Surreality TV: Inside HBO's Quirky John from Cincinnati
When you work on a show like HBO's John from Cincinnati (Sundays at 9 pm/ET), it can screw with your head. Recently, Austin Nichols, who plays the enigmatic John, was memorizing lines for a scene when he had a premonition. "I knew in my heart that I should scream, ‘Stare me down!'" he says. "The next morning when I arrived to shoot the scene, I looked at the revised script and those exact words were staring me in the face. It took my breath away." HBO hopes its surreal new drama has the same "Whoa, dude!" effect on viewers. Set in the border town of Imperial Beach, Calif., about 130 miles south of L.A., John rips through the turbulent waters of three generations of a down-in-the-dumps surfing family — grandparents Mitch (
