Matt Nix is the executive producer of one of the cutting edge shows on television called “Burn Notice”. USA has a hit on its hands and it makes you wonder if Nix knew it would be a hit right out of the gate.

“Well, I guess in terms of the job, the sort of day-to-day of it, not much actually. I find, like I sort of – you know, people ask me, like, how has your life changed? And really it’s sort of, I come into the office every day, and then I work for a really long time, and then I go home. But I mean the truth is, it was always a really fun process, and it still is. But really, like, kind of the best thing about it is all of your friends from high school call you.”

Some people like getting called out of the blue but spies don’t so it shows that he is working on a project that in no way resembles the man in real life, and lets face it who has the life of a spy?

“Well, they come from a lot of places. I’d say, with regard to the sort of case of the week stories, well, I mean really with regard to the case of the week stories and the overall Burn Notice arcs, we focus a lot on taking elements of spy craft from the history of espionage, including the very early history of espionage, to World War II stuff,” he said with pride. “I mean, really kind of, it runs the gamut. And we have the advantage of being able to use stuff from all around the world, you know, so we’ll read a history of Russian spies or read all about the Mossad and techniques from everywhere. And then we also talk a lot to our consulting producer, Michael Wilson, who has worked in that field and always has good ideas for places to go for stories….”

This show is funny, brutal at times, and very tech oriented. It’s a lot of shows rolled into one so this show certainly has some similarities with some older television hit series.

“I’d say that there’s actually a lot of kind of classic television, and the Rockford Files, It Takes a Thief. People bring up Magnum, MacGyver, The A-Team, a lot of these shows, some of which I watched, and some of which I didn’t watch,” he said candidly. “But all of us, between the entire staff, we all watched all of those at one point or another. And I think that one of the things we kind of use as a touchstone that owes a lot to that kind of classic television is the idea that we’re really – like, Michael is a classic hero. We all like Michael. We all like Sam. We all like Fiona. We all like Madeline.

“I think if you think about a lot of contemporary television, including a lot of my favorite shows, I should say, I mean I’m not slamming this at all. It is an important part of contemporary television, feeling ambivalent about the characters that you’re watching is, you know, it’s kind of something that people do now. And I think Burn Notice is not that. I think that when you look at Rockford, Rockford is just kind of a guy. At least my reaction to him was, you know, he’s a guy you want to know, you know, like Magnum is just cool, like, he’s a good dude,” he stated and then added this:

“And when we’re all writing Sam, you know, we’re thinking about what’s the brother we want. Who’s that guy? When we think about Michael, it’s whatever challenges or whatever darkness he may struggle with, ultimately he’s a hero. He’s a guy who’s going to put his ass on the line to save people, and so that kind of – you know, those are the kinds of touchstones we use, and I think that is a bit of a throwback to classic television.

"It’s a world where people are really trying to do the right things for other people, and where the characters on the show, however they bicker, are a family and they stick together, and that's what they do. And I think that's sort of comforting, and it’s fun to write, and I think there are a lot of interesting and subtle things to explore within that. But, you know, that’s the kind of television that I really cared about growing up, and I think there’s a place for it, and that’s part of what we’re doing.”

So what’s next for Matt? How about a “Hot Wheels” movie.

“I actually wrote the Hot Wheels movie at the beginning of season two, so I can tell you how it affected me. It was really hard, but I did it, but basically that project is – I think that it was not a particularly good time for Warner Brothers to make another car movie, if you look at what was being released at the beginning of last season, Speed Racer, and it was a tough time for them,” he revealed. “And so, I should say, as a feature writer in Hollywood, it’s not like you get a lot of calls telling you, hey, writer; here’s what’s going on. We just wanted to fill you in. So I think it’s on hold right now until such time as the stars align to make another big budget summer car movie.

“I had a blast working on it, and it was a fun thing, and I found actually that working on Burn Notice had given me a lot more comfort in the area of writing, you know, fast cars and action, that kind of thing. So I will say, because I wrote it at the beginning of last season, and because it sort of ended up getting put on hold at the beginning of last season, if you read the Hot Wheels script, you would find that like there are any number of snippets of dialog and action bits that were in the Hot Wheels movie that made their way into the season, so that was sort of a fun thing to be able to cannibalize some elements of that script and throw them into Burn Notice because by the time anything happens with that movie, it’ll be a whole new world.”

Check back for more interviews regarding Burn Notice throughout the season (Thursday’s at 10PM EST). Check out the trailer