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- [00:00]
Interviewer
Noah Hawley has written books and movies and TV shows like Alien Earth and Fargo. He's been successful not just because he's a talented writer, but also because he's a consummate professional. He's fluent not just in the world of stories and characters, but he also knows how to work inside the industry, how to get things done. And if you want to make it as a writer, whether it's on the page or on the big screen, well, this interview is a roadmap for doing that. The place I want to start is writers rooms and the benefits of writers rooms and also the drawbacks, because you're like, a pretty solo writer guy. So I just want to hear about the experience of being in a writer's room.
- [00:40]
Noah Hawley
Yeah, I mean, I have a love hate relationship with the writer's room, and hate's a strong word, but a writer's room is a collection of people with very different brains, and the only common language they speak is plot. So you tend to end up with this happens, then this happens, then this happens. Right. So it's very narrative driven. And because you're breaking story in a room with the what happens next mindset, you're not really using the writing part of your brain. You're using the list making part of your brain, the outline part of your brain. Right. And they're very different brains. And so, you know, I always try to steer them. Certainly when I'm in the room, when I say I love it, it's because it's a great way to help me think out loud and to bounce ideas. But it works best when I'm in there and I'm driving it. And then the sort of perfect version of it is, if I can't be in the room tomorrow, I'm gonna say to the writers, don't talk about what happens next. Let's talk about, say, how assimilation is a theme that runs through this season of Fargo. And so talk about the different characters and the different way assimilation plays into all these stories. And then we'll talk about that tomorrow, and we'll keep. Will keep going. Right. You know, I'll often get pitched an idea in the writer's room for Fargo, and I'll go, oh, well, that's a great movie twist if this was a movie. Right. That's a great turn. But reality doesn't. Rarely does reality end with white hat versus black hat in the town square at noon.
- [02:12]
Interviewer
Right.
- [02:13]
Noah Hawley
So. And because Fargo is defined by me is a lot of moving pieces on a collision course. And because there are so Many of them, you don't know which will collide and when. You don't really know what's going to happen next. That's part of the fun of it, is the unexpectedness of it. Right. And so this idea that, say, season two, you know, you've got Kirsten Dunston, Jesse Plemons, and they've run afoul of this North Dakota crime family, and you're like, I don't care who they send. I'm rooting for Jesse and Kirsten. And then they send the kid with cerebral palsy who just wants to prove he's a man. And you're like, I don't want anything bad to happen to him, though. You know, you're putting the audience in this position where they thought they were rooting for the violence, right? Because audiences are trained that violence is story, is progress in a story, right. But then when the violence comes, they're like, oh, I don't want this. You know, and, you know, I'm always looking to try to get the audience to hold up a mirror and go, well, why did I want this? Why did I want these characters to fight? And now it's happening, and it's awful. You know, it's violent, it's shocking, et cetera.
- [03:26]
Interviewer
So you talk about character there. As you think of how a character is different in Fargo, like the movie versus Fargo, the TV show, it seems like longitudinally, the character has to live on for a lot longer. So it seems like that would be one of the most structural differences between a movie and a TV show is just the depth in the time that we spend with the character.
- [03:48]
Noah Hawley
Yeah, it is. I mean, if you look at the movie Fargo in its totality, it's actually a lot more comedic than people remember. I mean, there's funny things, obviously, in our memories, but because of the way it ends and the wood chipper and, you know, the sort of dignity of the ending, and tomorrow's an irregular day, and she's gonna have a baby, and he got the 3 cent stamp, and there's a kind of, like, sublimeness to the end of it. You know, when. When you re watch that movie, you spend a lot of time going, like, I can't believe they put her in that hat. You know, there's a. There's a comedy throughout that that I felt like if we did that in the show, people would think we got it wrong. And we actually, you know, in. In the first season, I started referring to it as no country for Old Fargo. Like, we kind of needed more of Those dramatic stakes. Right. Because the reality is, I mean, once, once they break in and kidnap the wife, the threat level is super low. Frances McDormand has no threat level until the very end. Right. And Bill Macy is obviously, he's making a lot of bad decisions that lead to violence. But you know, you need in a 10 hour story to keep the stakes up for everybody and the threat needs to be constant.
- [05:06]
Interviewer
How do you watch a movie differently than how I would watch a movie? Like, I've never made a movie. I remember I had a friend in college and it was Kenner and we would always be watching a movie. And he was one of those movie talker guys. But it was actually pretty interesting because he'd be like, oh my goodness, the shot, you know, like the dolly roll or whatever, that pan was amazing. And he was very cognizant of the music and the lighting and just the way the sound effects were coming in. And he would talk about it. I was like, oh my goodness, I've never watched a movie like that. So as you're watching no country for old for Old Men, as you're watching Fargo, what is it that you're looking for to try to understand what's going on?
- [05:40]
Noah Hawley
Well, my hope is the first time I watch a movie, I'm just watching it as, as an audience kicking back. Yeah. And you know, afterwards I'll have thoughts about it, like, you know, one battle after another. Right. I mean, I was talking with someone last night who's, who's like, well, people are on the love it or hate it fence. And I said, well, I. I liked it. I just felt like the, the women were in a drama and the men were in a farce. And those were two different movies. And for me, they didn't jibe all the time. Right. You know, the women were always. The stakes were so high and they were literally fighting for their bodies and their identity. And then you've got dicaprio kind of like stumbling through in his bathrobe. And Sean Penn is kind of a caricature. Right. And. And so it felt like, well, it's kind of two different movies that, that have been sewn together. But I don't know that I'm aware of that while I'm watching it. But by the end, I sort of have a point of view on how the storytelling worked or didn't work as far as I'm concerned.
- [06:39]
Interviewer
Take me back to those different languages that you were talking about.
- [06:41]
Noah Hawley
Of.
- [06:42]
Interviewer
We talked about theme a little bit. We talked about character a little bit. We talked about plot. What are the different beats that you feel like you need to hit in a good story?
- [06:51]
Noah Hawley
Well, a lot of the times I'll start with a question, right. Or an image which has a question in it. Right. So the first season of Fargo was I had this image in my head of two men who meet in the emergency room, and one is a civilized man, and the other is the opposite. And then I'm like, well, that's interesting. Who are the men and what happens next? Right. Or, you know, a woman drives home with a man sticking out of the windshield of her car, makes dinner for her husband. You're like, well, who's in the windshield? And, you know, and, you know, my first novel, A Conspiracy of Tall Men.
- [07:29]
Interviewer
Such a good premise.
- [07:30]
Noah Hawley
Yeah. And I had studied, you know, sort of political science and. And this sort of cycle of paranoia in American politics. And, you know, then after I graduated and it was Ruby Ridge and Waco and the X Files was on, and I was like, oh, here we go again. What are Americans so afraid of that we keep cycling through this? And so that became a question that I wanted to answer through the writing of the book. The book becomes the answer to the question. Right. And so for me, when I talk about theme, that's what I'm trying to figure out is the answer to a question. In Fargo, it's always decency versus cynicism. And. And how can decency win? Right. But it's also in the. The third year was very much about the. You know, was after the 2016 election and this sort of post truth. Right. Alternative facts. And. And what is that? If you can't agree on what reality is, how does. How do laws work? How does law enforcement work, et cetera. So that's always where I'm coming from. And. And, you know, on some level, the characters then hopefully, invisibly to the audience, but for me, they're always part of that conversation, you know, and as you're
- [08:54]
Interviewer
thinking through that question about paranoia, like, what are Americans so afraid of? What are you able to achieve in story that you're not able to achieve in. Here's an essay.
- [09:03]
Noah Hawley
Right. Well, some of it is genre. Right. You know, genre provides a structure for an audience that's familiar. And then within that, you know, if you want to elevate it, character or thematically, you know, you're. You're doing something both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. You know, Memento, for example, a movie that is told backwards. Yeah, Right. And simply by changing the structure of. Of a Detective story. You're changing the whole identity of what those stories are, right? And so for me, there's. I always look at. My first question is always, what am I taking for granted in approaching this story? Right? And I'll give you an example. I made a movie, Lucy in the sky, with Natalie Portman, and I asked that question, and I thought, oh, well, this is a movie that's designed to play in a movie theater. I'm taking the movie theater for granted that it's a. That there's a big rectangle at the front and all these speakers, and you want to use the whole rectangle and you want to use all the speakers. But what if the movie theater itself could be a tool, right? What if when she's in space and everything's big, the image fills the whole screen and the whole room with sound? And then she comes back and she's waiting in line to pick the kid up from school, and everything sort of shrinks down, and the sound moves to the front, and the audience might not even be aware of it. But you're using the movie theater as a tool to help you create the emotion of the story, and that can happen within a story as well. You know, I did Legion, which was a comic book genre show, and because there was this surrealism built into it, because, you know, when we first meet him, he's in a psychiatric hospital, and we don't know if he has these powers or if he's crazy, you know. Now you can use that so that the audience isn't sure either, right? And as he becomes more sure, we become more sure. But because it's a heightened genre, I could say, well, this is the episode where David is trapped in his mind, and Sid is out trying to figure out which ones of his memories are real, you know, and he can end up sitting in an ice cube with Jemaine Clement. And, you know, you can personify things that in a straight drama, you couldn't do. Right? If I go back to.
- [11:19]
Interviewer
You were a writer on Bones. Like, I used to watch Bones because it was Fox, and I loved House, and I loved 24 and Prison Break. So I just watched a lot of Fox growing up. I remember, you know, I'd sit down, I'd watch Bones, and it was like appointment television, right? And so we'd sit down, we'd sit through the commercials and same thing with movies, right? I'd go to the theater. You talk about, what do you take for granted? Theater. Another thing is, someone's just going to be there the whole time. That's very different from now. I'm watching on YouTube, I'm watching on Netflix on my phone. So from like a tactics of storytelling perspective, how do you feel like you approach the craft differently now because of where media and the way that we consume things is at now?
- [12:01]
Noah Hawley
You know, there was this phenomenon that was referred to as peak television, right? Which was, you know, probably 2018, 2019, we had gone from 250 shows on the air to 500, right. Like literally they, we doubled the amount of story that we were pumping out to audiences. And we had all these new platforms, AMC and network and, and you know, Amazon got in. We had so many platforms and the only way that they could really garner an audience was to try to make something different and better. Right. So you end up with a lot of experimentation that was going on both with genre and form. You got all the Genji Cohen shows, you got a lot of stuff where, you know, Netflix is trying to, they're trying to be splashy and so they're doing something challenging or different and the same with all of them. And so as a, as a storyteller, it's a great place to be because I said, oh, different and better. I can do that. Right? But as a result, you get a lot more room to experiment. And you know, Legion is the perfect example of that. I mean, it really was the, a very surreal comic, you know, inspired by sort of old British comedy and television. And, and you know, there were a lot of elements to it that, that were not played straight. And you know, I once said to the network, like, you're asking me to compete with some very deep pockets at a certain point, what the show costs can't be my first priority, right? You want to win those awards, you're going against HBO and all those people. And so we were in this moment where, you know, the fourth season of Fargo was, was maximized.
- [13:47]
Interviewer
And this is what year this was,
- [13:48]
Noah Hawley
2019, going into 2020. So instead of 10 episodes, we did 11. The shortest one was like 55 minutes long compared to season five when I came back to it and I, and I thought, well, that's not where people's attention span is. They want, you know, I was like, I'm going to make concentrated Fargo now is no episodes longer than 44 minutes. You know, we're not playing around experimenting in the same way. I mean, I still had like a 10 minute puppet show, you know, in an episode, but, but it was much more concentrated and, and, and verb driven and, you know, action oriented because that's it's sort of where my head was as a viewer as well, which is. I loved all the experimentation. Now I just want a great story well told. Right.
- [14:36]
Interviewer
When you say verb driven, so that's verb driven as opposed to what things happen.
- [14:41]
Noah Hawley
Yeah, you know, as. As opposed to, you know, a lot of shots of clouds and. And episodes in which, you know, you're spending a lot of time with characters. But at the end of it, you think, I don't think anything happened this week that's. That moved the story forward in a way. And, you know, I think. I think there's a. Certainly a place for those. Those shows and those movies where. Where. Where it's more experiential and more anecdotal and, you know, it doesn't have to be a page turner, a plot. Plot driven. You know, are there
- [15:18]
Interviewer
shows, movies where not a lot happens that you really like that have done well?
- [15:24]
Noah Hawley
Yeah, I think so. I mean, you could argue that Mad Men was a show in which very little happened, you know, or. Or even the Sopranos was a show in which very little happened for a very long time. And then when it did, it felt like explosive. Right. Because, I mean, Pluribus is a perfect example of a show from this last year that Vince Gilligan made. Not a lot happened in that show week in, week out. And. And, you know, that's his pace of storytelling. You know, a guy comes home and opens the mail and Breaking Bad and. And. And they shoot it in A1 or. And the camera's on him. And the critical thing that comes in the mail is not the first envelope, it's not the third envelope, it's not the fifth envelope, it's the seventh envelope. Right. And you know, because you're lingering on this shot, that something's in that mail, but he's not giving it to you. He's making you earn it.
- [16:17]
Interviewer
How is character and storytelling different as you think about movies and tv? I mean, even as a kid, Loving Lost, it was very clear to me that J.J. abrams kind of made this show breakout hit. It's very coherent at the beginning, and you then begin to get this sense of, oh, my goodness, this thing is crushing. What are we gonna do with it? And it begins to kind of devolve at the end. These crazy things happen. Oh, my goodness. But movies aren't like that at all. Movies, the start, the finish, you have it planned. So talk to me about kind of that moment in the show when you're like, wow, this is doing better than I thought. We got to keep this going.
- [16:55]
Noah Hawley
Yeah, I mean, that was the thing with, with Lost. And, you know, I've talked to Damon Lindelof about it years back, and, you know, the problem was, is that they wouldn't give him an end date. And he had for the show. Yeah, they, because it was such a huge hit, they basically didn't want it to end. And he's like, but I have a finite amount of story, and unless I know where I am in the story, I don't know what to do. And so by the third season of Loss, like, characters are literally trapped in a cage, right. Because he doesn't know how much Runway he has to to land this play. You know what I mean? So, so that, that's part of it, right? Is, and, and you know, luckily I, I, I have the ability to decide how long the show is based on how much story I have working at fx. And, you know, I sold Fargo to them as an anthology, which meant that every season is a totally new story. And the first year was such a success that I expected them to say, what about two seasons with that cast and those characters? But they didn't, to their credit. And so I know where the ending is. Right. And I always feel like the ending of a story is what gives the story meaning. And so if you don't know how it ends or where, where it ends, how do you know what story you're telling on some level?
- [18:17]
Interviewer
So you just see it over and over again. With TV shows, people love the show. They don't like the ending.
- [18:24]
Noah Hawley
Yeah.
- [18:24]
Interviewer
Maybe it dragged on too long and they kind of leave with a sour taste in their mouth.
- [18:28]
Noah Hawley
Well, you know, I, I, I haven't done a lot of recurring shows. I did Legion, but that sort of was reinvented every year. And so it's a little bit odd to me. You know, I always have this moment where I was like, so it's the same characters, just different stories. That's just a weird thing to do. Like, I'm so used to wrapping it up at the end of the, the first season. And so, you know, I'm working on the second season of Alien Earth now, and I had this thought about television, which is, you know, when you start out in the first year of a show, you are, you come up with a story and then you populate it with characters that are meaningful to that story. Right. And so you tell that story and then you go into a second season and now you have all these characters that you have to service because they're in the show. Right. And so Rather than tell you another chapter of the story and sort of go, well, it's not really relevant to these, these characters, so I can just broom them out. People tend to have to service these characters. So that's why you watch these shows and you're like, what is this C story with this romance thing that I don't care about? But it's. And it's in there simply because they're like, I don't know what to do with these two actors. I have to come up with a story. And so I just sort of refuse to do that because I don't think that's what good storytelling is. You know, it's better. Come up with your second season, figure out which one of those, which of those characters really fit into it. And for the others, if they're not there or you're pausing on them for a season or maybe they come in later. You know, the best thing for the story is to tell a great story. But if you feel like you have to service all the characters, then, then, you know, it kind of hamstrings you. Yeah.
- [20:17]
Interviewer
I mean, you're almost in a prison of your own creation.
- [20:19]
Noah Hawley
And that's where the longevity of the show starts to work against you in a way because, you know, there's something organic to the first season. And then by the third or fourth or fifth year, you're like, I feel like they're just treading water here. You know, a movie is. I always look at the structure of a movie as like a pyramid. Right at the, at the base you have all this room to play with, introducing characters and themes and things. But the closer you get to the end of the story, the less room you have. Right. And so what's always interesting to me about long form, you know, an anthology show, a 10 hour movie, is that I still have room all the way to the end to tell the parts of the story that wouldn't fit into the movie. Right. Because you got to get to the point in a movie. Right. Literally to the point. And you know, in a show it's like, you can digress. You can have a whole episode from now from the villain's point of view and change the dynamic and everything. And in movies it's a lot harder. Right.
- [21:24]
Interviewer
Can you help me to appreciate horror? I do not like horror at all. I never watch horror movies. When I was a kid, I'd get really scared. Like, I remember watching 101 Dalmatians as a kid and having nightmares about Cruella de vil. I've had 50 nightmares about Cruella De Ville. She was just terrifying to me. And I remember there was a movie I watched where when I was. I don't know, I must have been six or seven years old, I went to go see Clock Stoppers, okay? And I was 15 minutes into the movie in the theater, and I was so scared that I left. And I remember just like huffing and puffing, and I was like, this is not my thing. I don't like horror. I don't like scary movies. But it's clearly a genre that you love, that you appreciate. What is it that you see about horror that I'm probably blind to?
- [22:06]
Noah Hawley
Well, what's interesting about it is that it is in many ways the most cinematic genre, because most horror is not about dialogue, right? It's about those long moments in which the camera is lingering on something, right? It's super visual. And the other thing is it produces the biggest emotion, which is fear for the least amount of money, because it's relying on your imagination to do most of the work, right? What's. I don't. She's sitting there, her back is to that door. It's dark in that doorway. What is back there? I'm not happy right now, right? Or what's in the basement? Don't go in the basement. Like, you know, the. The thing about horror is that that engages the audience viscerally in a way that almost no other medium does, right? And so I appreciate it on that level, and I appreciate it on the cinematic level. You know, I think that. That constraints on a storyteller are often lead to real innovation in storytelling. And, you know, horror is sort of by definition, a low budget medium often where you have. You have one location, you have this house. What can we do in this house? Right? And so you end up with a lot of really inventive filmmaking and storytelling as well. And then, you know, the other thing for me is that, you know, there's a reason that Jordan Peele was so successful in comedy and horror, which is the comedy and horror are the same. It's just tension, tension, tension release, right? And whether it's the punchline or the sight gag or whether it's the. The whatever comes out of the basement comes out of the basement. There's an uncomfortableness. If you rewatch Key and Peele, it's just horror, right? It's. But they're just. They're playing the funny side of it, right? So that. Those are some of the reasons that I like it.
- [24:10]
Interviewer
Can you tell me about how you create that tension and horror, like, do you. It seems like there's the tool of pacing, so that's over time, and then there's what kind of comes through. So that would be sound,
- [24:26]
Noah Hawley
or the lack of sound to lean forward. Yeah.
- [24:29]
Interviewer
Color, I think of deep blues and purples and kind of like blood red. What are the different tools that you have?
- [24:37]
Noah Hawley
I mean. Yeah, again, it's the imagination. If you can trigger the audience's imagination, you know, patience. You know, when you linger on a shot, right. A wide shot of a room, and there's a character who's, you know, sitting at a table, and you can see what they can't see because their back is turned. And you just sit on that shot. And as the audience member, you're like, I know I'm here for a reason. I know there's something in this frame. Right. That I need to see. And so you start to work yourself up of, like, you know, you start to get worried. You start to get nervous. My daughter is 18 now, but she. Since she was 12 or 13, she loved horror. And we. We would watch a lot of horror. And I was always trying to scare her, and she was very hard to scare. But we finally. We watched Paranormal Activity, which they made for $15,000. And it's. It's basically just. Just shot on a. On a video camera. And it's. It's this, you know, husband and wife, and he, you know, he buys this video camera because there's something weird going on in the house. And it's. It's innovation. Right. I was talking about horror. And innovation is that they set up the camera to watch them while they're asleep. And so you're looking at the bed and they're asleep, and there's a door to the hall that's open for some reason. Right? Who sleeps with the door open to the hall? But they do. And you're just watching, and they'll. They'll fast forward through. But then you're just watching them sleep, and it makes you feel. It makes you think about how vulnerable you are when you sleep. Right, Right. And you're just laying there for eight hours. Anything could happen. Anyone could walk in, et cetera. And it got her because it wasn't trying to scare her. It was just showing her how vulnerable she is eight hours of the day, and she didn't know what was going to happen. And. And the camera is just objectively recording and, you know, like a sheet will be pulled back by some unseen force or something minor will happen. But because your stress level is Elevated. It has a real impact.
- [26:45]
Interviewer
Yeah. The word that's coming to mind for me is subtlety, right, because your stress levels elevated, and so your senses are kind of awakened, right? Little sounds, whatever it is. Oh, my goodness, what is that? And so you don't need as much of anything to happen in order to create effect.
- [27:02]
Noah Hawley
Yeah. And so. And that's different than almost every other form of. Of storytelling, you know, because you. You got to leave space. And so when I'm, you know, it was a sort of constant struggle on. On alien Earth, you know, to leave that space because there's. There's so much that's going on, character and dialogue and, you know, even the action of, like, oh, the creature's out. And, you know, but to then build this moment where there's silence, and just behind them, you see this cabinet door just sliding on its own, right. You have to be aware that. That to the audience who's looking at that frame, and if they see movement out of the corner of their eye, their. Their adrenaline is going to spike, right? So you got to leave room for that. And, you know, as a filmmaker, I can make myself feel every emotion except fear, right? Because I know what's going to happen, right. I can get choked up at the emotional parts of the script that I wrote, right. If the actors are good enough and the music is right, and I can feel the adrenaline of the action or I can laugh at the comedy, et cetera. But what I can't do is feel the suspense on some level because I know how it pays off and where it pays off. And so that's what you have to rely on an audience for. That's why you. You would test something is to go, oh, yeah, they. They. They want more of this anticipation before, like, I'll get a bigger jump if I wait a few seconds longer, or I've waited too long, and now they're shifting around and I've lost them. You know, I test something.
- [28:40]
Interviewer
What does that mean?
- [28:41]
Noah Hawley
Well, well, you know, you'll like bringing
- [28:43]
Interviewer
people into the theater showing.
- [28:44]
Noah Hawley
Even if you should just show your friends or whatever, you know, you sort of want to watch an audience watch it. Yeah. You know, and, you know, you do these test screenings for shows and movies, and that experience of sitting in a theater with people, that's the valuable part. And then they do these focus groups after that nobody enjoys, you know, and, you know, there's sort of three types of people. There's people who loved it. There's the people who liked it but thought it could be Better. And then there's people who hated it. And I've never understood why you include people who hated it in the focus group. They hate it. You're never going to win them over. Right. But they do it because the studio has a point of view, right? There are things they don't like about your movie. And if they can include people in the group who also didn't like that thing, then they go, see, nobody liked it. And you're like, well, that person just hated the movie. I. I could change the thing you're talking about and they would still hate the movie. You know? Exactly.
- [29:42]
Interviewer
Scripts. If you're writing a dialogue, heavy script versus a horror script, how does that script show up differently? Because it seems like, what's different about a movie script? I mean, you would know better than me. But what are you trying to achieve? Because it's not just words, but you're trying to basically help the reader visualize what's there.
- [30:02]
Noah Hawley
You. Yeah.
- [30:03]
Interviewer
So how is it different between genres?
- [30:06]
Noah Hawley
Well, I don't know that. I mean, the way that I write them is not different. You know, I write the movie the way I see it. I mean, I sort of watch it in my mind while I'm writing it. So, you know, as I'm describing the scene, it will say, you know, angle on him as he crosses the room. Close up on the glass. You know, I'm trying to help you visualize the story as you're reading it. Both. Because I just find that it's a better communication tool that way. You know, I tend to write things that I make, you know, so I write them the way that I'm gonna make them. And then when I hire department heads and, you know, people to build the sets and all that, they can see very literally what, how I'm going to shoot it on some way. So it's a good communication device there, you know. But the other thing is, you know, whenever you are asking someone to interact with your story, studio or actors or whatever, you want the experience of that to feel like the story you want. You want the experience of. So if you have, like an irreverent comedy that you're writing or. Well, your outline better be irreverent and comedic. Right. You know, your pitch in the room. You know, I did this pitch once where I went in and, you know, you always have the small talk in the room. Water, water, small talk, small talk. And then at a certain point you get into it, you have to segue into the pitch, right? And so I said, you know, I was thinking on the way over here about the segue, how I'm going to get into the pitch. And I was thinking about maybe I would start by telling you how my house was broken into a few weeks back and they stole these guitars. Then I thought, well, no, maybe I'll talk about how I was watching TV the other night and Stripes was on. And I thought, oh, we don't really have Those kind of 70s, Bill Murray antihero movies anymore. And I talked about a few other segues that I could have done. And at this point, the executives were like, what is happening? No one ever talks about the segue. You're like breaking the fourth wall. Yeah. So I had immediately had their attention because I was doing something different than everybody else. And then at a certain point, they realized, oh, the segue is the pitch. It's a crime story about a Bill Murray anti hero in a very 70s style. And by pitching it the way that I pitched it, they could see the tone that the show would have because the pitch had the same tone. So it's all writing, know what I mean? And. And, you know, I. I like to say, you know, the key to success is you got to be good enough to get in the room, right? That's talent. You got to be good in the room. That's this ability to tell a story, right? And you got to deliver when you leave the room. I told you that I was going to write a show based on the movie Fargo, and it was going to feel like Fargo when you watched it, et cetera. And I delivered, right? So if you can do those three things, then. Then you're going to have a career.
- [33:17]
Interviewer
First drafts, you rip through them.
- [33:19]
Noah Hawley
Why is it that you do that? I mean, it just comes out at the speed. Like I said, I see it and so I write it. And, and how do you structure your
- [33:27]
Interviewer
life in order to do that? Do you basically just sit down for however long and write, I don't know, 100 pages to just get it all?
- [33:33]
Noah Hawley
Yeah, it depends. I mean, you know, with fiction, you know, I would tend to have. I'd have an idea for a. For a book, and then I'd have a certain period of time, three months or whatever between shows or. And. And I would sit down and I would try to write as much as possible in those three months. You know, if I had. If I ended up with 100 pages or 110 pages, you need enough so that when you. If you don't go back to that book for three years, you. You can see exactly what you were doing, you're like, oh, I see what the voice is. I see what the characters are, the structural conceits. I see where I was going.
- [34:12]
Interviewer
There's enough there, there.
- [34:13]
Noah Hawley
Yeah. If you only write 25 pages, you're like, ah, I lost it. I don't know what it was. Right. And so it is a kind of sprint to get it down and then. But with, you know, with the scripts, I just have fun doing it is the other thing. You know, you talk, I'm sure you've talked to a bunch of writers who almost hate the writing process or they can only managed, you know, if they sit in there at their desk for four hours, they can get one page written or something.
- [34:42]
Interviewer
I don't know if there's a craft in the world that so many people who do it consistently and at a high level hate as much as writing.
- [34:50]
Noah Hawley
I know, I know, but I, but it's tough, right? Because you know, I would say if you get to do what you love for a living, you gotta love doing it. Otherwise you're just an. Right. Like everyone else is trying so hard to live their dreams. And if you get to live the dream, I, I think you got to take some joy. Joy in it. Right.
- [35:09]
Interviewer
So for you it's fun.
- [35:10]
Noah Hawley
Oh yeah, it's a lot of fun. And you know, I meet a lot of people who, who don't feel that way. Right. But I'm. And I love all the parts of the job. I like the team sport of production, but I really love, you know, being at that desk with, with those words and, and chasing the story and help
- [35:28]
Interviewer
me visualize what that's like when you have the idea, the premise, the, the driving question. So that pops in your mind and then you're trying to get enough there. There that you can return to it three months, three years later. So walk me through the process of the initial conception to. There's now enough on the page that I can step away from it for a while.
- [35:50]
Noah Hawley
Yeah. So I wrote a book called the Good Father. There was a writer strike in Hollywood in 2007 and my daughter had just been born and it was like a three month strike and we drove from LA to Austin and you know, we were there for two and a half months and I thought, I mean, I suppose most people would have said, oh, this is a great opportunity to take a break, but not me. I thought, oh, what can I accomplish in this time? And so because I just had a kid, like a lot of new parents, I was sort of focused on what could go wrong, right? Like you have this kind of like, how do you baby proof your life? And so, you know, I had this story in mind about this, this, you know, man. He's a doctor, he's on his second marriage and the, you know, he's making dinner with his new family one night and the doorbell rings and. And someone has shot a presidential candidate and the suspect is his son from his first marriage, right? And so now he's going, he's both going back to figure out, what did I do wrong? Could I have been a better father? But he's also trying to prove his son innocent. But because he's a doctor, you know, rheumatologist, who's sort of the doctor of last resort, where when you really can't figure out a medical mystery, they go and they look at all the systems of the body. And so I thought, oh, it'll be interesting if he does these case studies, right? He looks at Sirhan Sirhan or John Hinckley or these other guys and he's like, is that my son is my son. Jared Loughner is my son. You know, any of these, these three name shooters, right? And so the book has both the fictional narrative and then it has these chapters that are all about Sirhan Sirhan and the shooting of RFK Senior. And, you know, because he's trying to look at, at these cases and see if he recognizes his own child in there. And I thought that was really interesting for me to mix fiction and nonfiction in a way. But I needed to get enough, deep enough into the story itself and then get two or three of those sort of chapters written so that later when I came back, I would understand what the drive was.
- [38:05]
Interviewer
It seems like with AI, the party line in Hollywood is basically like, no, AI is bad. We will not use it. It's killing creativity. It's going to take our jobs. In what way do you agree with the party line and in what way do you see things differently?
- [38:20]
Noah Hawley
Well, I mean, on some level it depends on the ambition of the storytelling, right? And how formulaic it is. I would say that there's some. How many seasons of Law and Order are there? I would imagine that AI could write a Law and Order script that you probably couldn't tell the difference, right? Because there's hundreds of hours. It's so trainable and there's such a formula to that show, right. And it doesn't have a inventive, creative ambition to it. You know what I mean? It's a procedural in a way in which, you know, which, which sort of has this comforting sameness from week to week. Right. But if you're asking it to invent something or be playful with something or innovate with something, I don't know that I'm worried about that right now. It's a tool like any other tool. Right. I mean, it's, we used to talk about visual effects, right. As, as, you know, ruining cinema. Right. You know, I mean, you think about the original Star wars and they do these matte paintings and they'd build these models and they'd literally just fly these ships around. And then as visual effects got better and better, you know, you started to have fully CG worlds.
- [39:44]
Interviewer
Now you have Avatar and James Cameron.
- [39:46]
Noah Hawley
Yeah. And, and so, and no one thinks that's cheating anymore on, on some level. So it's a tool. You know, I've talked to someone who is using AI for, for de aging actors instead of using visual effects because visual effects is not good at it and AI is better at just sort of. Right. Feed in a lot of photos of Tom Hanks as a younger man and then it'll, it'll do it. Right.
- [40:10]
Interviewer
I'm thinking Benjamin Button. There were a few parts of that movie when I didn't feel like they quite got it right. And that could have definitely been done better.
- [40:17]
Noah Hawley
Yeah. And so again, it's a tool. And if, if we use it as a tool, then I think it, it has a lot of uses. I mean, I, I, I wouldn't use it to write for me, but, but I do use it for productivity to some level. And, and if I am in a place where I need, you know, know where I want to, you know, sort of help me think about, do some research or help me think about the story, and I can kind of bounce back and forth. I end up telling the story. But, but it's a, it's a mechanism, you know, to, it's not a blank page. Right. And I, I think the blank page is really intimidating to a lot of people. And, and I, you know, I guess I'm used to rewriting writers also, so there is a sense that, like, you're going to give me material, I'm going to go, oh, that's not right. Here's how I would do it differently. Right. And so seeing it done wrong can also trigger right now, now you're like, oh, I see how I would do it. I didn't know how I would do it before, but now I see how you did it. And I was like, yeah, it shouldn't be like that it should be like this.
- [41:20]
Interviewer
Isn't it funny how often that happens? We're like, I got a vision for what this is going to be like. Okay, explain it to me. I can't explain it to you. Okay, show me three things. Yeah. Okay, that's wrong in this way, that's wrong in this way, that's wrong in that way. Okay, now I know exactly what I want, and I can explain what's wrong with each of these things.
- [41:36]
Noah Hawley
Yeah. You know, we're all trying to move these businesses into the future, right? Fiction. You know, how's. How is. How are people going to read novels in 10 years from now, 20 years from now? What does a novel need to be 20 years from now to be commercial? To be, you know, and because we want to do our art as a profession, you got to think about it, right? Not how do I make something commercial, but how do I think about an audience? You know, a readership, a viewership. You know, I talked about how in 2018, I made a season of Fargo that, you know, was 60 Minute episodes because the audience, they wanted more, Right? And then in 2024, I made much shorter, more concise, because that's where I felt like the audience was. I love both of those seasons. I think they're both great seasons. But I was aware of the fact that people's attention span shift. And, you know, you have to. You have to be aware of the moment that you're working in and the moment that's coming as well.
- [42:47]
Interviewer
You're talking about the audience. And I'm curious to hear on what level, if you almost have duality here, on what level you like, I am the creator here, I am the director. This is my vision, and I'm going to take that vision and put it into the world. We'll see if people like it. And on the other hand, all the way on the other side of the spectrum, it's like kind of maybe like Law and Order or something. It's like, this is a product. We're going to give something that is predictably excellent. And I'm going to be very cognizant of what the audience wants.
- [43:17]
Noah Hawley
You have to be aware of it no matter what. Whether you choose to cater to an audience or not is your decision. But part of it also is that this process of making corporate art, right, Television or film, where it costs 40, 50, 100, $200 million to make something. Right? So. So you're working with a corporation, and their driving motivation is to turn a profit, of course. Right? To turn A profit through the art that you're making. How do we game the risk reward of it so that there's more reward than risk. Right. And my job as a storyteller who is. Who is concerned both with commercial success, but also I want to experiment. I want to challenge you. I want to take you to places that you didn't think you were going to go, et cetera. I have to game that with them to go like, well, I'm the safest risk that you'll take because I will experiment and play and give you that original thing. But I'm going to bring it in on time and on budget and, you know, and. But they worry, you know, I mean, every season of Fargo that I make, then I always get the same note. It just doesn't feel like last time. Right. And you're like, well, yeah, it's a totally different story. But I understand where the note comes from in a way, because. And especially going into that second season, which is arguably people's favorite, you know, 1979American crime epic, you know, I went from season one, which was a literal kind of one to one, car salesman is an insurance salesman scaled down story, to season two, which was more of an American crime epic and about the rise of corporate America and the death of the family business, et cetera. And they're like, well, how is this a Fargo? Right? And I was like, no, no, no. You're going to feel all the same feelings that you felt watching season one and watching the movie. They're just going to happen in different places for different reasons, et cetera. But until you show them, they don't get it.
- [45:34]
Interviewer
Yeah. Derek Thompson, who, he writes at the Atlantic, one of my very favorite journalists, he has this idea called most advanced yet acceptable, which is basically when creative work works, it has to be beyond where we currently are. Something needs to change. But if it changes too much, people kind of don't have the receptors for it. But if it doesn't change enough, there's not novelty, and then it's just a little bit boring. And then a lot of create creative work is just pushing the limits, whether it's the difference between season three and season four, whether it's launching a new product into the world, it's getting the right amount of difference in terms of what it is that you're doing so that it can actually resonate.
- [46:17]
Noah Hawley
Yeah. You know what I. One of the things I enjoyed most about the Daniels movie, everything everywhere, all at once, was how mad it made people in Hollywood because there were no takeaways There was nothing you could take from that movie where you're like, oh, if we just copied this, we'd have the next biggest Oscar winning movie of all time. It was such a unicorn, and it won so many things. It ran the table and people didn't know how to repeat it. You know, Hollywood is a place in which people are always running to where lightning just struck.
- [46:52]
Interviewer
That is so true.
- [46:53]
Noah Hawley
Their takeaway is never, well, maybe if we made something as original. Yeah, right. We would be as successful. Instead, they're like, well, what could we copy about that that we could then, you know, coattail that to our own success of something else? And it's, you know, I mean, look, I. I have built a career in television, mostly on adapting existing ip. Right. Fargo or Alien Legion is a comic book. Right. But. But I also feel like I've built a reputation as an original storyteller. And that seems weird, Right? How could both of those things be true? Yeah. At the same time. Except I always try to bring as the same level of originality to a Fargo as I would if I had just made the story up myself. Because in many ways, I have. Right. I'm using the title, I'm using a kind of tone of voice that the Coen brothers have, and I'm availing myself of the facets of comedy and violence and philosophy, spiritualism under currents that run through their work, you know, which is a. You know, it's a recipe in which you can change every time. You can change, you know, how much of the comedy you use versus how much of the violence you use versus how philosophical is it, how much about Judaism is it. You know, all those elements in different measure, create a totally different experience, but it's still the same thing at its heart.
- [48:30]
Interviewer
You got me thinking about the process of consuming art as changing your sense of what's possible.
- [48:38]
Noah Hawley
Right.
- [48:39]
Interviewer
So we're talking about Memento. What if you told a detective story back to front instead of front to back? You talk about Benjamin Button. He looks at the F. Scott Fitzgerald story, Eric Roth, and he says, okay, from that story.
- [48:51]
Noah Hawley
It's.
- [48:51]
Interviewer
It's decent story, but what if somebody ages backwards, right. And there's everything everywhere all at once. It's this new way of making a film. How did Don DeLillo do that with White Noise for you? It seems like that's a lot of what that novel did. It was like, wow, this awakens something. It unlocks something in me.
- [49:12]
Noah Hawley
Yeah. I mean, I was a huge reader all through childhood, but, you know, and I started out you know, reading a lot of science fiction. There was a. Down on 8th Avenue, there was a science fiction bookstore when I was growing up, and I'd go down there, and he knows all the Robert Heinlein and Edgar Rice Burroughs and all the classic, you know, Asimov, all that stuff. And, And. But I was also listening to, like, a lot of British comedy records because my dad had. Had studied overseas and he'd brought home a lot of these old gun show records and Firestine Theater and. And, you know, Monty Python was on and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy had come out. So. And then, of course, there's the New York tone of voice, Right. If you grow up in New York, right. Way of talking, you know, it's. It's. There's a wise guy, you know, attitude. Right. And the thing with DeLillo is he's so New York, right. He, He. He encapsulates that. That humor on the one hand, and. But he's also. You know, I had never really read anything before I read that book that. That was meta in a way. Right. And. And, you know, White Noise was sort of the first novel, came out like 84, that was talking about consumerism and. And pop culture and. And, you know, there's a moment in that book in which, you know, the father goes in, he turns off the lights, and. And the young girl is talking in her sleep, and he leans close to her to hear what she's saying, and she's saying Toyota Celica over and over again, Right. Like, he kind of created this. This meta. Ness. This driving thematic. The book was so thematic in many ways, that expanded my concept of what a book could be. Oh, it's not just a story, Right. It's about something. It has a point of view. It's talking about. He's a professor of Hitler studies and he's talking about all plots lead toward death and. And, you know, these bigger ideas that. That, you know, I hit at the right age where I thought, oh, I want. I want to write bigger ideas also, you know. Yeah.
- [51:33]
Interviewer
And when you look at DeLillo, what did he teach you about storytelling versus someone like Kurt Vonnegut?
- [51:40]
Noah Hawley
Yeah, I mean, they're both playful, right? I mean, but Vonnegut is. You know, I went back and reread a lot of Vonnegut before I was writing this last book, Anthem, because I don't know how he did that. You know, I mean, he. And he's the only one who's ever done it really, is that he manages to tell these, you know, to write a book like Slaughterhouse Five about his World War II experience, but do it with the conceit that his main character has come unstuck in time and that he's bouncing around without any control from these moments in his life. And now he's in the war, and now he's after the war. But Vonnegut is also a character in his own book. He's narrating his own book and talking about the experience in the war. And he'll bring in, he has this. He invented the science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, you know, and he's, he's, he's, he's doing so many cross genre things that shouldn't work, but it does. But not only does it work, he also has this, this, this very simple morality to him that feels important and meaningful. And so I thought, well, how, you know, I wanted to understand better how to do, do that because I found myself as a narrator in my own book and I wanted to understand how, where the lines could be on some level. You know, I mean, we don't know how to do anything until we learn, right? And I don't have a degree. I didn't get an mfa. I never went to film school. You know, I learned to write books by writing a terrible book and then writing a less terrible book. Right. And reading, and reading and reading. And, you know, you learn on the job, and if you learn on the job, you got to be willing to accept the fact that, that it's going to be a process to get you to a place where the work is great.
- [53:39]
Interviewer
I don't see this with every writer, but it is one of the most common themes that I see for people who come on how I write is basically this. You see something, it moves you to awe. Wow, okay, what's going on there?
- [53:53]
Noah Hawley
Look, look, look.
- [53:55]
Interviewer
Try to integrate.
- [53:56]
Noah Hawley
Doesn't work. Look, look, look.
- [53:58]
Interviewer
Try to integrate. Figure it out. Do that over and over and over again. And over time you begin to understand what other people are doing. But strangely, develop your own style by integrating the works of people who've moved you.
- [54:14]
Noah Hawley
Yeah, you're synthesizing all of your, what are really unique inspirations. The fact that I had the science fiction that, that I loved as a kid, but I also love British comedy. Like, that's not necessarily something that a New York kid would have. Right. And then, but then also the, the New York comedy, that other side of my family, right? The, the Jewish Long island side, the Mel Brooks side. The, you know, and now, so now. Okay, so now These are two different types of comedy, but here's where they. They synthesize for me. Or here's the absurdism or the surrealism of the fact that the first movie I ever saw in a movie theater was 2001 A Space Odyssey. I was seven years old, right? And. And, you know, I remember sitting in that theater and. And I don't know what was going on in that movie, but I was fascinated. I mean, I'd never seen anything that big before. And you start with Neanderthals, and then you're in space, and it's like. For a kid, you're like, what is this amazing movie? And, yeah, it's slow. It's pace slow. But. But. And so when you start to tell your own stories, you're drawing from all of these places. You know, one of the first writing assignments that I remember in high school was we were reading catch 22, the Joseph Heller book, which is, you know, he invented that phrase, catch 22, about, you know, the irony of. Of if you're a World War II pilot and you want to get out of flying missions because it's too dangerous, and so you tell them that you're crazy, they go, well, the fact that you want to get out of these missions proves that you're not crazy, but if you were crazy, you'd want to fly these missions. And so either way, you're fucked. Right. And so there's a humor to that. Right? There's. There's a. There's a satire, etc. And so we had this assignment, which was, write your own chapter of catch 22, pick a character, and write a new chapter for Catch 22.
- [56:17]
Interviewer
In his voice.
- [56:18]
Noah Hawley
Yeah, in the voice of the book. Right. And I loved that assignment. And in many ways, looking back, you know, after having done Fargo and Alien, it's like, oh, that's. It was the same thing. It was like, what is it about this book? The style of it, the humor of it, the themes of it that I was able to access and channel. Right. What is that skill to be able to do that? Right. Which is to take the spirit of a thing, not to copy the thing, but to go, what? What? How was he able to do this? And how could I also do it?
- [56:55]
Interviewer
Yeah. And I like voice because it's definitely there. It's obviously a thing, but it is not the kind of thing that's just handed to you on a platter. It requires looking and feeling and. And reflecting.
- [57:05]
Noah Hawley
Yeah. I mean, the thing with the Coen brothers was that, you know, they write A lot of movies that they don't direct, and those movies never feel like Coen Brothers movies. So there has to be something in the translation from the page to the screen that that completes that. That voice of. Of Cohen. Right. And so my job wasn't just to write in their voice, which I was able to do, but then I had to. And part of it was understanding that comedy and horror are the same. Right. Part of it was understanding that Anton Chigurh's haircut is hysterical. And yet to the audience, it's just weird and unsettling. And why does he look like that? Does he know he looks like that? Like, it makes him scarier on some level that he has this stupid Prince Valiant haircut. Right. And I know they laughed at his face after they gave it to him, but it's not comedy in the movie. So there's something in that gray area between farce and horror that is Cohen. Right. And so how do I channel that?
- [58:05]
Interviewer
One difference between humor and horror is that whether I'm watching something alone, I think I still feel the same experience of fear. But I laugh way harder when I watch a movie with other people.
- [58:21]
Noah Hawley
Yeah.
- [58:22]
Interviewer
It's like a shared experience of laughter. And it all kind of builds up like a crescendo where. Versus, a lot of times when I'm watching something alone, it's actually only in retrospect, or when I'm talking to someone, I'll be like, oh, yeah, that was funny.
- [58:34]
Noah Hawley
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's. I mean, the shared fear experience, though, does elevate it as well. Right.
- [58:40]
Interviewer
Because, like, we're all scared together.
- [58:42]
Noah Hawley
Yeah. And so much of horror is silence. And. And then if there's a jump and people around you scream and, you know, you're just. The stress level in the room rises and rises. But, yeah, I mean, there's definitely horror movies that I've watched alone during the day and had to pause to, like, get my adrenaline down to be able to keep watching, you know, because it's so effective. And. And you are aware of your aloneness. You are aware that you're now a very frightened person who's isolated and alone.
- [59:14]
Interviewer
You know, as you write Fargo, you write Alien, these sort of shows with different voices, and then you work with a team, you're leading a team. Then you have the dp, you have the director, like, all these different people, the writers. How explicit are you about the voice? Is that something that develops over time where you're like, hey, here's a style guide and a sheet of how we do things. Or is it just like you say to your team? Is very important that you understand what the voice is? There's a feeling. It's hard to explain, but I will know it when I see it.
- [59:43]
Noah Hawley
It's both, to some degree, there's a voyage of discovery. And in order to both build the team that I'm going to work with when I'm directing that we're all making the same thing, I have to be able to explain what I'm doing to them. Certainly with film, to entertainment, I'm always just trying to create a feeling in the audience, and I don't necessarily know how to do it, but I'm willing to have bad ideas and play around with it. And. And when I go to adapt Alien, for example, I don't rewatch Alien. I think about, well, what feelings did that movie produce in me and what really stuck? And then how do I produce those same feelings in the audience by telling them a different story? I'm not thinking about the intellect of it. I'm not thinking about the plot of it. I'm just thinking about the sort of paint swatch of emotions where you're like, oh, it's bone white and it's. It's eggshell and it's. You know, and if. If you think emotionally about a movie, you're like, oh, I was feeling blue and then I was red, and then I was. Yeah. And so how do I create those feelings in. In the audience in a way that. That, you know, I mean, in the most obvious way, you're like, oh, it's a sad moment and here's sad music. That's a one way to create a feeling, but it's pretty obvious.
- [61:03]
Interviewer
But I like the color wheel analogy because there's complimentary feelings. Probably. Like, there's complimentary colors. Right. Like, I think grief and humor kind of opposite. They're like blue and orange. Kind of opposite sides of the color wheel. But one can then enable the other.
- [61:19]
Noah Hawley
Yeah, I mean, one of my favorite things to try to create in an audience is a feeling of catharsis. Right. Which sort of literally means from sadness comes happiness. Right. That there's really. That there's a. There's a. There's a level. There's a complexity of emotions that needs to be released, that build. That builds up and. And, you know, and can give you a transcendent feeling at the end. You know, I tried with this last season of Fargo, where Sam Sproul's character, you know, he broke in and tried to kidnap Juno Temple. At a certain point, and, you know, she took half his ear off and escaped. And then he ran into her one other time, and she thinks that they're square, but he shows up at her house when she thinks everything's all over, and he's sitting there waiting for her with her family. And, you know, when I sat down to write that scene, I didn't necessarily have a plan for it. I knew that he showed up and I thought, oh, well, so it'll be one more set piece where she has to defeat him or escape from him. And then I started writing the scene, and it didn't want to be that. And I thought, well, that's his scene, right? His scene is, I'm going to show up and it's going to be violent in action. What if she doesn't play his scene? What if she refuses to play his scene? And so she basically says, look, it's a school night and we're halfway to supper, so we're either going to have to reschedule this or you need to wash your hands and help. Right? And so then he's in the kitchen, like, helping her make the biscuits. And I was like, well, this is going to a really interesting place for me. I love that she just refused to be in his scene, and she's kind of trying to force him into her scene. And then it builds. There's tension to it, right. Because he's a hair away from going back to his scene, and she keeps working him and working him, and then they're sitting together and they're literally breaking bread. And, you know, and she raises the idea of forgiveness, you know, like, at a certain point you just have to forgive and move on and. And, you know, and he takes a bite of this role and his eyes tear up. And, you know, it's this idea of forgiveness that is so profound in. In our human culture. Right. And it's, you know, I felt like the. That complexity of emotion that went into it builds that moment, and now that moment is really heightened. Yeah, right. You know, and. And so. But that those things can make. When you're tr. When you're making stuff for networks and studios and the, like, they get nervous when. When the emotions get really complicated. I remember when I worked at abc, they had this word they would use, emotionality. They would talk about the emotionality of something. And I was like, well, that's not a thing you realize, like, it's emotional, right? Or it's not, but emotionality. And then I realized, oh, it's. It's actually the simulation of emotion. It's like the sad music starts before the sad moment to tell you that the sad thing's coming up.
- [64:25]
Interviewer
You're supposed to feel sad.
- [64:27]
Noah Hawley
Yeah. And it's clarity where it's like, you only feel sad when you're sad. You only feel happy when you're happy. They don't like it when it gets too complicated, where some people might feel one thing and other people might feel something else.
- [64:41]
Interviewer
Huh. But I like that you keep using the word playful as you talk about writing.
- [64:47]
Noah Hawley
What.
- [64:48]
Interviewer
Why is playfulness so important? Why is that the word that you keep coming back to?
- [64:52]
Noah Hawley
Because it's an act of imagination. Right. And you think about, you know, kids down on the floor with pretend play. You know, one moment it's a spaceship, the next moment they're cowboys. It's like, you know, they have access to a level of imagination through play. Play.
- [65:08]
Interviewer
You should have seen the forts that we used to build with couch pillows growing up.
- [65:12]
Noah Hawley
Yeah. And. And so, you know, that act of play means that you are open to all possibility. Right. And. And, you know, I mean, I'll. I'll write the script, and I'll get on set with the actors, and then we'll. We'll play with the material. And it doesn't mean that anything different is going to happen necessarily, but it means you need to be open to whatever comes. And I think that that playfulness, both on the page and on the screen, but also in how you approach the business of writing with how you. It's all an opportunity for creative problem solving. When the network or the studio gives you a note and you think, oh, that's what they think it should do, that's completely wrong. But you can't say that's completely wrong. Right. So you go, oh, okay, well, how do I get what I want while making them think that I'm giving them what they want? Right? And that's. It's. It's a creative approach to problem solving and a playful approach, because rarely is the answer to yell. You know, I think a lot of artists have this instinct that they have to be junkyard dogs and protect their work at all costs. But that's a recipe for disaster. It's like, you hear these stories, Someone got their first show, and they just went to war with the network about it so that they could make the show that they had in their mind. And then they never made anything else again because the network's like, life's too short to work with those people. So you're actually failing if you do that. You have to find a way to seem easy to work with, to seem to be easy to work with, but also. Oh, but he got what he wanted on the screen. You know, she got. She told the story that she wanted to tell, and I feel good about it. Right, right. So.
- [67:10]
Interviewer
Well, I think that we have the idea in our head of the crazy, wacky, wild creative. And, you know, it really struck me, I was reading about Christopher Nolan and his consistent ability to just deliver on time and under budget.
- [67:22]
Noah Hawley
Yeah.
- [67:22]
Interviewer
And that's something that really stands out with you, is I think, where you're at, you're able to speak to the creatives, and you're able to kind of speak their language, but then also be the business guy.
- [67:33]
Noah Hawley
Yeah.
- [67:34]
Interviewer
And also to speak to the business people and be the creative now and speak the language of business, but also be the creative person. And being able to almost be multilingual seems really important.
- [67:45]
Noah Hawley
Well, I want to do this for a living. You know what I mean? And I. I've had these conversations with authors who are like, do I have to go out and promote my book? And I was like, only if you want to write another one. You know what I mean? It's like, do I have to take their notes? I got a pilot going, and they want me to change the story, and do I have to take their notes? It's like, well, if all you want to do is write an outline, then you hold firm. Right. But if you want a script out of that outline, then, yeah, you got to work with them. And then if you want that pilot picked up, you know, again, there's a lot of give and take that you have to do, but. But the skill comes in at. But I never compromised on anything that was too meaningful. Right, right.
- [68:27]
Interviewer
There are deal breakers.
- [68:29]
Noah Hawley
Yeah. And look, I mean, a note is. That's confusing. That's a good note. I want to know if something's confusing or I see what you're going for. I just don't think you got there. That's. That's really helpful to me. Right. A note is not. I would do it differently. And I have those moments where I say to them, well, that's just a different story. Right. That's not the story I told. So it's not really helpful to suggest that something else happens. That's just not the story that I'm telling. Maybe that's a good story. Maybe that's a better story. I don't know. It's not.
- [69:00]
Interviewer
Right. It's like someone walking to a candy store and Saying, hey, there's not enough vegetables here.
- [69:04]
Noah Hawley
Right.
- [69:05]
Interviewer
I'm not trying to sell you finish.
- [69:06]
Noah Hawley
And, you know, it's sort of the worst situation you can find yourself in is when you realize, oh, I'm making a different movie than they want. Yeah. You know, because there's sort of nothing you can do about it. And. And you know, you find yourself in that situation from time to time, you know, and there's sort of no way to resolve it because, you know, if they fundamentally feel like, oh, well, we wish this had gone a different way, story wise, you're like, well, I can't fix that. Unless you want to rewrite and reshoot half the thing, which they do sometimes, you know, but. But, you know, you. So that's the other reason that communication is so important, to make sure this is the movie I'm making, this is what you want. Right. And not to cater to them, but so you can avoid that 11th hour editing room. Oh, shit, you know what? I. We're never. This is never going to resolve itself.
- [70:03]
Interviewer
So I just made a short film and the thing that surprised me the most is just all the subtleties of sound, the way that you would put sound in, in post, the way that you could play with echo and reverb, whatever, to make a space feel big or small, how long a song should be, to basically create suspense, say, oh, now we're ending this little segment here. And you started off kind of wanting to be a songwriter, kind of wanting to be a rock star, whatever it was. So now from that experience, how do you think about music, like in the script writing process and then how you go from that to then putting it on screen?
- [70:42]
Noah Hawley
You know, I start. I. I've used the same composer on, on everything I've done. Jeff. Jeff Russo. And. And so he and I start talking very early in the process. I mean, before I had a Vargo script, I had talked to him about what I felt like, you know, that show should sound like. And so, you know, I did my first location scout up in Calgary and I had 10 pieces of music that he'd written that I could listen to while rolling through that landscape. And, you know, you really feel what the. The tone of voices of it. Right. And so, you know, with Legion, we sat down, I was like, well, I feel like it should sound like Dark side of the Moon, which is the most. The closest you would come to the sort of auditory experience of mental illness, you know, in musical and soundscape form. Right. And so, you know, he goes out and he tracks down that brand of 1979 patch cord synthesizer. And he buys one and, you know, and we start dialing in what the sound of. Of the show should be. So it starts with that. Of like, what does it even want to sound like? You know, you think about, you know, you think about the. A movie like All Quiet on the Western Front that, that Ed Berger did. And when that score comes in, it's this electronic, ominous electronic score. Nothing period about it, right? Like, and it's really the tension between the period piece and the modern music elevates. It creates a modernity to this project that elevates it beyond just, oh, it's a World War I movie, right? And, you know, so that soundscape. And then, you know, on Legion, I. I decided that I wanted the, the needle drops, the songs that we use to sound like score so that you never really broke out of the. The musical concept of, of the score. And so, you know, because I was a musician and, and, and a singer, the easiest way to get what I heard done was just. We just did it ourselves. You know, I would choose the songs and he would, you know, he would compose the music and then I would go in, you know, it's a great thing at the end of the day, and go, go in and record some music and, and you know, and then, and then it creates this, this sort of almost hypnotic feeling like you never break out of the, the tonality of the, of the piece. So as I said, trying to figure out how to create a feeling in the, in the audience. And, and music is one of the ways to do it, but it's also the lack of music. And if you, and if you're, if you're mixing tone, right? If you've got drama and comedy and violence and whatever, what do you score? If you score the comedy, you kill the drama. If you score the drama, you kill the comedy, right? So. So a lot of the times it's where music doesn't go. You know, there's. There's an example I use in season three of Fargo. Carrie Coon is this cop who's, you know, she's at her lowest point. And we had this running gag for her where everywhere she goes, the electronic sensors don't recognize her. The automatic doors never open, the soap and the sink never works for her. And she begins to think that she's not real. Like, you know, and so she's having this conversation with this other cop who she's met in this investigation, and she's admitting for the first time that she doesn't know that she's real or not. And then she, and then the woman gives her a hug, right? And like you, you are real. And then she goes to the bathroom and the soap works and the water works. And, and, and so when I was looking at that sequence and thinking, okay, well I could score the emotion of, of her confession and that would be totally legitimate, right? And it would, it would heighten it and, you know, but what I'd rather do is leave that dry and then score the triumph of the sync, you know, the being real and emphasize that. And because there was no music until that point, the impact of that was so high. Right. And what you find mostly is that people just use too much music, right? You watch a lot of things where it's a 42 minute show with 38 minutes of music because they don't trust you to just have your own emotional journey with the story. And then the music becomes meaningless.
- [75:25]
Interviewer
I heard this story about Scorsese. He used to watch a movie every single night.
- [75:29]
Noah Hawley
Right.
- [75:30]
Interviewer
And have you done anything in terms of how you think about consumption? Like, I don't know, you've probably referenced 20 movies already in our conversation. And is that something that you've done intentionally or is it just like. I just love movies. I love this, this, this medium. And so I'm constantly consuming and then I make things.
- [75:53]
Noah Hawley
Yeah, I am. You know, when you have a lot of output, you need to have a lot of input, right? So whether that's reading, you know, books, articles, essays, whatever it is, or watching things, it's. I'm always looking for something that makes me go, oh, that's interesting, you know, or, you know, it's like when I discovered Paolo Sorrentino and the Great Beauty, which is a great Italian. He's a contemporary Italian filmmaker who has a Felini esque quality to him. And you know, it just. Part of your brain opens up that wasn't open before. That's a good, you know, and then it's like with white noise. And once it's open, it stays open, right? And, and so I'm always looking for those moments and, and you know, so, so, you know, one of my favorite routines that I, I don't get to do all the time is, you know, you drop the kids at school and then you go to some restaurant or cafe for a second breakfast at that point and you know, and I've got something in my back pocket. Whether it's a, you know, a, you know, a little book of ideas or magazine articles or whatever. And then the moment that I go, oh, that's interesting. Now my mind is engaged, right? And now that's making me think. And once I'm thinking, now I'm. Now I can think about my stories. You know, the. The hardest part is when you go in and you're like, I got nothing, right? Because, you know, I left it all on the page yesterday. Nothing went in in the last 12 hours. And so where am I going to go with this? And sometimes the. The answer is, well, you're just not going to write today. You, you know, you gotta be okay with that also. But if you can trigger a thought, now you're up, off and running.
- [77:40]
Interviewer
I want to get into hiring. As we begin to close here, as you think about bringing people on, you've talked about this kind of person who just works too hard, and intuitively you'd be like, how could that exist? Yeah, so talk to me about that.
- [77:55]
Noah Hawley
Well, I have a line which is like, don't climb four flights of stairs to get to the second floor. You know, there's people who. You're like, you're working way too hard just to go up one flight of stairs. You know, and, you know, some of it is, you know, when you. When you get up every morning and you gotta go in and shoot eight pages of a script, and you've got an action scene and you got this important dialogue scene, and you're like, how am I gonna fit it all in today? Every morning? We know that what we have to do today is impossible, right? But we're going to do it anyway. You know, I remember talking to Jason Schwarzman. He was really nervous about a scene. And I said, well, just picture your favorite scene in your favorite movie, right? I could have been a contender, right? They shot that on a Tuesday between 4 and 8pm Right? And, you know, they didn't go, oh, this is the. I could have been a contender scene. Or maybe they did. But at a certain point, it's just. You just got to get in there and do the work, right? And I guarantee you, if, you know, if we don't like what we did, I'll find a way to take another shot at it, right? So you got to lower the stakes on some level, even as you're trying to. It's the playfulness, right?
- [79:10]
Interviewer
Let's close talking about movies, books and tv. I just want to go through each of them, and I just want to get your quick take on writing for that medium. So let's start with movies.
- [79:21]
Noah Hawley
Well, movies, like I said, you know, you. You start out with all the time in the world, and you end up with no time at all. And so. And so, you know, you kind of have to structure it in a way that, that. And this is true of books also, you know, where the plot doesn't hijack the story from you. In other words, if you reach a point in. In the movie in which you. You're just paying off what you set up, then you've kind of lost control of the story in a way. You know, I started writing with the. With on the book front with the Good Father and then before the Fall and then Anthem, what I called emotional thrillers. Right. And I did it because my. The first novel, A Conspiracy of Tall Men, which was about a professor of conspiracy theories whose wife was killed in a plane crash. And he finally has the conspiracy he's been looking for, but he's lost his wife. And so it's no trade off. But there was a moment in that book, the last sort of few chapters, where I'd set this conspiracy into motion and I had to pay it off. And I felt like, oh, well, now I'm just writing what happens next in a way where it's not as interesting to me. But if I can build it as an emotional thriller in that, what you really want to know is, is the character going to be okay? Is the hero going to. How are they going to navigate the emotional crisis they're going through? That's what you really care about. And yeah, you want to know what the solution to the mystery is, and you want to see everybody end up safely, but you still have room to tell the interesting parts of the story and not become a sort of hostage to the work you did earlier in the book or the film that now has to pay off. You know, it's. On some level, it's a subtle thing for a reader, but for the writer, you know, it's. It's a huge thing because the moment you're like, ah, now I gotta type, you know, this. The car is chasing him. And, you know, I've already lost interest on some level. Right. So, you know, you. I think you want it. It's gotta be a character piece the whole way through. And the stakes have to be character stakes. They can't be like, you know, plot stakes in my mind.
- [81:34]
Interviewer
Tell me about tv.
- [81:36]
Noah Hawley
A television series has a beginning, middle and an end. And a television season has a beginning, middle and end. And a television episode has a beginning, middle and end.
- [81:44]
Interviewer
Like a Russian babushka doll. Yeah.
- [81:45]
Noah Hawley
And so. And so you have to sort of be able to, to think about it in that way that like, you know, this, this hour that we're going to watch together now, right, Is going to give you a feeling at the end of it like you've watched a complete story. You know, there's this problem you, you can run into in a season of television, which is, which is the late middle problem, right? You start big, you put everybody in motion. You know, somewhere around the mid season, there's going to be a big thing that happens. And then, you know, the end of the season, there's going to be a big thing that happens and there's a lull in between, right? And, and part of how I solved for it in Fargo was, you know, in episode eight of the first season, the show jumped ahead a year, right? And you know, in season two, in episode seven, Ed and Peggy went on the run. The show changed locations, it moved. We weren't stuck. You know, I'm not writing to standing sets. We're not trapped in the story where, you know, I only have enough money to have an episode five set piece and an episode ten set piece. And I don't know, you know, I gotta. Now it's just gotta be people talking in a room that, that makes me a little crazy. When you feel like the show, they don't want to spend money, but, but they're not using the constraints to be innovate as storytellers. They're, they're they're just sort of accepting they're taking it for granted. They're like, okay, well, I guess we just have to have a, an episode where everyone's just talking the whole time and you're like, well, yeah, but, or you could make the talking more interesting or you can create an urgency in the one location or whatever it is. So, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's being able to look at your, your season, your episodes and pace out your story.
- [83:38]
Interviewer
Let's end with the core lesson of writing novels.
- [83:42]
Noah Hawley
Well, you know, patience. And you know, someone once told me when, you know, when you work in Hollywood, the phone rings every day and someone says they love you. And when you write novels, you just sit in that room and the phone doesn't ring. And you know, you got to be okay with that, right? You got to be okay with, this is a long journey that I'm going to take. I'm going to live with this thing for two or three or five years and, and, and it's going to have its ups and downs and, and you know, the, the the. It's not an instant return, you know, in the way that, you know, you. You can write a season of television and in a few months and shoot it in a few months and have it on the air within 18 months of the start, and it feels like you're working in real time. And, you know, a book is. I don't know. You're gonna. You're gonna. You're gonna sit in that office for a very long time before anybody sees anything. Yeah. No, Holly, thank you very much. Thanks.