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The Gist
Chris and Paul Weitz say Murderbot Doesn’t Want to Be a Real Boy
00:45:00
Murderbot showrunners Chris and Paul Weitz join to discuss their sci-fi series’ blend of chamber thriller, workplace satire, and reluctant hero tale—all orbiting a security unit who just wants to be left alone to binge his stories. They talk robot...
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- [00:00]
Mike Pesca
I'm doing a sub stack live on Wednesday. I enjoy doing these, especially when you could get a person on top of the news and you could hash it out, chop it up, struggling to come up with third piece of diner lingo. Adam and Eve on a raft. Anyway, my guest is Sam Stein. He's the managing editor of the Bulwark and I watch a lot of his videos where he talks to people in the Bulwark. And now I'm taking him out of his Bulwark zone, his MSNBC zone, and I'm inviting him and you to Substack Live. If you don't follow me on Substack already, please do. I also have the Gist list every day and it's a way to join me as I join with some of the more interesting people in the news today, Sam Stein, who's a longtime friend of mine. I haven't talked to him in many years, though I've been hearing from him as has as he's been covering some of the, let us say, excesses of the Trump administration. 3pm all times Eastern Standard Wednesday. It's Monday, July 14, 2025. From Peach Fish Productions, it's the Gist. I'm Mike Pasca in span is machina de firma automatica. In German it is unterschiciften automat or alternatively automachina signature machina, literally in German, the words for what we call the auto pen. And the Republicans are calling for Joe Biden's use of the device, totally legal by the way, as worthy of investigation. And Donald Trump just today called it the biggest presidential scandal in perhaps 50 or 100 years. So just under the wire for the T Pen Dome scandal, clearly Trump is saying it is bigger than the Iran Sharpie affair or Parker Gate. Actually, speaking of Sharpie affair, Trump was himself involved in a Sharpie gate. Remember that? When he redrew the path of the hurricane. Here was the president offering his insight into the proper use of the auto pen.
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Joe Biden
You know what the auto pen is supposed to do? Sign thousands of letters from young people that write, I get, we get thousands of letters a week. Susan Right, Thousands. I mean tens of thousands. Sometimes I look at a room that's a room where we have many, many people working, responding and sending letters back. That's what an auto pen is supposed to be, to write to a young 7 year old boy that writes to the president and he wants to be president someday and he loves America. That's what the auto pen is supposed to be. It's not supposed to be for signing major legislation and all the things.
- [02:34]
Mike Pesca
Joe Biden talked to the New York Times today on the record, and he said he made all the decisions for himself. He was very aware authorizing a staffer to use the auto pen. He had a machine sign the many proclamations, commuting sentences or issuing executive orders. He also didn't need to say this in the interview, but it should be noted he didn't type any of the proclamations himself either. GOP legal theorists haven't yet uncovered case law indicating that ballpoint technology or really anything past Quill violates original intent. But I assume that's coming and you know, the whole thing, you know, it's all an issue because, well, everything's an issue. Chemtrails are an issue. The Epstein thing is subsiding, need a new one. But the main driver is that Donald Trump is a weirdo who loves signing his name. He gets off on his own signature. He makes a televised spectacle of signing things, whereas Joe Biden, like normal people, thinks of that as kind of a chore, or at least not what he got into the presidenting business to do. Biden thinks if I commute a sentence, that person will go free. Or in the case of Foushee and apparently everyone with the last name Biden, that person will avoid prosecution. That's why I commute sentences. That's what he's in it for. Trump says if I commute a sentence, then I can sign that proclamation and have a big ceremony and toss out pens. Mr. President, you know, the person also goes free. Yeah, whatever. Who cares? I get to show my signature. You get a pen. You get a pen. The guy loves pens. He really loves pens. He's in it for the pens. He put the I in pens between the N and the s. And if you need to know specifics. And Donald Trump, in proving his point, is trying to cut Joe Biden down with a pen. And who knows, in this chaotic environment, as a weapon, the auto pen might prove to be mightier than the sword. On the show today, a full show interview with the showrunners of Murder Bot, the Apple plus show starring a guy I call Alexander Skarsgard. But you will hear in the interview Skarsgard is nowhere near the correct way to say that Scandinavian name. It is based on a sci fi novella and then limited series. It is extremely well done. Chris and Paul Weitz are extremely thoughtful and accomplished directors, writers and showrunners. And you'll find, I think, really good podcast guests. The Weitz brothers. Up next. This message is sponsored by Greenlight money is at the core of at least half of the issues we covered and a little bit deeper down with all of them. Financial stress is a major part of life. The finances of our nation drive our nation, drive our people, and can drive our children a little mad. Teaching kids about money isn't just smart, it's the right thing to do. For them, it's essential. So what Greenlight does is offer a debit card and a money app for families. It's a safe way to teach kids and teens about money, preparing them for bigger financial decisions later. They learn to save investors and build money confidence. They're not scared of it. If I greenlight when I was growing up, I'd probably be a bit savvier. I know people, people close to me in my own life who if they had green light growing up, things would massively have changed. So this is why I recommend that you give your kids the financial education many people didn't get. Green light is the easy, convenient way for parents to raise financially smart kids and families to navigate life together. Maybe that's why millions of parents trust and kids love learning about money on Greenlight, the number one family finance and safety app. Don't wait to teach your kids real world money skills. Start your risk free Greenlight trial today at greenlight.com/the gist. I am a security unit or SEC unit. I was built to protect and obey humans and humans are idiots. But now that I've hacked my programming, I can do whatever I want as long as they don't find out. Chris and Paul Weitz are the showrunners of Murder Bot on Apple tv. Plus what careers they have had. They remind me of some sort of combination of Danny Boyle and Billy Wilder. I'll just list cumulatively and some of these are collaborations. Some of the stuff they've directed or written. American Pie, about a boy. Rogue One, the second Twilight movie. They clearly didn't write that. Fatherhood with Kevin Hart. There's something out of left field. Pinocchio, where Chris was written as a co writer along with Robert Zemeckis and Cole Collagelo. Who is the original Italian guy who wrote Pinocchio?
- [07:51]
Chris Weitz
Yeah, he didn't. We did. I didn't work with him much.
- [07:53]
Mike Pesca
Colonial.
- [07:55]
Paul Weitz
It froze him out of the process.
- [07:57]
Mike Pesca
He would need more than the Blue Fairy to bring him around. But welcome to the Gist. Thanks for coming on.
- [08:02]
Paul Weitz
Oh, thank you.
- [08:03]
Chris Weitz
Thank you for having us. And thank you for describing us in such glowing terms. That's great.
- [08:07]
Mike Pesca
Absolutely. You must come off up with Ideas in different ways from different streams. And this Murderbot, this was handed to you from the source material of the novels?
- [08:17]
Paul Weitz
Yeah. I mean, I think that we both read for pleasure and. And as opposed to picking everything up and saying, oh, can this make a film or a show? That's a horrible way to read. But, yeah, I read this book. I probably picked it up because of the COVID Like, I also. I also just wandered through bookshops and pull books because I like their cover art. And I thought it was speaking of Billy Wilder. Oddly, the tone of it was so specific, and this character was so specific, and the whole concept was such a sort of cynical. But human. But human. Oddly enough, since the main character is not human spin on science fiction, that I felt like Chris would really enjoy this. And so I sent it to Chris. And I had done a show before called Mozart in the Jungle, but as opposed to thinking this could be a film, it felt like this character could really travel through a lot of stories. And the book was fantastic. It's a great literary character. I don't know, Chris, do you think as hogwash that there's a little bit of Billy Wilder touch to the voice of it, or in the.
- [09:33]
Chris Weitz
I think there's a Wilder touch, The.
- [09:34]
Mike Pesca
Lubitsch touch in space.
- [09:37]
Chris Weitz
Why not? Yeah. I think we're drawn to stuff that has a cynical kind of veneer, but a soft, gooey center. And this kind of has that. And it was a sort of comedy of manners in space, which felt like something that hadn't been done recently, maybe before.
- [09:56]
Mike Pesca
Oh, go ahead. Also, just. And I literally just thought of this. I do a lot of prep and think of a lot of things, and then it's just because I said it in the intro, isn't it really the story of someone becoming a real boy?
- [10:09]
Paul Weitz
Well, it's interesting because, like, Murderbot doesn't want to be a human. It has no interest in it. It just wants to watch this awesome. It's awesome shows. So it's kind of a. It's even a spin on the Pinocchio story, I think.
- [10:25]
Chris Weitz
Yeah. Really doesn't want to be. Doesn't want to be a real boy. I mean, I guess there's also a bit of. I believe I'm going to mispronounce it, but Carol Chapek, Right. The term robot coming from RUR Rossum's Universal Robots, which is really a slave narrative. And I think Martha, as much as anything, intended this to be something about indentured servitude, forced labor, and all kinds of very Dark and unpleasant things that are kind of hidden beneath the surface of the fun.
- [10:57]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. And so the thing that pulls him out of the classic conception of the robot, the forced labor, is this group who hires him possibly because he's the cheapest robot available, Murder bot available. And they're very. Talk about soft and gooey. They're very. What we might call in this century and in this universe, woke. And somehow the interaction of them and the hardened would be slave brings out. I don't know if it's the best in everyone, but the humanity in everyone.
- [11:27]
Paul Weitz
Yeah, it's.
- [11:28]
Chris Weitz
Yes, the personality in everyone. I'm going to be a bit like the Preservation Ox people and point out that that Murderbot's gender is it. But, yeah, certainly they're kind of. They're kind of space hippies or burners maybe, and they're the first. I think they're the first people from outside of this kind of space capitalist system that Murderbots really come across outside of the kind of weird space soap operas that it watches. And so it's not as though its heart is melted, but it's really thrown into confusion about what it's going to do by suddenly being amongst people who don't treat it like an object. It actually would rather be treated like an object, frankly. Because then they would leave it alone.
- [12:15]
Paul Weitz
Yeah, to some extent. Initially it's wrangling kittens and it's hoping that they're not going to wander into the road and get run over. Not because it cares so much about them initially, but just because that would be a pain in the butt. And then it'll probably. It'll get caught and possibly melted down because it's also hiding the fact that it's. It's hacked this governor module, which is something that allows the corporation to keep control over it all the time. So. So that's more why it doesn't want any harm to come to them initially is because it'll. It'll screw up its own life.
- [12:52]
Mike Pesca
Do you read all the books, all the Martha Wells books before starting?
- [12:56]
Chris Weitz
Yeah, they're really fun. So, yeah, yeah, we definitely wanted to see where. Where it was heading and also to steal good stuff from future books when we could and kind of. And get a sense of the trajectory as well. I mean, I think we can spoil it now, but Murderbot kind of rides off into the sunset and. And so, you know, there are sort of further adventures down the line, which was cool to get a. To get a handle on, because it.
- [13:27]
Mike Pesca
Does seem the tone is there and there is there are different. You work in different tonalities, but I could see the through line of what attracts you. But this element of you expressed it as cynicism. I wouldn't even call it that. But it's a lot. It's very fun dramatically, to be able to crack a character and to see that character change. That's the point of Dr. Drama. And the tone of the series is there. But I was wondering, are there any. Were there any incidents in the book where you were saying to yourself, maybe you're reading it early on and you're thinking of how it will present itself as a limited series and you're saying to yourself something like, well, that's a problem to solve, or they'll there. There will have to be some screen writerly way to address this. And then she herself, in the books, comes up with that solution later on. Later in the.
- [14:21]
Paul Weitz
Well, not just in the books, actually, because we got in touch with her very early on and she sort of was generous with her time. And sometimes authors don't want to be bothered if something's getting adapted because they're off writing their next book and they've maybe been through the Hollywood rodeo of somebody saying they're going to adapt their books and then it doesn't happen for 10 years. But she actually gave us ideas for stuff. Like we would go to her sometimes and saying, okay, we want someone to find this. This evidence of alien remnants at a certain point, here's our idea. And she would say, well, I'm not so sure about that, but what would you maybe think of this? And she came up with some really good ideas for the show, actually. So we actually had, you know, we had access to her as a writer.
- [15:05]
Chris Weitz
One challenge that actually Alexander helped a lot with the first season was that in the.
- [15:11]
Mike Pesca
This is the star. This is Murderbot himself, Alexander Stargard, Skirt.
- [15:15]
Chris Weitz
Gore and Skirsch Gordon. He identified quite rightly that in the book, in all systems Read, Murderbot is kind of in the tank for its clients pretty early on. So there's a line where it says, my clients are the best clients. And that happens about 30 pages or so into the novella. But once you've got that, a lot of the tension between the characters, at least in screen terms, sort of drops. So the key was to sort of keep them at odds as much as possible possible until. Until the very end. But to do that without resorting to, you know, manufactured arguments.
- [16:01]
Mike Pesca
Yes. And so what that allows is this great fun opportunity to have this main character who's in the Mode of the gruff but lovable protector, the guy who doesn't want to be doing it. So I'm thinking of John Wayne as Ethan Edwards. I'm thinking of Rick from Rick and Morty. Almost everyone. Humphrey Bogart played Lou Grant. Right. Even him. Even though it was a newspaper and not, you know, the stakes were in life and death. That's amazing.
- [16:32]
Chris Weitz
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [16:35]
Paul Weitz
And toss in with that. There's that simultaneously, all it wants to do is watch this soap opera called Sanctuary Moon. And there are also sort of like slightly more obscure literary sort of character examples of that. There's a Russian novel called Oblomov, which struck me at the time that I read it along with Dostoevsky and all these Russian novels where people were frantically doing things. This is a. It's a novel about a guy who just wants to stay on a couch all day and all the things that are dragging him off the couch, unfortunately.
- [17:13]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, yeah.
- [17:14]
Chris Weitz
You know what you're saying?
- [17:15]
Mike Pesca
See, just to interrupt I this. It's funny you say that, because the first time I watched American Pie and when the guy stuck his dick in the pile, like the writer of this read a lot of dose diaphrags.
- [17:25]
Chris Weitz
There you go.
- [17:26]
Mike Pesca
Through the screen, I'm sure.
- [17:28]
Paul Weitz
Yeah, I'm sure Dusty XC spent his time with his, you know, Cobbler and Punishment.
- [17:33]
Mike Pesca
Sorry.
- [17:33]
Paul Weitz
There's a Samovar, though.
- [17:37]
Chris Weitz
I guess more in the kind of the pulp genre. I was thinking about how, you know, Marlowe, Philip Marlowe was described as this kind of errant knight. Errant. Right. Underneath all of the hard drinking and the cynicism, there was this sense of inherent decency. And, you know, Murderbok kind of has that for some reason. It keeps on doing its job well and it's inherently protective. And I think it never quite figures out whether that's remnants of its programming or its actual personality and character. That does it.
- [18:14]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, but there's an analogy to humanity. You know, is it our DNA that makes us protect other people? Is it the fact that we're a social creature and we get more resources if we show, quote, unquote, altruism?
- [18:27]
Chris Weitz
Right.
- [18:29]
Mike Pesca
How much are we really not programmed?
- [18:31]
Chris Weitz
Yeah, I haven't figured that one out yet. But season two, we're gonna do it. We're gonna crack.
- [18:38]
Mike Pesca
So is he another good? Tension. Tension is always fantastic to play with. Is the question, is he omniscient or is he forever on unsure if they're on to him? Because in some ways. Sorry, I'm saying him is murder Bot. He has so much ability to observe everything from all angles. And yet he also has what I think reads to us as humans as neuroticism. And so how much was that, you know, what you wanted to play with in the script or what Skarsgard was bringing to it or source material or anything else?
- [19:14]
Paul Weitz
I mean, speaking of neuroticism, some of the sort of recent. The most entertaining thing about the artificial intelligence as it's manifesting itself through chatbots is how deeply neurotic it appears sometimes like the. It also feels like. I mean, that is some sort of essence of what makes somebody a person is what they're worrying about and freaked out about.
- [19:43]
Mike Pesca
Right. It's so needy. It wants you to love it and approve it. And then when you scold it, you're like, you're right to point that out. And I always say you were wrong to make the mistake. I'm pretty mean to my chatbots.
- [19:53]
Chris Weitz
You should be careful. What is it? Ruka's Basilisk. You should hope it's not being all recorded and filed against you. But I mean, I think that. I think that Martha's contention would be that something in the making of Murder Bot, probably the combination of sentience and lack of free will, that sort of chaining of free will and free expression made for anxiety and depression in this character. And, you know, is what makes it so appealing. And there are like, a lot of people sort of see an analogy to people on the spectrum to aromantic and asexual people. And I think that Martha's never trying to do this kind of direct comparison, but there's something about this character that inherently sort of draws those comparisons. It's really interesting. And I think that it never quite gets to the point itself to where it's figured. Figure that out. It's something in the combination of machine and. And. And human neurological parts that it has that. That make for. For trouble.
- [21:11]
Mike Pesca
And at the risk of engaging in ethnic stereotypes, but maybe one of the few ethnic stereotypes you're allowed to engage in. Is there something about your lead actor, his icy, placid Scandinavian ness that plays well with this. With this robotic. Who also may have. And if you know about the Scandinavians may have a good deal of neuroticism.
- [21:35]
Paul Weitz
Yeah, I mean, I think he was Alexander's quote about Swedish people that, like, beneath the surface they're like roiling with insanity. Like polite, but it's not exactly how you put it. Beneath the. Beneath the surface, they're utterly crazy. Yeah. I think that in tandem with the rest of the the cast and the crew. It's also, I think, specific to Alexander that he is, along with being a great actor, he's a real, and a real oddball. Like his, his IMDb IMDb picture is him in, I think, tuxedo top and underpants. He, I think that part of the reason that he took to this so much is that he is somebody with a whole, with an internal monologue going on which does not match his surface. And that's, that's the case with Murderbot as well.
- [22:33]
Mike Pesca
Is it creative, is it creatively exciting or daunting? The fact that everything in the environment is a choice, right? So if you're doing about a boy, someone hands you a candlestick and it's a candlestick, right? Maybe as a director you get to choose three with this, there's nothing that you don't craft, make, make decision. Literally no, no curve of a, of a dash that you don't make a decision on.
- [23:00]
Chris Weitz
You've really put your finger on one of the most painful aspects of making this show, which we probably didn't realize until a few months into pre production, which was like, oh God, you can't just have a chair, you've got to have a space chair. And it says something about the, you know, the culture that made it. And so everything is manufactured or kind of kit bashed, right? You can do sort of mashups and things like that, but, but everything has to be thought through.
- [23:27]
Paul Weitz
And also you're trying to thread a needle of all the great science fiction that's come before it. The Star wars universe and the Ridley Scott alien universe and sort of there's also landmines of cliches on either side of whatever decisions you make. Luckily we had a really great production designer, Sue Chan. She's done a lot of different things, but she did Shang Chi for Marvel. But she was really great at both coming up with really interesting looking things but also having a logic to them. So they're on this planet for the most part, sort of a deserted planet and everything there has been extruded by some ship that's come down. So the hippies are in this sort of plasticoid environment that they then have because they're so creative people. They've gone and graffiti and hand colored all sorts of things. So the big thing is A, not to despair because you're right, you put your finger on the most alarming thing about doing science fiction and then B, to have a logic to everything. I think the story logic.
- [24:40]
Mike Pesca
Is it the case that most of the cast in the show, the actual show, most of the crew of the spaceship are made of non Americans, but most of the cast in the show within the show, the Lunar Moon show, are Americans.
- [24:58]
Paul Weitz
That's really interesting.
- [25:00]
Chris Weitz
Yeah, yeah, we kind of realized that a little late in the game as well. I wish we could say that we had planned it out that way.
- [25:10]
Mike Pesca
Well, okay, fine. So even if it's not planned, I think there might be. Again, I'm overanalyzing as Murderbot sometimes does, there might be. The show within the show is broad and you cast comic actors there. Jack McBrayer and for instance. And it does seem to have more of a broad American Star Trek esque sensibility. And even the lighting is a lot different, isn't it?
- [25:34]
Chris Weitz
Yeah, absolutely. It's maximalist and it's. Yeah, I think, I think there's a different, there's a vibe to that show. Right. And it was also pointed out by somebody that, that it's mostly male. The cast of Sanctuary Moon and the cast of, of our show is, is pretty balanced if not, you know, tipping the other way. So yeah, there is this kind of, there's a, there's a very gung ho science fiction feel to what's happening in Sanctuary Moon. Whereas in, you know, Preservation alliance, these, these guys don't really know that they're in a science fiction show. They're just trying to like, like to do their thing basically.
- [26:16]
Mike Pesca
Right, right. I said Lunar Moon, so, so redundant.
- [26:19]
Chris Weitz
Oh, sorry.
- [26:20]
Paul Weitz
It was also just people whose phone numbers we had for Sanctuary Moon. Yes, we worked with them before.
- [26:26]
Mike Pesca
Well, you got a lot of phone numbers at this point, don't you?
- [26:28]
Paul Weitz
Yeah, yeah. That's the good thing about sticking around a while.
- [26:31]
Chris Weitz
We just call them until someone picks up. Yeah, but like John, speaking of American Pie, Jon Cho, we first met him when he was the guy recommended by the casting agent to come in and read the, the, the scene, the scene descriptions when we were doing our read through and we thought, oh, this guy's really funny and interesting like, and charismatic. Let's. And then we gave him a part and we've worked with him something like 14 times since.
- [26:58]
Paul Weitz
I think it's up to 6.
- [27:02]
Mike Pesca
I was just. This Just hit me again. Did you guys, if not invent popularize the word milf?
- [27:12]
Paul Weitz
John?
- [27:14]
Chris Weitz
I felt that question slowly taking shape in your mind and you knew where I was going and I started sweating. Okay.
- [27:21]
Paul Weitz
I still don't know what the word means.
- [27:24]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, that's good. Plausible deniability. Excellent.
- [27:27]
Chris Weitz
I'm gonna blame that one on Adam Herz, the quite brilliant screenwriter of American Pie. I feel like it was in the culture, as they say. I'm certain too that the movie popularized it. And John Cho apparently has it shouted at him on occasion as he goes through his everyday life.
- [27:47]
Mike Pesca
And we'll be back in a minute with more of Chris and Paul Weitz, though not necessarily in that order. So we're back with Chris and Paul White, possibly Paul and Chris, depending on how they answer. They're the showrunners of Murder Bot. And one aspect of the show which does open up, as they say in later episodes, but early on, before we see a lot of the planet that they're on, there are long stretches of the show, very tense stretches, when the cast is right there in the ship, not leaving the ship side, eyeing Murderbot. Murderbot is looking at them. They're each wondering about each other's motivations. So are we as the viewer a little bit. And this is the. There are different words for this kind of psychological thriller. It is a suspicion based chamber play, or I've seen it described as a closed circle thriller. And so, gentlemen, there is that going on when everyone in the crew is questioning Murderbot and Murderbot is questioning his crewmates and the crew themselves.
- [29:00]
Paul Weitz
You hope there is. Yeah, there's one character played by David Desmalchen, who's an amazing actor who is suspicious of Murderbot from the first and who knows that these security units are, aside from being meant to protect them, are also meant to spy on them. So he's really the one who's freaking out. And then the others sort of fluctuate. And then the leader of the expedition, played by Nomad Dumezwini, is very. She. And she very early on needs to believe that that Murderbot is. Is a person. And, and she cares about Murderbot, I think partly because she can't share her total anxiety that she just made a disastrous decision to remain on this planet with any of the people who are part of her team. And Murderbot's the only one she can talk to. But Murderbot doesn't want to talk to anyone.
- [29:55]
Chris Weitz
Yeah, I think you get to trade in. I mean, as much as there are cliches you want to avoid, you also get to kind of draft off of some of them as well. So there's like, there's the thing and there are the, you know, there are replicants and there are the, you know, the robots or the androids in, in the Alien movies who are always under suspicion of being.
- [30:20]
Mike Pesca
Right.
- [30:20]
Paul Weitz
Right.
- [30:21]
Mike Pesca
Those are the sci fi ones. But even Lifeboat, Even Hitchcock.
- [30:24]
Paul Weitz
I was just thinking of Lifeboat, where you don't know whether one of them is a. Is a Nazi spy. Right. Or something like that.
- [30:31]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, yeah.
- [30:31]
Paul Weitz
I was just thinking of like, well, gee whiz.
- [30:33]
Chris Weitz
And the people, you know, the characters in the show only know about the security units, about the kind of robot that. That. That Skarsgrd plays from news reports. And we have to imagine that news reports are incredibly tabloid and amped up and from. And from entertainment in which they're always kind of murdering people. So they come in with their own preconceptions about what. What an entity like this might. Might be. Which are completely off base, actually.
- [31:03]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. So again, it's just so thrilling. It seems so. So creatively. Why am I saying that word wrong? Seems so creatively rich. But that also. The other side to that is it's daunting. It's a whole world that you have to provide. And then there's the question of this is what all the fans want another season. So does. Does Apple TV plus come to you and say, all right, you don't have to do severance numbers, but, you know, two thirds of severance would be good?
- [31:28]
Paul Weitz
It's much more mysterious than that.
- [31:30]
Chris Weitz
Yeah.
- [31:30]
Paul Weitz
The wizard of Oz doesn't step out from behind the curtain and say, hey, Dorothy, you just do this, this and this. You're going to go back to Kansas. No.
- [31:41]
Chris Weitz
I mean, well, the thing is, there aren't even numbers, right. So in the world of streaming, sometimes it's like some crazy metric, and maybe there's an algorithm somewhere that some AI has determined whether you get to continue making the show or not. But.
- [31:57]
Paul Weitz
Yeah, I mean, I will say that the Jamie Ehrlicht who co runs Apple TV is a huge science fiction fan. And I have to imagine that's partly why there's a lot of cool science fiction shows on Apple tv.
- [32:13]
Chris Weitz
Yeah. And he had read Murderbot and loved it, so we were fortunate in that regard. And then the key was, like, how to sort of square the circle between super fans of the books and people who've had no exposure to it whatsoever. And that can be quite tricky because a lot of what would seem to be exposition to a fan of the books is actually necessary and, like, how to do that. Try to do that elegantly without pissing too many people off is tricky.
- [32:45]
Paul Weitz
It is a weird thing when you're making a TV show that there's an assumption that the whole thing, the whole raison d' etre of the season is so you can have another season, which is really not a great way of creatively approaching something. There's something kind of craven about it. And so look, we're lucky enough that there is going to be a second season, but also, I think that I was really happy that this season maps onto the first book, which has a beautiful ending. And, and we had to actually add some stuff in tandem with Martha because the first book is very, very short. But yeah, I mean, it's really weird because in a way you can't, you can't think about how people are going to feel about it. To do it, to do a good job with something. It's like thinking about breathing.
- [33:42]
Mike Pesca
And also. But I understand what you're coming from. It seems weird and craven to want that next season. And yet the fundamental basis of storytelling is Scheherazade and Thousand and One Arabian Nights. And if you tell an entertaining enough story, you get to live to the next day. So it's not, it's not out of keeping with what your entire tradition has always embodied.
- [34:04]
Chris Weitz
Oh, 100%.
- [34:06]
Paul Weitz
Chris and I, the first thing we wrote together had a sort of schlocky director character in it. And at one point in the script, he says, don't kill me, I can still make you money. And I just think in general, as a filmmaker or showrunner or something. I'm not talking for Chris. This is more my neuroses. Probably there is some degree to which, you know, yeah, you're trying to keep the story going so you can still do it because it's so fun telling stories.
- [34:34]
Mike Pesca
From the time you did Mozart in the Jungle, which ran for four seasons on Amazon. Is that right?
- [34:39]
Paul Weitz
Yeah.
- [34:40]
Mike Pesca
And won all sorts of awards and was a beloved show. So that, but that was, that was about a decade ago to about six years ago as everything changed. Did you. I guess the question is, did the lessons learned there, are they still more applicable or less applicable to doing the multi episode, multi seasonal, potentially arc on a streamer?
- [35:03]
Paul Weitz
Well, that was like, we were so early on in, in the existence of Amazon prime that I think that they were just like, you've given a lot of credit if the thing just wasn't horrible. Like, if you were just like, oh, wow, this cuts together and I'm enjoying watching this. Why don't you do another season? It's definitely not like that anymore. There's way fewer shows. It's like, you know, I think that in that case, the first agenda when you have a new streamer was get some attention, have people pay attention in some Way. So it wasn't so much like, we need X number of eyeballs watching this for each dollar we spend on it. And I think now just to survive, you know, it's. It's. It's crueler.
- [35:50]
Chris Weitz
Right?
- [35:52]
Paul Weitz
And you just. And I. Look, I have no idea. But. But, like, do you see the show? Somebody somewhere? This is really. I'm gonna plug this show.
- [36:01]
Mike Pesca
Is this the one in Manhattan, Kansas?
- [36:03]
Paul Weitz
Exactly, yeah. Starring Bridget Everett.
- [36:04]
Mike Pesca
Beautiful Bridget Everett.
- [36:05]
Paul Weitz
Look, they did three seasons. It's a fantastic show. It is so sort of homemade and beautiful. I'm glad that could exist for three seasons. But I don't. I don't. You know, I have no idea whether Mozart in the Jungle would get to exist for four seasons now.
- [36:19]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. And do they. It doesn't seem like they're stepping on your neck in terms of budget. And they are Apple, right? They're not Nvidia. Nvidia is going to, I guess, have extreme.
- [36:28]
Paul Weitz
I think they probably hate hearing they are Apple now because it assumes there's limitless money. You know, nobody likes to lose money. I don't care.
- [36:36]
Mike Pesca
You know, but this is My question is, are budgetary constraints less prevalent than.
- [36:42]
Chris Weitz
No, always. We've never made anything in which there was almost not enough to do it. I remember, like, we're working on Rogue One on Star wars, and they're like, there's a big budget crunch. You know, we might have to cut a planet. And I was like, wait a second. This is Star Wars. I mean, that's the same as saying, like, this is Apple, like, Star Wars. We need this planet. I had to go.
- [37:04]
Mike Pesca
So all of a sudden, they put you in the. In the position of the Death Star. You're literally blowing and. Or. Way to go. Way to go. I do think peaceful planet never meant any harm to anyone.
- [37:15]
Paul Weitz
I think the moment you have some sense of limitless budget, probably then the gravity of making crap gets increases. I think limitations are a good thing.
- [37:32]
Mike Pesca
So you guys have done Twilight A Twilight. You've done Rogue One. There's this idea of fan service. Obviously, you want the fans to be thrilled for this. I think they are. Is it a different kind of assignment when you're inside a gigantic blockbuster machine like that than a project like this previously existing intellectual property and all? But is it very different?
- [37:55]
Chris Weitz
Yeah, I think it is. And I actually think the different fandoms kind of vary. You know, arguably the Star wars fandom has become fairly toxic as an environment, and it was kind of edging towards that when we were doing Rogue One. And there is a sort of. There's a psychological feeling tone to every kind of fandom. You know, like the Twihards, as long as they felt that you got the essential thing about Jacob and Edward and, and Bella, right, And they would just love you, you know, to the moon, right? So they're very, very, very loving. Star wars, you'd better watch out and get it right. And it's with Murderbot, I think that there was this sense that a screw up was, was coming down the pike because the moment they thought, nobody's ever going to understand why I love this thing, right. They were less like.
- [38:54]
Mike Pesca
So in other words, the fans are like the main character, the neurotic. They're expecting the worst. They have a sense of duty, but I don't know if they have nipples or not.
- [39:03]
Chris Weitz
They didn't think of themselves as a powerhouse that needed to be appeased. They're like, oh, God, they're just going to mess this up. So I'm not going to get my hopes up. And that's been a really interesting and fun kind of encounter because ideally you come at it, to any fandom loving the thing that they love, you know, as much as they do, or at least some kind of harmony with what they do. And we could bring that in this case. It was great.
- [39:32]
Mike Pesca
I want to go back and maybe we'll even literally cut this back to where we were talking about every design of a chair. I wanted to ask you about the design of the monsters. They should be okay. There are a couple philosophies here. They should be scary. The characters have to be, even though they're playing against the green screen or whatever, they have to be motivated to be scared. And yet at the same time, this is a choice. You could either have them be purely scary and just 100% go with that realism, but they could also be, in a way, goofy, a little bit comic. What were you thinking about when making those monsters and you know, what part of the totally scary to Monsters Inc. From Pixar were you considering making the monsters?
- [40:16]
Chris Weitz
I think we were going for scary. And any goofiness is kind of accidental. I mean, no, because we knew, I think we knew that eventually you were going to see this species mating. Right? So there had to be something that felt a bit kind of comical in the way that real sex of any kind of creature is essentially comical and hopefully not scary. But there's also kind of another axis which is believability and believable biology and justified biology. Now, these creatures had had a A mouth on each end, which doesn't make any sense. So. So there's an aspect to that which. Which is a little Monster's Inc. Yeah.
- [41:01]
Mike Pesca
And maybe a little human caterpillar. Just. You're just taken from the greats. Hitchcock.
- [41:09]
Chris Weitz
Yeah.
- [41:09]
Mike Pesca
Wilder.
- [41:10]
Chris Weitz
Yeah.
- [41:11]
Mike Pesca
We're ranging far and even beyond the monsters. There's the world inside the craft. But when you create the world, world building, maybe an overused phrase. There is a philosophy that either have the world be totally real. Young Frankenstein was funny because it's literally for many reasons, but it's literally the sets that were used for the classic film. And so you can bounce off that. And the humor is heightened and not. It's heightened by the reality, the ultra reality of everything next to it. But then there's another philosophy. And maybe Monsters Inc. Is like this, where things are a little off and you could even find jokes in the background. Where were you with that?
- [41:53]
Paul Weitz
We wanted a rationale. I mean, the big thing initially was Murderbot suit. The decision because. And we had some of the. We had a. A designer who worked on some of the book covers, Tommy Arnold, work with us.
- [42:10]
Chris Weitz
The.
- [42:11]
Paul Weitz
So the first tendency is to go for something that's a little like a stormtrooper or something, because Murderbot is one of a line. You know, there's. There's thousands of Murderbot out there of that particular model. But we wanted it to be distinctive. And Alexander Skarsgrd in particular was like, I'd love it if like, at some point, like someone was wearing a Halloween costume. Murderbot, you knew exactly what it is. And now there are some people, like, showing up at sci fi conventions with Murderbot costumes. But so we actually, when we were building the helmet, we incorporated the corporate logo into it, which is something that you see stamped on various things sort of throughout. Anything extruded by the. By the corporation, anything that they're selling has this kind of logo on it. It manifested in different forms and that. So we went in that direction because we thought it was logical. You know, if you buy a Mercedes like every. Every couple of years, they're going to change the design. But it still had the Mercedes logo on it.
- [43:15]
Chris Weitz
Yeah. And there's. There's also a point where the Rover meets the road. We really wanted to. To shoot the sequences with the suit in. In camera. So it wasn't going to be like, like Iron man, where everything's. Everything cgi. In order to do that, like, the functionality of the suit is going to dictate a lot what, what, what the form of it is as well. So. So in that regard, it was kind of hard, although not totally hard. Sci fi in the sense of, you know, of looking optimally, you know, cool and sleek. It actually looks kind of dinged up in a lot of cases.
- [43:51]
Paul Weitz
Yeah. And he had to be able to breathe in it and he had to be able to move in it without falling on his face. So you had to be able to see out the front of it.
- [43:59]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. This is, you know, the downsides of having actual humans in there. So, Paul, how different was the eventual iconography from the COVID of the book that attracted you in the first place?
- [44:12]
Paul Weitz
Quite different, I think.
- [44:15]
Mike Pesca
And now, by the way, the COVID of the book is. Oh, your iconography. Yeah.
- [44:20]
Paul Weitz
But yeah, it was, it was pretty different. I think we did end up with something which to me had a little bit of like that dog and Little Rascals. Is it Petey? No, like the dog. Yeah. Where you just see one eye or there's something kind of like slap dash. Like they probably moved on from that design pretty quickly because it does have a lot of personality.
- [44:46]
Chris Weitz
So.
- [44:46]
Paul Weitz
Yeah.
- [44:47]
Chris Weitz
By the way, it's always really strange when you make something and suddenly that's the COVID of the book. And it's sort of as though you're colonizing people's imagination. Imaginations. And it's not like we, we look at that and we think like, you know, f. Yeah, that's awesome. I think it. It sort of robs people or something on some level. Right. And we've never really wanted to say this is the definitive kind of version of how this ought to look. It's just like this is a very, a rather expensive bit of fan fiction that we're. That we're doing right now.
- [45:16]
Mike Pesca
Right. Well, at least they don't do the novelization. The, you know, back sourced from your work. I think I read one for Herby Goes Bananas. The novelization. Let me tell you, from the source material, there was a real drop written.
- [45:29]
Paul Weitz
By at some point. Didn't Martha do Star Wars?
- [45:33]
Chris Weitz
She's gonna start. She's gonna Star Wars. But it wasn't a novelization of one of the movies. I think it was kind of extended universe sort of.
- [45:39]
Paul Weitz
Yeah.
- [45:41]
Mike Pesca
Chris and Paul Weitz are the showrunners of Murderbot on Apple tv. It's an excellent show and you should watch it. And this was an excellent conversation. Conversation. Thank you guys so much.
- [45:50]
Chris Weitz
Thank you so much, Mike.
- [45:51]
Paul Weitz
Thanks so much for having us. That was really fun.
- [45:59]
Mike Pesca
And that's it for today's show. Cory Wara produces the gist. Astrid Green is in charge of our socials. Kathleen Sykes, also a social person, but she helps me more than helps me with the gist list. Michelle Pesca oversees it all. Their coordinating production is Ashley Khan, Improve G Peru du Peru and thanks for listening.
- [46:27]
Unknown
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