Game of Thrones Interview: David Benioff and Dan Weiss (Writers/Executive Producers)
WhatCulture attended a round-table interview with some of the cast and producers of the hit show.
Game of Thrones interviews so far, you'll know that I attended a round-table interview with some of the cast and producers of the show. They were in town for the press launch of the Season 1 DVD/Blu-ray, which is available now. We reviewed it HERE. Ahead of tomorrows (US) highly anticipated Season 2 Premier, here is the final interview with Writers and Executive Producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss. Benioff is the author of The 25th Hour, his debut novel that he also adapted into a screenplay. The film starred Edward Norton and was directed by Spike Lee. He has also written scripts for Troy (2004), Stay (2005), The Kite Runner (2007), and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009). Fellow author Weiss debut novel is titled Lucky Wander Boy. He is currently working on the script for the I Am Legend prequel film. Please note the interview was from a roundtable session and not all questions were asked by WhatCulture So the first season has been enormously successful, is there a lot of pressure to deliver the same with Season 2?David: Yeah, I think its probably a different kind of pressure. With the first season we had never done this before, we had never worked in television, wed never worked in production so there was the pressure of, What the hell are we doing? and, Why have they entrusted us to run this show thats costing tens of millions of dollars! and, Can we pull it off? So that was terrifying in its own way and then with the second season its more, now the shows out there, people watched it, we know that people are watching it, we dont want to disappoint them, we dont want to let people down you know. Was the first season kind of a fluke? Are people going to say, That was fun for ten episodes but now I think Id rather go back to watching Dancing With the Stars! I dont know, so I think theres probably going to be different pressures each season and the second season was even more of a production challenge because the world got a lot bigger, we were shooting in three different countries, its intense. Its definitely not a relaxing show to work on. The shows quite racy, and as we know HBO can get away with content that would otherwise be censored on other networks, how do people respond to the mature content?Dan: I like the word racy; Im going to start using the word racy! David: It just varies depending on where you go, I mean its a huge country and there are pockets of incredible conservatism where people I think would equate this show with the devils work. Dan: Yeah but theyre watching it too! I just feel that the realism and the sexuality of the show, which is a facet of that realism, is something that attracted us to Georges books when we first read them. (To David) What was your line the other day? Bilbo Baggins never gets a boner, I think is the line! Its true and that makes it hard for me to relate to Bilbo Baggins as a real person, as much as I love those books, which I do from the bottom of my heart. But it doesnt seem like it should be that big of a deal to me. Q. But again there isnt much else out there that compares, maybe Spartacus on Starz?David: I grew up in New York City and we had a channel J so everyone in New York was able to watch Robin Byrd, so I remember being twelve and watching, you know, blowjobs on TV. It just really depends on where youre coming from and to us; I think were a little bit surprised, not surprised I guess because as you say, theres a lot of prudishness in our country so we kind of knew it would be coming but the fact that people make more of a big deal about the sexual content as apposed to the fact that peoples heads are getting chopped off, people are having swords shoved through them, theres all sorts of gruesome violence. Dan: In Episode 7, one woman masturbates another woman and in Episode 8, somebody cuts someones throat, reaches into his throat and pulls his tongue out through the hole he created in his throat. Theres been a Harvard University study done that proves that the later is actually worse for you than the former! And yet nobody really says anything about the later, which is also one of my favourite scenes in the show, but theres been talk about the former, which I dont morally, or aesthetically, understand. They focus on the one as apposed to the other, which is objectively worse. Q. Did you get complaints about killing animals on screen, for example when Ned kills the direwolf pup?David: Actually she was killed just off screen I think. Actually because the dog wouldnt stay still, it was very smart and every time Sean Bean drew his dagger, the dog got out of there! Dan: The dog did not like that dagger! David: Yeah, people were really upset about that. Meanwhile in the same episode a little red-haired kid is killed and dragged back into camp by the Hound and I dont think anyone ever complained about that. Dan: Again, big dog fan, but its objectively worse to kill kids than dogs. For me. I am a species-ist. 
Q. Youre both writers with publish novels, has working in Hollywood put a hold on your literary careers?Dan: Theres not really time to do that now. David: Well actually two of the three books I wrote were after I was already writing in Hollywood. The last book came out a few years ago and Ive been working in Hollywood for about ten years already, so the next novels plotted but the problem is Game of Thrones is just all encompassing. It takes every hour of our working lives, so I think for the next couple of years, the novels are on hiatus. Dan: I sometimes get to thinking about novels during the five minutes Im not thinking about Game of Thrones but it never gets to go past the thinking stage. Q. Does being novelists yourselves help when adapting somebody elses writing for the screen?David: Yeah absolutely, I think partly just in terms of having respect for a novelist, knowing how hard it is. In terms of writing, I dont think theres anything harder than writing a novel, and I cant even imagine writing a novel thats thirteen hundred pages long, or writing a series of novels thats getting close to ten thousand pages. I have a hard enough time writing a two hundred-page novel! I think both of us have an immense respect for what George has accomplished and that respect translates into the way we treat his story and our desire to adapt it faithfully. At the same time, having a background in writing fiction, its all just storytelling, writing novels or short stories or screenplays or plays or anything else, your trying to write the best story and I think the novel writing experience has helped my screen writing and I actually think that screen writing has helped me with novels, just in terms of making me a more disciplined writer. So its ideally a feedback loop that goes on and on. Q. When you first brought your idea for Game of Thrones to George Martin, how quickly was he on board with what you wanted to do?Dan: We had a lunch, and I think over the course of the lunch he stared us down across his steak. Hes worked in Hollywood so he kind of had his bullshit detector in full working order and I think he was very used to people telling him what they thought he wanted to hear about how, Were going to do exactly what you want, and how happy he would be with our work, and over the course of lunch he asked us some questions that were designed to gage our actual level of engagement with the books. David: He quizzed us. Dan: He gave us a pop quiz and we did vey well I think. You know wed freshly read all the books, and not just read them you know, but just devoured them. David: But Hollywood people say, Oh I read your book and I loved it, and that generally means they read the coverage which is someones assistant writing a page or two summary of the book and the studio executive or producer has read that and said, Oh I could make a good movie of that. I think George wanted to make sure he wasnt dealing with that kind of producer. Dan: We didnt have to work to generate any passion for the books because the passion was real and natural and completely unforced and so I think, over the course of an hour, hour and a half lunch, he picked up on that. Q. So what we see on the screen is essentially what you presented to him? How much did you have to compromise?David: Well its such a big show, we didnt bring him a specific treatment, and we didnt say, Heres the outline of whats going to happen. What we did say is that we wanted to do a faithful re-telling of his story for the screen; we want to include all the central characters and the major plotlines. Certain things, even with ten hours to tell the first book, certain things are not going to be able to make it because the books are so huge, but I think he was really pleased. We had a frightening moment right before we screened the first two episodes of the first season last year, and George and his wife Parris sat down right in front of us and right before the lights went down, Parris turned to us and said, I hope you boys didnt fuck it up! So we were nervous and watching the backs of their heads throughout the first two episodes, trying to gage what they were doing and then the second episode ended and she turned around and said, You didnt fuck it up! So we felt good about that. Dan: We strongly endeavour not to fuck it up! David: Thats our house motto, We dont fuck it up! 
Q. Do you feel the need to contemporise some of the themes to give them relevance for todays audience?Dan: I would say that contemporary relevance in terms of whats happening now, at the moment, for us its not that kind of show, were not trying to create a one-to-one correspondence with something thats happening in say, Syria, and trying to reflect that on the show. I think that the world of the show is wide enough and complex enough, the characters are real and human enough that their interactions on personal and large scales are just going to be complex enough that those resonances are going to happen on their own. I think its more about trying to keep in touch and stay in touch with human universals of power and family and loyalty and lust and jealousy and regret and the things that have probably driven people since we were chewing on bones in caves. They really make this story resonate with events of today because the events of today, beneath their surface, probably arent that different from events of a hundred years ago or five hundred or a thousand years ago. David: We have an inherent distrust of writers trying to jam theme down an audiences mouth or creating allegories for the show. Thats just never been our interest. Were dealing with a struggle for power, or several struggles for power. Were dealing with, especially in this season (2), with warfare, its impossible not to think about current conflicts and both of us are kind of veracious newsreaders. Were on set a lot between setups reading through the New York Times and theres no doubt that it informs the writing on some level, hopefully, mostly on an unconscious level, but theres never been a moment where we thought, This would be good way to comment on the Republicans or something. Thats just not what were interested in doing. Were interested in Westerosi politics. Dan: I think ultimately doing things that way is the way to make work thats flat, and doesnt really stand the test of time very well. If youre keyed in that closely to something thats contemporary and of the moment, then that moments going to pass and people are going to forget the specifics of that moment and youre going to be left with something that doesnt mean anything to anyone who doesnt remember the reference. Q. What was the hardest aspect you found in adapting the books for the screen?David: I think, more than one specific thing, just all of it, trying to get all of that world into a very tight schedule, because even though we have a lavish budget compared to most television shows, its not a lavish budget at all compared to features and theres a reason why television shows havent tried to do this kind of epic fantasy before; its really difficult to pull off, its really difficult to shoot scenes with horses in a constrained time period because horses are a pain in the arse, they take forever to do anything, theyre really not interested in your directions. Its the same with dogs and we have a lot of dogs and you know, we also have a lot of kids, but the kids turned out to be our strong suit, but just trying to shoot what we needed to shoot in this compressed schedule was immensely difficult. You know we came into this with very little experience in the production side of things and we were very lucky to be partnered with some very experienced producers and had a wonderful crew and somehow they managed to get it all done. Im constantly amazed if I look back. If you look at the schedule that Chris Newman, our line producer has created, its all colour coded, we have two units shooting every day and not a first unit and a second unit but two first units with two first unit directors shooting two separate scenes every day, often in two different countries and this goes on for months and its an incredibly schizophrenic kind of calendar because its hard to even remember because tomorrow we might be shooting Jon Snow up north and Arya Stark down in Kings Landing and the day after thats a whole other set of characters taken from all the different episodes of the season because we cross-board everything, in other words, we write all the episodes before we start shooting and then depending on the location, well shoot from a certain episode at a certain time. The schedule makes my I just dont have a brain that kind of works in a way that I could understand how to unravel all these scheduling intricacies and so were lucky we have people who do. It was a tough one; I mean George always said, he wrote these books to be un-producible. He got tired of writing these television scripts that everyone would say to him, George, its a great script but we dont have the time for it, we dont have the money for it. Well fuck it, Im just going to write these books that are going to be huge and Im going to have the castles be eight hundred feet high and theres going to be as many horses as I want and no one will ever make it because it will be un-producible!" And then we were the dipshits who came to him and said, We want to produce your series! Q. Did you ever come to a point where you thought, its too much, it cant be done?Dan: There were definitely some points where we wondered, I mean in the first season we managed to write around a battle sequence that we really wanted because there were things that we needed to tell the story and we found a way to tell the story without the battle sequence. The schedule for the battle kept shrinking and we new that we wouldnt be able to do it the way that we wanted to do it so we wrote around it. The battles in the second season were impossible to write around, we knew the story just simply wouldnt work without the battle that everything is sort of leading towards and we didnt have enough money to do what we needed to do, so there was a time when we were wondering whether we were going to be able to pull it off. So we made the case to HBO about why we needed this episode to do what we needed it to do and they were very committed to the show and I think they know that we dont go to them with hat in hand begging, unless we really, really need to. We worked together with them and made it happen. That was the closest we came to wondering whether or not we were going to be able to pull off what we needed to pull off. Q. And this happened so late into the second season? How about the immense casting process you must have gone through?Dan: There are plenty of landmarks of dauntingness throughout the whole thing you know, looking at the casting board grid on the wall and there are two hundred blank pages up there with faces that need to be filled to cover a whole wall and you just look at it and you say, Holy shit! Thats going to be a lot of casting! But yeah it gets done if you just do everything that you need to do in a day and if everyone else, the dozens of, hundreds of, talented, dedicated people you work with do the same thing then the grid fills itself in you know, and everything gets done. 
Q. Some characters have been made older in the series than they are in the books, Daenerys for example is only supposed to be thirteen. Why did you make these changes?Dan: That was our choice to stay out of prison! David: Its actually an important part of her journey in Season 1. I was looking at an interview that Emilia did the other day and she was talking about the characters sexual awakening over the course of Season 1 and the truth is yeah, we didnt want to do that with a thirteen-year-old. Also part of it was just finding Emilia you know. We could have cast an eighteen year old but Emilia was so perfect for the role, her audition was so staggeringly good that the fact that she was a few years older just didnt matter to us because she has to take the character on a journey where she starts the first episode of the first season as this very meek, timid girl whos in the shadow of her abusive brother, whos being sold off into what she assumes is going to be a loveless marriage, as her brother tells her, Id let you get raped a thousand times if it gets me what I want, so she starts from that place and she goes to a place where shes, I was going to say a Joan of Arc figure, but Joan of Arc if she had stepped out of the fire with three dragons! She goes to this place of being almost a messianic figure and a leader of her people and so we had to have one actress who could do both; who could play this really scared, timid girl and who could also become this powerful Queen, and Emilia did both those scenes in the auditions with such power and then she had the added pressure of having to fly to Los Angeles and go to HBO, get on stage in the theatre they have there in front of the top brass of HBO, she was the only actor who had to do this, and perform a scene with Harry Lloyd who played Viserys to convince them that she was the right one for it. Im twice her age and I would have been pooing myself! She was just so calm and poised, and nailed it and thats when we knew for sure that we had the right person. Dan: I think in general when you cast according to narrow, descriptive checklists, youre saying, Theyve got to be eighteen years old, five foot six, brown hair and green eyes, youre really just screwing yourself because inevitably the person whos the best actor and most captures the character, is not going to fit whatever physical characteristics youve laid out so you have a ball park and say that they need to be somewhere in this range and kind of keep it generally in line with what you had in mind but you need to be open to change. Well thats all from our Game of Thrones round table interviews, I hope you've enjoyed reading them as much as I enjoyed doing them! Remember of course, Game of Thrones Season 2 Premiers tomorrow night in the US (April 1st) on HBO and the following night (April 2nd) in the UK on Sky Atlantic and Sky Atlantic HD. For our top 10 reasons to watch Season 2, read HERE.