"Noah Hawley"

Hey, I'm Sean. And I'm Will. And I'm Jason. Hey, Will. Do you like golf? Oh, I love golf. Let's talk about golf. Ah, I hit a four. I hit it out of the park today on my Niner. Well, that's awesome. That's better than I. You guys, it's time to talk. We have to do a smart list episode. Ah, Sean, shut the fuck up. Ah, yeah, what do you know? Ah, welcome to smart list. Shani, are those glasses new? Yeah, what do you think? Yeah, they're not bad. I mean. Let's go higher. Really? No, you don't like them? Well. Do you not like them, seriously? I just put them on like five minutes ago. No, lean closer to your camera. Do you like them? Oh, not that close. Yeah, no, they're good. What do you think, honestly? You look great in everything. You know, I was noticing you on Kimmel last night. Me too. You look great on Kimmel. I was thinking the same thing. All right, everybody. Are you working with a new stylist or something, Sean? I am, actually. Are you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't dress myself like that. Shani, you look really good. Thanks, you guys. That's so nice. You did for real. It's true. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, I. And you're a great guest. Thank you. You're building a boat. You're a very good guest. You are a great guest. You know, I don't know how you guys feel about talk shows and stuff. Like, I get so nervous. I talk fast. Well, that's. You know what's bad? A guest that talks slow. Slow, right. And isn't nervous. Yeah. So, wait, Will, are you still in New York? I am, yeah. Wow. And it's still press for the movie? Still doing press for the movie, yeah. Still, like, just kind of getting going, really. And, yeah. Busy, busy, busy. Yeah, because it comes out. It does it. Well, I don't know when this episode. December 19th is when the movie comes out. December 19th. Yeah. Yeah, is this thing on. I can't wait for everybody to see you in it. It's so exciting. And what about you? You're in it, too, mister. And, Sean, you're in it, too. Sure. Sean, he was doing press for it last night. My favorite line I had in the movie is, does anybody want to play Bananagrams? Yeah. Yeah. That's it. What I loved about it was your line, the way you read it was, it is as if you had said that a million times. Yeah, by the way, totally. I know. You know, we don't often do these records here in the. Mid-afternoon, here it is, 3 p.m. here on the West Coast, 6 p.m. there in the East. You've got dinner time here. And, you know, listen, I think the audience is aware that the three of us are not in our 20s, okay? What? Well, what I want to say is. Speak for yourself. I get a little tie-tie right now. At three? This is not an ideal time for us to be doing. Well, you've got to find it. Well, hey, listen, save it, okay, Nappy Poo? How do you guys get through the late afternoon, okay? Sean, I've already explained your strategy. Will, how do you do it? You know, I just do stuff, you know, whatever. Schnitzy LaRue. Or do you guys go to, like, an espresso at a certain time every day? No, I do. What are you waving at? There's a fly in here, a dock on it. Like an old gramp? Like the guy from Up? He's an old man. He's grumbling about the time. He's waving at a fly. You know what I mean? I've had a real high-protein shake with spirulina and everything in it. I should be vibrating right now, but no, I'm supplementing it with the ice green tea, and I'm still sluggish. But if I don't have anything going on, I'll feel sluggish about this time, and I will listen to my body, and I'll lay down for sure. Wait a second, there's an if there? How often do you have shit going on at three in the afternoon? But I mean, like, if I keep. If I'm busy enough, I'll keep. It'll keep me awake, you know what I mean? Right. Like if I have a meeting or whatever. I'm coming off of four consecutive Zooms right into this thing. So I've been up, I've been at it, but it's still. Did you work out? I did work out. That's my problem. JB, it's not the problem. It's the Zooms. They suck the energy out. Staring at the screen for those meetings, I'm telling you, it's the worst. In-person meetings, we should all get back to the office, right, Will? Yeah, absolutely. You hear that, America? Well, you know what's funny? I will say, because I have been on the East Coast more this fall, and summer, is because being in the city, I feel like I'm just more energized in general. Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, that's New York City. Never sleeps, never sleeps. Yeah. It's got a heartbeat. It really does have a heartbeat. Do you have a T-shirt that says, I heart NY? It's a thong. That doubles into a T-shirt. Yeah, go ahead, Jason. Do you have something you want to add? Today, we got a big brain, okay? He's not one of your fancy, dancy celebs that are going to clue you into the life of the rich and famous, okay? No, Sean will. This today, we've got someone who's given you some of the best television available over the last 20 years. This is a writer, producer, director, and often all three on the projects that he gives us, giving us the kind of specific and singular experience that we look for on television nowadays. He's got the nominations, the awards. He's got the education, the credentials. He's also got the looks, the taste, the kids, the wife. The wind at his back, and he's going to tell us how he keeps it all together while bringing us top entertainment with shows like Bones, Legion, and the massive hit Fargo, and the new and spectacular Alien Earth. Folks, Noah Hawley. Bring it out here, Noah. Take it easy, Sean. Don't attack him just yet. This is exciting for me. Good afternoon, Noah. Good afternoon. I'm not nervous, and I'm going to speak very slowly. Good, good, good. Okay. Now, you're right in the middle of the country there. Aren't you in Texas? I am. I'm in Austin, Texas, yes. So you're two hours. I'm married to a seventh-generation Texan. I didn't read the fine print, so. Oof. She said we're going back to the motherland. Yeah, but it's good. I'm happy. I like it. It's my kind of place. You're not missing. Where did you move from? Well, I'm a New York City kid originally, and then there was a little San Francisco, there was some L.A., and, yeah, now I'm here. You're not missing those places. You're into Austin. I mean, I was in New York last week. It's, you know, you reach a certain point where you're rarely home anyway, so. Word. Yeah. Yeah, it's W-E-R-D, Sean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Welcome to the show. You know, this is a long time coming. Thank you. We know each other a bit. Do you guys know him at all? How do you guys know each other? Just through mixers, you know, get-togethers. Mixers. Yeah. Someone set us up once. Jason described you, and I don't know if Jason's like, not one of your celebrity, like he was, that felt like a real shot across your bow, if I'm being honest. It's good, I mean. He's not one of these, like, these, you know, tabloid celebs, you know, that sometimes we're looking up the book on this show. That's you. I've never been on a tabloid. Unless I'm caught in the background of one of Jen's shots, you know? I will say, you know, living in Austin, you know, I'll go to L.A. sometimes, and I'll think, oh, right, I'm somebody. Sure. But at the same time. The second you leave, you're nobody. Right. Well, but no, sometimes there, I feel like, it's the only place I've ever been where you can feel like nobody also, right? It has that status game that is very specific. But talk about that, though. You are, for a lot of the people listening to this, and maybe only Tracy will be like, well, this Noah Hawley, you know, who is this fella? I'm gonna, for most people, they know exactly who you are, and you're enormously well-known and very, very powerful in this industry. But is there a part of, let's put it this way. I've got a writer friend of mine. Okay. Who likes to also act. And. Is this you? No. Okay. He's an enormous writer, but couldn't give a shit about the writing. Just wants to act. Oh, really? Do you see the kind of weight and power in the writing that you should and deserve? Because he doesn't. Like, he doesn't get that, like, he's already got the gold medal there by being an incredibly successful writer. That's so hard to do. No, I'm very, look, I love all the parts of the job. I like to sit in a room and write a novel, and the phone doesn't ring, and I like the writer's room element of it. I love to get on set and direct, and the team support of it all. You know, I think what makes me happiest is the fact that I don't have to do just one of those things, that I can get my isolation and recharge, and then I can go out and be in public, you know, and sort of command the ship. And, you know, try to elevate everyone to do their best work. And you're creating these projects. You're creating these jobs. You're creating all these many, many, many people with employment. And, like, that's not something that often an actor or a star can do. I mean, they can generate heat for a project, but you're literally filling up blank pages and, like, creating a story and a world and a project. And I just think it's just incredible. Well, thank you. And he's, Jason's not unlike our current president. He's just enamored with, and of power, you know what I mean? Like, he's, and so he's just in awe of your power. Yeah. You see the aura. Well, I appreciate that. He can come over and tell my wife how powerful I am. Yeah. Now, what about that, right? What about, like, how old are your kids? 13 and 18. Okay. Now, so they're old enough to give it up that it's exactly the same age as mine. Yeah. Do your kids give it up? Like, do they get what you do? Do they like what you do? Yeah, I think so. You know, I don't know how it is with you, but probably one more than the other, you know. I think, you know, my son loves to, he's the 13-year-old. He loves to come to set, give me a headset, I'm going to sit on the camera rig, you know. Oh, that's cool. He's, you know, I call him the mayor of childhood, you know. And then my daughter's a little more retiring, a little, you know, less, I don't know. I mean, she appreciates it in a different way, I think, you know. And I think he's like, you know, where's my director's chair? Right, right, right. Yeah, is she, is either one of them interested in the industry? Early, too early to tell, I feel like, yeah. I mean, my son did ask me on Alien Earth, he's like, is there any role, like, could I do anything in there? And so I did put him in the show, just in a sort of improv. He plays the young Alex Lothar character. And, you know, I wasn't going to write a scene, but I wanted that kind of feeling of that, that kind of Malick-y feeling of the childhood thing. And I was like, I can't. I can't hire a day player to be his dad. And then I got, he's never acted before. And so, you know, I'm always the guy who's like, maximum creativity, maximum efficiency. I was like, the easiest thing to do is if I just get down on the floor and I play the dad and I'm there with him. And you did that. I did, I did. It was a really kind of special day, certainly. And it did, I loosened him up. We, you know, we had a good time. And it comes across. Were you at the end of that? I've seen every episode. At the end of that day, were you like, hey, hey, the dad character might need a spinoff. Exactly. Because, you know, this guy's really got something. Exactly. But can you tell me, like, because I'm a massive, massive fan and my husband, Scotty, of the Alien series. We've seen every movie, everything in between and all incarnations. And then when we saw this show coming up, Alien Earth, we're like, wait, finally, somebody's like doing a series of it. And how did that come to you? And did you feel the weight of it? Because we're like, we did the nerd stuff. We're like, let's. Find out where it falls into the storyline, you know, and the history. And it's really cool. I love it so much. It starts before the original Alien, correct? Yes, it's a couple of years before. And after the Prometheus and the Covenant, right? In between? Yeah, I think that's accurate. You know, I felt like I wanted. I mean, Sean, don't mess up your microphone here, okay? Put some plastic over it. One of us is an expert on Alien, but I don't think it's me. Okay, okay, yeah. Because, Sean, according to your timeline, actually. It's the glasses. I got the new glasses, so they make me Alien smart. No, but yeah, did you feel the weight of it? And how did it come to you? And how did you create it? Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I've now had this opportunity a couple of times, right, to take a classic film and turn it into a TV show. And, you know, for me, it's never about going back and re-watching the film. Right? It's about thinking about, well, how does that film live in my imagination? And what are the feelings that it brings up in me? And how can I create those same feelings in an audience by telling them a different story? You know, the thing with an Alien movie is it's a two-hour survival story. But a TV show has to be the opposite, right? You have to invest in 10 or 30 or 50 hours about characters who don't die. Yeah, right, right. And so, well, what is it? What is it if it's not a two-hour survival story? And so, there needs to be, you know, even if you have 60% of the best action in horror, you still have 40% of what are we talking about, right? What's the show about and everything. So, that's where it started for me. And it came down to this one moment in Ridley's movie where, you know, the monster's out and Sigourney's in the communication room and the computer is telling her that the crew is expendable and she leans back. And Ian Holm is there and you realize he's an Android and I thought, well, that moment in which humanity realizes it's trapped between nature and technology and they're both trying to kill us, that feels like the moment we're living in. Right, totally. And that feels like what the show is about. Yeah, for sure. I got that. I got all that. Skye, lock the doors. Yeah. But also this, also that one creature that you created in the show was just the one eye, you know? Yeah. Like, it's so creepy and clever and it's like, and holds like all the mystery, like, I think it's so cool. Yeah, well, like I said, what are the feelings that the original gave me? Well, the one feeling that the movie, the first movie has, right, is the discovery of the life cycle of the creature. Wait, it's an egg and then the thing comes out and attaches to your face? I'm out, right? But then, no, it gets worse. Right. And then it falls off and you think, "Oh, I'm hungry," and you have a meal and it pops out of your fucking chest. And then it grows to be 10 feet tall and, but that's the one feeling we can never get back for an audience, right, is that discovery. Right. Unless we introduce these new creatures, right? Right, right, right. Unless we go, "All right, well, it's an eyeball with tentacles, and how does it reproduce? And what does it eat? And I don't like that." You know? Wait, wait, wait, wait. So how do you, this is a great point. This is about my mom? This is. She's got one eye. Oh, no, Sean. I'm not gonna reach for the low-hanging fruit, even though it's still fruit. That's the thing about low-hanging fruit. Okay, okay. No, is that when you come up with a creature like that, like what are the things that it's got the tentacles and stuff? What is that process? Are you guys in the writer's room going like, are you people pitching like, "No, no, no, he's got eight tentacles because one of them. " No, no, no, hang on a second. And like, how do you write that? Yeah. No, it's really interesting. You know, the writer's room, you know, I have a kind of love-hate relationship with the writer's room. I had to figure out how to use it for myself. And what I figured out about it is it's a really good way to help me think out loud, you know? So I don't tend to let the room tell the story. I tend to go in there and I go, "Here's where we are." And then if I can't be in the room tomorrow, I'll say, "All right, well, you know, it's a good idea to do this." And then I'll say, "Okay, well, I'm going to go to bed." And then I'll go to bed. And then I'll go to bed. that was gonna work out really for me. jason's not an afternoon person yeah what was that first uh what was the first um thing the little hit you got on the hook that like said okay i'm i'm good i i know i i think i know how to write because yeah well you you didn't you got it you got a degree in political science right it wasn't in in in writing was it or did you minor in there geez man no yeah i was just you know studying things that were interesting to me and then and then you know writing on on the side um you know it's interesting there was in high school you know there was an assignment we were reading the book catch 22 right and and very specific voice in that book comedic satirical and there was an assignment which is write your own chapter of catch 22 right and i remember that being the first thing and kind of interesting considering i ended up you know write a coen brothers movie and write a ridley scott movie that there was something to that exercise of of joseph heller's voice of finding it going oh i know what that is and i know how to do it that that ended up being really um seminal for me i guess wow we'll be right back and now back to the show um i just have a quick question from scotty if that's okay oh sure oh we're not really taking calls right now but um but but it's good open up the lines um he says it feels like with your show with the upcoming release of the movie predator badlands which features a character from the alien universe that both the alien franchise and the predator franchise are finally being codified in the same universe do you see the world of predator being folded into the world you created now i've wrecked my microphone do you see them combined at all uh or predator coming on to your show uh no not onto the show i don't think i mean i think dan tractenberg who made uh prey and it has made uh the badlands movie and you know i mean i i loved prey i think he's doing a great job with that franchise he he clearly has has a plan yeah there um i you know i've met i've met dan once we're not kind of coordinating any of that stuff so yeah yeah okay fine it's not really my my plan to do it yeah sure so just tell scotty thanks scotty down yeah yeah he's just comes in in a predator outfit like okay yeah um well so no let me tell us about that moment that the the switch from political science um to to writing was there was there a first job was there was it a school paper like what what was that um transition i mean i i had done some fiction writing and you know as a kid and then in college um and as i said i was you know i was trying to star but you know to make ends meet i i took a job um working as a as a paralegal uh for the legal aid society in new york city and in family court so these are the lawyers who represent children in abuse and neglect cases to termination of parental right cases but also but also juvenile delinquency cases so both civil and criminal law and what did you do sorry what did you do i was a paralegal i basically tried to help help them you know case law etc and and you know it was if it took off in a you know in a car in a miata let's say let's say it's a miata let's say there was a lot of wheel spin and um mg and there was four or five kids in the rear view would you you would take that case on yes even if it was in chicago those kids deserve their day in court as all right all right all right i'm gonna tell my dad i'll see you in court yeah yeah um but you know in the family court the family court building at that time was this huge black obelisk it looked like darth vader's helmet yeah right and so every day i'd go to work and these these kids would come in and you know it's obviously it's it's heartbreaking you know it's it's outrageous etc and i started writing fiction as a way to kind of process yeah escape a little you know and and you know when you're in a band you're tied to these three filthy penniless men right and fiction writing believe me i know yeah fiction writing was a way to i could just do it myself and you know when you wrote 10 pages you had 10 pages right like it was your material dark at that time was it a reflection of what you were going through well no i i've always been playful and and you know i've always been attracted to to genre and elevating genre you know as character pieces etc so i don't know you know the first novel i published was called a conspiracy of tall men and it was about a professor of conspiracy theories whose wife is killed in a plane crash and he finally gets the conspiracy he's been looking for but of course it's no solace because you know he had to lose his wife to get it and it has a bit of a thriller quality it's also a little satirical you know i'm always just trying to figure out what how does the story want to be told wait but but but the time is a paralegal and witnessing all of that you know horrible stuff to kids and the parents and the families how did that affect you and how do you see the how did that change who you are as a person as a writer as a parent um after being experienced and to uh after experiencing all of that yeah well believe me i tell my kids every day you got it good you don't know how good you got right right for sure no it's interesting you know because i my daughter is 18 as i said and and if i look back at the last 20 years of stories that i've told really you know i can't separate my identity as a parent from the stories i'm telling you know i look at at alien earth which is about these children whose minds are put into adult bodies or fargo season four which is about these two crime bosses who trade their youngest sons there's always something that ties into like who are we as a people how are we raising our children and and you know what is moral and what is cynical and how are we preparing our kids for the world right right right yeah i mean noah how do you do you have a um a structured way in which you divvy up your day to to to to tackle these to allow your brain to think what do i want to do what do i want to say uh what should this episode be about what should my next project be about um and then and then do you have a certain time like is in the afternoon where you actually then do the writing and then another period of time the time management and like how do you i just can't imagine how you take on as much concentrated individual time along with all the time you need to spend with the teams that you're running it kind of depends on what phase i'm in right it's you know right right now um you know i can look at at at having to have scripts due in a in a few months and production coming up and you know i'm sort of in a phase right now which is every day i'm like where does my brain want to go okay you know and so and some days that that's like you know i want to watch movies or i you know i want to read this book and other days it's like oh i guess i'm going to think about you know alien earth today or i'm going to think about fargo today and and you know in that way you know when an idea is new you don't want to look at it directly you want to side eye it you know you're like it's fragile you're like i don't know what this is yet and i don't want to scare it so and i don't want to tell anybody about it and i just kind of kind of and and then after after a few days or a couple of weeks you sort of go okay now i see a little more clearly you know i think i can start to make some hard hard choices here it starts chasing you yeah i like that idea i like to like keep things out into kind of a soft focus i always say like just keep it out there in a soft focus for now yeah let it kind of let it come into let it sort of marinate and come into focus on its own a little bit you know jason was saying you've got all these different things that you're working on and when they're in production i imagine they're in production in lots of different locations as well which must uh also be a big issue yeah you know we love canada we film a lot in canada it's uh but no i i mean i shot i shot alien earth in bangkok we were in thailand oh probably a total of a year you know i wasn't there the whole time i'm there for a couple of months here a couple of months there um but uh yeah it's hard it's hard and and if i can time it to a kid's summer vacation it's easier and if not we try to have a two-week rule yeah but can't come back from thailand for a weekend you know no i was just gonna ask to be to mimic your son and say look there's a part in alien i always say you can't come back from a weekend in thailand you know i mean i well it's metaphorical and literal yeah yeah so um no there oh i i it is uh it's a coincidence no uh but incredible that you have adapted as you said earlier two iconic films in a television series is is that a coincidence or um well let's start with fargo how did you have the moxie to say i want to approach the coen brothers and talk to iconic film into a television series and then how did you do that again for ridley with ridley scott yeah i mean luckily these were these were both sort of incoming calls uh i i had written a couple of pilots for fx i knew them i was in talking to them about something else they had optioned fargo as a tv show joel and ethan had signed on and they'd said if we like the script you can put our name on it and if not you know where to send the check and and you know so the first process was to sell fx and to go through you know um, that, that process and write a script. And then we sent that first script to Joel and Ethan, and that was when I met them. And, and when, when, sorry, when FX optioned it, was it always going to be an anthology or was the original conceit to take the original characters and, and keep moving them? Yeah. They wanted to make a TV show out of it, but they also said, do you think we could do it without Marge? Because who, how could you ever top Francis McDormand? Right. And I said, well, well, first of all, everyone else is dead or in jail. So, all right, well, that's interesting. If you're adapting the movie without actually any of the characters in the movie, then what are you doing? And I said, look, it's not a TV show because the movie says it's a true story. Um, and at the end of it, she's seen the craziest Coen brothers case and tomorrow's a normal day and she's got two months left to have the baby and he got the 3 cent stamp. And, and you know what I mean? It's a closed ended thing. If she woke up tomorrow and it was another crazy Coen brothers case, you couldn't say it's a true story. No one would. No one would, would believe it. Right. I said, but you could, you know, why is the movie called Fargo? It's set in Minnesota, except that Fargo, the word is evocative of a place, right? What Joel and Ethan call Siberia with family restaurants. And, and, you know, but it's also after that movie, it's kind of a state of mind. It's a type of story. And so I said, you know, so you could tell this story about Fargo and this is a Fargo story or, you know, as proved out. It could also be a 1979 crime epic about the death of the family business and the rise of corporate America, or it could be a 1950 story about, you know, the, the sort of alternate economy and immigration and et cetera. So every time I just try to push that envelope of what is a Fargo story. But it would all need to take place in Fargo though, yes? No, it all needs to, I mean, not, not even really. Fargo, North Dakota, yes? Well, but it needs to have some connection, you know, whether there's a character. I mean, the fourth season took place in Kansas City, but Jesse Buckley's character was from North Dakota, you know, and, and, um, you know, this last season with Jon Hamm, you know, he was in North Dakota, but, um. This fucking guy, I don't know how he gets fired. Honestly. Noah, Noah. Just every fucking month, it's a new goddamn ham deal. It's a fucking, you just get a ham's fucking face everywhere. Jesus Christ. We'll cut all of that. And funny. All of that needs to be trimmed. It needs to be trimmed out, but I just needed to. Yeah, no, I'm glad you got that off your chest. So, sorry. Okay, so we're back. Yes. So, uh, the fourth season was with the great Jon Hamm, right? Fifth season. Fourth season. Fifth season. Yeah. Yup. That's your back end. Fifth season was, uh, Chris Rock and, uh, anyway. Uh, so yeah, so they came to me and, but then of course I realized, look, you know, it's great. I wrote a, a script that the Coen brothers, you know, when I spoke to them finally and finally, and they said, it's, you know, we hate imitation, but this was, it was eerie reading this because it felt like you were channeling us, right? That's a great thing to hear. That's makes, makes my millennia, right? But then, but then you got to film it and, and, and there's, we know, we know that the Coens, they, they write or rewrite a lot of movies that they don't direct and those movies never feel like Coen brothers movies. So there's something in the cinema, right? That turns those words into that thing. And I had to figure out what that was. Otherwise I was going to fail on my face. Did you end up directing the first episode? I didn't because I wasn't really directing then. And so, you know, I had a director. Yeah. Who was, did somebody come in and say, yeah, here's the visual component that is the Coen brothers? Yeah. Adam Bernstein came in and he had shot a bunch of, uh, Breaking Bad and, and we had a good collaboration. Um, but you know, he, he gave me his director's cut and, and, and, you know. I, I recut it, you know, um, I recut it to find the tone of voice that to me felt like a Coen brothers movie. It's not as comedic as you think, right? And, and a lot of the comedy is deployed, you know, like Anton Sugar's haircut. It's deployed in a way where you're like, well, it's not funny. It's just really specific and kind of unsettling. Right. Right. And, but it ends up being funny, you know? Yeah. Well, one of the, one of the first things I did was I, I took like half of the film, half the edits out of the episode, you know, because nothing makes something feel like television more than. Cutting to dialogue. You're cutting every time someone talks, right? Right, right, right. I mean, there's a scene in the emergency room where, where, where, uh, Martin Freeman meets Billy Bob for the first time and I'm in this master shot, sort of slowly pushing in and, you know, Billy Bob gets up and moves over next to him and that's the first cut, you know, but that's a long time, right? But that's what a movie feels like. Sure. It's, you know. You trust the audience, so. Wait, so who, like, because you're, you're right. It's, it's. I love Martin Freeman. Sorry, I just had to say that. Have you seen his show, by the way? No. Have you seen his show, The Responder, that he did? No, I haven't. In the UK? Yeah. Oh my God. He plays a cop in Liverpool. It's unbelievable. He's so good in that show. Please, I, I. I'll watch it. Yeah, watch it. It's so, so, so. So the, the comedy that like comes, like you were talking about from the Coen brothers, who was that for you growing up? Who, who was the, who was the. The show, the movie, the people, the comedians that you're like, you know what, I really like that kind of style. Well, I grew up, because my father had studied acting in the UK, he came back with a lot of Goon Show records, which was Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers and Harry Seacombe, this radio, half hour radio show. It was that, it was Monty Python, it was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Yeah, for sure. There was a lot of that British humor that, that really. Was seminal for me, and, and then, you know, I, my, because people ask me, when was the first time you saw Alien, and I'll, and I, and I say, well, I'll tell you the first time I didn't see it was a nine-year-old's birthday party, where my parents were like, yeah, you're not going to that. And so we went to see The In-Laws instead, right, with Alan Arkin and Peter Fawkes, and I was like, I think that explains everything about me, right? Yeah, yeah, right, right. You know, so, so, you know, that, that's the sort of thing, is the, the absurdism, but, but also, you know, the, the cinematic nature of it. Right, for sure. Is there, is, go ahead, Jason. Well, this, this, the first television writing gig, gig came on Bones, yes? Yeah. Yeah. So you're a writer-producer on that, and, and then, then you start to create your own shows, so it started with The Unusuals and My Generation were those two of the first? Yeah. Both for ABC, yeah. And was it, was it, was it a difficult process to get the, the networks? Were the networks interested in your ideas? I mean, were they, were they, were they receptive right away based on your, your time there on Bones, or was that kind of a tough transition into being a, a showrunner? No, I mean, I, I had come from being a novelist, you know, to writing an original spec feature film that I ended up selling, and my first novel had been optioned, and they said, all right, well, now you're a screenwriter, so give it a shot. So I did some feature writing, and then, you know, the TV agents at the agency were like, would you ever think about doing? So I went out and I took some meetings, and I ended up selling a couple of TV pilots that I, that I wrote, and I thought, well, if any of these ever get produced, I should know how to make a show, and so, whatever it was, 2004, I came, I was in San Francisco, I came down to L.A., and I staffed on Bones, and I did it because Hart Hansen, who ran the show, said, well, you're going to learn how to make a show. Yeah. There were other shows where they're like, you're going to be in the room the whole time, and I was like, well, I know how to write, I, I, but I need to know how to, how to produce a thing, and that, but then, well, I was like, well, I'm going to be in the room the I was on staff, you know, I was still, I published another book, I, I sold a movie script each, each season, I, I didn't write a pilot the first year, but the second year, I went into ABC and developed a show with them that they really liked, but they didn't make, right, because it didn't really have a genre, right, that was the broadcast days where they're like, lawyer, doctor, cop, right, and so, the next year, I thought. Do you think that show, do you think that show would have been made today, sorry to interrupt? I think so, yeah. Yeah. It was a, it was a sort of white trash dynasty about a guy who, you know, he was a, he was a guy who had a used car empire, and he had four families, and everybody worked for him, and, you know, it was a really fun sort of. I want to watch that show. I see you as a lead on that, Willie. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And they really liked it, the character work, and so then, strategically, I thought, okay, well, I'm going to go back in the next year, what can I sell them that they would actually make? And I thought, well, let's sell them a cop show, not a procedural, but like a Hill Street or, or a Barney Miller or something like that, and so that's the show I pitched them, and then, you know. And, you know, we, we got it through the process with Jeremy Renner and, and, you know, Goldberg and Harold Perrineau, and, and, you know, we did the eight hours, and then they said thank you, and, and don't let the door hit you on the way out. And then the next day, Jeremy Renner was nominated for an Oscar for Hurt Locker. Uh-huh, right. It was like, you guys are real geniuses. Yeah. Yeah, how did, tell, talk to us about how the, the, the directing thing started to come about, and, and what, and, and, and where did your confidence start to, when did your confidence start to grow for that, like, asking for the, the, the wheel? Yeah, I mean, you know, what you realize, especially when there's comedy in the work, right, is, is that, is that, you know, where you see the joke is different than where somebody else sees the joke, right, where, with a beat, and, and even The Unusual's pilot, right, is like, Stephen Hopkins had directed it, and, you know, he cut a much broader comedy than I saw, right? Sure. And so I would go in. And so you start in the editing room to be a filmmaker, And where, you know, I'm not a big fan of melodrama. I like to keep the emotion sort of low until it's really earned. And, you know, and then My Generation was a fake documentary about the high school class of 2000 and where they were 10 years later. And so I had to approach it like I was making a documentary film. So, you know, when you watch a documentary, you're like, well, the cameras weren't there. They've got an audio recording or they've got still photographs or they've got, you know, or if the cameras were there and the couple had a fight and she ran off and he ran after her, well, the camera's not there waiting, right? The camera's chasing, right? So there was a cinematic mindset of making that. And then, of course, as I said, with the Coen brothers' film, you know, I started doing a lot of the second unit directing on the first season of Fargo. And then I just started doing the episodic World Conference. World Creation in season two. Did you find it, I think most people can read something or watch something and from the comfort of their couch, the safety of their couch, they can say, oh, I would do this differently or I would do that differently. And those are nine times out of ten, like, really good ideas. They're good catches. They're good fixes. But if you give them a blank page or you give them a screen with no image on it or, more pointedly, on a set, standing in front of a bunch of actors and some cameras and a cameraman, knowing how to create from the ground up, you know, to put this thing into three dimensions, like, did you find that change in the process from just, from recutting stuff that's in front of you to actually creating it from the ground up on set, was that a comfortable thing for you? Or did that, would that have some growing pains? You know, I'm sure you had that moment the first time you're on a set and, and, you know, you're on a set and, and they go, what's next, boss? And you don't know, right? That's so scary. And 200 people are staring at you. You know, I've gotten, I've gotten comfortable with that feeling, which is like, I just need a minute. I'm going to figure it out. Because then, of course, people start to offer suggestions, which isn't helpful, right, and everything. No, it was just about, about finding the, again, as I said, the feeling. And I don't have any training on this. And, and, you know, a lot of it for me, you know, there's a moment on Alien Earth, I did that, that fifth hour, which was the trapped in the spaceship, you know, hour where, where, you know, you see what happened before the ship crashed. And, and, you know, this moment where Richard Morjani was running away from the, the xenomorph and she was hiding and she was pressed against a wall and we could see down the hallway and the xenomorph came out. And I thought, well, I want to do a push in here. But let's do a zoom. And what, what if we zoom on her and then we, you know, we do it as a lock off and then I do a longer zoom on the xenomorph and then I marry those two things. It's kind of an impossible shot. I don't know if it's going to work or not work, but I know it'll give you a feeling, right? Which is like, something feels wrong here, right? Which you don't know is a cinematic thing. You just feel that feeling. And that's sort of how, how I approach it. Super cool. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. Did you find, did you find that once you got, kind of like JB was saying, like you could create from the ground up in real time as a director on set. Did you find that it took a step out of the process for you? Because as a writer, as a producer, as the showrunner, all these things, you're watching cuts or you're watching them shoot stuff and you're like, yeah, and you're trying to convey what it is that you want. And at a certain point, just being able to cut the middleman out, as it were, was that satisfying? Well, look, my wife, Kyle, who I love dearly, she said, you know, at one point to me, do you have to direct two, right? You know, and I said, but here's the thing. As opposed to just one? No, do you have to direct at all? Like you're writing, you're show running, you also have to be a director. And I said, well, here's the thing. I'd have to be there anyway, right? The first episode of a new series, a new season, a new series, whatever. I got to be there anyway. It's actually, you're going to see me quicker if I do it myself. Way more efficient. Yeah, way more efficient. Yeah, so that's that. And for me, look, it's all an act of play, right? There's a, you know, as a writer, I'm a sort of yes and improv guy, you know, in the room. I'm like, okay, I like that. We're doing that. Now what, right? I mean, I've heard these stories about Vince Gilligan where he's like, that's good. Let's spend two weeks seeing if we can top it and that would make me crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For Tracy, he created Breaking Bad, yeah. Yeah, and so you get on set and, you know, I have a script I think is great and I get on the set with the actors and I'm not saying we're going to change the words, but like, let's figure out what it would really be like and what it wants to be. And, you know, you got to be open to play in that moment. Yeah. What about, so you wrote and directed a film as well, Lucy in the Sky with Natalie Portman. Was the film experience anything different than basically just a double length episode for you? And I guess the question behind the question is, is there a desire to do film or do you see it as just simply arbitrarily a different medium that is every bit consistent with what you're doing on television anyway? And one could argue much more sort of creative control on television. Yeah, I mean, it's its own, it's its own unique medium, right? And I did like the experience of it. You know, I mean, one of the things that, you know, I'm such a use every part of the animal television filmmaker that, you know, sometimes a scene doesn't fit and you're like, I'll use it in episode four, you know, or I'll repurpose this. And then, but with the movie, you're like, there is no episode four. It's either in this movie or it doesn't exist, right? And, you know, whenever I come into a project, my first question is always, what am I taking for granted, right? As a storyteller or a filmmaker, whatever. And with Lucy, I was like, all right, well, this is a movie that's going to be shown in theaters. Well, maybe I'm taking the movie theater itself for granted. The fact that it's a, you got a giant rectangle at the front and all these speakers on the side, and you're taking for granted that you want to use the whole rectangle and all the speakers. But what if this woman goes to space and it's this huge, you know, spiritual experience and the screen is full and the sound is full and then she comes back down. To earth we see her in the pickup line, you know, to pick up her kid and now the image is small and the sound is in the front, right? But then, you know, she meets your friend, Jon Hamm, and you guys want to grumble about Jon some more or? I mean, he's all right, he's all right, he's okay. But she meets Jon and they have an affair and so the feelings get big and the screen opens up, you know, so I'm always looking for those sorts of things. You know, I think that the structure of a story should reflect the content of a story, you know. What was it about that story that you thought lent itself better to feature as opposed to long form in television? And how do you treat any idea that comes into your head, decide whether to, you know, write another book based on that idea or actually this is something that could go into as a limited series or an ongoing or a feature? Some of it is how long you want to live with it and the other, you know, TV, we're interacting with the culture mostly in real time. You know, you might be 18 months, a year away, like from writing to production, airing, whatever. A book, you know, you might live with for five years. A film you might live with for seven years before it hits the screen. And so it's sort of like, is this interesting enough? Is this going to hold my attention enough? Is there enough there for me to live with for that length of time? And do I have enough to say? Were there any sort of creative, creative babies that you had to let go, that ideas that you loved for a long time? Anyone that sticks out that you were like, I love this so passionately for a year. And then you read someone else's doing something similar. A year and a day later, you're like, Yeah, all the time. Or you just go, it doesn't really get me anymore. Well, I feel like you're looking for some free ideas here. I'm just saying, if you could DM me. All I'm saying is. What would it be and can I produce it? Yeah, I mean, there's always stuff, but again, I don't have to say specifically the actual idea. Yeah, I think there are things and there's scripts that I wrote that I love and I wrote this novel before the fall and Sony owned it and I adapted it. I think it's great, but it's expensive, right? It's like a $70 million drama thriller and they don't make those right now. So I could beat my head against a wall for five years trying to get it made. Or I could go, I'm going to bide my time. Or turn it into a limited series. Yeah, or turn it into a limited series, yeah. What about other people's ideas? Let me shoot you my number real quick. Okay, great, thanks. You're such an auteur, do you even spend any time considering other people's work and adapting that? Yeah, it's interesting. You know, "Lucy in the Sky," I did not originate that project. That Fox Searchlight brought that to me. It was a script that Reese Witherspoon was producing. The first draft, you know, it's sort of. of like a dramatization of this true, you know, this tabloid story. about this astronaut who has an affair and, you know, drives across the country allegedly in a diaper, you know, to kidnap the, you know, it's a very tabloidy story. And the first script was kind of a diaper joke script and I passed on it. And then, you know, and then they came back to me with a script that began through magic realism to explore her psychological state of how she went from being that one person to being that other person. And I thought that was really interesting. And so I signed on and I developed it with John Henry Butterworth and then, you know, but it's, in the end, I feel like if I had had the idea and written it from scratch, it probably would have been a different movie. You know, when you get a script, you kind of can't see past what the script was. So I don't know, it was a $35 million magic realism astronaut movie and it turns out people don't want to see those. So, you know. I'm not sure what they want to see nowadays. It's such a crap show. It's such a crap shoot. You know, it's really, really interesting. What about stuff for the stage or theater? Oh, here he comes. Oh, boy. Yeah, I think about it. Did you ever forget a line on stage and anybody ever have a heart attack? I think about it. You know, like I said, I'm a New York City kid. My dad had been an actor. I grew up going to all the, you know, shows and, you know, and it's a different medium. It's an animal I haven't tried yet. Yeah, it's a good way to test the waters for, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Bigger things. Yeah. And then, and so let's go back to music a little bit. Sean, will you be surprised to hear that he's a singer as well and has sung on some of his shows? Yes. I didn't know that. You do a little bit of singing. I think that's a big surprise. We like to know what the audience will be surprised about. Yeah. Can you give us a little something? A little something, something? Just like happy birthday, you know. It's Sean's birthday today. Happy birthday. Yeah. Yeah. Happy birthday to you. Okay. Yeah. That's something you still do, yeah? It is, yeah. And, you know, like I said, I wanted to be a musician. It wasn't really in the cards for me professionally, but I found a workaround, right? That's what I try to do is what's the system and can I game it? And, you know, it started on season two of Fargo where I decided I wanted songs in the show that were covers of songs from Coen Brothers movies, you know, so Jeff Tweedy did a cover of the Jose Feliciano song from the movie Fargo and, you know, there were a lot, you know, there were a lot of covers. And then I thought, well, why don't I do one? And so Jeff Russo, the composer, and I recorded the Go to Sleep, You Little Baby from O Brother. And then when I made Legion, which was a, you know, a very surreal Marvel-inspired show, I wanted the songs to sound like, you know, like score. I wanted it to go from score into songs without feeling like there was any difference. So he and I just started recording. Again, it's like I hear it in my head. I could try to explain it to somebody else or we could just do it, you know? And so that's what we ended up doing. And now we do that. That's cool. Tell the audience a bit, the torture, the horror, or the pleasure, you tell me, of pitching. What a writer has, well, you explain it. What a writer has to do to get the people who write the checks to write the check. Like, you've got to basically tell them what's coming, right? And you've got to trick them sometimes. Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating that this visual medium is still rooted in the oral storytelling tradition, right? Which is, I walk into a room, I tell you a story. Right. Right? And if I'm charismatic and, you know, I've got good timing, you're going to go, oh, my God, that's amazing. I want to see that. Right. I did one pitch where I went in and, you know, I started to talk about the segue, right? The segue, of course, is the segue from small talk to the pitch, right? And we did the small talk and I was like, you know, I was thinking on the way over here about the segue of how I was going to get into the pitch. And I was thinking about how. Like, how are you to like. Yeah, I was thinking about how recently my house got broken into and they stole some guitars. And then I was thinking, no, maybe I'll talk about how I was watching TV last night and Stripes was on. And I thought, we don't have that kind of Bill Murray anti-hero anymore. And I went through a couple of things. And then at a certain point they realized, oh, the segue is the pitch, right? Because it is an anti-hero story about a crime, you know? Yeah. Oh, that's cool. My feeling is always when you're asking someone to interact with the show in any way, whether it's an outline or a pitch, it's got to feel like the show. And so I do these hair and makeup tests when we get on set where it's, you know, it's grown to this thing where I'll have like a, you know, a crane on my hair and makeup, you know, because I'll get the characters in. I'm like, let's not waste an opportunity just by looking at people in clothes, right? We have an opportunity to like, you know, let's get David Thouless and Michael Stuhlbarg and Ewan McGregor in a room and feel like what that dynamic is between them. And, you know, and so I end up cutting these things together with music and when I show it to them that this is what the show is going to feel like, right? I love that. Yeah, because it's not, I mean, we're kind of past the point of talking, just going in a room and pitching and telling a story. You need shiny objects, you need to excite them and you need to like, you know, sizzle reels or whatever or something. But it's great for the actors because they get to put the skin on without any pressure, right, for a day or two and then it wakes the crew up, right? They're like, oh, we're pushing a dolly in the hair and makeup test. Like, I'm laying track and we're doing this for real. Yeah. We did that, we did that actually on our film last year on this movie that I did and we did all this camera test thing here in the city outside, just me and Bradley and Matty Libatik and the guys and we went out and shot for a couple of days during the day, at night, we went and shot all this stuff and Bradley ended up cutting it together and putting together this reel that he was showing the studio and cut it with music and with stuff that happened and it was so, A, it was great for them but B, really for us, it really started to, it taught us the language of the film before we started. Yeah, you get to feel it. Yeah, and it was really, really helpful. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it is, it is. I find it, you know, and it becomes a sales document for them internally of like, look what this guy's making for us. You know, we're making Alien Earth and you feel like you're watching, you know, an alien movie for four minutes or whatever it is. Yeah, it's cool. We would be criminal if we let you go without giving you an opportunity to discuss with Sean what, to the extent you're comfortable, we can cut it if you're not, what happened with Star Trek? And will it, will your participation with Star Trek be coming at any point? Yeah, because you're supposed to write and direct it, right? Or was there? I did, I signed on, you know, after Lucy in the Sky, I thought, oh, I like this movie thing. I'd like to do another one, but I think maybe I'd like to try something a little bigger. And, you know, it's all franchises and I thought, yeah, but everything's war, right? Star Wars is war and Marvel is war and, but Star Trek isn't war. Star Trek is exploration, right? It's people solving problems by being smarter than the other guy. Like, the best movie from, the best moment from Star Trek is in Wrath of Khan where Shatner puts on his reading glasses and like lowers the shields on the other ship. It costs like 45 cents, right? But it's like, you see, oh, he's smarter than Khan. He's, you know, and so I went in, I talked to Paramount. I sold them this original idea. It wasn't Chris Pine. It wasn't anything. I wrote it. They said, we love it. Let's prep it. We were, you know, we were, I was going to move to Australia. We were booking stages, whatever. And then, you know, as happens in Hollywood, Jim Giannopoulos, who was running the studio at the time, he's like, I'm going to bring in somebody else under me and they're going to take over the film studio. And the first thing they did was kill the original Star Trek movie because they said, well, how do we know people are going to like it? Like, you know, shouldn't we do a transition? Movie from Chris Pine, play it safe, you know, whatever. And so it kind of went away. But, you know, I do. I mean, I talked to David Ellison recently and I was like, you still haven't made a Star Trek movie. I'm just saying it's in there. I love it. Yeah. It's sort of like with all this new ownership and administration over there, I guess it's, you can just pick up the phone and say, hey guys, want to dust this off? Yeah. Right, right. You just wait five minutes in Hollywood for everybody to get a new job and then go pitch the same stuff again. Sean, what are you saying? Nothing. You know, but I mean, I don't know if you guys feel the same way, but they, you know, to some degree, you really have to declare this is my next thing. This is all I want to do, all I want to think about. And then you can move the mountain, right? For me, I've got more Alien Earth. I could make more Fargo. Like, it's a little, it's more like, well, you know, what I learned from Ridley Scott, you know, who I got to know some, you know, he'll develop three movies at the same time and he'll say to Sony, I'm going to make the Fox movie unless you guys, you know what I mean? So you kind of have to try to get them to play your game as opposed to play their game. Create a little leverage there. Right, right. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Well, you've certainly done your part with that. Keep it coming, please, Noah. It's an incredible body of work already. And are you even 40 yet? I mean, you know, I mean. I am, I'm older than 40. Well, you've got so much. It's just impressive. It's so broad and it's so diverse. and it's so just. thing about it is just it's really a degree of difficulties high on this stuff you're not you're not the novel and the fact that you write novels and like the i know all these novels that these guys will never read yeah i am i am gonna start i am gonna buy some of your books uh i appreciate that even if they're just on your shelf it's no no no no no he reads these things it's a very surprising element of will arnett this guy knocks down books like reese witherspoon yeah so i'm gonna check out um all right pal well thank you for doing this very much i'm glad we got this done um i'm glad you had time to squeeze this in uh in your busy busy schedule thanks guys i really appreciate it so nice to meet you yeah nice to meet you no thanks man you too guys talk soon man there goes noah holly um i mean he's something else man what an impressive guy i like to think i work hard you know but i don't what are you talking about you're tired at two yeah but i worked so hard until two yeah how you I mean, like, I can't. You like to think that you work hard. And can I just say, and I want you to be honest, as honest as you can be. Okay, I'm ready. How many golf games do you have scheduled this week, including yesterday? I will be playing Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Okay. But I work during the round, as you know. I'm returning emails and texts all the way through it. And I'm usually knocking down one of these goddamn things before I get out there. And then I make more phone calls when I get home. Sorry we're getting in the way of your golf. This fucking podcast, man, is no good for my golf game. By the way, Sean, you know what? My favorite thing about JB is sometimes we're playing golf and he won't pull out his phone. But you'll see him, all of a sudden, he'll just wander off talking into his Apple, into his watch. My wrist. And he'll talk into his wrist and he'll say, yeah, well, get them to send it. Tell them we'll look at the thing tomorrow. Period. New paragraph. Why don't we try to do an episode of SmartList while you're playing golf? You know, because I don't play that much. I work a lot. No, but while you're on the course, That's not a bad idea. Why don't we go out to Hawaii and play a round of golf? We've been invited. And, you know, we're actually, to be honest, we're all a little bit too busy to do that. I know. You know, we're all doing a bunch of shit. Should we, I think, and I know, again, we should talk about this privately, but we might as well do it here. We've talked about it. We should go back and do some shows, some live shows. Yeah, why not? Get back out on the road. Yeah, don't you think? Yeah, why wouldn't we? Yeah, at a minimum, we should go and be on stage somewhere and doing it in front of a live audience. Why don't we do it like at the end of next year? Okay. We could. Could we do the spring or no? Is the spring off limits for us? I'm going to be in New York. Can you guys hold on one second? Yeah, no. Shawnee, when are you doing the play? I'm doing the play January. I love that we're doing this in real time on the show. I know. I'm doing the play January to April. Like January 3rd, basically February. I say we do like pre-summer, so it's nice out. That's what I'm saying, is that we can get out to some nice places. Yeah, so it's not so cold. Sort of like September. Remember we were going to go, we were going to go. You know, I might have a little bit of work as well. Well, I know where you are. I know you are. You're not planning on doing any work, Will? Are you done? I am. I might. I might retire. You're going to pack it in now? You know what? We can talk about it. We can keep talking about it. We don't have to decide now. We can make a decision by the end of the year. I know. No, Sean, what was yours going to be? Mine was, we can just talk about it. We can go day by day. Or, you know what? Better still, we just play it by ear. Oh, a three-by-by. Hey. Triple-by-ass. SmartList is 100% organic, and artisanally handcrafted by Bennett Barbico, Michael Grant-Terry, and Rob Armjarff. SmartList.