The Watch - ‘Atlanta’ Is Back and It’s Like It Never Left. Plus, ‘Pachinko’ With Creator Soo Hugh.

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

Chris and Andy talk about some of the behind-the-scenes drama going on with ‘Mission: Impossible 7,’ including multiple COVID delays (1:00). Then they talk about the long-awaited return of ‘Atlanta’ for its third season (18:24) and the beauties of ‘Pachinko’ (31:30), before Chris is joined by ‘Pachinko’ creator Soo Hugh to talk about the challenges of adapting such a richly detailed book (41:13). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Soo Hugh Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joanna, do you ever wish you could definitively prove that you have the right opinions about movies? Uh, yeah, Neil, because I do have the right opinions about movies and television, right, Dave? No, because I'm more right about those things, and I demand trial by content. Oh, boy, what is trial by content? Each week, we'll take on a huge question. Each of us will bring a choice and combine with listener submissions and your votes, we will come to a decision. It's trial by content every Tuesday on Spotify, the ringer.com, wherever you're listening right now. Don't let Neil win.

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Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ranger.com and joining me on the other line adapted from an international bestseller. It's Andy Greenwald! What language do you think I was originally written in? Celtic. That serves your interest too well.

I don't believe it. I think somewhere down the line you've got a little bit of Irish and your Bono is way too good to not be... to have a little bit of Irish blood flowing through those bins. That's nice of you. I think I've never done one of those 23 and me ones or whatever because I think it would be pretty boring. You know what I mean? Like I think that I would send it away and I would get back a Biali. You know what I mean?

Like they don't even need to run the test. Andy, it's Thursday. I'm actually in a really good mood. I'm about to go to Philadelphia. It's nice weather outside. Everything's going my way. And I do, I'd say that despite the fact that I spent 25 minutes. in a boutique grocery store this morning behind the guy who was buying one of everything.

You know, that guy who's just like, one cumquot, two avocados, six fingerling potatoes. Then he looked at several cuts of bluefin tuna and chose his own, you know. He had a large sorbet, but then he replaced it with a different sorbet. and all this, your boy was just trying to buy a dozen eggs and support a local business. First of all, first of all, I am very choosy about sorbet, so I appreciate you not airing my dirty laundry. And I apologize to my behavior this morning. You're not a dessert guy, though. Do you like Surrey as a pallet cleanser?

As a pallet cleanser, sure. Chris, I just want to say, like, every so often I just get, you know, I'm here as your co-host and your friend, but every so often I just get a whiff of like what other people appreciate about this podcast. and I feel like it's, you know, we're in touch with a common man. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like shopping for cum quots on a Thursday morning. I wasn't. I was just getting eggs.

That is just the salt of the earth stuff, right? How much was the salt, by the way? Was it pink and Himalayan? Yeah, I didn't see. I think this guy got up around the 90s with his bill, though. You know, and it was, it was pretty impressive. What was your vibe? What was your vibe as you were queuing up?

Do you, do you, if you were clear, are you clearly annoyed? Or do you just zen out? I let out one sigh because it was kind of a, like, a photo finish to see who was sort of like ready to be checked out. And I sort of thought I had gestured like, it's just me and my eggs, my man. You know, like, help a dude out. And he just started unloading all his stuff. And it's just like one, one, one, two, four, one, one.

May I see this? Can I do that? Can you cut this before you put it in here? And I was just like, you know what, we're back, we're in stores. Some of us are wearing masks. We masked because the sigh you let out could be considered an act of aggression. That's true. That's true.

Andy, how are you doing? I'm great. I'm great for two reasons. One, because you know, I love order. I love top of the show, you know, just like TOC, table of contents, table setting stuff, right? Couldn't be more excited because we're talking about two great television shows today. We're talking about the return of Atlanta on FX. We're talking about the debut of Pachinko on Apple.

You've got an interview with the showrunner, Sue Hugh. I'm very excited about that. I'm also really coming to terms, as we all are every day, with just sort of, you know, slightly creaking signs of my own mortality. Like I went to a basketball contest last night. As you know, I saw our hometown, Philadelphia 76ers, defeat, not handily. No, not confidently. Not confidently, the Los Angeles Lakers, wonderful evening.

Just thought we mentioned that. I mean, he was there. He was wearing a sweatsuit and dapping up little Wayne in between possessions. But great night, totally pleasurable. And I feel terrible today. Do you really? Not because I caught, like, you know, crypto.com COVID. I just mean, like, it's a weeknight activity, you know.

I could have been, I could have been. up watching one of this 27 TV shows. Did you, did you, did you like, embed? I had a one, I had one beer. One beer. Interesting. You know? And it just, it was, it was an event.

There's something about the, maybe it was my excitement seeing DeAndre Jordan throw down a dunk in between letting people blow past him because he's older than the two of us put together. Yeah, that, that's where I'm at today. I feel like, that's why I was kind of connecting with the shopper in front of you, because I feel like I need a very focused and restorative. organic meal curated with that level of care. I'm more on the Tom Cruise side of doing things.

I don't know if anybody saw this today, but there's a Hollywood Reporter article that Andy shared with me that was a long TikTok. It was amazing. Some would say troubled production of Mission Impossible 7 and now Mission Impossible 8. They were supposed to shoot back to back. There's been no less than seven COVID delays on Mission Impossible 7.

and I just wanted to talk to you about this piece because it really is old school, baby. It's just like what you really, what we got into this business for was for articles about Tom Cruise spending $300 million of Jim Giannoplas's money that Paramount Movie Chief, who then gets fired mid-negoti with Tom Cruise about when Mission Impossible 7 will come out and whether it will go to Paramount Plus 45 days after its theatrical release days. then Brian Robbins comes in and is trying to get Tom Cruise to see the vision, see that redstone in the sky and be like we need to help the Paramount Blues. And meanwhile, Tom Cruise is just like,

I won't be doing that. You will be paying for a submarine in both of these movies and all of my crew and cast will be getting COVID every three months. And also, until you give me the submarines that I want, maybe I'm just not finished

with Mission Impossible 7. Yeah. maybe a movie that was supposed to be released last year. Just tinkering. Just, you know, it's not quite there yet. There's kind of a ninth act problem. That's how you number it if you just keep numbering the acts after you rewrite them and replace them.

And I have to throw my hands up because over the last couple of weeks, I think that we've kind of done some side eye at some like the franchise movie making or TV making that we've seen specifically on the Disney side of things where whether it's a Marvel show or a Star Wars show and we're like, do you guys really know what you're doing? Isn't it all just corporate shareholder massaging? And like, what do you just make a real story?

And then you read where they're just like, Christopher McQuarrie straight up does not finish these scripts. No. And that they write third acts as they're shooting, some of the most expensive films ever made. It's amazing too because Christopher McCrory, who started working with Tom Cruise a bunch of years ago, Valkyrie, right?

It was maybe their first collaboration. I'm not entirely sure about that. Maybe he'd script doctored other things, but he wrote usual suspects. And I think generally his cue rating is very high, especially for the work that he's done on these mission possible movies. I mean, how much higher could he get? Great call. But to hear him, he's very thoughtful about screenwriting and directing and filmmaking in general.

You know, I know he's talked to our buddy Sean Fantasy on the big picture. He's actually, if you're looking to replace me, he is a great podcast. Kaya, hold off for a second. I got to just shoot a couple emails. But what's truly amazing to me is. me is that yes, he can talk confidently about how, you know, watching the third man still informs his decision-making when he's blah, blah, blah, but clearly he is also completely fluent in the bullshitanomics of Hollywood in 2022, which is never to finish anything and just write shrug emojis

during large swaths of your script. So just to recap, and we should give credit to Kim Masters who wrote this piece. It's not just an old-school type of story. This is an old-school type of Reportage, you know, that we love. And basically, as with everything in Hollywood, right, timing really does matter. And the moment when Mission Impossible, surprisingly, had its highest grossing outing to date in fallout. That usually doesn't happen with the sixth movie in a franchise was exactly the time when Paramount was at this crossroads of what are we? What is the streaming future even going to be? Will we be one company with CBS or not?

also I think Transformers was dead like they looked at like the last, not the last Jedi, the last night or something. And Bumblebee obviously didn't I think set the world on fire so. So they didn't not have. Is that what it was called Bumblebee? Yes.

Yes. They did not have the arsenal to compete with the other studios at that moment or so they perceived. And so when they went to talk to Tom Cruise about more, he knew he had them over a barrel. And he was like, I'm going to make two more. And this is what it's going to be. And I'll just take.

Instead of payment, I'll just take an ATM card and I'll let you know. Yeah. It's also fascinated to see, like, although, like, if you read the Kim Master's piece, like all the places that they were shooting was like, and then they went to Italy. And I was like, you guys. But it's not just they went to Italy. It's that every place they went. I said that because Italy was historically, like in the last two years, kind of a hot spot.

Yeah. They went to northern Italy at the beginning of 2020. And they were like, Prego, this seems fine. That's right. But then it's just like this. I mean, this matches the movies, right? Because one of the, I mean, part of the appeal of Mission Impossible movies is not just which stunt will Tom Cruise really do and imperil his actual life, but which beautiful parts of the world will they travel to next? And that is really part of the appeal.

But it does sound like they were running some kind of like international confidence game where they would go to Finland. And Finland would be like, I'm sorry, you must all not have COVID. Sorry to be unreasonable. And Tom Cruise would be like, king, whatever. of Finland? Let me speak to you man to man. And then all of a sudden, Finland would be like, please, come to our shores and film here. It's just like old-fashioned Hollywood charm. Tom Cruise also spent $670,000 on a cruise ship for everybody to stay on so that they could quarantine. Because if there's anything we've learned over the last couple of years,

cruise ships, just awesome place to be. I think you're looking at it wrong, because I think that Tom Cruise is looking at it like a businessman. And he was like, yes. He's like, What is the market inefficiency right now? You know what I mean? Like, I'm going to short cruise ships. It's incredible. And yet, for as much as we like to laugh at, like, the financial hubris and all of this, like, I want these movies.

Oh, yeah. I'm excited for these movies. You know how great it is that when they're like, oh, you know, we have to take a, we got to go back to the lab with Dr. Strange to make sure the multiverse connects with this latest Disney Plus show. So everybody's going to go back to Atlanta and not know what movie they're in. when we're reading dialogue in front of a green screen. And then Tom Cruise is like, we're shutting this movie down again

until you give me a submarine. That's old school, man. And we have to be like, this really is the end of an era, not only because apparently these are going to be the last mission impossible movies, which I highly doubt. Yeah.

I highly doubt. But. Jeremy is like any day now. You guys. He's just waiting by the phone. But just the shes, the sheer outsized presence and power that Tom Cruise has in a post-movie star world, because it's in this article, it's not just that he's saying, I need a submarine, and I will not finish

this first movie until you give me a submarine for both movies. It's that he is actively fighting where the industry is going in a way that almost makes him the last samurai, right? Like, I don't know if this is smart. It's not our opinion. We are not paramount shareholders, but so whatever. But I kind of am into. him saying, I'm going to spend all the money on these movies. You cannot put them on streaming until three full calendar months have passed. Also, no, you cannot make a days of heaven. That would be amazing, a Days of Heaven TV show. You can't make a TV spinoff. Days of Thunder television series. You cannot mind my personal, producerial or starring back catalog for content.

One of the best ones is you cannot make a Mission Impossible TV show because certainly that would devalue the brand. I recommend everything Mission Impossible is built. Yes. I highly recommend Googling not just Mission Impossible the TV show, like the, you know, I think fairly beloved and clearly influential 1960s and 70s TV show. But do you remember that there was like a syndicated reboot of that in the late 80s that Peter Graves showed up for?

And I think they filmed it in Australia before people were like, oh, let's film in Australia. It is a little low budge. So anyway, I kind of admire all of that. But my favorite thing about the story is all of the story in between the spaces once we get to Brian Robbins taking over Paramount in mid, as you said, mid-negoti. So Jim Ginole's-Poosso of Paul Patrol comes through. Yeah. This is what he does. So first of all, the story is just like dealing with a star like Tom Cruise is not something that Brian Robbins has ever dealt with in his long career as a child actor, director, and producer, which I'm sorry, I know commas make sense.

but I was reading it that he was a child director and a child producer. It would be kind of awesome. So I was picturing that. But two, and this is a quote from the article. This is not a quote from a person. This is Kim Masters writing the sentence, and I want to give her all the credit in the world for this. Pekish told Giannopoulos that the studio would be downsized

and steer away from big movies. Instead, focusing on franchises like Robbins's Paw Patrol. First of all, Robbins's Paw Patrol. Of all the things to deserve an autour credit, which had generated a movie. Can we just stay there for a second? Generated a movie, the way the human body generates dandruffin sweat or whatever.

It's like the superconductor that's like in the bottom of a mountain. It's incredible. Generated a movie that streamed on Paramount Plus the same day had opened in theaters with no pushback from the animated characters. Bravo. That is good. First of all, I did not see any corroborating quotes from Mayor Goodway. I'm curious what Rubble has to say about this.

But with their erasure, I believe all this. We're just not going to see stuff like this happen again because the other reference it makes. And again, Jim Giannopoulos, former head of Paramount, known as a Star Whisper, managed these talent relationships. One of the things that Kim Masters writes in Giannopoulos's favor was that they figured he could do this with Cruz. Yeah. Because he had done it with John Krasinski, my old college pal for a quiet place part two. and all respect to John, whom I've always loved, when you go Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible,

seven and eight, and the next example is John's a quiet place too. We're in a different era. Like, there's no, there's no mezzanine between these projects or the stature or even the age of the people involved. No. I know what it is?

It's a testament to how many of the people who we consider movie stars are currently tied up in Disney stuff. Because, yes, Krasinski and Cruz are two of the, what like five maybe movie stars who aren't currently wrapped up in a in a marvel franchise to be fair uh chris you are still pouring over the tape of wanda vision hoping krasinski shows up as reed richards i that is that ruined that show for me that is your white whale we i was just like what the fuck

i don't know why i got so invested in the idea that reed Richards was just going to pop out in the third episode of Wanda Vision and be like, Fantastic Four is here. Hello, it's me and Jennifer Lawrence. Also, have you ever in your life cared about the Fantastic Four? Like, that's not something you care about. I honestly never really gotten it. I'm like, how come this guy's made of rocks? Like, what's going on? Sometimes I wonder if, like, if you just click on the wrong Reddit link after a couple of the watch sponsoring Heineken's, like you then, you were just all in, right? Like, if it catches you at the right moment. I'm so susceptible to stuff like that. You know that about me. Like, it's like, like, It's a miracle that I'm not a fish head.

I told you this story where it was like, I have my freshman roommate. And he was like, let's go to a little fish show. And I was like, eh, I think I'm going to go home to do my laundry. But if I had gone, I probably wouldn't be sitting here today. I'd be selling mushrooms in Vermont, you know? You would still be self-tapping. Like, you would still have the task game on the microphone, but I don't know if it would be supporting. Yeah, I'd be true.

Let's doing Trey's greatest guitar solos of 1994. That was a good year. Andy. Yeah. Hard pivot. Yeah. To great TV. We have obviously, like you mentioned, we have Sue Hughes, the creator showrunner of Pachinko, which is releasing its first three episodes on Apple TV today. And then also it's a great day in TV because Atlanta is returning. I will let you choose which show we talk about first. We're going to try and not spoil anything about these shows in case you want to listen to these conversations that Andy and I are having before you watch these shows. My conversation with Sue, I should just say up front, it does touch on some things.

that happened in episode three of Pachinko. So if you want to see it completely blind, please listen to the Pichinko interview after the fact, and I'll remind you that when we get to the actual interview. But which one do you want to talk about first? So I think that we should talk a little bit about Atlanta, just some table setting, because as you said, we are not going to spoil.

There are two episodes that are going up on FX. They're going to be streaming on Hulu after they air. Tonight, we're recording this on Thursday. We are not going to spoil them, but we will talk about them more in-depth with a guest. on Monday. So please know about that. Then we can talk about Pachinko a little bit. You can just tell me, it's Tom Cruise. We'll be talking about Atlanta with Tom Cruise. He's going to be joining us throughout the season. That's funny because I booked Jim Giannopoulos and it's going to be

awkward. The thing that I wanted to say was, and this is why it's a great day on the watch podcast, sometimes I think it's worth just taking a step back and saying like it is weird to be, to talk about TV as if it is one thing. When we all have different expectations for it, but not only that, we all use it in different ways at different times of the day, the week, our lives, what have you. While we're folding laundry? Sometimes, shout to Sam Smael, who never folds laundry,

or watches TV when he does it, at least. He's a very clean guy. It's kind of like saying, oh, this is a good frying pan. Sometimes, sometimes you're just going to cook an egg in it. it's going to be great. Other times you want something different. And I say this partly because when we go down the avenue of IP and branded content and where TV is going, which is a very attractive avenue for us, we spend a lot of time there, I think it can get a little confusing. And we were talking about Star Wars last week, because it's something that we're going to keep talking about. It's a huge part of culture,

and it's becoming a huge part of TV. You know, I don't mean to be demeaning or belittling from my own what I want from this medium. Sure. I think there are clearly people and people who have given feedback on the social media is that I sometimes still look at that, you know, that Dave Faloni being able to like bring his cartoon vision to life in the live action stuff is exciting and thrilling. And that's fine. Like I'm the guy who likes to watch Japanese TV shows about middle-aged, retired men going to restaurants by themselves and being brave enough to order a beer. Shout out to Samurai Gourmet. Like not everyone wants the same thing from their TV.

but I think that you and I are aligned and it's in some ways the heartbeat of this podcast because what we really want is for something to just exhilarate us and to do something that we in the cooking analogy something that we can't make at home a surprising restaurant meal

something we've never tried before something that we just can't imagine how it's done and frankly we're not even sure if we want to know the magic that went on in the kitchen and we just wanted to be delivered to us and today we have one of those shows where we can talk about two programs that do that in very different ways. Yeah. But it's pretty exciting to be able to talk about them again.

So let's start. I think we should start with Atlanta. Can I just follow up on something you just said there? Because I was going to say this about Atlanta, but I guess I'll just say it about both of these shows, is that one of the reasons why I love both of these programs, and I'm such a fan of the first two episodes of Atlanta and the first three episodes of Pachinko is, they're kind of atypical for the kind of TV that we've been talking about for a while. And I don't mean that in the sense that they do something better than other shows, but they're just doing something different.

And so much of the way I've kind of conditioned myself to watch television now, and even think about television now sometimes, is to solve it. You know, is to basically that there are things to be divined from frames, from scenes, from conversations and from shots or whatever. that you can somehow derive, you know, a shortcut to like what this show is trying to do. Where is this show going? What is this show trying to tell me and what is it going to happen to these characters? And these are two shows that laughs in your face if you try to do that. You know, I wouldn't say Bichinko laughs that much. But like, I think that both of these shows

are just like, why don't you just sit back in the most comfortable thing you've got and let real ones, like, do the work here. And let this, like, art wash over you. I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think that one of the things that has elevated TV over the last 20 years, inarguably, is the viewer involvement. You know, going back to, like, fan theories about Lost

and, you know, whether Reed Richards should have been on Wanda Vision on Reddit. I mean, those are the two. I can't think of any other examples. Frankly, those are the two big ones. But I think what you're speaking to, you know, I think you and I have long been advocates of the fact of the idea that TV is not movies and shouldn't be movies. And I don't like the idea that a TV series is a 10-hour movie because nobody wants to watch a 10-hour movie. Like there's a reason why we do it episodically and break up the stories and there's freedom in that and creativity.

But there is one thing from movies that I think you're speaking to regarding these TV shows, which is the – And actually, this is something you've talked about in other contexts, too. Almost a forced submission. Not forced, because it's very pleasant. But I really like the fact that someone is driving these shows. Like there's a creative vision, there's a lot of talent, there's a lot of resources, and it is, it's a different kind of relaxing than something like Reacher, which, you know, if we're using the food analogy, it's just a slab of meat that I don't even know if you have to turn on the stove. Yeah. to cook. But you can just let them do this and they know what they're doing. That is really

thrilling. And that said, the return of Atlanta isn't just thrilling. It was a little bit discomforting at first because, Chris, it's been four calendar years since the show has been on TV. That is an impossibly long time. I was trying to remember when the show came into our lives. it's not just that it premiered in, was it 2015 or 2016? You know, the show was greenlit and announced in 2013. So Donald Glover and Stephen Glover... They've been working on this for 10 years. Yeah. Basically 10 years of their lives. It's enormous. And these have been a fairly significant four years, not just for the body politic or the body in terms of its immune system, but in terms of how we watch TV, what we watch on TV on a more specific level.

like FX and FX's place in the marketplace. And it's really stunning. Like, taking four years off, you could say the show got canceled and rebooted. I mean, I imagine shows have gone on that cycle within these four years. And I guess the first place to start, again, we're not going to know spoiling. I don't think this is a spoiler to say that Atlanta stays Atlanta, which means that if you think that the season premiere after four years, is going to be like, well, what happened when they got on the plane to Europe? Right.

Remember the show you're watching. Remember that this is a show that from the very beginning, or at least from the second episode, had the confidence to tell you the audience that it would not be holding your hand, that it would not be helping you from episode to episode, that it would not be giving you a Cliff's Note's Guide on how to watch the show or what certain references mean

or which characters are going to come back. It's not that show. You know, it's one of the few TV shows that I can think of in the last couple of years where the creators and the creative minds behind the show have been so bullish on the show itself. There's like a pretty noteworthy comment from, I think we tweeted about it in 2020 and Glover was just like paraphrasing, but basically the only show on our level is Sopranos. And I was thinking about that quote when I was watching the first two episodes that that are going up today

because like the Sopranos I think the greatness lies in its disorientation you know what I mean in the fact that there is something very comforting about when you do get to see

these main characters earn and van and paper boy and dares come together or you know pair off but are together on their European trip but

the cool thing is is that like you just never know what to expect with this show which is something that I associate with the Sopranos. It's like that kind of like, well, we have these sort of, we have these pillars of the show. We have like both these dramatic mechanisms,

like these conversations with Melfi or whatever that are going to be kind of like the thing, the engine of the show. But Tony can go anywhere. You know, AJ and Meadow can experience anything. Carmelo might go to Paris. Like all these different things can happen. And the fact that he mentioned the Sopranos

was actually like a real eye-opener. When I think back across all the episodes of Atlanta and these new ones, I was like, I wonder if that's really like, strangely, the closest thing we have to Atlanta.

I don't think that's wrong. And I think it's manifested in a lot of ways. The fact that on a granular level, this show has the best characters and the best actors, and you would be thrilled watching them just hang out in chat for 25 minutes.

I mean, Sopranos had that, right? Like just at the pork store, if they're just shooting the shit or busting each other's balls, like, that's a good time. And that is a well they could go back to whenever they wanted. And part of the genius was they knew that and they didn't always go back there. They used it when they wanted to because they had a lot of other things they wanted to do. I think just in terms of aesthetic, competence, excellence, vision, it's stunning. Four years off shooting two seasons back to back from what we understand they wrote the two seasons and then there were delays. I mean, this show has been so delayed.

Didn't season three originally get delayed because of solo? Like that Donald Glover was going to go be Lando? I mean, it's just incredible how long this has gone on. But then to just immediately get back together like Voltron and just, I mean, these two episodes night are episodes of Atlanta. You know, it's not like they had a rethink or lost their fastball. They are absolutely episodes of Atlanta in the best way, meaning that one of them is very disorienting and surprising and disturbing and one is all of those things plus delightful you know

it's really remarkable that they can do that but the other piece of it that I think really unites him with the soprano is just the confidence you know and the confidence has been there from the beginning and you know I hope we get a chance to talk to more people creatively involved in the show about that whether it is is it trickle down auteur theory like Donald Glover was like I got this I've been everything's been building towards this and I'm I've got this. Or is it Donald with Stephen, with those writers, with Brian Tyree Henry and Lekeith Stanfield, who we say every time we have the opportunity to talk about the show or just

two of the best actors of their generation. And I can't believe they're just hanging out on the show. You know, it's awesome. With Hero, Marai directing, you know, like this team that they have, there's swagger in the show that is pretty cool. And you can see it too, a little credit where credit is due, I think. I mean, Atlanta's a huge show, an Emmy winning show, a, paradigm shifting show. It is when it is on the air, everyone in the industry's favorite show

to watch and talk about and think about. And four years off the air, you would, I wouldn't be upset or confused if there was a media blitz to try to claim a mantle that maybe it didn't ever have, you know, just be like, hey, everyone, the best thing ever is back. Let's act like it. They did South by Southwest. There was an interview from South by Southwest, I think, in variety. and Glover has been tweeting like Atlanta comes on in two days or Atlanta comes on tonight. But other than that, I haven't really seen a lot of stuff about it. Like in terms of them talking about it.

No, and the marketing is what it's always been. There's a kind of surrealist, cubist image of the four leads that's on billboards here in LA and I imagine in other major cities. And that's it. I mean, remember the first season poster was just them with a peach. Yeah. Like it's not, it doesn't sweat trying to make you watch it. You know, it knows it's good.

Again, it's that swagger. And I think that FX, when everything's clicking, they know when they have something good and there's something always kind of cool about them acting like it. But I just feel like, you know, last year we had the opportunity to rave, to discover and then not discover in a Columbusing sense, but like just appreciate and reservation dogs.

And we kept comparing it, I think, you know, sincerely to Atlanta in the sense that like Atlanta, this was a show that seemed to be conventional in some ways. And then we learned, oh, it could be anything. And now it's like, oh, right, this is why Atlanta is the reference for shows like that. This is why. So let me ask you this. When you turn on Pachinko and you watch the first episode and the three are coming out.

And I would say that, you know, I've watched the three. I think that the third one, like, I mean, I think they all contain moments of absolute, like, transcendent storytelling. when you start watching the first one, do you have the same reaction that you have to Atlanta where you sort of... I mean, obviously, like, Pichinko has a long way to go before it's considered Atlanta. But do you get that same sense

of, like, confidence and certainty in the storytelling? Confidence, yes. I would say that it is enriching and appealing in a very different way. So just as some background for people who aren't aware of it, the show, the Apple, it's an Apple TV Plus original.

It is based on the best-selling novel Pachinko by Minjin, and it is about a family, a Korean family, who over the course of, I mean this... It's the 20th century. Over the course of the 20th century and the Korean family, a Korean family beginning in the beginning of the century under Japanese occupation, the family moves to Japan.

The story travels from throughout time across the century, travels from Korea to Japan. New York is mostly... It's kind of told through the perspective of a character from her childhood through her old age named Soya. Yes. Yeah. And I think what's remarkable about the show and what Sue Hugh managed to accomplish here is that it is at once traditional in really beautiful and moving ways and respectful of storytelling tradition and fitting with the subject matter, but also quietly radical in that this is a show that exists in three languages constantly, sometimes within the same line of dialogue.

Korean, Japanese, and occasional English. And, you know, it does not really, you better catch up. And you better be okay with the subtitles. And it does something really cool in that the subtitles, for example, are in different colors to denote the language being spoken. Because as is the case of many Korean immigrants to Japan or immigrants anywhere, the language they speak at home is often a mix of languages. And that in itself is pretty radical.

I mean, I think that a book like Bichinko 20 years ago, could be a bestseller, and then Hollywood would have just torn its hair out being like, well, can we make the American businessman, the narrator here? Can we just have everybody speak English? Right, exactly. And the answer to that is no, and it's all the better for it. But we've talked before about how, like, you know, what is Apple TV's lane? Like, what are they trying to, what is their marketplace?

And I think we've said, not necessarily dismissively, but sometimes with some criticism in it, that they are attempting to be like, there's a reason they make Tom Hanks movie. movies now, right? Like they're kind of being family friendly and old fashioned and traditional in a home for big expensive epics or it was unclear whether they were interested in like racier content or whatever. And like honestly what they should throw out all that language and just say this. This is what they're doing because they're taking something that will appeal to anyone who has ever cried in a movie theater honestly. Yeah. And doing it. Do you like the godfather? Yeah. But doing it with such style and and and and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,

mastery. And there's a last point from me, because I'm sorry, you started watching it more recently than I, I've further, you started watching the screeners a couple weeks ago so you could talk to Sue and I just was watching it this week, so I'm really like awash in it. I love it.

I found it really striking that after all the shows we've been watching and talking about, this show is really lovely and about love. And it is not, it doesn't have a cruel or unkind bone in its body, which isn't to say that

there isn't cruelty in the show itself. Don't happen. They do, of course, because it is about a tumultuous century, let alone a family who suffered through some of the worst of it. But the moment I fell in love with the show wasn't the opening

scenes, you know, where you just see, oh my God, look, they shot this on location. They shot this in Asia. It's beautiful. It's Kaganada's directing who did after Yang and Columbus and he's just got this amazing eye for natural beauty. It's almost like a less deliberative or less like navel-gazy malloc

kind of way of looking at the screen. Yeah. Absolutely. That wasn't the moment that got me. It's that when the opening credits rolled in the first episode and the opening credits are these characters, some of whom we hadn't met yet at this point, and they're dancing in a Pichinko parlor. Yeah.

And it's ecstatic, frankly. and I just think it's such a marker being thrown down that this is what this show is about life fundamentally and to see the characters dancing even though these are not characters prone to dance or who have the opportunity to dance in the real life I was just like this is such a cool way to indicate what the project is

and what the project is going to be beneath the surface of the story. I love that. There's a couple of really great performances in this. People maybe recognize Jin Ha from devs. Yeah, that was our guy. Kim Ha, come on. He was Jamie on devs. Look at him now. And obviously, young Yo-Jung, who won the Oscar for Minari. Minari. But two people I just wanted to shout out and ask people to keep an eye on.

One is Kim Minha, who plays Sunya as a teen and young adult and gives kind of like a basically star-making performance. I don't know that she's really done a ton of acting. And certainly none that I've ever seen. And then the other person that I just wanted to direct people's attention to, not that they really need me to because he's apparently, like, he has a massive star as Lehman Ho, who plays a character named Kohansu, who's kind of a, of the sort of the fish broker, but is obviously an ominous character and figure in the world of Pichinko and has got like that, like, first time you see Ryan Gosling kind of energy to him. man, it's going to be like a problem for people going forward. Can I also just say, on a personal note, long-time listeners of the podcast will know that one of my go-toes is to celebrate any moment. A show takes time to fully, yes, to literally cook or to linger in an outdoor market of some kind. Yeah, yeah.

This show is Exhibit A as to why I want that, but also Exhibit A as to doing it right. like the detail, and I think we got to credit Koganada as well as Sue Hew for this, it's not just to be like, okay, look, here's some background extras, you know, I'm going to earn some authenticity by just showing an eel or whatever. No, it's the mechanics of the fish marketer explained. Yeah, it is a living place down to, down to the clothes people wear, the tools they use, the sounds, one can only imagine the smells of it. And it's incredibly evocative.

And it feels luxurious, not the market itself, but luxurious to be sitting on your couch being like, this is being, this was made for me and is being delivered to me. It's really that kind of transportive feeling. I just want also, as long as I hope this isn't, you know, overstating it. But this is not a eat your vegetable show for me at all. No, it's mostly seafood. No, but it, I mean, it's entertaining and gripping the way a great drama is. the way the crown is, the way like a big sweeping epic can be. And I was never like looking at my phone or, you know, bored or anything.

Like the music by Nico Muley is this kind of a great composer. Gorgeous classical score that that kind of fills in a lot of emotional spaces. The depictions of the various eras are seemingly note perfect. I mean, like, I just, I really can't recommend this show highly enough. And I hope people give it the full first three episodes to like kind of get into because by the time you get to the third episode, it's got its hooks in you, really. So, yeah.

It doesn't have to be one or the other, but it's such an interesting moment to be like, well, what is TV for? What's it good at? All the excitement is still there, so much money is still there. But, you know, we're of a lot of years removed now from the shows that people would point to

as signs of not just the creative rebirth, but the creative dominance of the medium, you know, from the Sopranos that you mentioned all the way through Breaking Bad. even better call Saul. The spinoff is now about to end. I feel pretty good, honestly, about the medium when you can say, yeah, we have Obi-Wan coming and Moon Knight coming, and those are exciting for various reasons and for various fandoms, and we're going to be talking about both of them. But you could also say, but in that same month, we had Atlanta and Pachinko, and neither Atlanta nor Pachinko

could or should be a movie. They're right there. They're exactly what they ought to be in a ways that feels very exciting and gratifying as a fan, and particularly gratifying, I believe, as wayward television podcasters. That's a great place to end it. We can get into my interview with Sue. I hope people check out Pachinko. Obviously, people are going to check out Atlanta.

Andy and I will be back on Monday talking Atlanta, Top Chef. We'll talk Atlanta a little bit more in depth and we'll talk about Top Chef and maybe get into some severance and hopefully have a special guest. Thanks, as always, to Kaia McMullen for producing and thanks to Sue Hugh for talking to me.

You can hear my interview with her next. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for. That's when Prime's same-day delivery as you're back. Getting you exactly what you need fast and reliably

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Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll Sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. Sue, thank you so much for joining me on the Watch podcast.

Pichinko is one of the best things. I've seen in such a long time, and it's so exciting to talk to you about it. I was wondering to start off with if we could just give our listeners sort of a little a pocket history of your involvement with the project, because I know it's been several years in the making. Yeah. I mean, so this book came to me four years ago. My Asian at the time, Teresa, who is now a producer on the show, she gave me this

book and said, I think you really need to read this. And this is when I was finishing the Terror. That was also another international show, and I was flying back and forth from London to New York for post. And so then I read the back of the book and I see Korea, Japan. It's like, oh, heart sort of sank. But even beyond the practical, you know, I was, when I read the synopsis, it was this beautiful story. But I did have some hesitation because, you know, I've never done a show that involved my homeland, right? And just, I didn't know what that process was going to be like emotionally to excavate that history. But then I was

on this flight. I had to do this seven-hour flight from London to New York, and I opened the book, and I started a reading, and the book is gorgeous. You just fall into it, right? Yeah. And then I get to this one scene. It's a scene where Yang Jin, Sinja's mother, is trying to buy a bag of rice for her daughter on her wedding night, and she's denied, and she's struggling to keep her dignity. And I'm on this plane, and I'm just bawling. I'm crying so hard. The flight attendant comes to me, and I think she thought that I got news of someone's death or something. Oh, wow. She was like, oh my God, are you okay?

And I just, all I could say with, Young Jin can't get white rice for Sunja. And I think she probably thought I was insane. But when I read that scene, it just came to life for me visually in my head. And it was then, I was like, I really do want to do this, but I didn't have it figured out.

Because one of my fears was I just didn't want to do, you know, a masterpiece theater version of the book. And so it took a little bit of time for me to wrap my head around it. So I was curious, about this, the whole arc of the adaptation process for you, because I would imagine that when you come across a piece of source material that you have such an emotional connection with, and you probably admire so deeply as a reader, it sounds like even in that first reading,

your writer brain started taking over, or you started, like you just said, you're like, I see this. Does that happen very often when you're reading? Do you read things that are like, okay, I'm specifically reading something because I'm thinking about adapting it or someone's passed it to me to see what my take would be on it versus Sue the reader who just happens into this story that she connects with. And how quickly do your brain sort of start visualizing or thinking of structure or thinking of arcs and things like that? It's such a great question. And I'm so curious how other writers answer that question. It's something that actually been struggling with. Like my brain can't compartmentalize that way so that everything I read,

you know, there seems to be no boundary between pleasure and work anymore. A few years ago because I was worried about this. I went back and started reading poetry again, you know, because I studied poetry in college. And even with poetry, like turns of phrases, I was like, oh, that's a nice turn of phrase. I remember, I'm going to write that down and using this book. And I don't know if it's just because it's, you know, when you are in a creative process, it never shuts off, or it's because the way I've made sense of it is I think we're always looking for inspiration in the world, right? Our lives are always this implication of something. And instead of fighting it, I've now just accepted it, that everything I'm going to read is going to somehow filter into something.

Did you feel like because you had such a personal and emotional connection to the work, that the writing was different than, say, working on the terror or working on other things that you've worked on where, not that there's necessarily a remove emotionally, but that it maybe doesn't have, like, the specific unique personal connection that you do for Pachinko? I think this was extremely personal. With terror, I was also so emotionally invested. I think I just have to love the characters that I work with. I don't love them.

It's going to be very hard for me to write them. And I think with the terror, similarly, I'm not interested in making cynical shows. I have no desire to judge my characters or laugh at my characters. And so even though this was personal, it still had the same process, the same creative process of my other work. Right. I mean, obviously what people are going to see for readers of the book, the first thing that they'll notice, I imagine, is the different structure.

So your decision to sort of have multiple chronologies or multiple timelines cross-cutting across those. And that's a brief decision to make, right? I mean, I can understand why it's a practical one, but you're immediately, now you're starting to put your imprint on this story and you're starting to decide, like, how people are going to emotionally react to characters that you love. So, can you tell me a little bit about the process of, of arriving at that decision, where you're like, okay, this is how we need to tell this story, because if we just do from A to B to Z, that's not going to have the desired effect. Well, I think it goes back to why would you even adapt something, right? Like, right now in the industry, because IP is just so desired. Everything is in the adaptation process.

And I worry about that because the book is gorgeous, right? Like, why adapt it? Unless you're going to say something new or add to the conversation of what that text is, why just bring something to the screen? That's not what I think cinema should be used for. You have the power of sound and image. So when you take a text, you know, when you take this book and, as I said before, I was worried that if I told it linearly, and it would have worked, by the way.

And if you gave this book to someone else to adapt and they told it that way, it would have, there's an absolutely beautiful version of that show. Sure. But I think it's not the conversation I'm interested in. You know, the thing that drew me to the book, all of us are attracted to different things and different materials that we work with. And as someone who is a child of an immigrant, that was something that really spoke to me.

And Solomon was a character that really spoke to me. And if I told it linearly, I wouldn't get to Solomon until much later in the seasons. And that felt like a wasted opportunity not to bring that conversation in from the beginning. Yeah, I mean, I think also what it allows you to do, which you do so beautifully on this show, is have these sometimes explicit, sometimes very subtle mirroring of sort of experiences, not only in show how things have changed, but how things have remained the same, but also, like, in a very core level, like, some of the emotional things that are happening in these first few episodes that people get a chance to see when the show goes up is quite lovely to watch, like, you know, someone experience something towards the end. of their life and then have the next scene or the scene preceding it be something that they experienced very early on in their life. I'm curious whether that the mapping of that story or the mapping of those kind of interplays, like how much debate was there in the writer's room or how much were you thinking about like, oh, I don't want to be too explicit that this is the relationship

to food across generations. So we'll have two scenes where they're eating. But at the same time, that that can be very powerful. Absolutely. And, you know, I resisted at first. I thought, in the writer's room, I said, we're going to do very few match cuts in this show that is so cheesy. Yeah. In the edit room, guess what? Match cut really works well, doesn't it? And it just goes to show you it just don't have rules, right?

And I think I'm so glad that you picked up on all that because one of the things that we talked a lot about in the writer's room is just how, you know, the weird way, the slipperiness of life, how people come and go out of your life. And how do you cinematically represent that? Because I felt like that's something I quite haven't seen before. And I love that, for example, you need a character in her older age. And then three episodes later, you meet her as a young woman. And the way you process that character is so different because you met her already at the end of her life.

In the book, we met her as a young woman first, right? And so I loved her from that beginning. I just thought there was an interesting way to explore character and constantly ask audiences to re-imagined what they know of everyone. Yeah, it just imbues each character both their young self and their old self with such, a different essence or like a level of depth that I don't know that you would necessarily get, but at the same time, I don't know that you can do this with every story. I mean, there's something about the novel and there's something about the way that this story is told on the page that lends itself. And I've seen you sort of mentioned the godfather a couple of,

you know, in the Vanity Fair piece and stuff. And I was like, man, that's, it really unlocked it. It does feel like has that Godfather too kind of like dipping back and forth across time to make points about who these people are and how they got there. Yeah. I mean, so I remember when I watched Godfather 2 and I was way too young to watch it, I was so bored today. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Because you're like, why are we here? Yeah. You know, like go back to the storyline. And then I watched it much later when I was older and it read so differently to me, you know, spending time with Michael when he's in Italy and just. And then also in the present day storyline resonated so much more. powerfully. Yeah, I really studied the structure of that film. You know, you mentioned,

you've talked, you've mentioned just in the course of this interview, like the editing process and, you know, the writing process. And I'm very curious about the shoot. As you sort of, I don't know if you've, how much, I'm sure you've been like a number of hours just watching and rewatching these episodes now as they're locked. What's one thing that is in those episodes that is exactly what you saw in your brain when you first, started reading or when you first started thinking about it. And what's the biggest difference? None of it is ever the ways I imagine. Yeah. That's the gap, right? And sometimes it's better than I imagine. Sometimes I was like, huh, it's, you know, and you just, I always try to ask myself,

what percentage of me is on this show? And hopefully as I make more and more shows, that number gets higher and higher. You know, with this show, this is a show that was made in the edit room. because in that cross-cutting of time, pacing, rhythm. But I think there are so many moments. I knew, for example, that scene at the end of 103, the third episode was Isak proposes to Sunja, Udan Diner. I always knew that it was going to be a quiet scene

and it was written to be a quiet scene. And I just love how that was filmed in the performances. So that came through. What was surprising about that scene when we filmed it is Minha, our sunja, she was very emotional when she filmed that scene. and I never thought Sunja when I wrote it would be emotional. I was like, no, Sunja can't cry in this scene. You know, and I was wrong.

It's so much more affecting when she teared up. I was going to ask you about that exact moment because that's one of those things that happen maybe once a year, once every couple of years where you're watching her performance. And with her, you're just like, oh, she's going to be a star. Like that's what she does in that scene.

And, you know, there's aspects of her reaction. I guess this is like light spoilers, but I'll say something in the beginning just to make sure people know that. But there's aspects of her reaction to his proposal that felt very modern to me. You know, like in terms of her, I guess her kind of,

how in tune she seems to be to the enormity of the moment and how emotional she was. And I was curious about your work with the performers, especially the performers in the earlier periods and what kind of talk, what kind of things you guys talked about in terms of like,

how did people actually behave back then? How in touch were people? How repressed were they? Because you see that in a lot of period dramas where it's like, okay, do we want to keep a real tight grip on what's going on here? Or do we want to have a kind of almost more recognizable modern affect? Yeah, that's such a great question.

We talk a lot in the writer's room of how much Sinha, she's a 16-year-old girl who grows up in this small village, right? Where is she of sex? What does she know of this world? how just how modern is she in that way? And then discussing with Minha, you know, she just, Minha has this very innate, intuitive understanding of this character. And she talked a lot with her grandmother to build it. And going back to that scene as an example of this, there's two ways to film that scene, right?

You can either film that scene so that when Isak proposes, Sunja is grateful, right? She'd be like, oh, my God, I am saved. or you can film that scene and play it as, what choice do I have, right? And there are two very different interpretations. I ask directors to film both versions. Because why not? Because once you add music in, once you add sound design in,

the scene will change a little bit. And if you look at that final cut of that scene, it mixes both. That's exactly what I was going to ask. Because when you describe those two reactions, I was like, she's doing both. Yeah. And that makes it so complex, right? Because when your real human beings don't only feel one thing all the way through in a moment. And that's why I just love that scene.

I think you get that whole full complexity. I have a couple more questions about some of the performers. But because you mentioned the music, I really wanted to ask you about the Niko Muley score, which I feel like is a character unto itself. You know, that can sometimes be, you know, a dice roll when you, decide you're going to make music, and not needle drops, but an actual score, do a lot of emotional labor in a show or something like that. I think about some of like the great Hollywood epics and you kind of think of Florence of Arabia or the godfather and think about what the music

means in those movies. What kind of conversations did you have with Nico? And I mean, I can't even imagine what it must have been like when you start sending you scratch scores and you're matching them to some of the visuals. Yeah. So Nico came on, I always liked to hire composers very early. So Nico came on

before we started shooting. And the reason why, you know, sometimes when I'm writing, I try to figure out the music. And with Chinko, I couldn't hear the music as I was writing.

I couldn't quite figure it out whether it was going to be, was it more of a synth score, is it more of, you know, fill of glass, minimalist score. You know,

there's lots of ways that have taken this. And it was very frustrating. It was like, why can't I hear it? Why can't I hear it? And it wasn't until I was in prep in Korea that I was talking to someone about just making rights. I was like, you teach me how to make rice the old-fashioned way of how they've done it.

I said, oh, my God, this is so laborious, right? And then all of a sudden, I realized how long it took to make rice this way. I heard choral music. I heard sacred music. I heard, you know, Gregorian chants. And the reason why is because of this making rice is a process. And if we can imbibe this process within sacred air, right? If we can make a mother making Rice for her daughter feel religious almost,

then I think that would work really well. So once I knew that I wanted choral music, you know, there's very few people who are of that caliber. And ego is really of that caliber. Yeah, his score for Howard's End was so wonderful, yeah. In the reader, the reader score is the group. And, you know, there's also not that many sound, you know, I didn't want a traditional film composer because I like,

classical music. I thought this was going to be a classical music score. I wanted someone with that rigor of classical music. And so Nico really is that perfect balance. So let me ask you a little bit about another performer that really jumped out at me. And that's Levin Ho's performances Kohansu, which I think will be one of the breakout or standout performances. And can you talk to me a little bit about casting him, but also the casting process? Because I read that, you know, you asked for auditions for all your performers, which was not, that's not a common practice. Right? No, in Korea, it was a tough process. I think people felt that we were second-guessing actors. And what we try to explain is it has nothing to do with second-guessing performers or talent.

It just has to do with chemistry. I think so many shows fall apart, and I really do believe this, because you have great actors, but they have no chemistry with one another, right? And with a show like this, where it's about family, you have to really believe that St. Jens and Mother. You have to really believe that Youngton's the mother and that they have that just a primal primal bond. And with Minow, it's so funny. I knew he was a star, you know, sort of. You know, we made him audition many times, right? And finally, someone's like, you know who Minow is, right?

What do you mean? He's like, he is one of the biggest stars in Asia. He is like bigger than Brad Pitt. Yeah. Oh, okay. But he wanted this role so badly and it was just, And just a marveled. Hansu is an interesting character

because in some ways you could have played him very surface and would have worked, right? That would have worked. But knowing especially that we have one episode later in the series, that's a standalone episode that very heavily revolves around Han Su's character, I knew that we needed an actor that can mind a little bit deeper. And with Linneau, because he hasn't been given the opportunity

to perform his other shows, no one is going to see him this way. And that was really exciting to be able to bring something out. Yeah, the early scenes with him are just so captivating, mostly because he is the person who would pop out on a dock. You know what you mean? Like, he obviously the way he dresses, but the way anyway, he carries himself. But he just has like a, there's an enigmatic quality to him that just sort of pops on screen. And, you know, I have this, I haven't told this story before.

So we do camera test before you start shooting where you test different lenses, different filters. and we were doing Minho's camera tests. And I've never experienced this before. And I've worked with tremendous actors. You know, I've worked with great-looking actors. But I've never had this experience. The camera is on him, you know, and what he does is he tilts his head lightly

and he catches the camera on. He knows how to move for the camera. And it's not vanity. It's something else. It's this weird in connection with how he is portrayed. And the minute you yell cut, though, it's gone. Like, he's a person.

It's when the camera is rolling, his persona that just is so, and he's a wonderful person in real life. I'm not saying that, you know, but he is a different person on camera. When that kind of thing happens, like, do you actually, like, do you go up to him and say, like, hey, what just, like, you have this thing? Like, do you ever talk to an actor about that quality? Yeah. I mean, he's the first person I've ever had this experience with.

And I don't know, you know, maybe that's what the Angela Joese have also. Like, maybe that's what makes people. superstars that separates the pack. And, you know, he says it just comes to him. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I remember Ethan Hawk talking about Denzel Washington that way, where he's like, when they were doing Training Day and Denzel Washington seemed to have this like sixth sense of what the camera was perceiving in his performance and was almost able to like manufacture that moment kind of. Yeah, that's incredible. I mean, it really must be just one of those innate talents. I wanted to ask you about specifically, you know, one of the coolest things about this show is that

obviously it's almost entirely in Korean and Japanese and the subtitles are color-coded. And I wanted to know about writing in those languages and, you know, basically like what that does to your writer brain, you know, what kind of nuances there are to both languages and especially in a story where language itself, is this political football, is this power, is, you know, almost a chess piece between these two nations? That's such a great question. And it is, I would say, the language component of the show was probably the most, most challenging. I went in so naive, right?

I was like, we're going to write the scripts in English and they get translated. Right. It was a year-long process, that transition process. So we have a script. It goes to the Japanese screenwriter, Korean screenwriter. They do their first pass. Then after that, it goes to the dialect writers. Because in addition to being Japanese and Korean, we did sub-dialects.

So in Japanese, we did the standard dialect and the Kansei dialect. In Korean, we did standard dialect, Busan dialogue, Chesudo dialect. And then in Korean, at least because I can understand Korean, what happens is I get the back translations and someone reads it out to me in Korean. And I can say, I don't like the sound of that. Why did this happen? In Japanese, I don't know a lick of Japanese. So that's just pure translation.

trust. What's interesting about Chavities in Korean, they don't use pronouns, right? And also, there's an honorific form. You talk to people differently based on hierarchy. Sure. You don't have that in English. So all of a sudden, all these things are either taken away from my script or added to the scripts. And by the end, as I was doing rewrites, I was able to be like, there's no pronouns. I'm going to do a shorter sentence here. And in Japanese and Korean, the verb comes at the very end. And the reason why that's important is because when you see the translations, it affected us in post-production. So we did do another round of translations in the edit,

right? To actually subtitle what was actually said. Right. But if I wrote it the way it was in the script, the audience would know what happens before the actor does. Because it doesn't come to the end. Right. Right. If you wrote, I'm running to the store, you know what that line is.

Our actor who's performing it doesn't know they're running. They're running. I, they're hearing, I, the store running. Right. And it is so complicated. That sounds like such a grueling process, but I wonder whether or not that kind of methodical interrogation of the work

leads you to different places that if it was just like your draft, someone else's draft, you rewrite, and then we're locked, and then you're giving notes on line reads or whatever. Yeah. I think I ended up being a little bit too detail-oriented on this and went down the rabbit hole,

a little bit too much and I'm not sure if I need to do it again and now that I have this process down hopefully it won't be so hard but for better or worse some lines I chose

to translate badly right and some lines I chose to translate literally depending on the context I mean you'll be interesting to see and at the end of the day the most important things

are we emotionally getting it and so we're interesting to see whether or not the audience does you're alluding there to the process and having one set in place maybe for the future I've read

you say that the plan is loosely for seasons. But when you're mapping out a story in it and you're taking this text, like, are you thinking in terms of breaking it for seasons in that way? Or is there, what's like sort of the long-term plan for Pachinko? Well, I mean, I don't know what's going to happen with Pachinko, you know, having just finished season one. But that's, I like adaptations. And the reason why I like adaptations is because it's the beginning, middle, up and the end. The question is, how long does it take you to get to that end? And with a story like this, when you're cross-cutting time, I had to have broken the whole season, right?

And the reason why is because 1989 already knows what happened all the way before. So I was really annoyed once I realized that I was like, oh, I really screwed myself. Cross-cutting it, that means I have to know what happens in between. But sometimes,

you know, we don't. But normally I normally like limited series because I don't have to deal with that. So this is actually my first experience doing that with ongoing. What kind of things did you sort of, What did you learn by doing it that way? And I learned, you know, that's how I knew how many seasons I wanted it to be.

Yeah. That's how we knew. I really like this structure of having a departure episode per season and whatever that departure episode is going to take on like a disaster piece, right? Right. Right. Having some kind of, yeah, structure. That's amazing. Well, Sue, thank you so much for talking to me. I feel like anything else I ask you would start to give away parts of the episodes that I want people to be able to experience, but maybe you would come on at the end of the season

and chat with us a little bit about the season in Holman's people have had a chance to watch it. I'd love to. This was so much fun. Yeah, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, Chris. This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Selling your car should feel like one less thing on your list. Not one more. With Carvana, it is. Just go to Carvana.com. Into your license plate or Vin and get a real offer down to the penny. No back and forth, no surprises, just an experience you can trust.

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