The Watch - How the Streaming Business Made ‘Looking for Alaska’ Possible | The Watch

Episode Date: October 24, 2019

Chris and Andy review the music scene in 2005, their roles in covering it, and how that era of music fits onto the big and small screen (1:00). Plus, the creators of ‘Looking for Alaska’, Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, on the long road to getting the show created, making television about teenagers, and creating a series that is distinctly 2005 (21:11). Host: Chris Ryan Guests: Andy Greenwald, Josh Schwartz, and Stephanie Savage Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, welcome to the Ringer podcast network. Coming this Tuesday is the Ringer's third annual NBA Palooza celebrating the tip-off of the 2019-2020 NBA season. Make sure you're subscribed to the Ringer's YouTube channel so you don't miss our day-long live stream, including the premiere of the new season of NBA Desktop, the fourth installment of our Take Hunter series with a surprise twist, the unveiling of the Bill Simmons's Lakers wine bottle team, and a live Ryan Rusillo podcast to go along with so much more. Again, you can check.

All that out at YouTube.com slash The Ringer. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at The Ringer.com. And joining me on the other line, I will follow him into the dark.

It's Andy Greenwald. Oh, so you've been in my editing day then. You know how dark you get. How's it going, man? Coming to you live from the parking lot, buddy. Coming to you live from the sinkhole. which is my mental state. A lot of filmmakers say it all comes together and post, you know?

Yeah, well, first it falls apart, though, and then you have to bring it back together. It is a very emotional, and if I could give you an analogy, and I mean this because purely my own, you know, my own challenges dealing with my own shortcomings here. This is the people who worked on the show. But sometimes when I'm sitting here, I think it was a kid. We had pet cats. I think you did too, right? Yeah.

And I don't know if your parents came from the sort of old-school pet parents. But I remember, I think my grandparents did this with dogs too. Maybe I'm about to out my whole family. It's like, you know, that one of the things my dad would do if the cat like threw up on the rug, my dad would be like, cat, look at what you did. Look at what you did, cat.

Yeah, that was a method, though. Do you think, are we not allowed to do that with cats anymore? I don't know. I thought you were supposed to show the cat the hairball and be like, no, no, no. Right, right. That was the method. Bobby?

Is that a millennial? Is generational difference in... No, my dad totally did that too. All right, so okay, we're okay. Okay, good. I was a little worried. I was worried as I was about to get pet canceled. But listen, that is essentially what editing is like.

It's just like multiple months of being forced to have your nose pushed in the mess you made and dealing with it. So all that stuff about like, we'll fix it in post. That doesn't really work. No, no, you fix it. You fix it, but first you have to acknowledge how broken it is. It's deeply, deeply psychological. But it's ultimately, it's the greatest thing, because, yeah, you can. It's the majority of the more and all the things that you saw you had that you probably didn't get.

How much of your CGI budget have you blown yet? On my own, on work on myself or on the show? Have you de-aged yourself? Have you given yourself an avatar ponytail? I am covered, you haven't seen me in a week, I'm covered head to toe in ping pong balls. And I am now fluent in nine. as all of the Avatar Superfan from the movies. One other, two other points, Chris,

because I know this is a big show. You did an interview with my old friend, Josh Schwartz, and his writing partner, Stephanie Savage, about looking for the last guy. I'm heartbroken, but I couldn't have joined you for it. Yeah. Before we get into that, two quick pieces of business. One, I was so excited.

I felt like it was very on brand for us and for this show to have the New York Times write about our podcast in a wonderful way. They did this week. Great piece by Reggie O'Goo. was very grateful to him, long-time listener, great to talk to him about our show. And great to know that the piece ran

the same day, our most recent episode 7-minute long endorsement of cocaine in family circumstances. That's right. I feel like that was great for us. Then if you're going to do blow, you might as well do it in front of three children and then sing a song from Oklahoma. Yeah.

Yes, and I'm sure that's going to bring Thomas's English muffins and all our old friends back to the yard. two, I just want you to know that, you know how, I'm sorry to out you like this, but you and your wife enjoy going on haunted hay rides. Yes, we went last night. We went last night. In this autumnal 95 degree heat we're experiencing here in Southern California. I definitely have like a pretty serious respiratory infection from inhaling hot hay all night.

Whenever we run out of drugs in this country, we could. and just start smoking hay fumes, because let me tell you something, some weird dreams. This full of elite stuff, because I think the great men and women of the heart lynch, I'm sure that's a thing. And then maybe they sing Oklahoma. But anyway, I was talking to my wife about how you guys were doing your annual trip on the haunted hayride, and my children heard me. And it was just really a fascinating and very instructive moment where my older daughter heard me say the word haunted hayride and immediately freaked out.

And was like, is that going to happen to me? And I was like, no, we don't ever ride on, you know, barnyard equipment. And it's not real. It's something that Chris and his wife liked to do. And she was just totally freaked out during breakfast. And meanwhile, my two and a half year old is just shoveling oatmeal. And she looked up and she said,

is that real or made up? And then she just, then she nodded. And she said, I want to do that. Did she really? Eating oatmeal. There were some very, I would love to have seen Andy Greenwald parenting ombudsman in the building. There was a few people who were really pushing Daddington to its absolute limits by having incredibly small children in some really psychologically traumatizing situations last night.

Yeah, no, I'm out on that. You know, you already know, everyone listening to know how it feels about that. So essentially the haunted hay ride is like you go and you, you know, you go into this part of Griffith Park in Los Angeles. you go and line up and they put you on a tractor driven, you know, hay bin or whatever. And you go through these parts of Griffith Park that have been, you know, done up to resemble. There was like last night there was a kind of a hills have eyes thing of like inbred people. And then there was like a vampire situation where like vampires were hanging from like a wire over some trees.

and then there was like a kind of 1950s makeout point thing where a Wolverine attacked a couple who were necking. And the whole time just like people are running at you, setting off chainsaws, hitting your cart with aluminum bats. And there were several children there, like several. So I was really curious about what your take would have been like that. Also in attendance, and I don't think I'm outing him because he seemed to be very willing to take pictures with fans,

was Laker shooting guard Danny Green. Was he one of the part of the couple necking at Wolverine point? No, I think he was looking for an environment that most resemble the Lakers locker room. It was on an era. I just said it was such a profound, both parenting and cultural moment for me, where my older daughter just kept saying, why does he want to do that? I was like, some people think it's fun to be scared. And she said, but why?

And I said, I have honestly been asking that question for 40 years. I don't know, Chris. You know? Andy, today I did want to talk to. Did you have any other passing Larry King-esque thoughts that you wanted to share with us? I'll save it for Monday. I do have a recent phenomenon that I want to run by you that I bet. I bet you will have your own anecdotes for it.

It's a sneak preview of this scintillating stuff they can look forward to on Monday. I'm curious how many people in your life, Chris, who know that we've been recording this podcast under two. titles, yes, but for the last seven plus years. Yeah. Call you and personally ask for like an bespoke podcast on a certain subject. They're like, though your thoughts on something, call you and have you tell them your thoughts because they don't have time to listen to the podcast.

Oh, like, when I'm like, okay, so all of my television thoughts and thoughts on pop culture are relatively public record, but people are still like, I know that you have a pod and probably talked about Watchmen, but just tell me what you think. Yes. Am I supposed to guess who asked you for that? It was Chuck Kosterman. I talked to Chuck yesterday, and he's like, so, what are your thoughts on El Camino? And I was like, okay, well, I could point you to a download link, or it'll get me through traffic to Culver City.

But we can discuss, we can discuss on Monday because I know you've got a big show, we've got an interview. Yeah, I just... But you wanted to set the table. Yeah, so Josh and Stephanie came in to talk about looking for Alaska, which I very warmly talked about. I think Josh was very happy with my description of it, which was Dead Poets Society meets 2005 emo. And I think it's just this really lovely story based on the John Green novel set in 2005. The novel itself came out in 2005.

And Josh, you know, Josh was like, I think I always thought it was sort of loosely based in the late 90s. But we, you know, we set the show when the book came out. And it was a really interesting conversation with Josh just because I think looking for Alaska is indicative. of a lot of the stuff that's happened in the entertainment industry since 2005. Because shortly, when the book was in galleys, actually, is when Josh first wrote a feature script adaptation of the book. Which I remember reading at the time. Yeah, and he's been working on and off on this project since then.

And finally, like in, I think 2017 or whenever it was, they very quickly went into production, you know, once they got this and got Paramount and Hulu on board, and they found the right cast. they went into production and now the show is finally here. And it was a really interesting conversation both about, you know, how you couldn't have done something like this 15 years ago. There really weren't limited series.

There weren't eight episode television shows back then for the most part. And also just about revisiting things from your childhood or from your adolescence or from your early 20s that had a certain resonance for you then. And then you look back, you know, if you look back on with older eyes, like how different those pieces of pop culture can be. So I know that you haven't really got a chance to dig into the show yet, but you're going to.

The thing I did want to talk to you about was music plays a huge part in this show. And 2005, we were both pretty, I mean, pretty much made our bread and butter working in music. And it was a really cool time. You were really more, you know, you were like a lot of the bands that are on the soundtrack for this show. like Rilo Kylie, the strokes, gosh, clap your hands say, yeah,

there's covers of Death Cab for Cutie, modest mouse. Like, we were writing about these bands and going to see these bands a lot back then. I was working at a record store in New York City.

I don't know if I was working there in 2005. I might have not. I might have been in a magazine by them. But in any case, like, it's a really interesting time capsule.

And it led me to going back to looking at the spin magazine top 40 of 2005. this shit holds up what was our adverb rate here I assume I'm in some of these I'm just looking at the list

not the blurbs I just looked at the young GZ thug motivation 101 was written by our buddy John Caramanica but the number one record of the year according to spin was late registration by Kanye

then is Arular by by MIA Franz Ferdinand Gorillas LCD sound system block party silent alarm new pornographers Twin Cinema, Sufion Stevens, Illinois, Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine,

and Hold Steady Separation Sunday. That's the top 10. It's pretty good. I mean, that really puts me in the back booth at high-fi again with you and before-mentioned Chuck. That is really, that is prime time. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting,

and this is part of the conversation that I know you probably had with Josh, but like to do this now with hindsight and with some reflection, because it's very, very hard to know what is, a lot of things, what's actually important in the sort of emotional stew of the moment, especially when you're a little bit younger, whether you're as young as the characters in a show like that,

or you're as young as we were, like, you know, 27, 28 years old, working in this industry, trying, you know, chasing whatever dreams existed at the time. But it's also very hard to, as you just alluded to, shake out what you love fleetingly and what you love enduringly, and particularly in the case of music. And now in retrospect, you know, we were the beneficiaries of also to be critics and involved in that world where it felt like the tap was never going to turn off, that every era was going to be replaced with a different era, right? That we sort of came of age as fans in the early 90s, obviously when all rock and grunge and all that happened. And then we got deeper and deeper into indie or, you know, whatever category of the indie you want to talk about whether it was punk or emo or tweet or whatever. And then. moving to New York City and seeing not just New York City rock and roll

through, but seeing this kind of next generation takes a leap, whether it was Modest Mouse who was a band that, you know, that you and I knew very well in the 90s, suddenly becoming a top 40 concern, but also this next generation of people who seemed primed to replace their elders, whether was Jenny Lewis and Riloh Kiley or Ben Gibbard and Death Cap, and it just felt like it would be an ongoing thing where people would bubble up in the way that they had done for decades. and then take the leap and then to be plugged into that

moment of fandom when people were taking a leap to make what felt like great era-defining work that was what it meant for us I think to be music fans and I know for Josh too, right? That was to go on that ride and to get on that ride early

was part of the rush and you didn't have to be hanging out at a indie rock bar on the lowery side to feel connected to it. Sure. And in retrospect, that was the end of something

which isn't to say there's not good music now, but that particular roller coaster, not too long after that, right? No, absolutely. I'm just, I'm scanning over this list now. Can I read you something? Four art school types wed derogur post-punk with jangly melancholy from the Cure playbook. On dance force staples like banquet and she's hearing voicemons, she's hearing voices. Frontman Kelly O'Kerkey fuels heartbreak disco with visceral narratives about growing up and coming down. Andy Greenwald. It just proves I've always been passionate about visceral narrative.

I've always been passionate about two things, Chris. Visceral narratives and doing that sticky trick thing where you say something's up and something's down. Yeah. That was a really big blurb trick was to be like, the up and down thing was definitely like a huge trope. My contribution to the list was a blurb about the Mars Volta's Francis the Mute. How many times there you...

fun that little disc in the last decade. No comments. Well, I think we can leave it at that. I want to get to our interview with Josh and Stephanie. It was a really interesting time. Wait, wait. Oh, yeah. Last question.

Because when you said you wanted to talk about these years in music, there's one song in particular that really jumps out. It's like a song that I think we both celebrated that feels very tied to that era, even if it's not represented in looking for Alaska, which is Jimmy World's Work. Oh, yeah. From the album of Futures, which I think both you and I think of as last. like maybe like, you know, the 15 chapel ceiling of a certain type of post-punk pop emo.

Yeah. And just like that song sounded like all of the kind of dorm room emotions you felt in college exploding into the widescreen possibilities of real life. And I really wonder. Would you say it sounded like going up and coming down? I would say it sounded like going up and then you would never have to think about going down again. I would say like, I would have definitely worked in something about how the elevator's broken or whatever. The escalator only moves one way, my brother.

Help me shape this into a thought about why feels so like this for people of our age and then hopefully for younger fans of John Green as well. Yeah, Josh and Stephanie really articulate about that. I think that it's the most memorable, it's the most recent time right before the proliferation of smartphones. And so there is a degree of nostalgia for life before everybody kind of communicating constantly with this computer in their hands. I mean, obviously, like, I know your boy had a T-Mobile sidekick. Did you have a BlackBerry? Never.

Did you ever? You were Team Razor? Never. Oh, yeah. Kind of, yeah. I was Team Moto for sure. And I was also team duck into the Apple store. To check your email?

To check your email. Like that was, I would come out of the train. two blocks of the Apple store to check my email to find out where people were meeting that night to do the thing we did every night. No, you did not. You make it sound like your John Dos Posos. Well, I was of that era. Wasn't I? Just writing about the wars, the great wars, there was in Red Dust and Jesus. No, because you guys all worked in Manhattan in offices, and I was freelancing or being a writer, whatever I was for spin. So I was in Brooklyn, so I would always need to come in and then find out where everybody was. I worked in the back of Kim's. It wasn't

exactly like a gleaming skyscraper. I mean, you were Sinclair Lewis, right? You were reporting live from the packing plant. Anyway, I think that's a beautiful thought, but I am really curious, and I hope that our listeners who have checked out the show and maybe like some of these records, maybe we'll throw together a playlist or something. I think we should for ourselves.

Yeah, the looking for Alaska soundtrack is available on Spotify, but we can maybe put together an 04 to 06 music playlist. Yeah, and I'd love to know people to do. All Mars Volt-O-Doh. If you were 17 those years, if you were 27, or if you were either younger or older than that, what your relationship to that pre-smartphone era is culturally and how it resonates for you. It's good stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. No, there's a lot of, like, you know, talking on pay phones, hanging out together under a covered bridge and smoking together going on in the show. And a lot of it is, you know, not necessarily like that people don't do that anymore. but if euphoria is to be believed, they do it a different way. I just gathered us all together at high-fi and then one-by-one serenated you with my favorite songs from Oklahoma.

Andy, thanks so much for calling in. We will talk to you Monday. I'm sure we'll be talking about Watchmen and a bunch of other stuff. Check out this interview, Branskees. I'm going to listen. Yeah, all right. The quick word from our sponsors

and then my interview with Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, the people behind looking for Alaska. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Watchmen. ever ends Rolling Stone calls HBO's Watchman a dazzling reinvention. A reimagining of the world originally seen in the groundbreaking 1980s graphic novel of the same name, Damon Lendelof's Watchman is set in an alternate history of present-day America, where the lines between visual Andes

and mass crime fighters are blurred, and the only true superhero is nowhere to be found on earth. Stylized, darkly funny, and profoundly human as its characters struggle with personal and ethical issues. The series stars Regina King, Gene Smart, Don Johnson, and Jeremy Irons, and features music from Trent Rezner and Atticus Ross. Watchman is spectacular, equal parts, insightful, and exciting, Hales, Indie Wire. Catch new episodes of Watchman every Sunday at 9 p.m. Only on HBO. All right, so I'm so excited to be joined by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, who are the folks behind looking for Alaska on Hulu, which Andy and I talked about a little bit a couple of days ago or last week. I love this show. I watched it over.

the course of a couple of weeks with my wife. We both adored it. And I'm so happy to have you guys back on the show. So thanks for joining me. Thank you for always happy to be back. Yeah. So this is something that's been kicking around. I think, you know, I actually was talking to a friend of mine who said, oh, I loved that script, this film script that you wrote, that somebody who works in the industry who was like, I remember Josh's script that he wrote for the feature. So this is something that I don't know if everybody knows you've been working on since pretty much when the book came out. Yeah, it's been a 14 year, it's been a 14 year journey. Wow. And I like to joke. Stephanie is tenacious. I usually fold at the first sign of resistance like a cheap suit. But there was just something about this book

from the first time I read it. I read it in galley form. It was unpublished. John Green was a then yet unknown author, not the like household name phenomenon he would become and just fell in love with the writing, with the characters, the tone, and just couldn't get it made as a feature. John was really happy with the first draft that we wrote. And now having had some time, in perspective and looking back on it and trying to be generous towards these studios that wouldn't make it all these years.

It was a challenging feature. It's not an obvious studio movie. Especially not now. Well, definitely not now. But then, you know, was there stuff like that? Do you remember from 0506 that was a little bit more like this? There was always a movie that would get through.

Like we set it up with the original producers that I set up with at Paramount where Mark Waters and Jessica Chinsky, who were partners. and Mark had just come off of mean girls. So, you know, I guess that was a, but again, very different kind of tone and genre. But it was almost like when Josh set it up, Gail Berman had been our boss at Fox when we were working on the OC, which we were still working on at the time.

And then Gail went over to Paramount and she bought it for Josh, which, you know, was really like a wonderful kind of confluence and coming together. But it was almost at the last moment where you could even reasonably buy a book like that to make it into. a studio film. So can you tell me what that means? Like, I mean, obviously, I know what you mean by the option thing, but do you just mean, like, the trade winds were so strong that you knew this kind of stuff? Because this is right before. Well, I would say we didn't know.

I'd say we were caught off guard by those wins where it was like, like, when I started working, when my first job was working with Drew Barrymore and her partner, Nancy Giovon and Flauer Films. And the first movie that I worked on that got made was never been kissed. And that was 1999. And when that came out, it was like there were one of those movies in the theater at all time. Yeah. It's like, 10 things I hate about you and she's all that were like still in the theater.

Sure. Selection, Rushmore. Yeah, election, Rushmore. There was a real range of like American Pie. American Pie was that year. High, low, more comedic, more dramatic. Yeah. And that, I think by 2005 was.

Thinning out. Deeply thinning out. And then O.A is Iron Man. dark night and yeah goodbye goodbye goodbye I mean again there's like one a year maybe that gets through you know there's the haley steinfeld movie a couple years ago but again those are almost more indie movies you know lady bird a couple years ago yeah and now they're Netflix movies now they're Netflix movies now there's one a week a netflix so that's good I mean um we did a podcast like sort of um spin off of the main rewatchables podcast that we do here we did one about 1999 movies

and just to go back and be like wow the insider was considered like kind of a big deal, but now it would be dark water with the Mark Ruffalo movie that's kind of like this quiet movie that Mark Ruffalo gets to make because he's been playing the Hulk for 10 years. It's such a different circumstance. So tell me a little bit, because one of the reasons why I'm so excited to talk about this, aside from the fact that I really connected with the show itself, was that it is kind of very indicative of the changing nature of the entertainment industry and television and movies to see the progress of this property, for lack of a better term, over the course of the last 15 years,

basically. So when the first film version of the story sort of collapsed or whatever, did you let go? No. Okay. Problematically so. I did not let go. I kept rewriting the movie. There would be different studio head would come in. I wrote, you know, there's like the Prank Academy version of the movie. There's the super somber version of the movie. I mean, you're writing all these drafts and you're just to yourself, you're going, what am I actually doing here? Because what's the win?

Like, they actually do agree to make this movie and it no longer resembles what we set out to make to begin with. I mean, while the book is becoming more and more beloved. Sure. As John stock rises and falling our stars happens. Right. And so ultimately, there was an attempt. They tried to make the movie at one point without us.

After Fallen Our Stars and Paper Towns, they kind of brought in that team to take a run at it. And that was really heartbreaking. Because there's always things that you work on that ultimately don't move forward and you have to let go. And I just could not let go. And if I was sitting somewhere, I could overhear some other people talking about the movie.

Did that happen? You would hear about it or your agent would bring it. You know, someone would reference the divert casting or someone would accidentally call you thinking you were still involved about, hey, I have a great actress to play Alaska. And literally, I would have like a psychos, like a physical reaction where like my neck would turn red. It was just this thing I could not let go of. And then that movie fell apart in a really kind of, I think for John, incredibly frustrating. Yes, because it was, there was a Sarah Polly version that was about to start filming, right?

there was that version and then Sarah I think ended up walking away and then there was another iteration with a really good director named Becca Thomas that they were going to make and that fell apart they just they couldn't agree on casting with the studio I mean people had been relocating they were really close to making that version of the movie right and when that fell apart John was really really frustrated so I took it out on Twitter yeah I think if you go back I don't know if he's deleted I think they are deleted I was going to say that he still has a vlog up in 2016 he's doing like a Q&A from an airport terminal,

and he's like, this isn't going to happen. So I've just kind of accepted that fact, and I'm frustrated, and it's upsetting. That was probably after a couple years of therapy. That seems like pretty medium cool for how he was feeling at the time. But in a strange way, it seems like, so when did the turnaround happen?

When did you guys become involved again? So I had lunch with Wick Godfrey, who now runs Paramount Features, and he had been the producer of Fault and our Stars and had a long-standing relationship with John. He kind of told me the whole saga. And it was very clear that there was no returning to the feature film version, that I think John had it. So just had the thought of like, well, there's this new thing that's sweeping the nation.

If you ask Stephanie, it's not a new thing, it's the thing she's been proselytizing for a long time. Right. But there was no way to do it. Sure. There's no way to program a mini-series. We're talking about limited series. Yeah, limited series on network. There's no real, like, profit model for it in terms of foreign sales.

So literally this whole time, while we're having like the Alaska Harvestia, breakover here, the television business is evolving so that streaming is like being invented and new platforms come out and the limited series becomes a thing that you can actually make and sell. I want to get back to the development, but when, so when did you start talking about that? For as long as I've known her. Really? No, I loved miniseries growing up. I love, I love books and we love adapting things. So that feeling that one used to get a long time ago, and a lot of these I don't even really

remember, like, what the shows were like, but, like, that, like, everyone would stop doing everything and only watch Thornbirds for a week. And, like, that's all. Yeah, everyone would talk about it. And it didn't matter if you were, like, a parent, a kid, a male, female, like, what you actually liked in life. Like, everybody did that together. And it felt very, like, communal.

And also, like, wonderful that they were always good stories that everyone, like, got something from. And that why can't we still do that? Right. And now it's only been since obviously, actually correct me if I'm wrong. Is it because you see a different caliber or at least in terms of popularity,

a different kind of actor saying, I'd do this if I knew that there was an endpoint, if there's like a limited engagement here kind of thing? Or is it just that in general, people are looking for stuff and they don't care if it's a limited series or not? Are you talking about cast or are you talking about audiences? I'm talking about like what change that the networks

are now so amenable to this. I don't know. it's streaming. I mean, I forget what was sort of like the breakthrough title or even, because we approached John about this two and a half years ago now. And the call was like there's a, there's limited series now. Obviously, the fault in our stars, that film adaptation was as wildly successful as you could hope for. And rather than trying to kind of replicate that again, why don't we give audiences a different experience, an immersive experience. Where you could have eight hours, you know, with these characters, you could have, I don't want to spoil anything. You could have six hours or six episodes with. one of our characters is to make it to the end. You just have more time to hang out and connect with these characters. Because I think part of what held it back as a feature adaptation as well was it's not plot driven, right? It's not a high concept. It is a hangout show. It is about connecting with these characters. For us, it was a relief because it didn't mean having to cook up crazy plot twists. And, you know, our teen soap background did not have to apply here that we

could actually just hang out. We wanted to make sure obviously there was enough story to drive things forward and there we open in a way that you know something inevitable is coming, but that we could just kind of relax with these characters. So being able to offer that idea to John, he was instantly open to that and very generous with the things that he loved most about the adaptation were things that were new and things that were different. So anyway, I don't want to get ahead of myself, but we approached him with that idea, had kind of a rough idea of what the roadmap would be of how we could break this up into eight episodes. And then once we did finally go out and sell it, it happened really, really fast.

And so what's the next hardest thing is, finding the kids? Absolutely. Finding Miles in Alaska. Yeah. And was that you knew it as soon as you saw it when the folks who eventually played those roles walked in the door? We did. We had met Christine Frosef during our runaway's casting process.

And then she got cast on something in the middle of that. But we were like... Is that probably a society? Because that's where I think I first saw her. Yeah. It may have been what she got cast on. And we were just like, who is this person? And she has this kind of otherworldly presence, but she also has this real sweetness and

a mystery to her. And so she was one of the first people we sat down with when we, when we started this. And Charlie Plummer, we actually face-timed with to meet him first. Yeah, because he was in New York. And he just had, both of them have just such a huge connection to the book. Yeah. For Christine, it was the movie that we were not a part of was her first audition for anything. Okay. So that had a huge impact on her. And Charlie had been a little too young when they were casting the movie the first time. Okay. And like 15, 16 or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And he was probably 15 or 16, and he actually wrote a letter to John back then. Wow.

Extoling all the reasons why he wanted to be a part of it, which we were not aware of any of this. So there was a real kismet to all of it coming together the way it did. And then when Denny Love walked in as the colonel, you're just like done. Has he done anything else? Not that we were aware of. I think he had done like a guest star, but he just walked in and owned it. And we had talked to our casting director, Patrick Rush, who's cast so much stuff for us going back to the O.C., that, you know, there's not going to, sometimes, you're like, well, I could see that guy playing the part or I could see that person playing the part where like there's going to be one person who walks in and is the colonel.

Right. And we just have to find that one person. And when Denny walked in, we all knew. So did you, did these kids get a chance to, how did they form what was an obvious camaraderie on screen? Because I imagine that you guys have a lot of experience with putting together young casts and sort of hoping not only that they're going to be able to perform, but that they're going to have chemistry with one another and you're going to be able to get things that aren't necessarily on the page. what kind of stuff goes into kind of encouraging that kind of camaraderie? Well, one of the first things that happened

is that John took Charlie and Christine and our director of the first episode, Sarah Dina Smith, to Alabama and kind of took them on a tour and so of his school where he went and that was a real... He took us on that tour as well before, yeah, before. So that was a real bonding experience for them.

And then Sarah's very into actors and working with the actors. and a lot of what she did with them wasn't like scene rehearsal. It was just like trying to build those different dynamics between them. And I think the actors were very into it. Like there was one point where Denny had like a text thread that was like only with Christine and Jay because like they didn't know miles yet. Right. Plus we plucked them down in like rural Louisiana.

Sure. At this camp. So that that was also going to be instantly bonding, you know, that they only really had each other. Right. In this environment. But we knew very early on. And the first day on set, you know, Jay Lee, who plays Takumi, and Denny, who plays the colonel, they had their own secret handshake worked out.

Like, they had already kind of lived in these relationships in a way. They've got a good training camp already. They had, they had. You can really feel the on-screen, off-screen similarities of that idea that these kids are sort of going through this coming of age process while making this show. It actually does really resonate. I was wondering, though, for you guys, as you revisit this text for lack of, you know, 15. years later how your relationship to the characters changed

over the years and whether or not you think that you could have now in retrospect could have made the same quality of thing back in 2005. I think, although I would never root for another project that we want to make to take 14 years to come together, I do really feel like

it did come together exactly the right way. I feel like the limited series format was a much better format to tell this story than trying to do it as a two-hour movie, you know, especially a studio movie. And there were certain things that had changed since the book came out. And we had a lot of conversations with John about that. The biggest thing, I think, was how Alaska had, you know, the sort of the manic pixie dream girl.

Yeah. That's like it's just a huge trope. A trope. Yeah. And, you know, it wasn't really a trope when the book came out, or it may have been, but it wasn't one that was sort of kind of. Like garden state is where it sort of. And that's all around the same. Yeah. It's all around the same time.

So that wasn't, it wasn't a problem. Let's put it that way when the book first came out or one that people identified. when the book first came out. But it was definitely something we felt like we needed to work on for the series. So the first couple of conversations that me and Steph and John had was, how do we free this from Miles' point of view? Obviously, he's our way into the story, and he's our way into Culver Creek. But once we get there, how do we give the audience more access to these characters, Alaska

especially, than just Miles has? You know, John very intentionally, the book is about, as he puts it, the catastrophically limited adolescent male gays, which is a very John Green term. Yes. Which works great in a book and is a really smart kind of interesting concept to wrestle in a book.

But for a show, and especially in 2019, we felt like Alaskan year really needed to stand on her own. Yeah, we didn't want to like embed that gaze into the making of the show and try and comment on it. We were like, what if we just didn't do that and did something else?

Yeah, and I think the ensemble nature of it and the roving perspective really changes it because I think in the beginning, you're like, okay, I get it. Like, she's, in a weird way, like you start to have all the thoughts that you're worried that you're going to have. We're like, oh, right? I've seen this kind of character before.

And then as soon as it starts to move around and rove a little bit, everybody kind of comes to life and all the characters take on these extra dimensions. I was very curious about what it was like to go back to 2005, you know, for you guys too. Just in terms of, I think for me and Andy, too, I mean, like, we're always just like, it can't be the 15 anniversary of this album. Is it? That's not possible. We saw the record release show.

this band, you know, like, and we don't feel that way, and it doesn't seem like it's that long ago, but... We're not to close out the decade after that decade. Yes, I know. It's not comfortable for me. I was already old at the beginning of this decade. Yes, yes. But you guys also shaped the way we remember that decade in some ways, and with the work you did on television.

So what was it like going back to that? It was really fun. It was really, it was shocking. I mean, it's not that long ago, you know, 15 years. And yet, the world has changed. in so many ways, and the way teenagers communicate has changed in so many ways. And the book, it's never explicitly stated the book is set in 2005. John felt like it was present day. I always sort of read it as the 90s when he went to school, but because it's timeless, you know, because it has

this sort of out-of-time quality to it. And when you go to his school that he went to, you realize it's all outdoors largely. And he would talk about people would gather in the woods and at the smoking hole and you didn't know what was on TV and you weren't worried about the internet, like the only news that was happening was like what was buzzing about at the school at that time. And so we wanted the show to feel timeless as well. And so that was part of setting in 2005. When I first wrote the feature, I had written songs into the script. I even made a mix CD that went with the script that got sent out. And it was current. It was current at the time. Here's a band called Block Party. He's heard of. And Wolf Parade, anybody. And then now,

So when we decided to go back and to preserve that timelessness, it just felt right to set it in 2005. And we also really wanted to recreate the experience that readers had when they read that book, you know, how they were feeling in their lives and how that book made them feel and just kind of tie that all together. Take them back to that time period. So 2005 just presented it. And what is that if you were trying to imagine, like, Alaska's Instagram page and, like, how they're texting each other, everything, and not sneaking in and out of each other's rooms. Jeweling.

Yeah. No, but there's such a great built-in necessity for one-to-one contact by eliminating the iPhone stuff because they have to run across the campus to go knock on somebody's door and leave notes and the payphone. I mean, yeah, I remember the payphone being a central part of college and just being like, oh, hey, you know, like your mom called and here's a note and it's like three days later.

He's like, oh, okay. Yeah. But the other part of that, so we wanted 2005. We didn't want to lean too heavily into it. We have like, you know, MapQuest directions being printed or like Da Vinci Code on audio CD. Some details. Low-waste boot-cut jeans. Yes, of course.

Which are now like that, right? No, no, no. They will be in a year, yeah. So we didn't want to lean too heavily into it. But then the other part of it that was interesting for us is, you know, we have younger actors in the show. Yeah. So some of them were kind of looking to us like, what were the aughts? You know, what is this music or what is that time?

And so we've all of a sudden found ourselves like these. Grandpa. Come sit and buy grandma and grandpa. I'll tell you about how we used to gather around the radio. But the idea that their noses are buried in books and not buried in their phones. And I think it's okay maybe to present two teenagers today this idea of like you don't always, you didn't always have to be on your phone. You didn't always have to be on Instagram.

You could have a book and a conversation. And maybe there's something idealized about that that will, kids today will warm to. Well, I, you know, or that ship of sale that I'm just old. I'm sure they exist in different ways now. But I think what I always remember about that, time in my life and then the years after that was something that you capture really well in this show, which is the ability to recognize kindred spirits through these little things, whether it is music or whether it is your taste in books or whether it's just sense of humor. I thought that was one of

the best things about the show is that you show how these kids are just on the outside of this. There's a class system going on there. There's these rich kids, but there's not like there's not overlap because the school seems small enough that everybody pretty moat no much knows everyone. The gym is the gym and that's the whole school, right? But I thought that you guys really captured that so well in the way that kids can kind of wander in and out of different social circles in that way over the course of time. Yeah, the colonel's dating a weekday warrior and Alaska's roommates with one, but yet they hate each other. Yes, but then you find out when Alaska first came to school, she was friends with the weekday warriors until she met the colonel. And so it is more fluid in that way.

And Takumi, like, talks to everybody because he needs all the information. Yeah. I mean, I was wondering whether or not, obviously, the John Green novel is this sort of central text for it. But were there other things that you guys used, if not even as visual reference points, but as tonal reference points, like, dazed or dead poets that you felt like we're good to either show the cast, to be like, this is kind of like the vibe we're looking for, or even just to keep in mind as you were making it. Dead poets was definitely a great touchstone. And part of it was, I remember seeing that as a teenager. and it was said in the 50s. But just being like, that seems amazing.

I wish I could just bicycle across campus and, like, kick up soccer ball and talk about poetry and who wouldn't want that, you know? But it has a timeless quality to it, that even in the 80s, it felt like it was transcending time. I think American graffiti was a reference,

days and confused. Lady Bird was something we talked about, just how that handled period in a really nice way, that it was just sort of like softly period, but kind of transported you and also had a really lovely tone that blended humor and heart in a complicated way. Yeah, so I was curious because you guys have been working on and off about shows about people around this age group for so long that if there's something no matter whether it's set in Orange County or Manhattan or Alabama, what's the universal thing?

I mean, is that conversation that you've had before? And what do you think it is that not only draws you to it, but is the key thing that when you're telling stories about this? For me, I won't, I mean, we might actually have different answers for this. For me, I think it's the outsider story. It's the idea that whether it was in the O.C. or Gossip Girl or in looking for Alaska Now or other shows that we've done, characters who feel like outsiders, people who are looking for community who are trying to find a place to fit in. And even the people you think fit in don't feel like they do. And I think that is something that you really feel in a profound way when you're a teenager, when you're searching for an identity. and you're searching for a community.

So I feel like the outsider story is a story that or stories about outsiders or something that we are always drawn to and that the teen story, I guess, the coming of age drama is a nice place to, is a good genre for that? Maybe the compliment to that is the Cherry Lane outsiders, things are tough all over. Yeah. That like even the insiders actually are outsiders. And if you can take characters that feel like they sort of are the, you know, stock iconic teen characters and break.

them down so that you see that there's more there. Yeah. Isn't that what Friday nights did that really well? Yeah. I thought like where it takes, you know, like the prom king, prom queen. Yeah. And Riggins is supposed to be like rebel without a cause. And then they all kind of invert everybody's personalities like like normal people in that way.

I have a couple of spoilery like questions. So I want to make sure that if you haven't gotten a chance to get through looking for Alaska or, you know, you just have a few episodes left. You might want to hit pause until you do that now. And then bring a box of Kleenex. And then bring a box of Kleenex's. So I think the most striking thing about the series is the way that you guys handle Alaska's death. Because as somebody who watches a lot of crime shows and a lot of, I've been through Broad Church. You know how they handle death and stuff like that.

You're speaking Stephanie's language. Yes. But I would imagine that in a lot of cases, like take Dead Poets Society, for instance. The Death and Dead Poets Society is handled very much. We didn't give anyone a spoiler warning on that. I know. Well, I feel like 20 years. It's like it's free game.

That is treated like in a very probably feature film way as like a kind of a CODA that they deal with that and they kind of, it's not really known how they're going to go off into life thinking about that moment. But one of the things is so remarkable about looking for Alaska is like you guys give these people space to mourn. And it's a different show at the end of the show. It's kind of amazing.

And so I wanted to ask specifically about the writing and the blocking out of episodes like, how did you decide when to stage this, when this was going to be executed, and how you guys were going to deal with this event? Well, again, it was a conversation that we have with John because the after part of the book takes up probably more of the book than the after part of the story takes up in our show.

Sure. So it was, you know, and part of it is driven by this investigation that intentionally goes nowhere. And this idea that if we could just find answers, we could somehow control what happened or change the past, and you need to kind of recognize that that is a futile gesture. in that you can't change anything. So it was really about what is the maximum amount of time

that we can spend with Alaska on screen while still giving ourselves enough time to properly mourn her and deal with the shock of her death. And then also to be able to bank that turn towards some kind of hopeful ending. Yes. You know, that we can find some...

Because the story really is about having to live on even after something like this has happened. Where do you draw strength from or do you draw hope from? And that ended up feeling like, to just break it down, two episodes. Yeah. So she leaves at the end of six, and that's the end of the episode. And then Seven really has the, you know, the shock, grief, mourning, the ritual of funeral and wake, and ends with a question that's going to start the investigation in the next episode.

So we kind of wanted to, like, get you in seven. and just do the whole thing. Yes. So that when eight started, you could be ready for that turn. And we also had a lot of conversations about while we were giving you much more access to Alaska, that you would be able to see more of her than Miles or the other kids saw as an audience member. You get to go with her to college with Jake, you know, and reframe her as this girl who, she's like the Pye Piper who seems to know it all when she's at school and then she gets to college.

All of a sudden, she's this girl who hasn't read as much as these other kids and is lost. So while we were making these deliberate attempts along the way to give you access to her that the characters didn't have, we still wanted the what happened when she drove out of the school to always remain unknown. Yeah. And then I was curious, but you know, you guys have obviously so many productions going and I've been so prolific over the last 15, 20 years. Was the writing of this show different? Was especially not only given the limited nature of it, but the subject matter, What was the writer's room like?

You know, was it different than other ones that you've had before? It was, I guess it was different. It was smaller. We were able to use a lot of our runaways writers and kind of incubate between seasons two and three. Oh, that's really cool. Which was nice. And then Lila Gerstein, who was on the OC and Gossip Girl with us and created Heart of Dixie, came on as well. Oh, great.

And it was a diverse room, and that led to a lot of conversations and things like, you know, the colonel becoming African-American. in and lots of good conversations that came out of it that I think opened to the book up beyond what it was when it first came out. But it was also a room that we worked really quickly. We didn't have a lot of time. We kind of broke everything. Everybody had their scripts done by Thanksgiving or Christmas. Yeah, we stayed in – this is like in the weeds, but for people who care.

We stayed in the room for the entire 10-week period. Nobody left. So we just kept breaking the entire time and then people left to write their outlines in their Because traditionally, how does it usually work? Usually, when you're furnished the first episode or the second episode, that person peels off and does their outline and goes on script. But we kind of didn't have enough people to do that, and we also didn't have enough time. What were some of the things that you felt like you were able to keep or explore in the show

that you wouldn't have been able to if it was to our film? That is a great question. I was kind of wondering if, like, the pranks would have just been a montage. The pranks probably would have been a montage. Certainly characters like Dr. Hyde, you know, played by Ron Cephas Jones, who's fantastic. and The Eagle, played by Tim Simons, the legend, would not have been able to be fleshed out to the degree that they were and given the backstories that they were. I think Laura probably would have been given short trift, you know, in the service of the Miles-A-Lasca relationship. We have a scene in the third episode where Laura, they're sitting at the hospital after Miles has been concocted,

and Laura is able just to tell her whole story. And that would never have made it, I don't think, into a final future. I think there's lots of things like that, that we just would have been all about, like the Miles Alaska relationship and how are we driving to this one moment and would have lost everything else. And was it, was it exciting to, obviously with the book, you know the last moment, but is it exciting almost to work within the sort of parameters of like, and we're writing towards an ending? Yes.

Yeah. Very much so. Huge. Yes. Yeah. You're not like, okay, now to how we put this into a new triangle and ignite this new story that's going to have to drive another 40 episodes. Right. Yeah.

Or the network has just ordered, you know, five additional episodes. So we're doing 27 this year. Right. Miles comes back as an assistant prescript teacher at school. I'm sure people are very lucky. You're glad that Oliver did not show up at Culver Creek Academy because we had to fill out our order to get to 27. But it was also nice with just working with the cast to be able to have really kind of,

this is where your character is headed, this is where this arc is going, and be able to just service that in a way that you just can't when it's so open-ended in television. Yeah. We also insisted on getting 10 days per episode, which our shows. would normally be seven and a half or eight days. Right. And that day and a half is huge. Yeah.

It just changed like the number of takes you can do, the amount of work you have to get done in every day. Like everyone just got to be able to really concentrate and focus and do things more than one time. And we didn't have that. There's always days when you're rushing, but it wasn't that same, like, panicked feeling of like, it's just got to move on. Well, it also feels really real there.

You know, the smoking hole and the campus, it feels, it doesn't feel. stagey at all. It doesn't feel sound stagy at all. It was real. Yeah. I have the horsefly bites. So how long was, how long did you shoot for? It was about five months. March to July. Yeah. And by the way, we were shooting. So we shot the, you know, the beginning of the show in March. So we're shooting like, it's late summer, beginning of fall. Everyone's arriving at school when it was cold in Louisiana. And then we were shooting winter in July in rural Louisiana. So those scenes on the, like Tim Simons has this story of when he's on the bus at the funeral. and he can't get off the bus to go to the funeral.

And he could just, you know, it was a hundred and eight degrees. He's in a suit. Everyone's in wool clothes. And he could hear off screen someone say, could someone please tell Tim to stop sweating? He's like, it is impossible. So we really put in these extras, these poor extras who came and, you know, who were at the funeral, all wearing wool in the heat was quite intense. The other thing I was going to say when you're asking about the room or how breaking these stories. It was nice because we had the book.

We had the feature script, you know. And then it was really about just taking these sections and opening them up. So something like Thanksgiving, always feel like Thanksgiving was going to be an episode. You could really kind of spend all that extra time with the Colonel and his mom, and she's fantastic. Danini who plays Dolores. But then also be able to add in something like The Encounter with Dr. Hyde. So we would have these kind of, we kind of knew, okay, this next episode, this is the big prank in the school dance. You know, you had certain touchstones for each episode.

And I think that also was a really nice roadmap. I want to end it by asking you guys about the music. Because I checked, there's already like dozens of Spotify playlists. We have an actual soundtrack. I think I saw the actual soundtrack playlist. How hard was it to restrain yourselves? How, like, how did you make your decisions? I don't know that we did restrain ourselves.

We had a very large music budget because the irony is a lot of these bands we put on the OC because they were indie and we could afford them because we didn't have a huge music budget. Well, they're not indie anymore. They're huge bands that everybody knows. and the titles that we're asking for are now catalog titles. And so we were looking at a very different economy. Yeah, they clap your hands and say, yeah,

market has changed a little. They might still be if somewhat more. I'm sure they still do very well for themselves. But it was just, it's just, I remember being, I was working at Kim's in New York when that record, the first record came out. And I think Pitchfork gave it best new music. And it was all of a sudden it was like

we were giving away free money at the store. It was like the line to get the arcade fire and. It was a good album. So arcade fire still really hard to clear. So were you drawing from your personal libraries? Was there always a running looking for Alaska playlist in your head? Yeah, I mean, there was the songs that were in the script that was on that CD that I had burned and sent out with the script.

So that was, and a lot of those songs have made it in. So the show always opened or the movie always opened with crosses by Jose Gonzalez. I feel like that cover of milkshake was always playing, the callous cover, which is actually an 03 cover, or 04 cover. And then there were songs that like we wanted to use on the OC, like that block party song, we put to picture like 20 times. Ril O'Kiley tried 20 times never quite work. Different songs by those bands. But it felt like, wow, this is because we're going to use them in this moment. This is our opportunity.

And there was other song, you know, there was something like Death Cab, I'll Follow You in the Dark, was a song we had really wanted to use on the OC. And obviously we had a longstanding relationship with death cab, which I think at the time they were cool with. and then they were kind of uncomfortable with it. I think at one point Ben Giver was like, you know, we're more than just this band. Big O.C. band. Yeah, which totally fair. And I concur.

And when that song first came out, it was too personal to them to license at the time. And so that was a moment where like, oh, Death Cab is saying, no, which is, again, totally fair. And here, they were open to it, and we loved the idea of having it covered. And Maya Follock does this beautiful cover of it

that's really haunting. And actually all the covers, with the exception of our mockery, cover, our trap macarena cover, are all done by female vocalists. And that was about, you know, obviously a lot of indie rock was male vocal driven back then. And so trying to give, as we were also trying to get inside of Alaska's head and illuminate kind of her emotions, we felt like the music could go a long way to that. And having female vocalists cover these songs was a way of achieve that.

Yeah. And like, I'll follow you into the dark as a great example of like hearing that with a female vocal. And all of a sudden it's, you know, maybe it's Alaska's. singing it to Miles or maybe Alaska singing it to her mom like it doesn't become about his feelings about her. Yeah, it's not just

mixtapes going back and forth. Yeah. And I had no idea of France Vernan's take me out was so sad until I heard the cover in the show. Yeah.

Yeah. And the bravery and Orange Sky, Alexi Merrick, Orange Sky. So there were songs that we'd used on the show but that,

on the O.C., but then we wanted to have new takes or new context. What did the kids who were on the show think of the music? They were really into it.

I mean, for some of them, it was new. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And we played a lot of music on set, and Charlie Plummer, who plays Miles, just would walk around set all day with a little speaker. Oh, cool.

But he was usually playing like, you know, Travis Scott. It's a little bit of a different vibe. The Travis Scott version of Looking for Alaska plays a little bit different. That's in the next 15 years. Yeah, right. I want to ask one last question, which is just about the very, very, like, sweet OC drop that happens in the series where Miles and Laro staying around, They're a very, very relatable early binging thing where they...

On DVD on your laptop. And I remember running around Brooklyn renting discs of early 24 when my... That was the breakthrough TV show on DVD. It was like, we have to. And I was wondering if you guys could come up with like a blooper reel of like the different shows that they could have been for one. Because it would have felt different if it was key for Sutherland being like, tell me what you know! It takes you out of the moment. Shooting a guy in the knee.

Yeah, that would be cool. But that was great. Did you write it in that way, or was that something that was just... We actually didn't write that into this. That was written by two of our writers, Warren Sue Leonard and Ashley Wigfield. They wrote it in. It's not something we would have felt comfortable writing in ourselves. Okay.

But because they wrote it in and everybody's like, no, it's funny, leave it. Because we didn't know, like, what's that line? Right. You know, like, obviously we like meta things. Right. And even on the OC, they watched a show called The Valley. And we were kind of deconstructing it as we went. But we, you know, I don't know that's a line that we were...

And Christine was... a huge fan of the show. And while we were shooting, she was, like, making Charlie watch it. So there was kind of this feeling of like, yeah. She didn't tell us when we first cast her that she was, and then afterwards she's like, I have something to tell you. And then, like, photo started the surface of her at, like, age 12, like clutching magazines with Misha Barton's face on the cover.

And she said, so she got Charlie to start watching it. And one day we're on set. And she said, don't, you know, we'll just watch up until Marissa dies. And Charlie goes, Marissa dies. And he was so stricken. So it's, you know, it was not just an homage to ourselves, but also Christina. And it felt, it played. It was real.

You know, I think it really made sense. Well, thank you guys so much for coming by. I really loved this show, and I'm glad people are checking it. Have you gotten a lot of nice feedback from not just, because it's not just book fans now. It starts with the book fans. And it definitely, there was a lot of people who hold this book in high regard. You know, this book was there for a lot of people during difficult times in their life. And I think John has a really profound relationship with his readership because of that.

So they're obviously the ones who are the most skeptical, scared, what have you going into it. And their responses have been just so gratifying and feeling, you know, very pleased with how it's been adapted, understanding that we've changed some things, obviously moving into a series. But clearly, we love this book as much as they do. And now it's starting to broaden out into people who haven't read the book. And it's been really exciting. Yeah, actually, I haven't read the book. Really?

Yeah. I've read other John Graham. I would not have seen it. I would not have expected that. I think I just missed it when it came out. And then I knew about paper talents and stuff like that, but I just was like, oh, yeah, I didn't know he had another book. And so I was very surprised by some of the things that happened in the show,

which was just nice. And it's almost interesting to look at it with my eyes because I didn't have this sort of pre-existing relationship with it, but I was also quite shocked by the end of it. Because I was like, oh, that doesn't look like that bad of a car accident. Really? Well, I mean, you don't know who's in it for a lot. And I was like, around five, I was like,

they're going to have to start looking for Alaska City. this doesn't bode well so yeah well thank you so much I have a good laugh about that yes right thank you guys so much for coming by

I don't want to keep you any longer Stephanie and Josh thanks for coming on the watch love being there thank you so much thanks for listening to my interview with Josh Schwartz

and Stephanie Savage from looking for Alaska you can watch that on Hulu we'll be back on Monday with more watch thanks guys today's episode

of the watch was brought to you by Watchman watchman has come to HBO inspired by the groundbreaking graphic novel of the same name

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