The Watch - 'Reservation Dogs,' 'Bluey,' and the Value of Creative Originality. Plus, 'Sandman' Showrunner Allan Heinberg.

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

Andy talks about the importance of the creative originality coming from shows like 'Reservation Dogs' and 'Bluey' (1:00) and ranks his 10 favorite 'Bluey' episodes (10:39). Then he is joined by 'Sandman' showrunner Allan Heinberg to talk about what is was like to bring Neil Gaiman's comic to the screen (24:01). Host: Andy Greenwald Guest: Allan Heinberg Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I have no official title at the ring. dot com and I'm joined by no one. It's me, your solo host for the day, Andy Greenwald. I'm not even going to shout my name. I can't do Chris Justice. Hi, everybody. It's Thursday. Thrill to be with you. Later in the episode, I've got an interview

with an old friend, Alan Heinberg, who is now the showrunner of the number one show on Netflix, I think worldwide at the moment, an adaptation of the beloved DC comics, Vertigo Comics, title, The Sandman. So talk with Alan about all things Sandman coming up later in the show. But right now you're stuck with me. Chris is on vacation, a much-deserved

vacation. He has abdicated the edit button. Kaya is here in case of emergency, but I promised, well, I promised him I wasn't going to tank the pod. And I don't think I'm going to tank the pod, guys. This is not going to be the full Datington Island boat ride that you may have come to expect. Really, what you're going to get from me is enthusiasm. This is the golden time. I was thinking about it. And right now at this moment, three of my most favorite shows are back on the air. And those shows are Industry, which aired its brilliant second episode on Monday night, on HBO. Reservation Dogs, which aired the incredible third episode of its second season on Hulu. It dropped, I think, last night, Wednesday.

And yes, Bluey is on Disney Plus, and we are going to talk about it. But just some notes on those other shows. Here's the thing. all three of these programs bring me great, great joy. They are all extremely different. They are all, I think it's worth noting, original. Not to say that they don't have clear antecedents. They're not based on things.

They're not inspired by things. They don't draw from cultural touchstones. But they are not IP, and they are all the better for it. And I feel like I'm as excited about House the Dragon as everybody else is out there. I am as curious about She-Hulk attorney-at-law as many people out there. But you guys know what I'm talking about. There's a certain feeling that you can really only get from something that is original because it's alive. You don't have the expectations.

You don't have a roadmap. You don't know where it's going to go, what it's going to take you to where it's going to take you. You also don't know what it's capable of. And part of the fun of watching TV in this overwhelming and overstuffed era is watching programs where the creators themselves begin to understand their powers and their abilities and the depths of what it is that they're capable of. of doing. If you need to put an IP lens on it, it's kind of like superhero origin stories, except we get the stories. And all three of those shows, the shows that I mentioned, share that essential in their DNA in a wonderful way. Housekeeping note, if you aren't up on industry, you should be second episode of the second season. Fenomenal, especially the last 10 minutes,

which are as close to an illegal drug as I recommend you taking. It was absolutely thrilling. and just so you guys know, Chris and I already recorded our conversation about next week's third episode. That will be up on next Thursday's pod and just get familiar, get up to date. I think the third episode of the second season is the best yet, and I'm excited to, well, I already talked about it, so I won't pretend we didn't, but I'm excited for you guys to hear our conversation about that next week. Quick note about reservation dogs. I feel like I've noticed people saying this. Is this show being under-promoted? or is it just the dog days of summer

and not the reservation dog days of summer and people aren't really checking for it at the moment? Is it, as we said the other week, a victim of being bound to a more traditional TV schedule in that it premiered last summer and is back this summer? And people really aren't used to that. Maybe people need a little bit more of a break

between courses of their exquisite meals. I don't know what the reason is. I don't know what the excuse is. Frankly, I don't know what the numbers are. Maybe it's going gangbusters for Hulu. but I was thinking about when I was watching this third episode, which, you know, as with all episodes of Reservation Dogs, is totally Swedish.

It's not like episodes that came before. It's not like episodes that came after. It's really, that will come after. It's really only ever itself in the best possible way. I was thinking this has been an amazing year for TV full stop. And, you know, we've already lauded Barry and the bear and we own the city, et cetera, et but like at this moment, if you came up to me in a dark alley, a, please don't, B, there aren't any dark alleys in Los Angeles.

Angeles and asked me what my favorite show was, I might just spit out reservation dogs. It gets me, man. It is so funny. It is so lived in. It is so vibe. And it is so emotionally devastating in the most subtle earned way. This week's episode was, like many episodes, just another concentric ripple radiating outward from the event that sparked the series, which is the suicide, death by suicide of a character

named Daniel, who we've only ever seen it as a ghost or as a spirit or an flashbacks. Essentially, the episode is about bear getting a job and becoming a roofer or trying to become a roofer and attempting to age his brand new tool belt by stepping on it right before the guys pick him up in their pickup truck. But very quickly becomes something more, of course, about what it might mean to be a man in not just the kind of broken world we all live in, but particularly within the confines of the reservation in Oklahoma where the characters live. it is haunting, it is surprising, it is bittersweet, it's amazing. The show is just on another level, and I hope people are watching it.

Okay, speaking of shows that are on another level, I promised, I threatened I would do this. Guys, Bluey is back. Now, you heard me maybe talk about this show in our best of the year pod with Chris and Sam. And Sam is a dad now. He has bought a pretty nice parcel on the beach on Datington Island, but his daughter is not TV age yet, I think. So I don't know if he was ready to hear me talk about this. We all know Chris is not ready to hear me talk about this, but Chris isn't here today. So I just have to tell you guys, I'm not kidding when I say that Bluey is magical.

I'm not joking around or trying to get his goat when I say that it is special and maybe the best thing on television full stop year to year across the board. It is totally unique. There are kids shows, and I have to watch a lot of them, or I have to be in the room doing the word. while some of them are playing, which are different things, but you kind of get it. There are shows that I tolerate. There are shows that are pretty good for what they are. There are a lot of shows that are bad. There are shows that are admirable and awesome, and I fully support.

Like, for example, Avatar The Last Airbender or Spinoff, Legend of Cora, those are really remarkable feats of respectful, broad, adventurous, serialized storytelling aimed at younger audiences. but I'm not going to ask Chris to watch them because I know him. And I also know that when given the choice between awesome adventurous serialized storytelling that's a cartoon aimed at

preteens or awesome serialized storytelling that's aimed at grownups, he's going to choose grownups and frankly, I don't blame him. I'm not here to wage that battle. Bluey is something else entirely. Now, does it hit me more in the fields because I have two daughters who aren't that

dissimilar from the two dogs on the show? Absolutely. Is it going to make you just weep with joy and bittersweet melancholia, or probably a term that doesn't exist in English and only in the original German? It probably won't. Maybe it will. But it doesn't need to, I think, to be successful. So just to remind everyone, Bluey is a cartoon show from Australia that premiered in 2018. Two seasons have been streaming on the Disney Blues service for a while. They make something like, you know what, I don't even just say something like I am a professional podcast or I can give you the actual number of how many episodes there are. They make 52 episodes a

season. They break them up into halves of 26 and 26 generally when they air in Australia. Episodes are seven to eight minutes long. There have been two full seasons up to now, so that's 104 episodes. The first 26, I think, 22 episodes of season three have finally come to Disney Plus and which is why I'm celebrating why many other days. Eddingtons and Mommingtons in your life are celebrating. The show couldn't be more simple. There's a family of talking dogs. They are Australian blue heeler dogs.

Dad is Bandit. Mom is Chili. Older daughter, Bluey, younger daughter, bingo. That's it. That's all you need to know. Are there other members of the family? And are they all delightful? Yes, they are.

But focus on the family. This show is as much inspired by Monty Python, I think, as it is traditional kids programming. it is so deeply devoted to the idea of play and of children as real people that the children on the show are voiced by actual children whose names aren't even in the credits to keep their identities private as they should be. As someone who will never place a photo of his children on the internet, I deeply, deeply, deeply respect the creator Joe Brum for that among all of his other creative choices. I really think people should be watching the show just for its inventiveness, its honesty, its sense of play. It's really, really a moving and enjoyable thing. I know that this is a lot, because I just said there were over 100 episodes. So in the spirit of like being servicey to you guys, I tried to make a top 10 list. I can share this on social. You don't need to write it down. This is obviously incredibly, incredibly subjective. So I'm sure you have your own top tens. I'm sure you have your own top fives. Here's something that is really not useful for me as a podcaster to say to you, there are no bad episodes. There really aren't. There's some that are sillier.

There's some that are more emotional. There are some that are just formally interesting because they do different things. Like the show is called Bluey, there's an episode that's from Bingo's point of view. And instead of a voice saying the name of this episode of Bui is whatever, they just say the name of this episode of Bingo is Bingo. So I'm going to talk you through my top 10. This is chronological. Season 1, 2. First one is Kee Upy.

It's a classic introduction to these characters and how they play. they don't scream, they don't shout, there's no violence, there's no like games within games or trying to sell you anything. It's an episode about a girl and her sister trying to keep a balloon off the ground. That's it. Oh, and also the show has original music written for every episode, which is total rarity in animation and is incredible. Next one is takeaway, season one episode in which Bandit, the much put upon father, who is both a hero to all Datingtons, but also in some level of villain because he's really, really good at imaginative play, and sometimes that shit can be exhausting. He takes his daughters to get takeaway, takeout from a Chinese restaurant, and anyone

who's ever trying to take children anywhere will appreciate the humor and chaos that ensues. Taxi, a classic episode that I would recommend for people who are just checking for comedy, because it does more in eight minutes than most sitcoms do in 28 minutes. work, another season one episode in which Bandit applies for a job at his children's factory is both incredibly funny. It's just specifically an incredibly funny in a way that I feel like I haven't highlighted. Everybody watching this show with you, whether they are younger than you, whether they are significantly younger than you, whether they are older than you, everyone is going to laugh at this,

I promise. Just like everyone is going to cry, get a little wet-eyed, or at least say that it's dusty in here if they watch the next one on my list, which is camping. This is an episode that everyone talks about. They talk about it for good reason. I won't spoil it other than to say, Louie and her family go camping, and it is an absolutely bone-deep and haunting elegy

to the inevitable passing of time. It's also a cartoon show that's seven and a half minutes long. Moving into season two, Hammer Barn, season two premiere. They go shopping in a big box store like IKEA, and everything is a potential game and everything is a potential distraction. It really puts you back into the seat on the shopping cart when you were a child,

when everything was bigger than you were and everything was a game and you didn't understand why your parents were annoyed all the time. Sleepy time is an absolutely trippy exploration of one child's dream logic inside of their head as they tried to go to sleep. It is big-brained and beautiful and inspiring. Back to the comedy heads. You got to watch Buss. I think Buss might be the funniest episode. You could be the judge of that.

Bingo and Bui like to play characters called Granny's, and they cause a lot of trouble. It is deeply funny. I forgot. Well, okay, I was about to say I forgot. Because I realize now I made it a list of 11. The reason I made a list of 11 is because I wanted to include something from season three. Let me pretend I didn't do that.

Let's go back to 10 and let me just say that I forgot about an episode called Double Babysitter. Double babysitter is one in which Bingo and Bluey are babysat by both their regular babysitter and also their uncle, and the babysitter and uncle are very clearly flirting with each other. And it's somehow one of the best rom-coms I've seen recently, but it's also about putting children to bed. Kind of a wild card for the last one on my list, Mr. Monkey Jocks, great name. This is an episode in which the parents tell the children

that they need to do a chuckout and get rid of some of their stuffed animals. And the children, of course, say everyone is special. And so then the parents take this to an escalating game, in which, well, if everything, if this random monkey wearing jocks, which is, I believe, an Australian word for jockey shorts or underwear, if this guy is special, then do we all have to serve him and what does special mean? I'm getting choked up just thinking about these episodes, guys. I've watched many of these dozens of times.

I would watch them again. I adore them. I love watching them with my children. I don't mind at all watching them alone. You won't be judged. These are high-quality television programs. Last thing I want to say, season three premiered with a bunch of episodes. I have not watched all of them because I'm trying to savor them with my kids.

the season three premiere is called bedroom. It begins with Bandit and Chili taking down, finally putting away the crib in which their daughters each had their turn sleeping in when they were babies. Bluey says, maybe I want my own room. And, ooh, yeah, this one's ripped from the headlines. This one hit a little close to home. And it is incredibly funny. It's incredibly moving.

And if you watch it, whether you're a fan of the show or you've never checked it out, maybe just watch this one. And watch how ever. Every character is given grace and agency. It's honestly, it's a lesson for anybody making any kind of programming or writing anything. All four characters are alive in each moment. And sometimes they're happy and sometimes they're sad and sometimes they're frustrated and sometimes they're sick of each other. And sometimes they're just overwhelmed.

And that's what all of us are, whether we are Mommingtons or Dattingtons. And it just really speaks to me on a human level, even though, as Chris would point out, this is a cartoon about talking dogs. And, you know, I was going to go on a, this already has been a tangent, and we got to get into our interview. But like, it's really important for us to hold on to and celebrate programs, not just like Bluey, but just like reservation dogs, like industry. Not everyone is going to like all three of these, but like this is what storytelling is supposed to be. These are the chances our stories are supposed to take the risks they're supposed to take to show us things, to give us a different feeling, to give us something new. I recently with the kids watched the new Pixar spin-off movie Lightyear in which controversially Chris Evans takes over the voicing of the beloved cartoon toy

Buzz Lightyear from Tim Allen. And I have to say I found it admirable. I respected a lot of it. Chris Evans does a great job. Uzo Adobe and Kiki Palmer do great voice work, playing a grandmother and daughter in different timelines. And yet I can't help but say that this movie is kind of emblematic of all the problems we're facing right now in terms of television and movies and

creative output full stop. The movie is hundreds, if not a thousand brilliant artists and craftspeople working to solve a problem that are to serve kind of an impossible master, which is expectation. This movie begins with an almost a labyrinthine apology for itself, where it's just like in 1995, a boy named Andy, thank you, got a toy from his favorite movie. This was that movie. So instantly we're like, wait, this is an action movie in a cartoon universe from 1995,

but it has 2022's not just politics, which I actually celebrate and applaud. It's 2022's just ridiculously convoluted plot business. Like, I'm not going to spoil this movie, guys, but an adventure story about a space, Ranger as an adventure story about a space ranger. This is an adventure story about a space ranger. It's also about the nature of time travel and human and just humanity.

Did it need to be? And was the only time travel plot available to it? The same plot as Lego Movie 2, a superior kid's cartoon from a few years ago? I would love to be a fly in the wall in the creative conversations that went on to make this movie because everyone is more labored than the next. And it added up to something that my kids really enjoy. So I don't want to take that away from them. But I couldn't help but feel like we are collectively in the creative community, kind of retconning the idea of childhood. So it more properly aligns with what we do now with entertainment, where everything has to be continued, where everything has to fit together, where everything is a problem to be solved rather than an imaginative leap to be taken.

And it's a bummer. You guys hear me complain about being an old guy all the time, and I'm not going to stop doing it now, especially because I'm just going to keep getting older. But just to pull an example out of thin air, like Princess Bride was a wonderful movie when I was a kid, and it's still a wonderful movie. And I loved it, and I watched it a lot of times. And if it was on again, I've watched it with my kids. I've never watched it being like,

I kind of want Enigo Montoya's origin story. I'm not saying it wouldn't be a good story. I'm not saying there isn't some curiosity there. I'm just saying that's not how my brain used to work. And that's not the universe we live in anymore. It would absolutely be subdivided and subcontracting. and franchised out and that story would be told or that story would go straight to Paramount Plus

or whatever the case may be. And that feels creatively unfulfilling, I think, at a certain point. You know, like, I don't want my children to be encountering art or movies or TV and have their only questions be. But what happened before this story? You know what I mean?

What's the origin story of the side character in this? I don't want that. I want them to be delighted. I want them to be delighted. And that's why I was raving about Marcel the Shell, the other week. It's why I'm raving about Bluey now. And frankly, it's why, you know, you'll hear me and Chris rave about industry next week. We're delighted by it. And I feel like that's something that we've lost a little bit. So that's my rant. It's nothing new. Just like the multiplex.

It's nothing new. But it's heartfelt. Pivoting slightly into the Sandman, I think people by now know what this is. This is a project that has been in development for three decades, almost as long as the source material, which began publishing in comic book form in 1989. I got hip to it not soon after. I got into comics probably when I was 13 or 14, and I don't remember who was the pusher that was like, yeah, but you might like this too in addition to X-Men.

But it was a gateway drug, not just to different comics, but to what storytelling could be. It is absolutely groundbreaking head trip of a series that is essentially, you know, was unfilmable because the main character, Sandman or Morpheus is a implacable kind of assholey deity. And this story is named after him, but he really only flits in and out because it's really

much more across its 75 issues about the nature of humanity and dreams and telling stories and mythologies. And it was a convenient vehicle for Neil Gaiman, who became famous off the back of this to explore all the things that interested him most. It is now a TV show, which is wild to me. And the first 10-episode season is available now and doing very well all around the world. I've watched the first five, so the first half of the season. There are light spoilers for the first five in this conversation you're about to hear. But honestly, I'm not sure if it matters because the TV show, if you've read the comic, I don't think you can be spoiled. I think you can just sort of marvel at the opportunity to see these stories brought

back into life, especially put on their feet for the first time, put on the screen. But also, and this is what I wanted to talk to Alan about, the small and subtle changes that he encouraged Neil Gaiman, who is his partner in the show, who is an executive producer, to make, because clearly it was vital to Neil Gaiman, as it was, to many, many thousands of his, hundreds of thousands, probably, of his fans, that this be a faithful adaptation. There's a case to be made somewhere that maybe there is an opportunity to make, to question what any of this means 30 years later, what is interesting about dreams, what do we want to see, what could it be?

But this isn't that show. This is a vehicle that maybe could take us to that show, to the precipice of that show. this is something different. And I think it's worth appreciating and enjoying it for what it is, which is a really thoughtful, really honestly heartfelt and beautiful life-bringing to stories that brought a lot of life and a lot of imaginative thought, you know, bring that idea back into a lot of people's lives over the last three decades. So I really enjoyed the show, but also I really enjoyed talking to Alan about it, who has been a friend, as you'll hear, for almost two decades, and who cares about this stuff so deeply and is so uniquely qualified

to be the steward of this franchise because he venerates it, but also he is a dogged and incredibly skilled TV practitioner who was a playwright, it then worked on Sex and the City, and on the OC and Gray's Anatomy for many years. He wrote the Wonder Woman movie, and so he just, I think, more than many people that I know, even in this industry, just knows what box to put things in and knows what tweaks to make to bring things into sharper focus.

certainly in the, this is a word that comes up in our interview in the relational way the TV needs to function to make us care about it. So I'm a big fan of the series, big fan of Allen. And we had a really long talk about the nitty gritty of adapting something that for many decades was considered unadaptable. So we're going to get into this interview. Check out Sandman on Netflix if you haven't. If you haven't already, Chris is on vacation. But he is going to be calling in from vacation on Monday so he and I can talk about the series finale of Better Call, all. So that episode, if all goes well, should go live at the same time we've been putting up

the episode. So late Monday night, maybe even early Tuesday morning on the East Coast. And then Thursday, Chris and I will be talking about industry and then some surprise that I haven't even decided for the back half of the show. So thank you for listening to me for my little boat ride, three-hour tour to Datington Island. Thank you to Kaya for putting up with it and listening to it and for producing, as always. And let's get into it. This is my interview with the showrunner of Netflix's The Sandman, Alan Heinberg. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime.

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Go to your happy price, price line. I am beyond thrilled to be joined by my longtime friend and now the showrunner of the amazing Netflix adaptation of the Sandman. Alan Heinberg, welcome to the watch. Thank you so much for having me as a longtime fan of yours and the podcast. It's an honor to be here. Is this your first time on the podcast? Yeah. That's crazy.

Well, I mean, we've both been so busy. Come on. We've been so busy, but I'm so happy to have you on. People might not know this. We have known each other for 18 years. Amazing. Which is shocking. And relevant to our conversation about The Sandman, which is going to be rich, fulfilling, and in depth through the first five episodes. I feel like it's important to give context because we met at Comic-Con, thus establishing ourselves as geeky. of the highest order, right?

Like this was before everyone went to Comic-Con. I think this, I think that was my very first Comic-Con too. And yeah, I think it was. I had never been before. And you were there because you had just written or about to be announced as the writer of your first comic, which was Young Avengers for Marvel. Yes. And the reason I bring it up is because, you know, comic books have played an important part

in your personal life, in your career. You also wrote the Wonder Woman movie. Can you paint a picture for us about, who you were when you discovered the Sandman, which began publishing in 1989. Like, what was your, what was your inbox like, your long box, not your inbox? And what was your journey into this comic before it even came across your transom professionally? Well, I had been a long time comics fan since I, you know, was reading anything. I was reading comics and had been a DC fan primarily, which will come as a surprise to people who've read Young Avengers. But I didn't

read a lot of Marvel Comics, but I was steeped in DC lore. And after something called the DC implosion happened in 84, 85, I took some time off from comics. I thought, okay, well, a lot of my favorite titles were getting canceled, and they were downsizing, and maybe I've outgrown comics. And so Sandman was, the noise that Sandman was making at the time, you know, got me invested. I guess it was the Michael Gilmore article in Rolling Stone. So I started buying it then monthly. And as you know, it is steeped in DC Universe lore going way back. And so I was hooked. And it was the first, I hadn't read Alan Moore yet. I don't think. No, I think I read Alan. I think I was catching up to Alan Moore and Grant Morrison after the Sandman. So in those five years that I had

taken off, comics had completely become adult. And the writing, never in my comics fan experience, had writers been sort of leading the charge in terms of getting people to read these books. It was always characters you loved. It was always the artist who was drawing them. But this was writer-driven comics for the first time ever. And I completely was under Neil Spell from my first issue. So that's how I got into it. It was also, and I imagine you had the same experience, it was very, very tactile and subcultory in a way that now feels dated in 20th century, in that you had to go to the comic book store, discover it, and then it was like a secret language when you saw a Sandman issue or collection on someone else's shelf. That was a connection.

That was a way to talk about something. And it really became for people who loved it, not just, you know, in entertainment, it became kind of an obsession. Yes. And for me, too, I mean, you would see somebody in a in a t-shirt and you would stop and have a conversation with that person in a Sam-Man t-shirt, obviously. Yeah, it became, I, you know, Neil has told this story now, but when this whole thing started in order to prove my bona fides, you know, my partner at the time was not a comics fan, But for our first Christmas, he went to four color images in New York and Soho and got me, bought me a brief lives page, a Jill Thompson, Brief Lives page from Sandman. And it's been on my wall since 1995, 96, something like that.

So I took it off the wall and brought it to that first pitch to show Neil, like, I'm, you know, I've been there, I've been there since the beginning. What was his reaction to that? I think he's, I think people do this to him all the time. So I think he was reassured, but he was like, oh, yes, I remember that page. It was, you know, this happens to him all the time. But I was like, look, and now he tells the story. So I think he felt like he was, because we had met the day before we went to pitch this thing. So he didn't really know who he was getting married to.

And I was trying to reassure him by showing him my Jill Thompson page. That's beautiful. And also a brilliant segue. I can't believe you must have done this before because I did want to ask about how your path into this because all of the the what we were just discussing is prelude is basically to really just make people understand like this is sacred text to a large subculture around the world and it's had a very tortured journey to other mediums because of that I mean I know that was a successful podcast recently but the the the development of Sandman as a filmed property

is almost as long as the history as the book has been in existence and to the point where Neil has told the story also that he's he went into the Warner Brothers film division. It said, please don't make this movie at times. It's had quite a, quite a bumpy road. What was your path into this? And then I guess two-part question, what was your path into it? And then we can discuss your anxiety about taking it on next. Sure. Well, it's all one story. I mean, as a fan, the minute I started, you know, loving the book, you would hear about an adaptation happening or not happening. And, you know, I would feel, you know, eager to see whatever happened and then knowing it could never be done.

Faithfully, I would be even more delighted when it would fall apart. And so ever since I was in a professional situation televisionally or filmically, I would say to my friends at Warner Brothers, what are you guys doing with the Sandman? And I've been asking them that question now for 20 plus years. And it was always tied up in features. I know Eric Kripke was developing it for the CW at one point, but it has always been off limits. And so that sort of prelude to saying my ABC, I was with Shonda Rhymes for 15 years and my overall deal at ABC when she had left to go to Netflix, my deal was up. And my agent was very sweetly setting me up in meetings all over town, you know, trying to figure out what the next move would be. And the next to the last meeting was with Susan Rovner and Clancy Collins White at Warner Brothers TV.

And I've known them for a long time. And we did our ill-fated Wonder Woman C.W. Pilot together, we all bear the scars of that unfortunate debacle. But we had a great time working with each other, and we've been eager to do that again, and this is the first time I've been free since then. So, you know, we talked about various projects and nothing really, you know, I don't think we landed on anything. And then as I'm walking out the door, Susan, I think it was Susan said, are there any other DC comics properties we haven't developed yet that you'd be interested in. And I turned to her and I said, well, I'm just going to ask you the question.

I've been asking you for the last 20 plus years, which is what are you guys doing with Sandman? And she and Clancy looked at each other and smiled. And Clancy said, do you know David Goyer? And I have known David for years. And I looked at her and said, oh, is David doing it? I had no idea. And Clancy said, David's executive producing it with Neil Gaiman, but we don't have a writer and we don't have a showrunner. and we're pitching it in two weeks.

And we just sat there with that information for about a second. And then Susan said, go, we'll call you. And I left the office. And I went down to my car. And when I got to my car, my phone vibrated in my hand. And it said, David Goyer. And I picked up the phone. And I said, hi, David.

And David, can you swear on this podcast? Please. You're encouraged to. So David said, are you fucking kidding me? and I was like, how are you? And he said, when is your contract with ABC Studios over up? And I said, tomorrow. And he goes, you're fucking doing this.

And I was like, David, if you and Neil have something in mind in terms of what you're going to do, I don't want to come in. And he was like, we don't have anything in mind. We're just, you're doing this. I'm going to call Neil. And he hung up on me. And that's how it happened. It was literally 20, 34 years of loving something, 25 years of absolutely.

years of asking to be the person who gets to do it and being told no. And then at that, I don't know how to describe it. It was very much like how Wonder Woman happened with Zach Snyder and Patty Jenkins. Everything just moved into place at exactly the right moment. And I didn't have to do anything except love this as hard as I've loved it for 34 years. So it's a odd story. And then to your second question, I said to David, we got back on the phone after he called Neil. And I said, let me just reread the books. Give me the weekend. And I think I met with him, that was on a Friday.

I met with him on Monday. And I said, I can't do this. I can't do this. And he was like, why? What are you talking about? I was like, it's unadaptable. Like, go and read it. It's, it's so much of it is narrated and so much of it takes, it's Neil's voice.

And it's, the structure of Doll's house really frightened me and all the D.C. stuff and the Dream Cave and Hector and Light. and how are we going to, how? How do you do Brut and Glob? Like, anyway, I just didn't, I thought, if Neil, and I didn't know Neil at the time, I said, if Neil is really wanting a copy and paste adaptation, I won't be the right person for this, honestly, because I'm going to make it all relational and do a lot of work.

And David said, trust me, Neil knows that. He just came off of doing good omens. He knows how difficult these adaptations are. he is an amazing collaborator and not precious at all. And I was like, okay. So, you know, I said yes, and we worked out, you know, the lawyers went to work on my contract as fast as they could because the pitch date was coming up. And then the day before the pitch, Neil and David and I had dinner for the first time.

And we were at a Japanese restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard. And I'm super nervous, but also like, if this doesn't work, it doesn't work. You know, if we don't have chemistry, if he hates what I'm going to say, good to know. And then they can just go and do the pitch without me tomorrow, which they were going to do anyway. And it's no harm, no foul. And to my absolute relief, the first thing Neil said to me was, okay, our lead is naked and in a cage and doesn't speak for the entire pilot. How do we make the audience fall in love with him?

And I was like, okay, he knows. He gets it. He's, he's, yes, let's talk about that. And so at that dinner, if you've seen it, you have seen the first five, that whole, the whole idea of bringing Jessamy into the story present day and then losing Jessamy the Raven. You know, you don't meet Jessamy in the books until Thermidor, which happens, you know, much later. That was all a product of that dinner and wanting to see Dreams bond with Jessamy. Or anyone, right? Because otherwise...

Exactly right. Yeah. We didn't know at that point that we were going to do a prologue. That sort of happened later. We just assumed we were going to tell the story the way Neil had told the story, which was sort of revealing Dream over the course of the first hour. And eventually we found out fairly quickly, especially in post, that that was not going to work. That the prologue was essential that we meet Dream in his world before we get sucked into the 1916 narrative.

I mean, I have so many questions spinning off of this because it's interesting. The first thing that I was struck by was just how faithful this adaptation is in a beautiful and respectful and celebratory way. The second thing I was struck by was how well do I remember these books? Because it's been a while. So I go back and it felt familiar and I felt it was accurate. But then I went back and I noticed little things like the one you just mentioned. We didn't have a raven then. So we didn't see that.

You know, the Corinthian isn't there at the beginning. So I don't really know what the opposition is other than the... this magician who doesn't survive the first issue, I believe. Or the first storyline. So I'm noticing all these small changes that are really just letting it flow and making it make sense in a TV kind of in a TV language. And somewhere in there is the beginning of, I think, probably a series of questions because this is faithful to a story Neil told. But Neil's story is kind of insane, right?

Because you look back on it, it doesn't make any, it makes a lot of thematic sense. and it makes sense in terms of what he's interested in. But it's not as if this was, at least this wasn't evident from the beginning, one story. And I feel like TV, certainly franchise TV storytelling, has sort of fallen into that rut, that, you know, we're going to begin something here, but in seven or eight seasons, if you trust us, we'll find out who the king was or what the dragon means or where the rings came from or whatever the case may be. So I guess just from a creative perspective, once you got a green light,

how did those conversations develop between you who have such, I think exceptional abilities to tell stories in this format with someone like Neil who told the story in his preferred format already and yet was in the room with you. Well, I think you've hit on the real difference between the comic and the show. And that, I think, presented itself gradually that, you know, Netflix, we needed to construct a version of this show that had people needing to see the next day. episode. It's very important that that be the case. And if we went in, I guess I should back up and say, you know, Neil has been very honest and open about why he built the Sandman originally the way he did as a sort of anthology platform with which he could tell any story he wanted to, some of which are not really connected to dream or tangentially connected to dream.

But it was never designed really to be one story. or one person's story. And obviously, as you have astutely pointed out, Netflix really needs it to be one person's story because when you get to the end of the episode, you need to want to find out what happens to that person. And so that's the biggest shift is taking the source material and deciding, all right, we are telling Morpheus's story. And we are telling Morpheus's story through Morpheus's point of view, which is something

that Neil didn't really give us. access to very often in the comics. He narrates his own adventure to hell, but apart from that, the places where Morpheus tells you what he's thinking and feeling are very few and far between. So it was challenging for me to have to reconceive my understanding of the source material according to those sort of guidelines, but also really liberating once Neil gave me permission to not only sort of figure out what dreams sense of what's going on in his mind from moment to moment, but putting it on the page. So even though he doesn't, it's not often that he tells you what he's thinking or feeling, I as the writer have to know what he's thinking and

feeling at every moment so I can tell the director and tell the actor, here's what this moment is about. And then luckily, you know, I had Mike Barker and Jamie Childs for the first half of the season and they got it. And then Tom Sturridge, who is unbelievable. Like, Tom is able to take in, you know, I tend to give the actors too much information in terms of psychology and what this moment means, but then he really makes it his own. And he, you know, you do feel like you're getting a lot more of Morpheus's state of mind watching Tom, but he's also keeping you at a safe distance because he doesn't want to reveal too much. So it was a happy marriage for all of us. It's interesting because in one way, I think he did kind of presage our television moment in that he did tell the story in seasons, basically, not just seasons of miss, but like collect the collections are.

Yes. You know, they make sense. But in other ways, it's so not. And there are two particular ways that's jumped out at me. One, jumping off what you just said about Tom Sturge, who I agree is just excellent. Morpheus in the comics is kind of an unknowable prick. Like he's not really that, you're not that empathetic because he is an endless deity, right, that represent. an idea as much as he represents a person.

And that becomes part of the text later on and becomes more of a character piece. But that's a challenge. And I guess the question somewhere in there is about unpacking that a little bit more on the page. Because, for example, getting Pat and Oswald as a talking bird early makes a lot of sense. Because now there's someone for him to talk to. Now there's someone to say, hey, this doesn't make sense. You're taking me to the real hell? Because otherwise, he's just going to be swanning around pouring sand and, you know, talking to Lucifer Morningstar.

So finding that balance of making him a compelling television lead, but also the, you know, the totally unique and compelling deity that Neil created 30 plus years ago. That was the tension throughout. And it was a learning process for me because, you know, as a writer, especially somebody who had come to television from writing plays, you're not supposed to give the actors every moment of here's what the character's thinking and feeling. It's, it, you know, becoming a screenwriter to a certain degree was, was learning how to do that. But this was, this, when you've got a character who on the face of it is opaque and unknowable, the only way to do it is to really tell the team that's making the show and then the studio and the network, here are the massive movements that are happening internally that make this moment so loaded and so powerful. and then sometimes you would get somebody who would say, but how are we going to know that if he doesn't tell us? That's a note we get a lot. And some of it is me, you know, having to over-explain things in dialogue

that then we're able to cut in post because we don't need them because Tom is amazing. Vivian is amazing. But it was a learning curve for all of us in that, I guess to answer your question simply, once you make Morpheus the hero, right? Once you make him, and an imperfect and flawed, arrogant,

but honorable hero, it forces you to make a lot of changes to the source material to support it. And I hope that people know that Neil and I made all those decisions together with the writers and David Goyer and that, you know, we never, I don't know that, yeah,

Neil was, as long as Neil was happy, and the studio and the network felt like they were on the journey and taking the audience on the journey with Morpheus, then mission accomplished, I guess, I would say. But that, I mean, you're so right. That is the thing that required the most amount of work and care and insight and changes along the way in terms of my own approach to how to make this TV show. And I'm really, if we're able to get a season two, I so look forward to be able to continue telling the story having figured that out instead of having to figure that out while we're making the show. I think the other way that it's kind of struck me as being very anti-TV or anti-contemporary TV is the supporting cast. And, you know, so for example, when you had that, there was a beautiful announcement a couple months ago or, you know, of who was playing which part from the comics. And it was really exciting, for example.

you see Carrie Howell Baptiste, who's a wonderful performer, is going to play death. I'm very excited about that decision. And in my mind, again, it's been quite some time since I've read the comics. So I'm like, she'll pop up every episode, sit on a park bench, escort someone, say something pithy, insult her brother. Now I've watched five episodes. She's not there yet. Because, of course, this is still the comic book. Similarly, Gwendolyn Christie is Lucifer.

Great. I remember Lucifer from the comics. How many of the first 20 issues is Lucifer in? And most specifically, again, I'm only five episodes. episodes in, but the change of, oh my God, so wait, sidebar, were we supposed to be saying John Constantine, this whole time? The whole time. But we've been saying Constantine.

Yes. And there are, I mean, Neil has, is on Twitter and has provided panels from Swamp thing issues. I think it was Rick Veach, who actually had Constantine. Well, I was saying Rick Veitch, by the way. So I've totally met. I'm sure it's not. There need to be more podcasts with these people so we know how to pronounce their names. But yes, Constantine, you know, Alan Moore laid it down and Neil Gaiman carried it forward.

And Keanu tripped over it, but in that analogy, but anyway, the point being, I won't get you on the record about that. But Joanna Constantine, you know, is, and I would imagine with audiences as well, like, oh, that's working. That's awesome. What a great performer. What a great choice. What a great change. What a great dynamic between the two of them. And I feel like, you know, in TV logic, oh, that really pops on the screen.

episode. I think that's three. She's coming back in six. And she's going to have a whole arc in eight through 15. And she's going to be the second lead by season two. That's not the story you guys are able to tell, right? And I found that to be interesting because it sort of runs counter to what I imagine both of us as more like traditional TV fans, or at least people who grew up with it, would be recognizing or looking for. I mean, when you say it out loud, I'm amazed that we've been allowed to get away with this. Because it doesn't. But the three of us, David and Neil and I from the beginning, said this was never meant to be a television show.

This is not a conventional television show. We have two series regulars and everyone else is a guest star. And some guest stars go away for a season and then come back for a season. And it's, you know, our casting directors are heroes, Lucinda Cicin and Natasha Vincent. And just being able to get everyone to get, it's just a, this show is not like any other show. It's just the making of it because of that has, and during COVID, been particularly challenging. But you're right in that once we decided we were going to do the comic and commit to it, which with something like Sandman, I think you have to, it determines the course, right? So I loved Joanna Constantine as a present-day character, and when, especially when I knew that it was going to be Jenna and then wrote those scripts specifically for Jenna's voice, there was a long moment where I was advocating, and I think I might have even done an outline where Dream doesn't take Matthew to hell. Dream takes Joanna to hell. And it was going to be a two-parter, and Joanna was going to have to liberate Astra, you know, and it was just a lot. But it was, it's, it's a

It was my TV mind going, okay, well, let's establish Joanna and then spend some time with her. And we couldn't. So she does come back as Lady Joanna Constantine in episode six, no spoilers, but just so you know. And who knows? I mean, if enough people watch and we're able to extend our lifespan on Netflix, there may be ways we can interweave news stories along with what people are expecting as fans of the book. I mean, we were able to expand John D.E. and Ethel Crips, you know, enormously creating new material out of things that are suggested by the book. So I'm hopeful that we can continue doing that to some degree. It's such an interesting bet on whatever TV moment we're existing in because I think one of the things that was unfilmable about Sandman for so long was just simply the volume of it, the volumes of it. It was a lot. So it would be a bet on multiple seasons. or, you know, leaving it all on the floor in one season

and then making up new comics or whatever afterwards, I feel like a few years ago, I'd be like, well, yeah, to Netflix. Netflix just probably rubber stamps 10 seasons. And what they bought was the whole thing, not just one piece of the thing. And that's why this is a perfect place for it. Those days, like, what, 18 months ago? Those days don't feel like they were that long ago,

but they now are in the past. And so now I would imagine you're in a moment where you have made, I think, correctly from an artistic point of view, a very strong bet on the work you've done leading to more work in the future. But am I correct in assuming there's a lot of uncertainty in all of this? Absolutely. I mean, Netflix is very mysterious. They are loving benefactors, but they are also very mysterious.

And they're going to be looking at 30 days of metrics before they will know how they want to proceed or if they want to proceed. So, you know, the key thing is that people watch it and they watch it all the way through and they tell their friends about it. and if we can, we don't know what the benchmarks are and we'll never know what those numbers are. I don't, you know, there's a black box there that has all that information

and I'm not even sure they ate. I think there's something I, who knows? But, yeah, we, I mean, we're very hopeful. I'm working on scripts for season two now, and we had a 20-week writer's room, which was incredibly helpful, and we'll, you know, we'll see what happens, but people, we need people to watch.

Not to return to a topic that I know you and I are very practiced in talking about with each other and with professionals of anxiety. But I have to ask because you've had experience. You wrote the Wonder Woman movie and did such a fantastic job with that. Thank you. But it is different, not just because it's in a different box, but with something like Wonder Woman, everybody knows Wonder Woman. Everybody in the world recognizes Wonder Woman. Sandman, not everybody knows, but those who do know adore, which I think is a different kind of relational. fandom. So what was it like in the trenches with this material, getting under the hood, and then even going so far as to do the job, which I think you all did such a beautiful job with, of casting and realizing you are making these decisions that are going to, in some way, solidify the future life of these characters and the minds of people and that people are waiting and hoping and wondering and eventually judging. I know that can't be in your head when you're in it, but what role did that perception or awareness play?

throughout creatively. Well, luckily, I was one of those fans who was so protective of the material and had my own set of expectations that I assumed would be mirrored in other fans' expectations and hopes and dreams. So I was constantly checking in with myself as that fan. And then the writer's room was a really interesting mix of folks, some of whom really love genre stuff, some of whom do not, many of whom came with me from Chondaland, from The Catch and Scand and Gray's Anatomy. And so we're approaching the material relationally the way that I was,

because I'm primarily a relationship writer. And some had read the books and had strong feelings about them, you know, before as a fan. Some were just reading the books for the first time. And having those different perspectives on the material were incredibly helpful in terms of distilling what is a story about, what is this scene about? And then, you know, how I am in the writer's room.

It's those conversations very quickly become about what's going on in your life and the ways in which reading this material makes you feel about your family, about your relationships, about, you know, I remember in the Joanna Constantine episode, in the original comic, Rachel, the victim is a junkie. And she's a junkie when John meets her. And we were very, we did not want to tell an addiction story, but that it required us to get really. intimate with each other about addiction stories and our relationship to them. And do we want to do that? Do we not? Why? Like, it was a lot of the work that you end up doing on a show, on any Shondaland show or sex in the city, in my experience, where it becomes, it has to become very, very personal for everybody in that room in order for that to come out on the screen, on the other side. So it was going me back and forth. It was always, you know, we love Sandman and the Sandman fan in me was sort of always policing the way that those stories were told with the room. And then the room sort of operated as a, like, let's just look at the stories on their own, apart from that as an exercise. And then I would

leave the writer's room and I would get on the phone to resume with Neil, who is in New Zealand for much of the time. And Neil loves the Sandman as much. as I do, clearly, and is as protective of it as I am, and also understands what's important about keeping and what isn't. And so I had the benefit of all of this. You know, that's what's so great about the writer's room and about running a show is, you know, and then once department heads got involved, that's a whole other level of collaboration and all these brilliant minds, people who love Sandman, whether they're coming to it for the first time or whether they knew it before, I just felt really safe because I was such a fan and because Neil was there. And I knew that if I pitched

him something that didn't feel like Sandman, he would tell me. The miracle of it was that we never disagreed. I mean, in three years, we've never had a disagreement about how to proceed. It's a collaboration that I never saw coming. And as a super fan, you will appreciate, oh my God, if my 19-year-old self could only have known that at my advanced age, I would be on the phone with Neil Gaiman every day making sand. It's just beyond. It's beyond. And then you'd have had to explain to your 17-year-old self about how Netflix used to email, I mean, used to mail DVDs to you, but now, I mean, that's a whole backstory. Exactly. It's a prologue. And by the way, we should also say that while there was Grace Anatomy DNA in your room, there was also Breyer Patch DNA in the room.

Yes, there was. There was. We have to say shout out the great Jay Franklin on this podcast. I did want to ask, you were mentioning department heads. Yes. And I did want to ask about the role of visual effects in the making of the show, because what's so remarkable about it is the idea of a set or of even a physical plane or reality that the characters are walking and changes from not episode to episode, but often moment to moment. And it's kind of a two-part question, I guess.

The first part being, how did you conceive and communicate worlds that you, that you could not physically show either to your writers yet or even to the actors ultimately, right? Of what it ought to feel like or what it will one day feel like. Well, luckily, we had the books. I mean, the books were always what we pointed to. And I will say after we sold the show to Netflix, I think two weeks later, we hired Ian Markowitz to be our visual effects supervisor who had worked with David Goyer on Krypton. and that Ian was my collaborator, my first collaborator, before we even got a writer's room together, before I had even Neil and David and I had written the pilot, the first episode.

So those conversations were happening prior to anything else. And then we moved Ian into our writer's room complex. So his desk was right next to mine. And as you know, my writer's room is open. So Ian was in the writer's room as much as possible. our production designer we hired very quickly. Gary Steele, he would be in the writer's room as much as possible so that everything is happening together. These conversations are not happening independently. Everyone is making this together at the same time. And so it would be a matter of like,

all right, well, let's look at the books. And then Ian or Gary would go off and pull visual references from the real world because I think it was very important for us, for the three of us, to do everything we could in the physical world and on location and practical locations, you know, especially for interiors, but, you know, hell is a place in London, so to speak. I think I've been there. Yes. So we knew that because we had to be very frugal with our VFX budget, we knew that we knew that it was not limitless.

We wanted to shoot everything in the real world that we could and then use VFX to enhance what we had already done in the physical world. So some sets we were going to build. But again, as you know, like with a regular TV show, you have standing sets. And they are around the whole time, and you shoot on them in every episode, and you amortize what you spend

over the course of all those episodes. We had no standing sets. We had a cathedral that we would go to for days, and it's a massive thing to light and tent. And, you know, but we didn't have anything on stage that we used the entire season. So I remember Gary started building the diner set and hell, Lucifer's Throne Room, the minute we got to London, even though we ended up shooting them a little bit later.

But everything else was practical. Everything else was practical locations. Fawney Rigg, which is, you know, most of the first episode takes place at Fonny Rigg, is a place called Nettlebed. It's an estate that I think I heard Harry Stiles might have bought after we left. I don't know. I don't know, maybe. I'm sure it's connected. But that was the rumor we had to get kicked out after Christmas because Harry Stiles was coming to look at the place.

Shout out to Harry Stiles. So, yes, it was a very, it was a creative decision we made very early on that we did not want actors in a green screen environment. And the volume at that point, you know, was too expensive and too, we just couldn't afford it on our budget. And that's the Mandalorian Vis-FX wall that we talked about on the podcast before. We discussed it. And then we said, no. let's just let's go old school. I think that in many ways,

the most practical and old school effect that you have is the power of your performers. And I wanted to bring up David Thuleas as John D. But also maybe as a way to talk about episode 5, 24-7, which is a really significant episode of your series. It's a significant issue of the comic. In many ways, it's the one that I do remember being like, oh, they're going to do this.

This is possible, not just in terms of like what we now in TV would call like a bottle episode. but like the depths that it could go, the extremes that it could go to, the ideas that it could be peddling in. You know, it really was shocking as a younger person and didn't know comics could do that, let alone any medium. But specifically in the scope of your series, like to have an actor of David Thuleas's caliber, you know, bringing his Mike Lee, I am in the room with you and everything is about my raw humanity, but clutching a magical Ruby does so much work for you. And it's amazing. And I guess the question I have is about the conversation you would have with David Thuleus that allowed him to ground himself and his performance in a way that, you know, is an incredible

service to the show and to that episode in what is a very heightened and supernatural circumstance. Well, he is a fan of Neals and had been aware of the books. And we had originally approached him to see if he'd be interested in playing Roderick Burgess. And he passed. when we went out. And what I didn't realize until later, after we, after, I think after we had hired Charles dance to come in and play Roderick, and now I can't imagine anyone else playing that role. But what I found out later was that it wasn't that David didn't want to do the Sandman.

He wanted more to do. He didn't want to just do one episode. And when I found that out, I was astonished. But a lot of the work on John D. happened in the writer's room. room. My sensibility as a writer, that issue 24 hours was the issue that I was the most frightened of because I didn't know how to do it. It's almost through narrated. Neil's voice is telling you what's going on in everybody's mind and soul and life. And there's no actual dialogue between the characters where they reveal themselves. There are no scenes per se. There are some really graphic

monologues, necrophilia invoking monologues. And I really, it required an enormous amount of heavy lifting in the room and sort of reconceiving what it was before David, before we got David involved. So we had scripts for David to read the entirety of the John D. Ark, such as it was. and then once David signed on, seeing that it had that, that we had made John the hero of his own story, and that he was no longer a mad supervillain who was trying to destroy the world and everyone in it in the most violent way, that he was actually trying to save the world. He just got what we were going for immediately. And then I had the immense pleasure of being able to workshop all of his scenes on Zooms,

because it was COVID and we couldn't rehearse. And in TV, as you know, you don't. You get one run through before the cameras roll. But with this stuff, he and Jolie Richardson really wanted to dig down into it. And so I had the good fortune. And we did this with Jenna and Tom, too, with Joanna Constantine. We were able to do Zoom, rethrus and rehearsals that were incredibly productive to the point where I would be rewriting their stuff the night before,

and they would very gamely memorize it and try it. And there were oftentimes when David, who's also a genius writer and novelist and amazing in every single way, David and I would work on the scenes together. And so it was very bespoke. And he was sewn into the role, you know, very tightly, as was Jolie. And Sarah Niles was a gift to just getting Sarah to play Rosemary in that fourth episode. I've been a huge fan of hers from My May Destroy You. hadn't yet done Ted Lasso and you know how I am. Like, I really want the actors to feel like it's not dialogue they're being asked to speak

and getting them as comfortable inside it as possible. So they all came to play. And they all were really, really generous with their time and letting me figure it out on the page after we would rehearse. So for as daunting as it was to mount an episode based on that particular comic and see if this vessel that you've constructed with David and Neil and your collaborators can hold this type of almost one-off or at least, you know, contextually different types of storytelling. Are you now excited for the possibility of more of that going forward, which is a way

of saying, have you already scouted Stratford on Avon? Because I've been telling people, like, you think the show is one thing, but just wait to the Shakespeare stuff. Yeah. No, we are, I mean, our goal is to do midsummer in season two. The question is, I think for Netflix, is if we are constructing an overall narrative, which is dreams. And as the book moves forward, even though there are collections of short stories throughout, there is, it becomes more and more dreams story. And we have the benefit of creating the series knowing where the story ends. So we can, that's partially why I feel liberated in being able to do this and making a dream story sooner, is, okay, well, do we just launch episodes,

which are self-contained anthology stories with the hope that because the audience in seasons two and three, because they already love the series, they're going to press the next episode button? Or do you recast Mid-Summer Night's Dream as a flashback from whatever present tense moment we are in so that you can have your cake and eat it too? So that we've got Dream in the present moment,

with the stakes being extremely high, especially because Midsummer is about a father whose son dies, and Morpheus's story becomes about that as well. There are ways, I don't want to give anything away, but there are ways to take at least those short stories that are centered around the endless and weave them into the present day storyline that help inform what's going on in the present day while allowing for something like Midsummer Night's Dream to just show up in the middle of season two. So we'll see. We'll see. I mean, again, it all depends on how many people show up and make it all the way to the end. Totally. So, but you're asking such good writerly questions. No, but I love this and I love to hear. And I think listeners do too, because the glimpse under the

hood of like how actually to get this older, I mean, I said under the hood, so I'm going to try a metaphor, but like get this vehicle on today's roads, you know, specifically and have it work and make sense today. and also why I think you're such a uniquely talented person for this job because you love the original, but also your skill set is not keeping things preserved in amber, right? I mean, you have to make it a television show. And it's interesting to hear that Netflix, and of course they do, has very specific goals as well. And one of the things that I was really struck by in addition to the performances and just, you know, the thrill of having this world from that that has been a part of my life be brought onto the screen is that it is incredibly efficient. It is incredibly watchable.

This idea that it flows, this does not feel like an HBO series, even though it's made by Warner Brothers, I think, in the best way. You know, and it doesn't, which isn't to say that it ends with a, oh, but just wait, or a car, about to be a car crash. It's that the episodes feel energetic at the end in a way that makes me thrilled to watch more, not, oh, my God, I just did 56 minutes, you know, which can be experience in streaming, right? Yes, absolutely. I think it speaks to the amount of tinkering and thinking that has been going on ceaselessly in your head that most people will never even consider. I'm glad we have a chance to just even put a name on and talk about it, right? Because that's the work. This is, I mean, it's extraordinary to be able to talk about it with you.

I mean, you know, the writers are obviously know about it and Neil and David as well. And the studio in the network, I will say, you know, they've been incredibly supportive and loving and brave because it's not the, it's not the anthologic, you know, we're fighting something that was conceived to be anthological, right, if I'm even constructing that word well, more properly. So it's really, it's not about it's, it's ever having been dated because so much of it was prescient in terms of, you know, what's going on in terms of sex politics and race politics and gender politics. Neil was ahead of all of that in the 80s and early 90s.

It really is just about once you decide your telling dream story, how do you tell all the other stories as well? And the fact that you've already intuited that that is, I'm very grateful and impressed. And that was the work and continues to be for us. Well, I hope it continues for many seasons to come. I mean, I won't ask you to guess. It does really sound like you are like the rest of us, just why. watching and waiting now, right? We are watching and waiting and, you know, I would love to,

I would, you know, Neil and I would both love it, modern day Joanna Constantine spin off. And the Corinthian could have his own miniseries and there are two death mini-series, which we would love to adapt. So we're going to be nimble and we're poised to go, you know, I have a season two that's, I have all the scripts ready to, you know, when they pull the trigger, we'll, we'll talk about it, but we'll see what the feedback is. And yeah, it's just been a, it's been a pleasure and a joy. And to see that you are as a viewer, because I haven't talked to a lot of people who've watched it, it's very gratifying to hear that you've picked up on every nuance that we. But also, it's pleasurable. You know, I feel like first and foremost, because I can watch it as

someone who love the comic books, and I can watch it as someone who's interested in adaptations or interested in your career. But first and foremost, it's a real pleasure. to watch, which I think speaks to the work that you did and everybody did. And I think, you know, sometimes that ought to be the goal, right? But it isn't always the result. So congratulations on that. And I'm just, I'm so happy that you got this opportunity and that I still have five episodes to watch. And anyone listening needs to not be as slow as I was, apparently. And you need to get through it. You need to, you need to, you need to enjoy it. And you need to don't go to bed, right? That's the takeaway. And, and, you know, the hope is that people will

go back to the comics after they watch it and then come back to this series again. Because it really is a conversation, I feel, between the television show and the comic. And yeah, so we'll see. Well, overdue, a pleasure to have you on the podcast, Alan. It's great to talk to you. And I hope you'll come back when we get a season two and we can talk more in-depth, just about Shakespeare. I would love that.

Because this is what Sandvan allowed people to do, right? Like, it's kind of crazy. Yeah, it's true. It's really true. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for having me and for watching, and I can't wait to talk to you when you've gotten to the end.