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By
Sundi

Interview with Guillermo del Toro and
Carlton Cuse of "The Strain" on
FX 7/9/14
Final Transcript
FX NETWORK: The Strain
July 9, 2014/11:30 a.m. PDT
SPEAKERS
Dominic Pagone – Host
Carlton Cuse – The Strain
Guillermo del Toro – The Strain
PRESENTATION
Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by
and welcome to The Strain Conference Call. At this time all
participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will
conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will
be given at that time. (Operator instructions). As a
reminder, this conference is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the conference over to our host,
Mr. Dominic Pagone. Please go ahead.
D. Pagone: Thank you, Dan, and thank you, everyone for
joining us. Guillermo is running a few minutes behind, so
we’re actually going to get started just with Mr. Carlton
Cuse; Carlton, thank you for joining us today. The Strain
premieres this Sunday at 10:00 p.m. on FX. Because of the
large number of folks on this call we do ask that you ask
one question, and if you have a follow up please get back in
the queue. And let’s get started.
Moderator: (Operator instructions.) Our first question comes
from the line of Erin Willard from SciFiMafia. Please go
ahead.
E. Willard: Hi, thanks so much for taking the time to talk
with us today. Lost changed my life, so thank you for that
as well.
C. Cuse: Oh, thank you.
E. Willard: The first episode in particular is absolutely
riveting and I loved it, but can you tell me how you first
got involved in this and what drew you to it?
C. Cuse: I had read the first Strain novel as a fan of both
Guillermo’s work, and also independently I knew Chuck Hogan,
and so I was very curious to see what this collaboration
would look like. And I was just intrigued by the subject
matter. I had read the first novel when it came out in 2009
and really enjoyed it, and then basically about two years
ago my agent called me up and said that there was some
interest in doing The Strain as a television series and
would I be interested in it.
And I went and met with Guillermo and I had a really good
meeting, and I basically decided to get involved, for two
reasons. One, because I had a lot of respect for Guillermo
as a filmmaker and I thought, particularly in a monster show
like this, that he’s one of the most imaginative guys out
there in terms of creating creatures and worlds. And I also
thought that embedded in the book was this fantastic
opportunity to upend the vampire genre, as the vampire genre
has sort of been overrun by romance, and that we had had our
fill of vampires that we’re feeling sorry for because they
had romantic problems. And it was time to go back to the
conception of vampires as really scary, dangerous creatures,
and in so doing that there was a way to kind of make a genre
show that would be different than anything that was out
there on the TV landscape.
E. Willard: Excellent, thank you so much.
C. Cuse: Thank you.
Moderator: Our next question comes from the line of Earl
Dittman from Digital Journal. Please go ahead.
E. Dittman: Hi, Carlton. Thanks for your time.
C. Cuse: Hi, Earl.
E. Dittman: I have to say The Strain, I am incredibly
impressed with it. I find it just is riveting. Now being on
cable, though, having done network shows before, has this
really opened up what you can do with a series for you as a
producer?
C. Cuse: Oh, absolutely. Look, I can’t speak broadly to all
cable channels, but I will say that FX has been fantastic.
And I will say that this show really represents my and
Guillermo’s version of the story. It’s really unadulterated.
I mean, yes, sure, we can’t drop F-bombs, but that’s about
it. We really were able to put our unadulterated version of
the story on screen, and FX has been enormously supportive,
and I think very aware when you’re competing with films and
also with pay cable, you don’t want to find yourself in a
situation where you’re doing an adulterated version of the
story. And that was something that we were very conscious of
and concerned about, and John Landgraf and his team were
immensely supportive and really gave us the latitude to tell
the story the way we wanted to. And so it’s got some pretty
extreme moments, but I think that that also is kind of what
gives the show its octane.
G. del Toro: Speaking of FX dream, I’m here.
E. Dittman: Oh, hey, Guillermo. How are you doing?
C. Cuse: Hey, man. Yes, so I think that we really felt like
we were able to make the version of the show that we wanted
to make.
E. Dittman: Well, it’s incredible, believe me. You guys have
done a wonderful, fantastic job, and keep doing it.
C. Cuse: Thank you.
G. del Toro: Thank you.
Moderator: Our next question comes from the line of Jamie
Ruby from SciFiVision.com. Please go ahead.
J. Ruby: Hi, guys. Thanks so much for doing the call. I have
to say, the screeners were awesome. I started watching at
around 3:00 in the morning and planned to watch one, and I
ended up really late watching all of them that they sent, so
I really love it.
G. del Toro: Thank you.
J. Ruby: I have not read the book yet, I’m planning to, but
I’m curious, how closely is the mythology going to follow
that? And also, do you have it spaced, like is season one
going to be book one, how are you planning to figure that
out?
C. Cuse: Book one is season one, yes. We basically follow the
narrative of the first book in the first season. The plan is
that the show will run somewhere between three and five
seasons, and as we work out the mythology and the
storytelling for season two we’ll have a better idea of
exactly how long our journey is going to be. But it won’t be
more than five seasons, we’re definitely writing to an
endpoint, and we’re following the path as established in
Guillermo and Chuck’s novels. But obviously there’s a lot
that’s also going to be added. The television show is its
own experience, and there are new characters and new
situations, different dramatic developments, so the show and
the book can each be separately enjoyed.
And I think that the goal is not to literally translate the
book into a television show. You want to take the book as a
source of inspiration and then make the best possible
television show that you can make. And I think Guillermo,
Chuck, myself, all of us involved have basically said, okay,
here’s the book, now how do we take the best stuff in here
and then use that as elements and then make the best TV show
we can. But we view the TV show as its own creation.
G. del Toro: And it was very clear from the start that we had
the three books to plunder, but we also had the chance of
inventing. We talked about milestones, that we want the
milestones and the characters that are in the book to be
hit, but with that it became very malleable. Carlton
decided, I think very wisely in retrospect, it made perfect
sense as a game plan to, for example, leave the origins of
The Master, which we opened book one with for a second
season, if we go that way, and, for example, bringing a set
piece from book two to bookend the story of one character on
season one. So, it’s a very elastic relationship that the
series has with the book, but by that same token it’s very
respectful and mindful of the things that will not alienate
someone that likes the books. It should feel as seamless.
And I think the decisions we have to understand when Carlton
is guiding us through this new medium for the story, to
trust and know that his decisions are guided by huge
experience and a prestigious career.
J. Ruby: Thank you so much. I’m a huge fan of both of yours,
so thank you.
G. del Toro: Thank you.
Moderator: Our next question comes from the line of Anne
Brodie from Monsters and Critics. Please go ahead.
A. Brodie: Hi, there. Thanks for the call. It always strikes
me how popular police procedurals, and murder, and gore, and
blood, and pain, and death are in our culture. We seem to
appreciate that kind of genre so much, and I wonder what it
is about us that we do?
G. del Toro: From my end what I think is very apparent is
that we’ve come to the point where socially, as we are
mammalian creatures we are territorial, we are built to
fight and fend off territorial challenges, reproduce, and
sit a sedentary life, you know, ultimately that’s the way
we’re socially and animalistically geared, and yet we live
in a society that the more it isolates itself from its
natural instincts, the more it seeks them in entertainment.
And I think there is a vicarious thrill your brain needs,
the way your body needs the exercise in a way, your brain
needs to be exposed to flight and fight instincts, and you
seek it through a roller coaster, or some people seek it
through extreme sports, or you can seek it in genres like
noir crime, horror, adventure, etc. It’s literally a
biochemical mammalian biofeedback with how we are
constructed to organize the storytelling in our lives, I
think.
C. Cuse: I completely agree with everything that Guillermo
said, although I don’t discount that some reptiles will also
like the show.
Moderator: Our next question comes from the line of Dominic
Patten from Deadline Hollywood. Thank you. Please go ahead.
D. Patten: Hi, guys. This is a question for both of you.
Guillermo, starting off with you, how was the transition
from feature films to cable television, and what did the two
of you learn working together on this as you made the
tremendous trilogy turn into a series?
G. del Toro: The transition came from both Chuck and I, it
was very smooth in many ways because we had the chance to
adapt the novels to comic book form with Dark Horse. And
coming in we really sought Carlton’s guidance into this new
form. I think there never has been an occasion in which our
dialogue has seen anyone read the books and say, “This is
not the way it’s in the books.” So that much was very
satisfactory. For me as a producer and director, it was
about having some of the quirks that come from a feature
film. I asked FX to give us a long pre-production period so
I could really plan out the makeup effects, the creature
effects, the visual effects, all of which I have big
experience with, in order to try to bring to the pilot a big
scope feel to the series doing sophisticated effects and
some set pieces, while staying on a fiscally responsible
budget and managing.
And from a director’s point of view it was the same on the
pilot. I didn’t want to go back and say, can I get one day
more? Can I do many extra hours? I wanted to fit in the
sandbox what I was hoping would feel like a big pilot
episode for a big series. And that pre-planning was crucial,
but also adjusting the way I staged, the way I approach
coverage, or storytelling, and yet not sacrificing anything.
It was both some fiscal constraints, but creative absolute
freedom, which was a huge thrill for me to get a phone call
from John Landgraf before starting the series, saying to me,
“We encourage creator content, we love Carlton, we love you,
and we want you guys to do the most idiosyncratic, best
version of the series that you can.”
C. Cuse: And for me I really jumped at the chance to work
with Guillermo. I had not done a show with creatures, and so
to be able to do a show with creatures with, in my opinion,
the best creative creatures out there in the world was an
incredible opportunity. So it’s been a great learning
experience for me really to collaborate with Guillermo, and
I think the show has been a really great combination of both
our processes, in that we have a very complementary set of
skills.
And I will echo what Guillermo said, we approached the
making of a television show with a lot of the things that
you do when you make a feature, and I think that there are
inherent limitations in television if you think about the
network model, where a series might get greenlit and then
you would literally be in production six weeks later. It
would have been impossible to make this show under a normal
network production schedule. We needed a vast amount of lead
time to not only do creature creation, but to do a
significant amount of the writing so that we could plan and
organize things, because obviously we were working within
certain fiscal limitations, but by having all this planning
time I think we were able to bring something to television
that you just wouldn’t be able to do under normal
circumstances. And so we’re incredibly grateful to FX for
being so supportive in allowing us our process.
Moderator: Our next question comes from the line of Matt
Mitovich from TVLine. Please go ahead.
M. Mitovich: Hi, gentlemen. Thanks for your time today. I
know you were talking there a lot about having complete
freedom to do the show the way you want. So, are you saying
that you haven’t walked up to and crossed that line yet as
far as things you can and can’t do? There hasn’t been a “no”
from the network yet saying, “You know what, the tendril
coming out of the young girl’s mouth can only stick into her
dad for 7 seconds, not 10.”
G. del Toro: Obviously not yet.
C. Cuse: No. Honestly, I think that whatever aesthetic
limitations exist in the show are ones that Guillermo and I
came up with ourselves. We have had the full support of FX
to make the show the way we wanted to.
G. del Toro: And I think that one of the important things on
creating this is that the genre requires you to cross, at
some point. It’s almost like a hostage situation, where you
need to show an audience that you’re not kidding, you know?
You have to show you are going to deliver either by
atmospheric, creepy moments, or by visceral punch, hopefully
both. You’re going to be able to deliver the goods, the
things that will make you feel queasy, will make you feel
unsafe, will bring this delightful shiver that is required
with the genre.
And you can execute it both atmospherically and by simply
making the emotional relationship of a father welcoming a
daughter long after he knows she’s dead, or by making it a
shock moment. Or, hopefully also now and then in the series
we have moments in which we have really, really sick humor.
Certainly in the pilot we had the freedom to try to set up
one of the most intense scenes to a pop song, and things
like that I think are what defines a generic appeal for the
show.
M. Mitovich: Well, a job well done. That tub scene had me
looking through my fingers. Thanks, again.
G. del Toro: Thank you.
Moderator: Our next question comes from the line of Lesley
Goldberg from The Hollywood Reporter. Please go ahead.
L. Goldberg: Hi, guys, thanks for taking the time out. We’re
starting to see this big proliferation of genre stuff, which
is obviously not new, but the comic book stuff that really
has been invading TV. Just on broadcast alone there’s five
new shows based on comics. What do you think is behind that
proliferation, and Carlton, you tried this before with The
Sixth Gun, what goes wrong, and what do you think could be
next?
G. del Toro: Go ahead, Carlton.
C. Cuse: I think as a creative person, as a show runner I
don’t really think about the larger trends. I think about
what I connect to emotionally. And so for me I connected to
this story, I felt there was a way to upend the vampire
genre here. I felt like there was, as I said before, for me
kind of a wonderful collaboration to be had, as well as the
bones in this story, of a way to, I think, to tell a great
monster story for television that would find its own unique
footing in the television landscape. I really think our show
is different than anything else that’s out there.
And I would add to what Guillermo said before, I think there
are these delightful moments, shocking moments, but I think
there’s a lot more to the show also. I consider it to be a
thriller with horror elements, but there also are, I think
there’s an incredible mosaic of characters engaged in all
sorts of interesting, dramatic conflicts, and I believe that
the show will appeal to a broader range of people. It’s not
a show just for horror aficionados. So, I think while it is
a genre show, I think we’ve made a genre show that I think
is more than just being a straight genre show.
G. del Toro: And to answer your question, I think that the
way we have, and when you talk about the baby boomer
generation, or a second generation of film makers raised in
Hollywood, every generation brings with them the media in
which they were raised as part of the narrative leap in what
is acceptable or not in mainstream entertainment.
In the case of the generation presently dominating the
landscape, you have a huge acceptance of pop elements in
culture. The viability of comic books, video games, or other
forms of entertainment is not something new, but it’s
pervasive right now because it came with a generation that
have a pervasive influence of those mediums in the way they
shape their narrative about their fiction. But everybody
knows the first Batman was a black-and-white Batman right at
the time that the comic book strip was in vogue. Flash
Gordon. It’s always the interaction of genre and media in
mainstream movie making, and media that is alternative to
that has always existed.
I think that the only thing I feel has changed lately is
very often myself as a comic book collector and reader, find
out that many comic books feel almost like a trial for a
movie or a TV series. And I gravitate more towards comic
books that remain idiosyncratic and strange.
L. Goldberg: Thank you so much.
C. Cuse: Thanks, Lesley.
Moderator: Our next question comes from the line of Hal
Boedeker from The Orlando Sentinel. Please go ahead.
H. Boedeker: I want to congratulate you, I think you really
delivered the goods. And so I’m wondering about when you say
five seasons over and out, any thought that maybe would
extend beyond that if the public response is great?
C. Cuse: I don’t think so. I think that we’re moving into
this new phase of television where I think audiences are
really embracing stories with a beginning, middle, and end.
And if you look at the success this season, for instance, of
True Detective and Fargo, as well as the kind of incredible
response that the end of Breaking Bad got, I think that you
have to recognize that the audience wants to see stories
that come to a conclusion. They want the full and rounded
experience. And television has been sort of a first act and
sort of an endless second act, and I think that the best
television now is giving you a three act experience. And I
think that that’s what we want to do with our show.
G. del Toro: I agree with Carlton. I think one of the things
that we made essential when we pitched the series
everywhere, and certainly at FX, is we came in and we said
we are not going to be extending beyond the—we presented two
arcs, one that can fulfill three or four seasons, and
hopefully the second or third book are complex enough that
they can generate a fifth one. But we literally said it
needs to end when it needs to end, and that was a central
part of finding a home for the series.
H. Boedeker: It’s a great show.
G. del Toro: Thank you very, very much.
C. Cuse: Yes, thank you.
Moderator: Our next question comes from the line of Breeanna
Hare from CNN.com. Please go ahead.
B. Hare: Thank you for talking with us today. When I was
watching the screeners I was curious, and I think you
touched on this a little bit in the previous answer, but I
was curious why you decided to do a full blown series versus
doing a TV miniseries, that’s become really popular, perhaps
a TV movie, or even releasing it all at once like a lot of
the streaming series are doing?
C. Cuse: FX’s model, our partner in the show is not a
streaming service, so that sort of eliminated that.
B. Hare: Is that something you had to consider during the
creative process?
C. Cuse: No. Look, I think for us, I’ll let Guillermo speak
as well, but I think certainly for me the material, I think
you basically choose the medium that most fits the material,
and I think the three books are an incredible source
material. And I think they lend themselves to a series more
than a miniseries, more than a movie, and it felt like a
very natural and appropriate match to look at the books as a
three to five year television series experience.
G. del Toro: When we started writing the books the story of
it is a little convoluted, because it was originally pegged
as an arc for a series. And I knew from the get-go that it
was three books when I approached Chuck with the bible I had
written for it, and I really wanted something that we
accomplished in the books, which is the books feel very
different one from another. It is my dearest hope that we
can bring that evolution to, God willing, further seasons of
the show.
One of the things that linked me very strongly to Carlton is
when we met, we met one fateful morning for breakfast, and
he said to me, “I love the fact that you start the first
book debunking the spiritual aspect and the mythical aspect
of vampirism, and the second book you go into sociological
aspects of the tale, chemical, biological aspects of the
tale, and you come full circle on the third book
recuperating a new spiritual dimension to the myth.” And we
knew that journey was not achievable in a single swift six
episode arc, or eight episode arc of a miniseries. We knew
that structurally we wanted each season to not only continue
what you did on the first one, but to evolve into different
and hopefully more increasingly daring territory, and I
think that in that sense it really was the natural way to go
creatively.
B. Hare: Excellent. Thank you, guys.
G. del Toro: Thank you.
C. Cuse: Thank you.
Moderator: Our next question comes from Chris Hayner from
Zap2It. Please go ahead.
C. Hayner: Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for taking the
time for us.
G. del Toro: My pleasure.
C. Hayner: Guillermo, specifically for you, after directing
the pilot, do you think there’s a chance that you’ll be back
to direct any more episodes in the future?
G. del Toro: It is with both great pleasure and great
trepidation that I say I want to direct the opening one if
there is a second season. And I say trepidation because
obviously it is always almost like doing cardio, directing
TV is like doing cardio, and if you look at me in any
picture you know I don’t do cardio. But I think that the
beauty of the show is we have developed a really good,
increasingly fluid relationship, Carlton, Chuck, myself, and
I think now and then in the first season I would go and
shoot additional material with a Saturday second unit, or
Carlton and I could increasingly jab each other into coming
up with sick ideas in the middle of the season.
And I think that I really would like that, because it is
such a pleasurable experience. You come in, it is incredibly
intense on a day to day basis, because each day on a TV
series it seems like a week on a feature, but I do hope
that. As it is, I have made it a point to stay obsessively
involved in supervising every single of the effects in the
series, supervising makeup effects, color correction, this
and that, and I feel this is our baby, neither just Chuck or
Carlton’s or myself, is the three of us. It’s like Three Men
and a Baby for vampires, and I think that it will be
essential for me to continue to be involved in that way.
C. Hayner: Thank you.
Moderator: Our next question comes from the line of Dan
Calvisi from Act Four Screenplays. Please go ahead.
D. Calvisi: Hi, guys. I’m a big fan of both of yours. Thanks
for talking to me.
G. del Toro: Thank you.
C. Cuse: Thanks.
D. Calvisi: My question is, how did you choose your writing
staff for this show considering the elements involved with
the genre, the sprawling worlds, the source book, etc.? How
did you find your staff?
C. Cuse: The job of putting together a writing staff is
always something that I think of as akin to assembling an
orchestra. You need to find people who have different voices
but who all can harmonize together and create a single
sound. So, first and foremost, I was very happy that Chuck
Hogan wanted to engage not just as the co-writer of the
books but also as a writer on the show.
And so having Chuck on staff has been a hugely wonderful
thing. I hired these two wonderful writers from Battlestar
Galactica, David Weddle and Brad Thompson, and then I hired
Regina Corrado, who was on Deadwood and Sons of Anarchy, and
Jennifer Hutchinson, who was on Breaking Bad, and a
wonderful young writer named Jason Brigg Gibson. And we had
this wonderful combination of different voices and writers
with different interests, all of whom I think brought
something really unique to the very complicated and arduous
process of adapting a book into a brand new creation as a
show. And there’s lots of new stuff in the show, there are
new characters in the show, there are lots of new
situations, and each of these writers really contributed to
that process.
G. del Toro: I think that in this I completely rely on
Carlton. When the charge of a show runner is applied, you
know who’s running the show, and Carlton has the experience
and the knowledge and the capacity to cast the writers’ room
in the way that he thinks is appropriate for the show. And
we jibe, we veto ideas and so forth, but ultimately he’s the
arbiter of how that part of the show goes and the direction
the show takes, and who gets to participate as a writer. I
think we have a great sampler of different disciplines and
different points of view into the story that he needs to
orchestrate into something seamless.
D. Calvisi: Great, thank you.
Moderator: Our next question comes from the line of Ryan
Turek from ShockTillYouDrop.
R. Turek: Hey, guys. How are you doing today? I wanted to ask
you about Lance Henriksen’s participation in this, because I
think it’s very creative. I want to hear, just from
Guillermo, how did you woo Lance? You are obviously a friend
of his, but can you talk a little bit about Lance and as
well as the creature design, because this isn’t the first
time you’ve tread down the vampire path, Guillermo.
G. del Toro: Yes, the thing that we know is that The Master,
the character, encompasses many voices, so he’s a character
made of many voices over the centuries. He overtakes bodies
and he stays alive that way. So we wanted to meld several
voices, and one of the voices that we wanted to use was
Lance, because of its power and authority and the way it
sounds, and then mix it with other voices as the base for
The Master’s voice, for the authority and the power it has.
And in terms of creature creation we really went into it
trying to, little by little, reveal the biological traits
and the design traits of these creatures to make sense to an
audience, not just from a looking terrifying, looking good
point of view, but to make them feel organic, to make them
feel like almost a different breed in the evolutionary
history of this planet. You get to see them as a species, in
a way, the more you advance in the plot and in this series.
So, designing it took approximately six months of just
purely conceptual and sculpture and draftsmanship design,
and executing it took a very long, long time. But it was as
complex and as demanding as designing creatures for a
feature film.
R. Turek: Very cool.
Moderator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line
of Brent Hankins from The Nerd Repository. Please go ahead.
B. Hankins: Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking some
time for us today.
G. del Toro: Yes, thank you.
C. Cuse: Thanks.
B. Hankins: I have a stylistic question for you guys. We’ve
seen a lot of movies and television shows where they deal
with an outbreak or a contagion and they usually have this
very bleak, very gloomy, washed out color palette. The
Strain goes in the completely opposite direction; everything
is very saturated, it’s very rich, the colors are very
vivid. Was this a conscious choice to make the show stand
out a little bit more?
G. del Toro: One of the reasons we asked FX for a long lead
time for the show was that I spent a long time working out
line and saturation patterns with coordinating art
department, wardrobe department, set design, and
cinematography to give the show a very strong look. I was
jokingly calling it “saturated monochrome,” because we have
very few colors in the show. We are going for a palette that
limits itself to basically cyan and amber in clash with each
other, and then they make room for red to exist. And red is
only in connection with the vampires.
And the other thing that I wanted for the show was that if
you’re channel surfing - the show would almost pop out and
demand your attention visually. I wanted it to have a very
strong inception from comic book form and illustration. But
when people think about it they need to think about it as an
orchestration of wardrobe, set, cinematography, and
ultimately the way you texture the clothing, the walls, the
sets, and to giving it a unique look. And I went for this
color palette because the clash in the show, you’re talking
about daylight and nighttime, so it’s a clash between gold
and blue basically, night and day, and that led me to cyan,
which is a color in the spectrum between blue and green, so
to speak, and that is the night world, and then the amber,
which is the day world, clashing.
And in between those colors, every time you see red, with
the exception of a police siren or a fire extinguisher,
something causally of the real world, every time you see red
- you know it’s linked in some way to the vampires. So, some
of the characters that are going to turn in the pilot are
coded, even from the beginning, to have a little bit of red,
sort of creatively telegraphing to, at least me, or anyone
in retrospect, that they were linked to that world.
B. Hankins: It looks amazing. I love the show, so
congratulations to you guys.
G. del Toro: Thank you.
C. Cuse: One of the things that we talked a lot about was
trying to make the show look, sound, and feel different than
other shows on TV. It was one of the things that I think we
achieved pretty well with Lost. When you flipped around on
the channel and you heard Michael Giacchino’s music and you
saw the lush, verdant Technicolor jungle you knew where you
were and that it was a different destination than other
places on television. I think Guillermo’s, again, I think
deeply imaginative and is a visual creator, and we have a
show that I think really looks unlike anything else on TV.
B. Hankins: I would agree with that.
Moderator: Our next question comes from the line of Raeanne
Rubenstein from Dish Magazine. Please go ahead.
R. Rubenstein: Can you hear me?
C. Cuse: Yes.
R. Rubenstein: Okay, very good. Well, it’s a pleasure to be
speaking with you guys. I’ve been excited about this show
since I found out about it, so congratulations.
G. del Toro: Thank you very much.
R. Rubenstein: My question is about the creature development
which you referred to. I was so stunned when I saw your
first creature, just by chance on Google, and have been
fascinated with the development of the idea of these kinds
of creatures, with the powers they have and the tongues that
they have, and their appearance and stuff like that. Can you
give me some idea of how the concept of these characters
developed in your mind?
G. del Toro: Yes. I’ve been obsessed by vampires for a long,
long time, since I was a very young kid, and a very strange
kid. I read about vampire mythology worldwide and I
familiarized myself with the Japanese, Filipino, Malaysian,
and Eastern European variations on the vampire, and many,
many others. And I kept very detailed notes as a kid on
where to go with the vampire myth in terms of brutality,
social structure, biology, this and that, and some of those
notes made it into my first feature, Cronos, some of them
made it in Blade II, when I directed that, and most of them
made it into The Strain. And designing them, we knew and we
had it very clear that, for example, The Master needed to be
hidden for at least half the season or more to not make him
that accessible.
And I came up with the idea that this guy that has been
alive for centuries and essentially is an apex of the Dark
Ages in the middle of a world of imminent modernity. You
have people with cell phones, jet airplanes, iPads, texting,
Internet, all of that, and in the middle of it there is a 9
foot tall, hand carved coffin with a creature that has been
alive for centuries. And it’s ancient, and that’s what makes
it powerful, that it doesn’t care about any of the modern
accoutrements of mankind that gives mankind such a false
sense of security.
And The Master needed to look that ancient, so we decided
that he was going to become his wardrobe and that eventually
when he reveals himself you have a second layer. So we
designed the wardrobe, the cape and the multiple layers of
clothes that are falling apart, because he has an
accumulation of clothes over the 1800s, 1900s, 21st century,
he’s just accumulating rags, and he needed to look like a
lump, like a bunch of rags thrown on the floor, then come
alive, and out of all these rags comes out this incredibly
glistening and viscerally biological appendage that then
drains the first victim. And that’s the way we started
guiding the process of designing The Master. And the more we
go into the season, the more you see of him and the more you
discover layer after layer of that creature design.
R. Rubenstein: And what about the other characters?
G. del Toro: Well, I knew that the older the vampires stay
alive, the older that they stay alive, the more they lose
their humanity. They start literally by losing their heart.
Their heart is suffocated by a vampire heart that overtakes
the functions. And this was important metaphorically for me
because the beacon that guides these vampires to their
victims is love. Love is what makes them seek their victims.
They go to the people they love the most. So they turn their
instinct that is most innately human into the most inhuman
feeding mechanism, so their heart is dead.
Then shortly thereafter their digestive system is overtaken.
Then, as we do in an early episode, their genitals fall off.
And their excretion system becomes really, really efficient
in the way that ticks, or lower forms of life that feed on
blood do, a tick in order to feed needs to eliquate itself,
and they are eliquating while they are feeding. And in the
series that comes with the big splashes of ammonia infused
liquid that they expel while they’re feeding. And then I
know that they lose their soft tissue, their ears start
falling off, their nose, if they’ve been alive for several
years their nose rots and falls away, and they develop a
tracheal opening to vent the extra heat from the metabolism
and to project the stinger. So, I take a very biological
approach. It’s not just, oh, that looks cool. I try to have
it make sense biologically in the design.
R. Rubenstein: Well, that is quite astounding. And thank you
for sharing it with me.
G. del Toro: Thank you. And you notice they lose their hair
because their body heat is so big it consumes the fat in the
scalp, burns the roots, and they then change color because
they lose their red cells. One of the things Carlton and I
have the most fun in writing the novels is Carlton would
call me any time he needed a biological angle or an
explanation. And we would talk about it for a while, because
I really love and know these vampires well.
R. Rubenstein: Well, that’s just amazing. Thank you so much
for sharing.
G. del Toro: Thank you.
Moderator: Our next question comes from the line of Terry
Stanley from LA Times. Please go ahead.
T. Stanley: Hello, gentlemen.
G. del Toro: Hello.
C. Cuse: Hi.
T. Stanley: I just wanted to ask you quickly about the
billboards that ran in a couple of markets, certainly here
in LA, and maybe in New York as well, with the eyeball worm.
That’s absolutely wigged some people out.
G. del Toro: Yes.
T. Stanley: I was wondering what you thought about that. Did
you expect such a reaction? Does that maybe set you up for
what people might think of the show? They might be just
completely twitchy and wigged out by it. Did you agree with
the decision to swap out some of those billboards?
G. del Toro: Carlton?
C. Cuse: I think that the advertising was bold and
imaginative, and clearly not for everyone. And I think that
FX does a credible job marketing their shows and I think
they wanted to convey that the show was edgy and bold, and
out there. And I certainly understand that it might have
been too far out there for some people, but I personally
liked it. But I understand that it was necessary for them to
make some accommodations if some people didn’t like it.
G. del Toro: I feel the same way. I trust FX. I think they
have a really great sense of, A) who their audience is; B)
what their type of advertisement is, and they’ve generated
some pretty extreme and chilling images in the past. Carlton
says it’s not for everyone, and I think that as much as I
think the show has many, many layers of appeal, in my
opinion, and certainly the more we go into the season the
more we go into developing these things we do go to
territories that are pretty extreme and graphic, in the
first scene we’re talking about a biological takeover and a
viral takeover and a body invasion series, and we go into
places that are extreme. And they are extreme because we’re
dealing with a fear that is, I think, essential, which is a
biological invasion. It’s not a knife slicing someone open.
Literally when you come to think about it, it is the concept
that is disturbing, the worm with the eye, the juxtaposition
of those two things is very powerful. And it is
representative at least to the most piqued sort of invasive
horror that we do explore in the show.
Moderator: Our next question comes from the line of Ernie
Estrella from BuzzFocus.com. Please go ahead.
E. Estrella: Hi, guys. Thanks for your time.
G. del Toro: Thank you.
E. Estrella: I wanted to ask you about revisiting the books
as you were making this series, whether or not there were
elements within the book that you wanted to preserve for the
book experience and keep that a unique experience, when
mining things for the TV show was there some kind of
discussion between you guys as far as what to translate and
then what to preserve of the book?
C. Cuse: No, I don’t think so. Well, there was a lot of
conversation about what to translate. We never discussed
preserving something for the books. The experience of
reading a book is always unique. I believe that you render a
version of the story when you read a book in a way that is
unique and special to each person who reads it. And I think
the experience of reading those books is going to be always
separate from what the show’s going to be like. I think we
basically, my approach with the series was let’s take the
best of what was in the books and let’s figure out how we
can translate that into the scripted form and make that into
the best version of a TV series. And in many cases it was
also, okay, here’s an idea that’s in this book that’s really
great, how do we actually embellish this, how do we take
this and make this into even more of a story?
So, the books were, and remain, an incredible source of
departure and inspiration. But again, it’s a very artistic
process to translate and adapt a book into a series, and I
think we really felt very early on that the two just had to
be their own thing. And we would use the books as far as we
could and then we would add stuff as it made sense, and
that’s what we did.
G. del Toro: As far as myself, obviously we have to choose
what stories and what quirks you tell and not tell from the
book. There are, believe it or not, far more disturbing
moments in the book, here and there, than there are in the
series, because some of them are very powerful when you read
about them, but they are almost unbearable if you were going
to stage them the way they are described in the book. So,
believe it or not we did exercise restraint.
And the other one is that we have in the three books at
least one or two instances of an epistolary device, being a
diary, or a letter, or a document being part of the
narrative. And we threw that away to have a right here,
right now type of narrative that I think lends itself much
better to the TV series.
Moderator: Our next question comes from the line of Judy
Manning from Your Entertainment Corner. Please go ahead.
J. Manning: Hi, thank you so much for taking the call today.
C. Cuse: Thank you.
G. del Toro: Thank you.
J. Manning: I watched the first four episodes, and this all
with a compliment, it is disgustingly fantastic.
G. del Toro: Thank you.
J. Manning: I absolutely am just waiting for the next
episodes to come on. How involved were both of you in
casting, because the production value in just even the first
episode is beyond anything that I’ve ever seen on TV and
it’s just wonderful. But the cast is fantastic, how involved
were you in casting?
C. Cuse: Guillermo and I cast the entire show together over
almost a year. And again, it was another one of those
advantages of having a lot of time to prep the show. We had
a lot of time to thoughtfully consider who was going to be
in our cast. Also we have to give a lot of credit to the
wonderful April Webster, our casting director, she cast
Lost, and she came and did our show. And she has wonderful
taste and a wonderful ability to find actors.
We met a lot of actors and we spent a lot of time discussing
and considering who would be right for these roles, and as I
said, we did it thoughtfully over a long period of time. And
it’s just a hugely important part of the process. The longer
I’ve done television—I used to have a lot more hubris about
the power of writing, you know that it would conquer all,
but I don’t anymore. I really think that as good a job as
you do as a writer, you’re absolutely indebted to the actors
that have to deliver that material. And we were incredibly
fortunate to get some wonderful name actors like Corey
Stoll, but to also find some amazing discoveries like Miguel
Gomez and Richard Sammel.
G. del Toro: Yes. I think that we have a great collaboration
with April, and we cast everything together. Literally we
had sessions of casting in the same office, and in the case
of at least two or three of the parts we basically didn’t
cast a wide net, we knew who we wanted, and when meeting the
actors proceeded to offer them the role right there on the
first meeting. And it happened again and again. We saw the
casting as a mixture of going for the unexpected. Or, like
in the case of Sean Astin, we said I think his character and
the turn of his character is really feeding on his persona
and his baggage in a great way, he’s so reliable, so
adorable, and his character has to do things that are
ambivalent. In the case of Corey, and almost more cases than
I have ever seen in a project, we were completely in sync in
the casting.
Moderator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line
of Alex Intner from The Michigan Daily. Please go ahead.
A. Intner Hi. Thank you both so much for taking our
questions today. I was wondering about the David Bradley
character in particular. Will he become more involved in the
narrative as time goes on? Will he become more involved with
Corey Stoll and his arc, or will he be doing his own thing
for most of the season?
C. Cuse: Oh, no, no. Part of the fun of the way that the
storytelling is structured is that this mosaic of characters
that we’re following, I certainly hope the audience will
enjoy as much as we do this idea of waiting for when they’re
going to cross and how they’re going to cross and how
they’re going to connect to each other. And we spent a lot
of time figuring out in the writers’ room at what point we
were going to have these characters intersect and how
they’re going to intersect. So, yes, David Bradley is a huge
part of the show, he’s a wonderful actor. And I think
Guillermo and I, we wanted a guy who wasn’t going to be the
sort of sweet, kindly, grandfather, sort of kindly mentor
figure that we’ve seen in a lot of shows. We wanted
Setrakian to be a bad ass, and David Bradley was the perfect
piece of casting, and he plays a hugely significant role in
the series.
G. del Toro: It was clear from the start that we didn’t want
the wise, gentle father figure mentor. We wanted a guy that
had a lot of edges and that became a bristling sort of hub
for all the characters. And I think literally every
character ends up circulating around the figure of
Setrakian, even Corey and Mia, they connect with the rest of
the characters through Setrakian. And what we did that I
enjoy a lot is that we have false crossings of characters,
like characters meet briefly and they don’t have to come
together yet. That is the case clearly with Miguel’s
character, Gus, who meets two of our main characters and yet
he doesn’t become one of the gang right away. And I think
that’s really nice.
But Setrakian is, in many, many ways the one element of the
show that goes through the mythology of the ancient and the
modern but brings a very, very hard edge to the figure of
the man who knows. He’s not whimsical, wise. He’s impulsive,
he’s aggressive, he’s really, really edgy, and capable of
big, great sweeping actions. And casting David, who is the
most vital guy, I think, and no one would get offended if I
say he’s the only member of the cast that unfailingly skis
in his free time, or dances salsa at the drop of a hat, I
mean this guy, regardless of his chronological age, has
incredible vitality, and that feeds into the role.
Moderator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line
of Sundi Rose-Holt from TV Megasite. Please go ahead.
S. Holt: Hey, y’all. How are you?
G. del Toro: Very good, thank you.
S. Holt: Good. You guys have talked a lot about the network
of FX and stuff, and I wanted to ask you, because a lot of
fans of FX like of The Americans, American Horror Story, and
Sons of Anarchy, have some pretty specific expectations
about a show that they’re going to watch on FX. And I was
wondering if you felt any kind of pressure to conform to
those expectations, or to perform to them, or how are you
dealing? Because they already have sort of a set expectation
of a show they’re going to see on this network.
C. Cuse: Well, I don’t know if I agree with the premise. I
think that if by specific expectations you mean they expect
it to be good, then I do agree with you. I think FX has
become really a purveyor of quality drama, so in that sense
I think the bar at FX is high. But I think that as a creator
all you can do is make the best version of the show that you
know how, and this show is kind of a combination of
Guillermo and my aesthetics, and I think we set out to make
the show that we would want to see, in our guts we were like
“this is the show that we like, that we care about.”
And I think that in some sense that the decision of whether
it fit for FX was made when FX bought it. I think John
Landgraf made that decision by deciding that he wanted to
buy this property. There was a very clear road map. Not only
that, John Landgraf read all three books before he decided
that he was going to be our partner in this endeavor, and so
he knew exactly what he was getting, and so he’s the one who
I think made the decision that, yes, The Strain as a story
fits into the portfolio of shows that are on FX. And then it
was really up to Guillermo and me to deliver our best
version of that show for those guys.
G. del Toro: I understand what you mean. I think that the FX
brand, of which I am a consumer, I love it, as evidenced by
the way I cast my movies, be it with Charlie Hunnam, or
Charlie Day, or appearing as a guest actor in Sunny in
Philadelphia, I know the brand.
And I think that what we got from our meetings with John
Landgraf, as I said, is that he said, “look, we are very,
very creator content driven,” and I know that you need to
have an edge to belong in the FX brand. But I think that at
the same time we are bringing viscerally and in terms of
scope new stuff to the brand, helping it define what the
breadth of what they do is. And we wanted to bring big
production value and a sense of visceral aesthetics that
feels manicured and very actively designed. As opposed to
more reality based and viscerally of this world, we needed
very extreme aesthetics in order to fit a storyline and
characters and things that you cannot safely just toss into
the real world and expect them to stick. So, I think that we
do belong, in a beautiful way, in content that is creator
driven, or encouraging the creation of individual voices in
the sense that we keep a very manicured and carefully
designed look, but we go to very edgy places with the
content.
Moderator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line
of Brandon Rowe from Spoiler TV. Please go ahead.
B. Rowe: Hi, thanks for taking my call. Obviously today pop
culture is really inundated with lots of vampire stories, I
think Carlton said that earlier, so my question to each of
you is, what makes The Strain special for you?
G. del Toro: Carlton?
C. Cuse: I think The Strain upends the current conception of
the vampire genre. As I said before, I think we’ve had our
fill of romantic, brooding, sparkling, depressed vampire
characters, which those are really sort of like love stories
sprinkled with a genre. The idea of sort of re-imagining the
vampires, going back in a way that the roots of what
vampires are, that they are scary, dangerous creatures, that
was something that was incredibly compelling for me. That
was something that really drew me to the project, and the
idea that when you see these things it’s not good.
So, on one level, and I also love all the stuff that
Guillermo said before about the biology and stuff, that it
was also thought through, again, I think Guillermo’s just a
master of creature creation, and so that the prospects of
working with creatures that were unique and so complicated
and so cleverly imagined was an enormous appeal, and that
conception of them was really vastly different than what we
see in other shows. And that completely appealed to me.
And then I would just add one other layer, which is that on
a show like The Walking Dead they have zombies, and those
zombies are capable of doing a few limited things. I think
one of the things that’s really interesting about this
story, that really inspired me as a show runner and
storyteller, is the layers of mythology. And as the show
goes on we not only learn about the functioning of these
vampires, but we also come to understand that there’s a
hierarchy of vampires, and then there’s a history to these
vampires, and there’s a mythology behind the existence of
these vampires. And as that unfolds and as we began to
understand that these creatures are not only scary and
dangerous but also sentient and smart, that adds just a
whole other layer to the forces of antagonism, which just
makes for great storytelling.
G. del Toro: Yes, I think that obviously this is a mythology
I’ve been living with for many, many years. And I think that
if I have to find vampires similar to what we are doing, the
only other relation I can find is my own creation in Blade
II, which comes from the same set of concepts, albeit a much
more limited number of ideas we’re able to go into to fit
that universe. But very rarely do we get to see a savage
form of vampirism in either film or TV, or basically any
other medium, so I think the degree to which this mythology
and biology, and basically lore of this type of vampire, is
laid out is really quite unique and evolving.
And I think that, God willing, we have the chance to
continue finding our footing and expanding and correcting
and continue to develop what we do in the first season, but
I think there is a lot of that breadth to what we’re
attempting here. And we make it very clear from the first
few hours of content that these creatures are not the
romantic version of vampirism, or the glamorous version of
how fun it could be to live forever, but a very painful,
very biologically challenging species. And finally, as we go
into it I think that we reveal to the audience that there’s
more than just the way they look, the secret history of
these creatures is revealed little by little.
Moderator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line
of Ashley Powell from Cable Fax. Please go ahead.
A. Powell: Thanks so much for speaking with us. I’m a huge
admirer of both you guys’ creative work, so this is totally
exciting.
G. del Toro: Thank you.
C. Cuse: Thanks.
A. Powell: What I wanted to ask, some would say you could
have taken the series to HBO, Fox, even the big screen, so
what about FX made you decide the network was the right
place for The Strain?
G. del Toro: We had a fantastic first meeting, if I may say
so. We had an incredible meeting in which the very head of
the network and everybody in that room knew patently well
and intimately the three books. And yet they were excited by
Carlton, they were excited by the possibility of not just
doing the books but where would Carlton take it as a show
runner, they were excited about, okay, that’s the universe,
but we see many more possibilities than that. That made it
very unique in our eyes. And they celebrated the aspects of
the series that were edgier, or less of a kind that we have
seen before.
And the other thing for me that was unique is I’m a follower
of the brand, I’m a big FX fan, and they give you time to
find your footing. They give you time to establish,
especially in a genre like this, you know you cannot just do
everything at once, reinvent everything at once. You either
reinvent the characters in a genre story, or you reinvent
the generic traits with characters that you’re able to place
in the normal canon of the genre and then little by little
evolve those characters, and that needs time. And FX has
been known to be supportive of series that find their
footing and creatively allow them to explore anything from
characters you’ve seen before that then transform into
things that are new, or concepts that are very new that go
to daring places. So, it made it a unique place for the
show.
C. Cuse: And I would just add to everything that Guillermo
said, that again we were presenting them with a very
specific business model about how we wanted to approach the
show, that we wanted to have the show last between three and
five seasons, that we needed them to spend a bunch of money
up front to do the R&D and the work that was necessary to do
the world building for our show, and they would have to
spend money up front on writing a bunch of scripts. And they
jumped in wholeheartedly and they embraced the way in which
we wanted to produce the show, as well as our creative
vision, and we felt incredible confidence coming out of our
meetings with them that they were the exact right partners
for us.
Moderator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line
of Jasmine Alyce from Fanbolt Entertainment. Please go
ahead.
J. Alyse: Hi, thank you so much for talking with us today. I
just wanted to know, it seems like the show also focuses on
personal crises and how the characters respond to that, just
as much as it does the supernatural elements, they often
have their own things going on in their lives. But I wanted
to know more about how you plan to maintain the balance
between the supernatural elements and the characters’
personal lives and how they’re handling what’s going on
there as well throughout the season.
C. Cuse: I think that the personal lives of the characters
are very important. And I think that television is about
forming a bond between the audience and the characters that
exist in the world of the show, and I would say that on Lost
we spent 80% of the time talking about the characters and
maybe 20% of the time talking about the mythology, at the
most. And I think that that’s why the show was more popular
than being just a narrow niche genre show, and the audience
was concerned about whether Kate was going to end up with
Jack or Sawyer as much as they were about whether they were
going to get eaten by the smoke monster.
In this show I think we’ve tried to take the same approach.
We want the audience to engage in our characters, we want to
understand who they are, what their lives are like, where
they came from. I think as much as these vampires are
causing upheaval in the city, they’re also causing upheaval
in the personal lives of the characters, and we’re seeing
these characters have to come to terms with the upending of
the social, emotional, personal structures of their lives.
And that stuff is a very important part of our storytelling.
And again, we spend a lot of time in the writers’ room
talking about who these characters are, what they want,
apart from just getting rid of the vampire plague, and I
think as we go downstream with the show one of the things
that excites me, and I know excites the other writers, is
getting a chance to even get further into who these
characters are and watch their relationships unfold with
each other as they’re in the middle of this incredible
crisis.
G. del Toro: Well, I think that it’s very hard to define the
dynamic of a show until you are five or six episodes into
it. But I can say that we tried to balance very hard small
moments, for example, the moment where Eichorst, the German
vampire, meets with Setrakian through a pane of glass in the
visitation booth, or the moment the father receives his lost
daughter coming back home, with bigger action set pieces.
Now, that balance continues throughout the series. I think
we are in some degree completed all the way through Episode
13, and we’ve seen that we have successfully maintained
quiet character moments with bigger moments. How successful
they are obviously is dependent on your empathy with those
characters, but the fact is as a genre piece we need to have
identifiable characters, the scientist, the sidekick, this
and that. But we also go to characters that normally you
don’t get in a series like this, a case in point, for
example, Miguel Gomez as Gus, a character that seems to be
on the fringe of the tale and gains his own footing, the
very character of Setrakian, which is a character you’ve
seen before but has a twist that you haven’t seen. It is my
hope that in the evolution of the series Corey Stoll, which
is the square-jawed, troubled hero that you may identify
from other series, evolves into places that are much darker
and challenging, both for the character and the actor.
But that balance occurs over time. And I can say with great
pride and great hope that we have made it a point to
maintain the balance through the series and hopefully take
it even further as we go along.
Moderator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line
of Lauren Berkley from GeeksAreSexy.net. Please go ahead.
L. Berkley: Hello, guys. Thank you so much for doing this
today. My question is for Guillermo. Guillermo, I know that
you were raised by your Catholic grandmother—
G. del Toro: Yes.
L. Berkley: I was curious as to how much of the religion you
grew up around has influenced your storytelling over your
extensive body of work?
G. del Toro: I think very much.
L. Berkley: I think so too.
G. del Toro: I do. I know that as a Catholic the main
mythology I seize upon, the way I understand the world,
comes from that upbringing, including The Strain, which goes
to very definite mythological and spiritual places in the
third novel, it comes all from that. I really like to think
about what it is that makes you right or wrong in this world
and all that moral ambivalence is in the heroes.
As I said again and again in these interviews, one of my
fascinations with the character of Corey is that he’s a
character that is very certain but somewhat emotionally
remote in the series. And in many ways Setrakian, who’s more
outlandish, should be relatable in the way that Corey has
too much certainty of himself, and little by little he goes
to a place of spiritual doubt, and ultimately enlightenment,
in my opinion, as a character. So that’s definitely inspired
very specifically by Catholic lore.
And I’m thinking, one of my favorite books in the Bible, and
one of the most mysterious books in the Bible that I relate
to the most is the Book of Job, in which a man of faith is
basically stripped of everything before finding a direct
line to God’s voice. And I don’t want to sound like you’re
about to step into a Catholic symposium dissertation with
vampires, but ultimately that speaks very highly to the arc
of Corey. So you need him to start the series on a place of
full certainty, and end up in a place of spiritual
discovery.
Moderator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we
will have time for a couple more questions. Our next
question comes from the line of Sabienna Bowman from TV
Equals. Please go ahead.
S. Bowman: Hi, guys. Thanks so much for talking with us
today. It’s a pleasure to speak with both of you.
C. Cuse: Thank you.
S. Bowman: My question is for Guillermo. I’m sorry I
mispronounced your name.
G. del Toro: No, you didn’t.
S. Bowman: Yes, sir. I’m wondering, what was it like for you
personally to see this story that you’ve worked on and you
had on the page come to life on the screen?
G. del Toro: It was really beautiful to go through the
process with new partnerships. I think that it’s great to do
it with a partner that has been so close to the books, like
Chuck, and someone that seems to have such a strong and
revitalizing take as Carlton. I think it has really been
quite energizing for me to see that. I think that Carlton
and I both come from a world where partnerships are
basically a single-minded approach to storytelling. Carlton
and myself are used to storytelling on the audiovisual
universe in an absolute way, and this partnership has
required truly growth and opening into, wow, our views are
enriched by both of us having really strong points of view,
which is not unlike the partnership I have with Chuck Hogan
to write a four-handed novel is just as strong and balanced
as the balance that I think Carlton and I have at this
stage.
And it has been, quite frankly, great to hear “No” from
Carlton, to say, “No, now listen this is why we’re not going
to do this.” And to learn from that, to say, wow, I never
thought about it in that way. The idiosyncrasies of being a
film maker and director, or a writer is that you domineer
basically what happens, you want the character to go right
and crash a car. And this is truly one of the most complete
collaboration processes I’ve experienced with the
triumvirate that is Chuck, Carlton, and myself. It’s hard to
define where every territory ends, but it’s not hard at all
to know that each of us brings a different strength to the
project, and we trust each other. So, that process has been
the most beautiful difference between putting the project on
the page and seeing it fortify as a series, that you don’t
exactly land where you thought you would land but you land
on a place that feels incredibly right.
Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, our last question comes from
the line of Scott Huntington from ScreenInvasion.com. Please
go ahead.
S. Huntington: Okay, thanks guys. My question is, these days
so many people view TV as an online social event and are
constantly reviewing and Tweeting about shows in real time
as they happen. I’m wondering, will either of you be
following along with conversations on Twitter or other
social media, or how do you measure the audience reactions?
[Background noise on the telephone line]
C. Cuse: I think that your phone, that you’ve got some noise
there. Look, I think that both Guillermo and I are very
hopeful that fans are going to embrace the show, and we’ll
be looking out there to see how people react. And I think
it’s also instructive as we hopefully go forward with the
second season of the show to see what people like and don’t
like. I think the advent of social media has created a real
dialogue around television shows, and I think that certainly
there was a lot of beneficial aspects of that that I
experienced when I was doing Lost, and I expect the same
from The Strain.
I’m personally enormously curious to see how people react to
all sorts of things. And it’s fun, too, because when you
create something on film and you put it out there you have a
certain expectation, and sometimes you get exactly what you
expect back in terms of reaction, sometimes you get
surprising reactions. And we’ve been working on this project
for almost two years, and so the idea that we’re now going
to see what people think of it and get their honest, true,
and complete feedback is very exciting to me.
G. del Toro: I think that when we started the journey on the
screen early in the novels we started in 2006, and you
really don’t get an immediate reaction that is a dialogue
that fast with the books or the comic adaptation. I think
that the fact that we can see the audience reacting to it in
an immediate way is going to be in the mid-to-long term
incredibly useful. I’m a social media shut-in, I don’t use
Twitter, I don’t have a Facebook page, I don’t have any of
those things, so I’m socially inept in that way. But I
certainly am aware of the Internet reaction. I don’t respond
because I don’t have the mediums to respond at hand, but I
do read the feedback and I do think you have to be able to
feed on it and react to it in the proper way. Obviously, on
a chapter to chapter engaging, it can be as disorienting as
a super fast tennis match, like it, not like it, like it,
not like it. But ultimately as the first season plays out
and people find that they are listening to the real voice of
the series, we can find things that we did right and
connected, and we can find out things we did wrong and learn
from it.
The main beauty of television for me, and what Carlton has
been repeating to me almost as a mantra, is a version of
“take it slow,” a version of, I come from a world that
within the first three days of a movie hitting an audience
you have defined its immediate interaction, the box office
results, the gauging, and the release of the movie’s done.
With Carlton it’s been, look, we can always learn and
correct direction, we can always add on, we can fortify.
None of the traits of a show are set in stone. All of them
are malleable to define the property itself. And that’s
really captivating and unique to television. So, I do expect
great feedback either way from an audience that will help us
create a show that delivers the experience and the
uniqueness of the narrative of The Strain books in a new
medium. So I’m very much looking forward to it.
C. Cuse: Yes, what Guillermo said is exactly right.
Television is a very organic medium, and you have the
opportunities, you have a long term ongoing relationship
with your audience. And I think we’re just now entering that
phase with the show, but hopefully this dialogue is going to
continue for a long time to come.
G. del Toro: Yes, I always say jokingly about myself that I
do not like the idea of film making as a brand. I like the
idea of film makers becoming an acquired taste for an
audience. I think that I myself think I am an acquired
taste, and I love being that because I’ve enjoyed, over two
decades, a very close relationship with the audience that
likes what I do. And I always pay close attention to their
reaction, to feed from it and to go into new ventures.
D. Pagone: All right, I want to thank Guillermo and Carlton
for joining us today. I’m sorry we couldn’t get to
everybody. This was one of the biggest calls we’ve ever
done, so I apologize if your question was not answered. But,
again, Carlton and Guillermo, thank you.
G. del Toro: Thank you guys.
C. Cuse: Thank you.
D. Pagone: The Strain Sunday night on FX, guys. Thank you
very much.
G. del Toro: Thank you.
C. Cuse: Bye-bye.
D. Pagone: Bye-bye.
Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our
conference for today. Thank you for your participation and
for using the AT&T Executive TeleConference Service. You may
now disconnect.
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