FILM & TV - The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast

What is love? How do the relationships we have early in our lives affect us for years to come?

Meaghan Oppenheimer is a screenwriter, executive producer, and showrunner who tells stories driven by flawed, deeply human characters and the relationships between them. She’s behind Hulu’s drama series Tell Me Lies, starring Grace Van Patten and Jackson White and adapted from Carola Lovering’s novel of the same name. Her earlier projects include the 2015 film We Are Your Friends, starring Zac Efron as a passionate young DJ, and the 2018 drama series Queen America, set in Oppenheimer’s hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma and starring Catherine Zeta-Jones. Season 2 of Tell Me Lies will premiere September 4th on Hulu. Oppenheimer is also currently developing the upcoming Hulu show Second Wife, to star Tom Ellis and Emma Roberts.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

For those who haven't seen season one of Tell Me Lies, just give us a little bit of background on Lucy and Stephen and their circle of friends. 

MEAGHAN OPPENHEIMER

Tell Me Lies really is about obsessive love and the ramifications of the things that we do to ourselves and to other people when we allow ourselves to get completely lost inside of another person. It’s also a coming of age story about people who are experiencing sexual awakenings and love, or what they think is love, for the first time. You have Lucy, a college freshman who is   sort of emotionally stunted because of a few things in her life, and she meets Stephen, who is a very charming narcissist, who has a lot of his own issues. So the show is about her getting completely entangled in this obsession with him, and the way that it pulls her further and further away from herself, and causes her to really undermine her own happiness and throw away any power that she has. She ends up betraying a lot of friendships; the rest of the cast make up their college friends.

Season one is definitely more of a love story than season two is. I keep saying season one is  the love story, season two is sort of a war story. It’s about these college kids who are making these choices that in the moment seem very mundane, but have much bigger consequences later on. Often when people write or make movies about romances with young adults, I think they are very flippant about it and don't take it seriously. But I think that those friendships and romantic relationships are some of the most important ones because they really set the stage for the rest of our lives. If your first relationship is incredibly toxic and damaging, it can take you years to  figure out that that's not normal, and that that's not actually how relationships are meant to be.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

You weave stories so well that your audience can imagine themselves into these situations they have never experienced themselves. What does your writing and creative process look like?

MEAGHAN OPPENHEIMER

There’s a lot of sitting alone in a room and just thinking about crazy ideas. I spend a lot of time just listening to music and coming up with stories. I think with this show, there's an element where I’ve found our audience really wants to be shocked. I also found this when we were writing the first season; you hand things in to the Hulu executives and the 20th executives and  people really liked to be completely surprised and completely shocked. And so it sort of became this game of, how can we do something that lives in the real world - that is believable enough that it could have happened or has happened to people we know - but then turn it up a notch so it really catches people off guard. It’s been fun to try to put things in the show that people don't see coming. It's hard to do that nowadays.

But for the most part, I just always try to think about, who is this character? What do they want?  Thinking about what a character wants is always the first drive, because everything we do comes from something we want, whether we're telling the truth or lying, whether it's conscious or subconscious. If you just try to think about, ‘what does this character want, and what are they willing to do to get it?’ then you can let the plot unfold organically. 

I acted as a kid, and it definitely was what taught me how to write, because I was always reading scripts and reading plays. I learned a lot about what actually feels realistic to say and what doesn't. I think a mistake that a lot of writers make is they don't say any of the words out loud, and so when someone actually says it out loud, you realize, these words don't even fit in my mouth. Certain sentences literally feel awkward and you realize no one would ever speak this way. And so as I'm writing, I'm definitely quietly whispering everything to myself, not acting it out, but just making sure it feels like it can flow, and that it won't be too difficult for an actor to actually say. I'm not always trying to get into the mind of each character, I'm not stepping into their psyche, but with all of them I’m thinking, what do I relate to about this character? And if I don't relate to them, who do I know that feels similar, and what would that person do? So I always have to draw on my own experiences, or people that I know. I pretty much always do. I write about relationships and love and family, and while the stories are not autobiographical, the emotions are. Pretty much all the emotions that are in Tell Me Lies are things that I have felt before to different degrees. 

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What is it like writing for actors you know, like Grace Van Patten and Jackson White in Tell Me Lies, who are also in a relationship in real life, and your husband Tom Ellis? How much are you drawing on different things you've learned about these actors along the way - their energies and what they bring to a project - so that you can write to their strengths?

MEAGHAN OPPENHEIMER

The whole Tell Me Lies cast, they're all my friends, I know them all. I know their real lives, and I have to put that completely to the side when I'm writing. I have to be very, very disciplined about not mixing those two in my mind and not confusing what Grace would do and what Lucy would do, because they're so different. But with that said, I think once you start working with a character or with an actor, writing their dialogue, you know what the actor's voice sounds like and what their mannerisms are and the tone of their voice. You know how it will sound in their mouth. So writing towards the strengths of different actors, I think, is something you have to learn how to do. I loved the first season, but that’s why I do think the second season is much better. Knowing who these characters were and knowing what everyone's strengths were was very helpful, like knowing with Grace that she's able to say so much without saying anything. Her face is just so expressive. There were times where I would get a note like, can you explain this moment more? And I’d say, you'll be able to see it on Grace's face. It's nice knowing you have an actor like that.

On Nurturing Education and the Importance of the Arts

English and theater were always the subjects I gravitated towards, and history, because history is just one big story. I had a teacher named Gary Sweeney at Holland Hall, who is one of the most impactful people I've met. He gave me a love of theater that I didn't have before, and showed me texts and plays that I never would have come across as a teenager in Tulsa. 

I had a great education, but I think there was also a structure that could be very rigid. There was so much that I stressed over as a kid that didn't end up mattering; the hours of homework or the stakes around a math test or a science quiz. And I think there are schools now that are  changing it, but I do wish there was a way to educate young people without giving them the anxieties of an adult, and allowing them to still be kids without this feeling of, if I fail this test, my entire life is going to be over, because it’s not. I have a nine-month-old baby, and we talk a lot about when we put her in school, trying to find a more alternative education where she is able to learn what she needs to learn, but also to love learning, not just putting in hours for hours’ sake.

In terms of educating people about art and teaching art, I worked with girls who were at a home, many of them were orphans, and they had really been taught to not take up space and to be quiet and inwards. Watching the way that they blossomed by doing performance - the way it teaches you to be loud and use your voice and take up space - they didn’t want to become actors or playwrights, but it was just incredibly liberating for them. I can't imagine what I would be like if I hadn't been involved in some level of art as a kid, because I think it taught me how to find my voice and also understand people who are very different from me.

Storytelling is the most important thing in my life. I think it's how we learn about ourselves. I think it's how we learn to empathize with other people. We can't experience everything someone is, everyone in the world is going through, but we can read a book about it and open our brains up to a different corner of the human experience that we would never have contact with in our  day-to-day lives. Building empathy is one of the most important outcomes of art.

How can we free ourselves from fear and social barriers to live more fulfilling and meaningful lives? What does it take to overcome trauma and turn it into triumph, and failure into reinvention? How can we shine a light on the marginalized and misunderstood to create social change that transforms the lives of women?

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is an Oscar and Emmy award-winning Canadian-Pakistani filmmaker whose work highlights extraordinary women and their stories. She earned her first Academy Award in 2012 for her documentary Saving Face, about the Pakistani women targeted by brutal acid attacks. Today, Obaid-Chinoy is the first female film director to have won two Oscars by the age of 37. In 2023, it was announced that Obaid-Chinoy will direct the next Star Wars film starring Daisy Ridley. Her most recent project, co-directed alongside Trish Dalton, is the new documentary Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge, about the trailblazing Belgian fashion designer who invented the wrap dress 50 years ago. The film had its world premiere as the opening night selection at the 2024 Tribeca Festival on June 5th and premiered on June 25th on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ internationally. A product of Obaid-Chinoy's incredibly talented female filmmaking team, Woman in Charge provides an intimate look into Diane von Furstenberg’s life and accomplishments and chronicles the trajectory of her signature dress from an innovative fashion statement to a powerful symbol of feminism.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

You tell the story of Diane von Fürstenberg: Woman in Charge, and it's truly fascinating because it's not just one story but many. It encompasses 50 years since the creation of the wrap dress. It’s the story of Diane, but it’s also her mother’s history as a Holocaust survivor and how she instilled in Diane resilience, imagination, and drive. You tell so many layered interesting stories, 1950s and 60s in Europe, 1970s in America in the era of sexual freedom and the hedonistic New York scene. It's the story of a businesswoman, a princess, a marriage, reinvention, and a dress that became a symbol of women's empowerment and liberation. In the way that Diane Von Furstenberg created a timeless dress that became a symbol of freedom for women worldwide, you present us with the beautiful life of a single working mother, allowing us to see ourselves in her vulnerabilities and struggles, inspiring us to chart our own path and find our voice on the journey to becoming women in charge. With all these intricate stories, how did you find your way into her story?

SHARMEEN OBAID-CHINOY

As a filmmaker, I've always made films about extraordinary women whose lives are faced with extenuating circumstances who've had adversity thrown at them and who've risen to the occasion. And when I began to look at Diane's story, for me, Diane is a fashion designer, but she's so much more. Her central ethos is woman before fashion, and we felt it was very important to take that ethos and weave it into the spine of our film, and make it about the woman. 

The Making of Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge

From the first time we sat down with Diane, she's such a natural storyteller that she began at her birth, which was a triumph because her mother had come out of Auschwitz only 18 months before she was born. As we began to tell Diane's story, we realized that it was so intrinsically linked with the history, politics, culture of the world, whether it was Europe in the 1950s and 60s, or America in the 70s and 80s. We felt that while we were telling Diane's story, we also wanted to tell the bigger story of what was happening in the world at that time. And so you see that when you watch the film, there are many layers, whether it's graphics, or music, or archival footage, or photographs that we’ve used. Together, they weave a story of what it was like to live at that time. And that is a very conscious decision that Trish Dalton, my co-director, and I made when we were designing the film.

Towards the end of our filming, Diane took us on a walk, and as we walked through the woods, we ended up at a flat ground that had a stone wall around it. And Diane looked at me and said, “This is my resting place.” We knew that in telling Dan's story, we had a beginning, middle, and end, and that had been clearly defined by Diane herself. And that was the natural arc of the film that we chose to tell. 

Once Diane was ready to tell her story, we spent a lot of time talking with the camera off, and spending time with her, traveling with her, having meals with her and really peeling the onion to get to the heart of Diane. At its core, it is also a film about four generations of women. It's about Diane's mother, it's about Diane, it's about Diane's daughter, and her granddaughter. We wanted all those voices in the film, and her family was incredible in that they allowed us into the inner sanctum of their lives.

Trish and I were really spoiled for choice because Diane has, unlike so many other people, documented every single minute of her life. In the basement of her house, there is a long room that has all her diaries, photographs, videos, mementos, letters from her children, and scrapbooks. And so when we began telling this story, we really went deep into her personal archives. That is why the film is so rich; that is why you see Diane when she's two, three, four years old, you hear from her mother. That is why, as Diane goes on a journey from Europe to America, you go through her scrapbooks and you see her own personal journey and her children's journey. 

And I think in making this film, every single person who we called whose voice we wanted to include wanted to contribute. They wanted to say something about Diane, because she had left such a mark on their lives. Our producers’ jobs, Tracy and Fabiola, was to juggle those schedules. How do you juggle the schedule of secretary Hillary Clinton with Oprah Winfrey? How do you make sure that Anderson Cooper and Mark Jacobs, you know, in the filming time that we had, that we could put all of these people together? But Diane's friendships run deep with people, and people made sure to make time.

You know, she was a single mother, and I think that young single mothers watching this film will feel for Diane, especially single mothers who are trying to be entrepreneurs, and creating businesses, and trying to find their way into the world to be able to raise a family. To do that as an immigrant in a new country is challenging, and Diane shows you just how challenging it is. In making choices about living her life, in being with her children or expanding her business, there were sacrifices that were made, and those sacrifices are boldly put on the screen for viewers to watch.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

You've told the stories of marginalized communities in Pakistan and women who have risen above their personal circumstances to highlight issues such as honor killings and acid attacks, or challenging stories in war zones, like children of the Taliban. As a storyteller, you’ve been at the front lines of trauma and injustice, and during this process, you've been threatened and harassed at times. How do you overcome your own fears and find the courage to ask those important questions and tell these important stories that are not often told?

OBAID-CHINOY

When I was young, I think empathy and the fact that I wanted to create characters, or tell the stories of people who had been on hero's journeys and who had been faced with extraordinary circumstances - that is something that has always driven me. The spine of the body of my work has been about the hero's journeys. And sometimes, when you are telling stories, and holding up a mirror, there are reverberations that take place. And I think that for me, the question is if I am bringing to screen the stories of people who will inspire others, move others to think about other people in a different light. If I feel like I've been able to do that, then I think the price to pay to tell those stories is worth it.

I realized very young and very early on in my career that film does more than just inform and inspire and entertain. It can move people into action, whether it's personal or collective action.  The first time I realized that was in 2006, when I did a film in the Philippines, which was about women who did not have access to contraceptives and were being forced into a life of constant pregnancies. The organization that I was profiling as part of that film used the film to lobby the local government to rethink its decisions. Suddenly, my film went from just being a film to  something bigger than that. And that's when I realized that there could be certain films that I create that could impact the lives of other people. 

In 2015, with A Girl in the River, I created a film that was about a young girl who had been shot by her father and her uncle because she had decided to get married on her own free will. They left her to die in a gunny sack in the river, and she survived. Sabah's story was deeply inspiring, because she wanted to send her father and uncle to jail, but in the end, she forgave them using a lacuna in the law. And when it was nominated for an Academy Award, we wrote a letter to the prime minister of Pakistan, and we used the film to educate and inform the government about the impact of the lacuna in that law, and how it was being misused. The film played a role in closing that and changing the law, which ensured that men who killed women in the name of honor would go to prison.

As a filmmaker, when I go into a project, I go in with a very open mind, because I'm there to learn and to understand the protagonist and their struggles. But as we're filming, we begin to piece together what the story is, what is the start of the story, what moves them, what are the pivotal moments in their life, and I think that we begin to put the building blocks off that. And then, towards the end of the filming, that's when we really realize what the arc of the story is. Oftentimes, it's not the arc that we originally envisioned it was going to be. As a filmmaker, I like to be surprised. I like to think that what I came into the film with has changed, because that's the real “aha moment” when you're a filmmaker.

On Embracing Technology and the Future Impact of AI on Film

I think it's very early for us to see how AI is going to impact us all, especially documentary filmmakers. And so I embrace technology, and I encourage everyone as filmmakers to do so. We're looking at how AI is facilitating filmmakers to tell stories, create more visual worlds. I think that right now we're in the play phase of AI, where there's a lot of new tools and you're playing in a sandbox with them to see how they will develop.

I don't think that AI has developed to the extent that it is in some way dramatically changing the film industry as we speak, but in the next two years, it will. We have yet to see how it will. As someone who creates films, I always experiment, and then I see what it is that I'd like to take from that technology as I move forward.

Reflections on Climate Change and Connecting with Mother Nature

My production company SOC Films, which works out of Pakistan, has created more than 15 short films about climate change in the region, and created a book for children to talk about climate change heroes. Pakistan is one of the top 10 countries in the world most affected by climate change. And so at the heart of everything that I do, climate change matters greatly to me because I have a personal connection to it.

I love to hike and I seek out mountains and quiet places where one can be in solitude with nature. I think that in the desire to expand and consume, we have really shaken the core of that connection that we have with Mother Earth — and I think that it's important. It's incumbent upon us to make sure that our children's generation and their children's generation have that same connection, where they can be in parts of the world where Mother Nature has been left to be in the state that it's meant to be in.

How can we free ourselves from fear and social barriers to live more fulfilling and meaningful lives? What does it take to overcome trauma and turn it into triumph, and failure into reinvention? How can we shine a light on the marginalized and misunderstood to create social change that transforms the lives of women?

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is an Oscar and Emmy award-winning Canadian-Pakistani filmmaker whose work highlights extraordinary women and their stories. She earned her first Academy Award in 2012 for her documentary Saving Face, about the Pakistani women targeted by brutal acid attacks. Today, Obaid-Chinoy is the first female film director to have won two Oscars by the age of 37. In 2023, it was announced that Obaid-Chinoy will direct the next Star Wars film starring Daisy Ridley. Her most recent project, co-directed alongside Trish Dalton, is the new documentary Diane von Fürstenberg: Woman in Charge, about the trailblazing Belgian fashion designer who invented the wrap dress 50 years ago. The film had its world premiere as the opening night selection at the 2024 Tribeca Festival on June 5th and premiered on June 25th on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ internationally. A product of Obaid-Chinoy's incredibly talented female filmmaking team, Woman in Charge provides an intimate look into Diane von Fürstenberg’s life and accomplishments and chronicles the trajectory of her signature dress from an innovative fashion statement to a powerful symbol of feminism.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

You tell the story of Diane von Fürstenberg: Woman in Charge, and it's truly fascinating because it's not just one story but many. It encompasses 50 years since the creation of the wrap dress. It’s the story of Diane, but it’s also her mother’s history as a Holocaust survivor and how she instilled in Diane resilience, imagination, and drive. You tell so many layered interesting stories, 1950s and 60s in Europe, 1970s in America in the era of sexual freedom and the hedonistic New York scene. It's the story of a businesswoman, a princess, a marriage, reinvention, and a dress that became a symbol of women's empowerment and liberation. In the way that Diane Von Furstenberg created a timeless dress that became a symbol of freedom for women worldwide, you present us with the beautiful life of a single working mother, allowing us to see ourselves in her vulnerabilities and struggles, inspiring us to chart our own path and find our voice on the journey to becoming women in charge. With all these intricate stories, how did you find your way into her story?

SHARMEEN OBAID-CHINOY

As a filmmaker, I've always made films about extraordinary women whose lives are faced with extenuating circumstances who've had adversity thrown at them and who've risen to the occasion. And when I began to look at Diane's story, for me, Diane is a fashion designer, but she's so much more. Her central ethos is woman before fashion, and we felt it was very important to take that ethos and weave it into the spine of our film, and make it about the woman. 

The Making of Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge

From the first time we sat down with Diane, she's such a natural storyteller that she began at her birth, which was a triumph because her mother had come out of Auschwitz only 18 months before she was born. As we began to tell Diane's story, we realized that it was so intrinsically linked with the history, politics, culture of the world, whether it was Europe in the 1950s and 60s, or America in the 70s and 80s. We felt that while we were telling Diane's story, we also wanted to tell the bigger story of what was happening in the world at that time. And so you see that when you watch the film, there are many layers, whether it's graphics, or music, or archival footage, or photographs that we’ve used. Together, they weave a story of what it was like to live at that time. And that is a very conscious decision that Trish Dalton, my co-director, and I made when we were designing the film.

Towards the end of our filming, Diane took us on a walk, and as we walked through the woods, we ended up at a flat ground that had a stone wall around it. And Diane looked at me and said, “This is my resting place.” We knew that in telling Dan's story, we had a beginning, middle, and end, and that had been clearly defined by Diane herself. And that was the natural arc of the film that we chose to tell. 

Once Diane was ready to tell her story, we spent a lot of time talking with the camera off, and spending time with her, traveling with her, having meals with her and really peeling the onion to get to the heart of Diane. At its core, it is also a film about four generations of women. It's about Diane's mother, it's about Diane, it's about Diane's daughter, and her granddaughter. We wanted all those voices in the film, and her family was incredible in that they allowed us into the inner sanctum of their lives.

Trish and I were really spoiled for choice because Diane has, unlike so many other people, documented every single minute of her life. In the basement of her house, there is a long room that has all her diaries, photographs, videos, mementos, letters from her children, and scrapbooks. And so when we began telling this story, we really went deep into her personal archives. That is why the film is so rich; that is why you see Diane when she's two, three, four years old, you hear from her mother. That is why, as Diane goes on a journey from Europe to America, you go through her scrapbooks and you see her own personal journey and her children's journey. 

And I think in making this film, every single person who we called whose voice we wanted to include wanted to contribute. They wanted to say something about Diane, because she had left such a mark on their lives. Our producers’ jobs, Tracy and Fabiola, was to juggle those schedules. How do you juggle the schedule of secretary Hillary Clinton with Oprah Winfrey? How do you make sure that Anderson Cooper and Mark Jacobs, you know, in the filming time that we had, that we could put all of these people together? But Diane's friendships run deep with people, and people made sure to make time.

You know, she was a single mother, and I think that young single mothers watching this film will feel for Diane, especially single mothers who are trying to be entrepreneurs, and creating businesses, and trying to find their way into the world to be able to raise a family. To do that as an immigrant in a new country is challenging, and Diane shows you just how challenging it is. In making choices about living her life, in being with her children or expanding her business, there were sacrifices that were made, and those sacrifices are boldly put on the screen for viewers to watch.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

You've told the stories of marginalized communities in Pakistan and women who have risen above their personal circumstances to highlight issues such as honor killings and acid attacks, or challenging stories in war zones, like children of the Taliban. As a storyteller, you’ve been at the front lines of trauma and injustice, and during this process, you've been threatened and harassed at times. How do you overcome your own fears and find the courage to ask those important questions and tell these important stories that are not often told?

OBAID-CHINOY

When I was young, I think empathy and the fact that I wanted to create characters, or tell the stories of people who had been on hero's journeys and who had been faced with extraordinary circumstances - that is something that has always driven me. The spine of the body of my work has been about the hero's journeys. And sometimes, when you are telling stories, and holding up a mirror, there are reverberations that take place. And I think that for me, the question is if I am bringing to screen the stories of people who will inspire others, move others to think about other people in a different light. If I feel like I've been able to do that, then I think the price to pay to tell those stories is worth it.

I realized very young and very early on in my career that film does more than just inform and inspire and entertain. It can move people into action, whether it's personal or collective action.  The first time I realized that was in 2006, when I did a film in the Philippines, which was about women who did not have access to contraceptives and were being forced into a life of constant pregnancies. The organization that I was profiling as part of that film used the film to lobby the local government to rethink its decisions. Suddenly, my film went from just being a film to  something bigger than that. And that's when I realized that there could be certain films that I create that could impact the lives of other people. 

In 2015, with A Girl in the River, I created a film that was about a young girl who had been shot by her father and her uncle because she had decided to get married on her own free will. They left her to die in a gunny sack in the river, and she survived. Sabah's story was deeply inspiring, because she wanted to send her father and uncle to jail, but in the end, she forgave them using a lacuna in the law. And when it was nominated for an Academy Award, we wrote a letter to the prime minister of Pakistan, and we used the film to educate and inform the government about the impact of the lacuna in that law, and how it was being misused. The film played a role in closing that and changing the law, which ensured that men who killed women in the name of honor would go to prison.

As a filmmaker, when I go into a project, I go in with a very open mind, because I'm there to learn and to understand the protagonist and their struggles. But as we're filming, we begin to piece together what the story is, what is the start of the story, what moves them, what are the pivotal moments in their life, and I think that we begin to put the building blocks off that. And then, towards the end of the filming, that's when we really realize what the arc of the story is. Oftentimes, it's not the arc that we originally envisioned it was going to be. As a filmmaker, I like to be surprised. I like to think that what I came into the film with has changed, because that's the real “aha moment” when you're a filmmaker.

On Embracing Technology and the Future Impact of AI on Film

I think it's very early for us to see how AI is going to impact us all, especially documentary filmmakers. And so I embrace technology, and I encourage everyone as filmmakers to do so. We're looking at how AI is facilitating filmmakers to tell stories, create more visual worlds. I think that right now we're in the play phase of AI, where there's a lot of new tools and you're playing in a sandbox with them to see how they will develop.

I don't think that AI has developed to the extent that it is in some way dramatically changing the film industry as we speak, but in the next two years, it will. We have yet to see how it will. As someone who creates films, I always experiment, and then I see what it is that I'd like to take from that technology as I move forward.

Reflections on Climate Change and Connecting with Mother Nature

My production company SOC Films, which works out of Pakistan, has created more than 15 short films about climate change in the region, and created a book for children to talk about climate change heroes. Pakistan is one of the top 10 countries in the world most affected by climate change. And so at the heart of everything that I do, climate change matters greatly to me because I have a personal connection to it.

I love to hike and I seek out mountains and quiet places where one can be in solitude with nature. I think that in the desire to expand and consume, we have really shaken the core of that connection that we have with Mother Earth — and I think that it's important. It's incumbent upon us to make sure that our children's generation and their children's generation have that same connection, where they can be in parts of the world where Mother Nature has been left to be in the state that it's meant to be in.

It is said that people never die until the last person says their name. In memory of the writer and director Paul Auster, who passed away this week, we're sharing this conversation we had back in 2017 after the publication of his novel 4 3 2 1. Auster reflects on his body of work, life, and creative process.

Paul Auster was the bestselling author of Winter Journal, Sunset Park, Invisible, The Book of Illusions, and The New York Trilogy, among many other works. He has been awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, the Prix Médicis étranger, an Independent Spirit Award, and the Premio Napoli. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has also penned several screenplays for films such as Smoke (1995), as well as Lulu on the Bridge (1998) and The Inner Life of Martin Frost (2007), which he also directed.

We apologize for the quality of the recording since it was not originally meant to be aired as a podcast. 

PAUL AUSTER

But what happens is a space is created. And maybe it’s the only space of its kind in the world in which two absolute strangers can meet each other on terms of absolute intimacy. I think this is what is at the heart of the experience and why once you become a reader that you want to repeat that experience, that very deep total communication with that invisible stranger who has written the book that you’re holding in your hands. And that’s why I think, in spite of everything, novels are not going to stop being written, no matter what the circumstances. We need stories. We’re all human beings, and it’s stories from the moment we’re able to talk.

*

It’s shocking how little young people know about the past. I sometimes tremble when I am confronted by this absolute ignorance and, even say Americans, not knowing anything about the American past which is a new country with only about 300 years to talk about. It’s surprising. Or meeting young people, and they say “old movies”. Old movies for a young person is something like Pulp Fiction. And that for them is old. And so they ignore the whole history of movies, which again, it’s a very short history, and it’s very easy to master a great deal of film history in a short period of time if you make an effort to look at the films. But people are not looking back. They’re looking forward. So we’ll see. We’ll see what happens.

*

I like collaborating with people. I find it very enjoyable and at various times people have taken my word and used it for other works. The theatre adaptation of a novel or someone has turned one of my books I’m going to do a little opera. There have been dance pieces based on my work. There was a ballet based on one of my novels. I find that so interesting that one form can inspire someone working on another form to do something. My actual belief collaboration with people, I suppose, well, writing a few songs. I mean literally only about a handful. It’s not something I’ve made a practice of, but the few times I did do it, I enjoyed listening to the results, and the heaviest collaboration I’ve done...of course, is in movies, and that is an exhausting experience to direct film. I can tell you that it’s also a satisfying one. I loved the camaraderie of all the people on the crew, and the actors, and every stage of making a movie is fascinating. I’m glad I had the chance to do this a few times. It taught me a lot about myself and about other people and very important experiences really.

Listen, for some reason, I don’t know why the stubborn old goat has resisted the digital world. I don’t work with the computer. I don’t own a computer. I don’t have a mobile phone. I just haven’t wanted to do e-mail or any of those things. You know, I have a helper, and that’s how you communicated with me through Jen, but I don’t want to do this. And I don’t do it. If I had a job, I would have to participate in all this, but I don’t. So I have the luxury of being able to choose, and I choose not to. I think essentially this digital revolution is a mixed phenomenon it has its positive side and also its negative side. And I’m afraid more and more the negative side to be dominating. And I can tell you there’s nothing more depressing to me than to say go out to lunch in my neighborhood in Brooklyn and go to a little diner a simple little restaurants a sandwich and see a family of four people or six people at the next table grandfather, parents, children. All three generations today they’re looking at their cell phones not talking to one another. It kills me to look at this, and I think the smartphone has made people feel so huge they feel so much the center of the universe by holding that thing in your hand as if they own the universe and it theoretically it connects everybody, but I think in the end it’s separating us from one another. And so I’m worried about it. And then there’s the whole political side of this, and you know the hacking and the the the the possibility for real serious mischief. And sometimes you wonder why governments don’t we just go back to using typewriters and filing cabinets because everything is hackable and used to be a spy would get with a camera a seal one document and then put it back in the filing cabinet But now if you can push the right, you can get the entire correspondence like you know the State Department, or the Democratic Party or whatever it is your trying to do or you can hack into a company the way apparently how the North Koreans hacked into Sony. Everyone is so vulnerable now. So you can see them. And so I’m very very worried about it. I don’t know what’s going to happen. It seems as if there’s no turning back. But we have to figure out how to use this stuff, in a better way. Otherwise, you’re going to really do harm to ourselves.

What are the stories we tell ourselves to justify our actions in times of war? How can the arts convey complexity and foster understanding?

Don McKellar is a highly accomplished writer, director, and actor. He has written films including Roadkill, Highway 61, Dance Me Outside, The Red Violin, and Blindness. He won the Prix de la Jeunesse at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival for his directorial debut, Last Night, which he also wrote and starred in. He is an eight-time Genie Award nominee and a two-time winner.

He wrote the book for the acclaimed musical The Drowsy Chaperone, for which he received a Tony Award. Most recently, Don served as writer, executive producer, and co-showrunner on The Sympathizer, a television adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The series was co-created with Park Chan-wook.

DON McKELLAR

I think the reason for success of the novel The Sympathizer was the very unique voice in the book. It's told in first person with this kind of raconteur who's very intelligent. It's satiric. It tackles big issues, and it's very lively and fun at the same time. It's quite and it's also complicated where it's coming from. It's a confession. It's written in theory under duress. It's very hard to replicate because it's sort of very freewheeling, and we didn't want to weigh the show down with just a lot of voiceover, you know, that feeling of a literary adaptation you get where you just have a voiceover quoting the book all the time. So, the first thing we tried to do, well, the first thing we did was get Park Chan-wook involved because he has a very similar visual language. We tried to replicate that voice visually, and we've tried to come up with parallel visual narrative devices that would give that feeling that the book had.

Right from the beginning, in talking with Chan-wook, we wanted this sort of multiplicity of narrative voices and devices. In a way, it's about how the story, in this case of the Vietnam War, has been told, what the expected story is, at least, for American viewers, which they may mainly know through the movies and through visual representations. And it's how our lead character, The Captain, who is writing the story, who has divided loyalties. How can we capture the contradictions within that story? And we tried to make that complexity part of the actual fabric of the show.

Doubling is kind of a big theme, and maybe it always is in spy literature, but maybe I think that that's why Viet chose to write a spy novel in a way and play with those sort of tropes because it's central and I think it's central to the message of the show and of the book. This idea that there's another side to every question. I mean, that's the central quandary. There's this problem with the whole Vietnam War. It's saying to Americans, at least put yourself on the other side, the Vietnamese side, and then recognize that that side also has two sides and then within that, there are further divisions. And if you do that, I think what it's proposing is that you have to step back. It forces a sort of objectivity and humility, and it asks you to step back and allow the bigger human questions to resonate.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Casting of The Captain was essential to communicate this complexity. He has to have this personal charm and all this emotional depth. How do you decide to cast Hoa Xuande?

McKELLAR

Casting of The Captain (Hoa Xuande) was very hard because it's really all from his perspective. The whole thing is on his shoulders. He's in almost every scene. And when he isn't, it's from his point of view, so he's a spy, you know, so he's got to be able to have that poker face. He's got to be able...it can't be on the surface. He's got to have a certain amount of control. So we had to have someone who was very emotional, but at the same time had a lot of control, who was very agile in a way, like the narrative of the book is, who is able to quickly change modes and at the same time sort of evoke the protagonists of American 70s action films, except from a Vietnamese side. We always thought we wanted to find a Vietnamese Steve McQueen, that was sort of our sort of goal. So we auditioned all around the world. We auditioned everywhere. We auditioned Hoa many, many times. We put him through hell. We kept him waiting for months and months. He seemed to have that movie star quality but also intelligence and humor. He's a very funny guy, and that helped too.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

It's a subtle humor that plays in the eyes and all these little gestures. And the key comic figure are the four characters Robert Downey Jr. plays, which are a kind of Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

McKELLAR

That was Park Chan-wook's idea early on. In the book, there are these sorts of male-white figures of the American establishment. They're all differentiated in the book, but he had the idea. What if we have one actor playing all the parts kind of like Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove and immediately we thought that's a great idea. We brought it to Viet. We were afraid of what he would think, but he said the same thing. That's fantastic. It really evokes what I was trying to do with the book. And, of course, it's kind of a reverse racist joke about, oh, all white men look the same. But we also thought it had bigger thematic consequences. It's a way of saying, without articulating it or getting didactic, that all these pillars of the American establishment are connected and feed themselves, and there's something similar about them all.

Robert Downey Jr.'s characters represent academia, intelligence in the military, entertainment, and politics. Even if they have opposing political ideas on the surface, there's something at the root that is working together. It's a kind of deep-state metaphor and - I don't want to give away the ending of the series - but it comes together in a way that feeds into The Captain's character, too.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

As you think about future, arts, and education, what would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?

McKELLAR

What saved me as a young person, I think, was how I connected with the arts. And I was exposed to this sort of world of possibility. What I hope for children is sort of courageous curiosity. I feel that they have to pursue their creative impulses, and I hope that art can inspire them to do that. That's what I always do. When I'm creating work, I always want it to be inspiring in a way. Not inspiring like a Hallmark movie, you know, like not happy, not necessarily, but provocative in a way that inspires thought, inspires creativity. So when I see young people, what I always try and encourage in them is sort of courage. Courage at facing the world, not being afraid of the world, and being. And I think that art can provide that, can bolster that courage.

Photos courtesy of HBO
Susan Downey, Robert Downey Jr., Don McKellar
Robert Downey Jr. in The Sympathizer, photo by Beth Dubber/HBO
Hoa Xuande in The Sympathizer, photo by Hopper Stone/HBO

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Katie Foster and Donna Sanders. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Sophie Garnier.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).
Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What are the stories we tell ourselves to justify our actions in times of war? How can the arts convey complexity and foster understanding?

Don McKellar is a highly accomplished writer, director, and actor. He has written films including Roadkill, Highway 61, Dance Me Outside, The Red Violin, and Blindness. He won the Prix de la Jeunesse at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival for his directorial debut, Last Night, which he also wrote and starred in. He is an eight-time Genie Award nominee and a two-time winner.

He wrote the book for the acclaimed musical The Drowsy Chaperone, for which he received a Tony Award. Most recently, Don served as writer, executive producer, and co-showrunner on The Sympathizer, a television adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The series was co-created with Park Chan-wook.

DON McKELLAR

I think the reason for success of the novel The Sympathizer was the very unique voice in the book. It's told in first person with this kind of raconteur who's very intelligent. It's satiric. It tackles big issues, and it's very lively and fun at the same time. It's quite and it's also complicated where it's coming from. It's a confession. It's written in theory under duress. It's very hard to replicate because it's sort of very freewheeling, and we didn't want to weigh the show down with just a lot of voiceover, you know, that feeling of a literary adaptation you get where you just have a voiceover quoting the book all the time. So, the first thing we tried to do, well, the first thing we did was get Park Chan-wook involved because he has a very similar visual language. We tried to replicate that voice visually, and we've tried to come up with parallel visual narrative devices that would give that feeling that the book had.

Right from the beginning, in talking with Chan-wook, we wanted this sort of multiplicity of narrative voices and devices. In a way, it's about how the story, in this case of the Vietnam War, has been told, what the expected story is, at least, for American viewers, which they may mainly know through the movies and through visual representations. And it's how our lead character, The Captain, who is writing the story, who has divided loyalties. How can we capture the contradictions within that story? And we tried to make that complexity part of the actual fabric of the show.

Doubling is kind of a big theme, and maybe it always is in spy literature, but maybe I think that that's why Viet chose to write a spy novel in a way and play with those sort of tropes because it's central and I think it's central to the message of the show and of the book. This idea that there's another side to every question. I mean, that's the central quandary. There's this problem with the whole Vietnam War. It's saying to Americans, at least put yourself on the other side, the Vietnamese side, and then recognize that that side also has two sides and then within that, there are further divisions. And if you do that, I think what it's proposing is that you have to step back. It forces a sort of objectivity and humility, and it asks you to step back and allow the bigger human questions to resonate.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Casting of The Captain was essential to communicate this complexity. He has to have this personal charm and all this emotional depth. How do you decide to cast Hoa Xuande?

McKELLAR

Casting of The Captain (Hoa Xuande) was very hard because it's really all from his perspective. The whole thing is on his shoulders. He's in almost every scene. And when he isn't, it's from his point of view, so he's a spy, you know, so he's got to be able to have that poker face. He's got to be able...it can't be on the surface. He's got to have a certain amount of control. So we had to have someone who was very emotional, but at the same time had a lot of control, who was very agile in a way, like the narrative of the book is, who is able to quickly change modes and at the same time sort of evoke the protagonists of American 70s action films, except from a Vietnamese side. We always thought we wanted to find a Vietnamese Steve McQueen, that was sort of our sort of goal. So we auditioned all around the world. We auditioned everywhere. We auditioned Hoa many, many times. We put him through hell. We kept him waiting for months and months. He seemed to have that movie star quality but also intelligence and humor. He's a very funny guy, and that helped too.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

It's a subtle humor that plays in the eyes and all these little gestures. And the key comic figure are the four characters Robert Downey Jr. plays, which are a kind of Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

McKELLAR

That was Park Chan-wook's idea early on. In the book, there are these sorts of male-white figures of the American establishment. They're all differentiated in the book, but he had the idea. What if we have one actor playing all the parts kind of like Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove and immediately we thought that's a great idea. We brought it to Viet. We were afraid of what he would think, but he said the same thing. That's fantastic. It really evokes what I was trying to do with the book. And, of course, it's kind of a reverse racist joke about, oh, all white men look the same. But we also thought it had bigger thematic consequences. It's a way of saying, without articulating it or getting didactic, that all these pillars of the American establishment are connected and feed themselves, and there's something similar about them all.

Robert Downey Jr.'s characters represent academia, intelligence in the military, entertainment, and politics. Even if they have opposing political ideas on the surface, there's something at the root that is working together. It's a kind of deep-state metaphor and - I don't want to give away the ending of the series - but it comes together in a way that feeds into The Captain's character, too.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

As you think about future, arts, and education, what would you like young people to know, preserve, and remember?

McKELLAR

What saved me as a young person, I think, was how I connected with the arts. And I was exposed to this sort of world of possibility. What I hope for children is sort of courageous curiosity. I feel that they have to pursue their creative impulses, and I hope that art can inspire them to do that. That's what I always do. When I'm creating work, I always want it to be inspiring in a way. Not inspiring like a Hallmark movie, you know, like not happy, not necessarily, but provocative in a way that inspires thought, inspires creativity. So when I see young people, what I always try and encourage in them is sort of courage. Courage at facing the world, not being afraid of the world, and being. And I think that art can provide that, can bolster that courage.

Photos courtesy of HBO
Susan Downey, Robert Downey Jr., Don McKellar
Robert Downey Jr. in The Sympathizer, photo by Beth Dubber/HBO
Hoa Xuande in The Sympathizer, photo by Hopper Stone/HBO

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Katie Foster and Donna Sanders. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Sophie Garnier.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).
Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What role do the families we’re born into or the traumas we experience shape the people we become? Do good deeds offset bad deeds? How can the arts increase our capacity for empathy, understanding, and kindness?

Dan Futterman is creator, executive producer, and writer of Amazon Prime's American Rust, the acclaimed crime drama starring Jeff Daniels, Maura Tierney, and David Alvarez. Previously, Dan has written screenplays for Capote, Foxcatcher, In Treatment, and Gracepoint. He served as executive producer on The Looming Tower. Dan is also an actor, director, and two-time Oscar nominee.

Adam Rapp is the executive producer and writer of American Rust. He has written plays, films, and series, including Red Light Winter, The Sound Inside, In Treatment, Blackbird, The Looming Tower, and Dexter: New Blood. His latest novel is Wolf at the Table. He recently wrote the book for the new Broadway musical, The Outsiders. 

ADAM RAPP

We ended on such a cliffhanger with Isaac presenting the wrench at the police station to Jeff Daniels' character. It allowed us to sort of start from a place of what's going to happen next. And I think because what is drawn in the novel and because of what Danny brought into the original script of the first season and all the ideas he brought in. The biggest thing we talked about was the relationship between Del Harris and Grace Poe and what is the ambiguity there? Who's zooming who? You know, it's not to ever land on one side of it because we're all culpable in some way of being both good and bad, being virtuous and also questionable at times in our own lives. And I think when you start answering questions on either side of that too firmly, I think it allows the audience to disconnect from it and then they go, Oh, he's a monster, or she's a monster. And then you just have this sort of a good and bad guy, good and bad woman narrative that is oversimplified all too often in our culture.

So I think the way season one was built, when we thought about season two, we were trying to run with a lot of the same ideas, even when you go from Isaac's sexuality discovery and the way he's living his life and who he's trusting and who he's giving blind faith to down to Billy. And like, who is he becoming? Is he going to become someone who shoots people? Or is he going to become someone who chooses love and romance?

And I think we kept our North Star about where that gray area is for all our characters. And Rob Yang's character comes to mind (Steve Park), who is driven by the truth and driven by finding justice at all costs to the point where he becomes so self-obsessed he becomes toxic in his own way and hell-bent to find the solution to that mystery in West Virginia.

DAN FUTTERMAN

It felt to me like a lot of the drive of season two is about payback. There are people who feel they're owed things. They want payback. There are people who feel like they have to get back at people because they've been wronged in some way. For Steve Park, there's a feeling of the justice of payback. Something was done that was terribly, terribly wrong, and he's going to right it. In a way, every character has something, some way that they're trying to right the wrong that was done to them or that they did in the first season.

Jeff Daniels’ character, Del Harris, is really driven by trying to right what he sees as wrongs that he did in the first season. And he's staying a little bit away from Grace because he doesn't know how much to blame her for how much were his own decisions or how much she kind of drove him to do things. So that was fun to explore. There's a lot of intertwined stories because of this. So that was a big driver, at least in my mind, and I think in all of our minds.

RAPP

You can't choose your family. You know, I hear that all the time. I'm always amazed when I see families that stick together and wind up being friends at the second, third, fourth decades of their lives. I didn't grow up with that. I didn't see that. I've only seen it as an adult, and it's remarkable when I see it. So I think viewers will relate to this nature versus nurture versus DNA, raising all the questions of psychological and biological inheritance.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

You’ve both been involved in many adaptations. American Rust, The Looming Tower, Capote, In Treatment, Foxcatcher…Adam, you have just adapted The Outsiders as a musical. What were the challenges of adapting these works?

RAPP

The Outsiders, in particular, S. E. Hinton, Susie Hinton wrote that when she was 15 and 16. It was published when she was 17. She was told by one editor in particular that she couldn't have any swear words, so she was sort of forced to write about these very big, intense, love-and-death operatic themes where there's a boy who dies by suicide by cop. There's a boy who dies from a fire. So it's about grief. His parents die in a car crash prior to all that. There's this hugely stacked deck of grief that exists in the novel. But when you read the novel, there's a very sweet and loving tone to it. So when I started working on it, I recall childhood in Joliet, Illinois. My mom was a single parent, and she raised three kids on her own on a nurse's salary. So I had to give myself permission to take her great dark themes and actions that are in her novel and like give language to it that was also from an adult world.

FUTTERMAN

I write with my wife sometimes, Anya Epstein, who's a terrific writer. We did In Treatment together, the third season. That's actually where we met Adam. Adam wrote a great series of sessions for the wonderful actor Irrfan Khan, who unfortunately died not that long ago. And we're writing something now that's not an adaptation. It's been really freeing and wonderful to do. Each project brings with it different challenges. We had a very, very good experience on The Looming Tower. Adam and I both worked on that. Lawrence Wright was kind of in and out of the writer's room, and he is just an incredible font of information. Even though the book is quite long and packed with information, he just had more to give and contacts with all of these people CIA, FBI, State Department...that was incredible to be able to tap into. 

If people have very strong ideas of where they want something to go, you just have to work as a writer within those constraints and try to find your creativity. And so trying to absorb that, run it through your process and your creativity, and put something out that feels true can be challenging.

On the novel, American Rust

Philipp Meyer wrote a very, very beautiful book and it was the reason that made me want to do it. Jeff gave me the book. He'd been having trouble getting it made, getting a script that he liked. And he said to me, "Will you read this and just remind me what I love about it? And if you feel that way?" And I read it very quickly and felt that it was terrific. And there were a lot of possibilities in making it. So just kudos to Philipp Meyer. He wrote a beautiful novel. And if anybody's listening is looking for a great novel to read, there's that and there's Adam Rapp's novel Wolf at the Table.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

A lot of your work examines violence in American society. What are your reflections on the ways AI, social media or our addiction to screens may be accelerating this? As you think about the future and the importance of the arts, what would you like young people to know, preserve and remember?

RAPP

Right now, live theater is probably much different than looking at a screen. It's much different than looking at your computer or your Game Boy or whatever. I see grown men on the subway playing video games on their phones. And we're not even looking at each other on the subways anymore. We're like deep in our in a screen. And I wonder what that's done. And so I think theater actually has a powerful ability to rewire us to the human experience. And maybe because of it, maybe we can find more empathy or more capacity toward kindness.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sophie Garnier and Donna Sanders. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Katie Foster.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).
Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What role do the families we’re born into or the traumas we experience shape the people we become? Do good deeds offset bad deeds? How can the arts increase our capacity for empathy, understanding, and kindness?

Dan Futterman is creator, executive producer, and writer of Amazon Prime's American Rust, the acclaimed crime drama starring Jeff Daniels, Maura Tierney, and David Alvarez. Previously, Dan has written screenplays for Capote, Foxcatcher, In Treatment, and Gracepoint. He served as executive producer on The Looming Tower. Dan is also an actor, director, and two-time Oscar nominee.

Adam Rapp is the executive producer and writer of American Rust. He has written plays, films, and series, including Red Light Winter, The Sound Inside, In Treatment, Blackbird, The Looming Tower, and Dexter: New Blood. His latest novel is Wolf at the Table. He recently wrote the book for the new Broadway musical, The Outsiders. 

ADAM RAPP

We ended on such a cliffhanger with Isaac presenting the wrench at the police station to Jeff Daniels' character. It allowed us to sort of start from a place of what's going to happen next. And I think because what is drawn in the novel and because of what Danny brought into the original script of the first season and all the ideas he brought in. The biggest thing we talked about was the relationship between Del Harris and Grace Poe and what is the ambiguity there? Who's zooming who? You know, it's not to ever land on one side of it because we're all culpable in some way of being both good and bad, being virtuous and also questionable at times in our own lives. And I think when you start answering questions on either side of that too firmly, I think it allows the audience to disconnect from it and then they go, Oh, he's a monster, or she's a monster. And then you just have this sort of a good and bad guy, good and bad woman narrative that is oversimplified all too often in our culture.

So I think the way season one was built, when we thought about season two, we were trying to run with a lot of the same ideas, even when you go from Isaac's sexuality discovery and the way he's living his life and who he's trusting and who he's giving blind faith to down to Billy. And like, who is he becoming? Is he going to become someone who shoots people? Or is he going to become someone who chooses love and romance?

And I think we kept our North Star about where that gray area is for all our characters. And Rob Yang's character comes to mind (Steve Park), who is driven by the truth and driven by finding justice at all costs to the point where he becomes so self-obsessed he becomes toxic in his own way and hell-bent to find the solution to that mystery in West Virginia.

DAN FUTTERMAN

It felt to me like a lot of the drive of season two is about payback. There are people who feel they're owed things. They want payback. There are people who feel like they have to get back at people because they've been wronged in some way. For Steve Park, there's a feeling of the justice of payback. Something was done that was terribly, terribly wrong, and he's going to right it. In a way, every character has something, some way that they're trying to right the wrong that was done to them or that they did in the first season.

Jeff Daniels’ character, Del Harris, is really driven by trying to right what he sees as wrongs that he did in the first season. And he's staying a little bit away from Grace because he doesn't know how much to blame her for how much were his own decisions or how much she kind of drove him to do things. So that was fun to explore. There's a lot of intertwined stories because of this. So that was a big driver, at least in my mind, and I think in all of our minds.

RAPP

You can't choose your family. You know, I hear that all the time. I'm always amazed when I see families that stick together and wind up being friends at the second, third, fourth decades of their lives. I didn't grow up with that. I didn't see that. I've only seen it as an adult, and it's remarkable when I see it. So I think viewers will relate to this nature versus nurture versus DNA, raising all the questions of psychological and biological inheritance.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

You’ve both been involved in many adaptations. American Rust, The Looming Tower, Capote, In Treatment, Foxcatcher…Adam, you have just adapted The Outsiders as a musical. What were the challenges of adapting these works?

RAPP

The Outsiders, in particular, S. E. Hinton, Susie Hinton wrote that when she was 15 and 16. It was published when she was 17. She was told by one editor in particular that she couldn't have any swear words, so she was sort of forced to write about these very big, intense, love-and-death operatic themes where there's a boy who dies by suicide by cop. There's a boy who dies from a fire. So it's about grief. His parents die in a car crash prior to all that. There's this hugely stacked deck of grief that exists in the novel. But when you read the novel, there's a very sweet and loving tone to it. So when I started working on it, I recall childhood in Joliet, Illinois. My mom was a single parent, and she raised three kids on her own on a nurse's salary. So I had to give myself permission to take her great dark themes and actions that are in her novel and like give language to it that was also from an adult world.

FUTTERMAN

I write with my wife sometimes, Anya Epstein, who's a terrific writer. We did In Treatment together, the third season. That's actually where we met Adam. Adam wrote a great series of sessions for the wonderful actor Irrfan Khan, who unfortunately died not that long ago. And we're writing something now that's not an adaptation. It's been really freeing and wonderful to do. Each project brings with it different challenges. We had a very, very good experience on The Looming Tower. Adam and I both worked on that. Lawrence Wright was kind of in and out of the writer's room, and he is just an incredible font of information. Even though the book is quite long and packed with information, he just had more to give and contacts with all of these people CIA, FBI, State Department...that was incredible to be able to tap into. 

If people have very strong ideas of where they want something to go, you just have to work as a writer within those constraints and try to find your creativity. And so trying to absorb that, run it through your process and your creativity, and put something out that feels true can be challenging.

On the novel, American Rust

Philipp Meyer wrote a very, very beautiful book and it was the reason that made me want to do it. Jeff gave me the book. He'd been having trouble getting it made, getting a script that he liked. And he said to me, "Will you read this and just remind me what I love about it? And if you feel that way?" And I read it very quickly and felt that it was terrific. And there were a lot of possibilities in making it. So just kudos to Philipp Meyer. He wrote a beautiful novel. And if anybody's listening is looking for a great novel to read, there's that and there's Adam Rapp's novel Wolf at the Table.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

A lot of your work examines violence in American society. What are your reflections on the ways AI, social media or our addiction to screens may be accelerating this? As you think about the future and the importance of the arts, what would you like young people to know, preserve and remember?

RAPP

Right now, live theater is probably much different than looking at a screen. It's much different than looking at your computer or your Game Boy or whatever. I see grown men on the subway playing video games on their phones. And we're not even looking at each other on the subways anymore. We're like deep in our in a screen. And I wonder what that's done. And so I think theater actually has a powerful ability to rewire us to the human experience. And maybe because of it, maybe we can find more empathy or more capacity toward kindness.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sophie Garnier and Donna Sanders. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Katie Foster.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).
Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What will happen when Artificial General Intelligence arrives? What is the nature of consciousness? How are music and creativity pathways for reconnecting us to our humanity and the natural world?

Dustin O’Halloran is a pianist and composer and member of the band A Winged Victory for the Sullen. Winner of a 2015 Emmy Award for his main title theme to Amazon's comedy drama Transparent, he was also nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA for his score for Lion, written in collaboration with Volker Bertelmann (aka Hauschka). He has composed for Wayne McGregor (The Royal Ballet, London), Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Ammonite starring Kate Winslet, and The Essex Serpent starring Claire Danes. He produced Katy Perry’s “Into Me You See” from her album Witness and appears on Leonard Cohen’s 2019 posthumous album Thanks For The Dance. With six solo albums under his name, his latest album 1 0 0 1, which explores ideas of technology, humanity and mind-body dualism, is available on Deutsche Grammophon.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

Your album 1 0 0 1 is a thematic exploration of nature, consciousness, technology, and artificial intelligence, implied in the title that suggests a binary code. Can you just discuss the organizing principle of the four parts of the album?

DUSTIN O'HALLORAN

It's really like a journey from our connection with nature to where we are now, in this moment where we're playing with technology. We're almost in this hybrid space, not fully understanding where it's going. And it's very deep in our subconscious and probably much greater than we realize. And it sort of ends in this space where the consciousness of what we're creating, it's going to be very separate from us. And I believe that's kind of where it's heading – the idea of losing humanity, losing touch with nature and becoming outside of something that we have created.

It started as a dance piece with choreographer dancer Fukiko Takase. And we had met when I was doing a dance piece with Wayne McGregor with another project that I do called the Winged Victory for the Sullen. We did a piece called Atomos, and Fukiko was one of Wayne's principal dancers. And I just loved how she was able to express in movement. It was a very profound experience to realize how connected music is to dance, this sense of communication without words, and how it gets elevated when you bring dance and movement into music.

Human-made Perspectives on AI

In making this record and with the dance, I didn't use any AI in the creation of this. This idea was to create just a perspective that's very human. And I feel that's something that is unique to us. And this idea of being reflective and even critical of itself. I think that it's trying to find the magic that I think exists in human creativity, and I wanted it to be very, very much human-made. So, every element is very analog in a sense. I use electronics, but I also use them in a very analog way

Knowledge, Wisdom & Quantum Physics

I think it's really a crossroads between knowledge and wisdom. And I think that wisdom for me is so connected to nature and the information that we get from nature. We ultimately are part of the natural world. And the knowledge of knowing things and facts and these kinds of bits of information doesn't necessarily mean that we are going in the right direction that we know things. In this space, a lot of wisdom is being lost. I find that, going back to what you were saying about being connected to an earlier time. I feel that that's true. Language is being diminished. There's so many things that are being diminished in this moment. And yet, we're creating something that is going to have vastly more knowledge. But this is where it splits. And what is the idea of consciousness? Is wisdom something that's external? Is it something that is more related to quantum physics and the quantum world, more than just the physical body and the physical brain?

What is the value of our consciousness and creativity?

And I think when all of a sudden music and art started to come out, it was a wake up call to what is our purpose. Like, what are we? What are we bringing to humanity, to the human story? And I think it's interesting because a lot of artists now are concerned about it. What is the value of our consciousness? Consciousness has been something that I've been reading about. It's a vastly understudied part of science, and it's going to become very, very relative very quickly. And I think that it's getting to the core of creativity. What is creativity and ultimately where do we want to go? How are we going to connect with each other?

Creating Spaces for the Human Imagination to Flourish

People want human stories, and people want to connect. And I think that it's such a powerful thing, and it's moving so quickly. Just in my lifespan, it's happened. My generation is the last generation to remember a world without the internet and what that was like. What did we do with our time? What did we do with the in-between times? And I think a lot about people growing up now. They have no idea there were moments when you could be bored and your mind would wander. And what you actually access in those times and how important it is. There's so much happening right now. I think that it's a very interesting time, even if there are a lot of concerns.

Iceland has been really great in that sense that there's so much going on and things are speeding up so quickly. And Iceland is very connected to nature and you can't really escape it here. It's just around you constantly and it doesn't take that long to get into just a vast open space. And for me, I really appreciate that, just the space I feel in my mind. And I feel like there's a lot less noise. And that's really good creatively. I think that having these huge natural occurrences like volcanoes and this incredible wind that happens during the winter, all of these very elemental properties.

The Way Sound Moves Underwater

My father had a scuba dive business in Kauai. So I grew up scuba diving since I was about eight years old, and that was a pretty big impact on just my early years of experiencing nature and especially being under the water. The way sound moves underwater, sound waves move much faster in water. So whenever you hear something, it sounds like it's all around you. And I've been lucky enough to hear whales sing and dolphins. So, that was a great way to grow up and experience this whole part of the natural world that most people don't get to.

*

The thing that with nature that I think is most profound is that it's always truthful. And I think that that's something that always resonates with me. Whenever I'm in raw nature, there's just an undeniable truth and a sense of how it's supposed to be. And I think that that's something that I reach for in my own music where I try to take myself out of my own single being and try to be in touch with all of it. And that's just something that's so resonating in nature, the sense of wholeness and connectedness. 

When I'm writing music, I don't think I'm ever specifically trying to capture any of these moments specifically. I think it's just the way your mind works when you're in nature and the way you're able to hear yourself and peace, really. So, for me, there's always this very strong connection to creativity in nature.

*

Creativity is the core of consciousness. It's such an important part to understand, that relationship to ourselves. And where do those sparks come from? I think there's a kind of universal consciousness of creativity. I think our best moments are when we find silence and those are the moments where we're able to tune in to grabbing these ideas that are bigger than us. I always find that those are the moments where you really connect with other people because people I think people internally feel that universal connection.

Exploring Creative Freedom

I was lucky. My mother was very open-minded and didn't really get in the way of how I wanted to express myself. She was just encouraging and helped make sure that I was around the tools and the things that I needed to do it, but gave me a lot of space. And so that was my experience. I don't have the conservatory experience, which is a much more analytical, mathematical way of approaching technique. I've had to do a lot of work on my own with tech, trying to catch up with some of the technique that I didn't get in the early years. But ultimately, with education, I think the idea of being graded on art gets really conceptual because, ultimately, it's when you feel unjudged and you feel free, then I think that's when you can really get in touch with interesting things

Synesthesia & Music

It's funny, I didn't really think synesthesia was strange until I got older and I realized that I was always thinking of colors when I'm writing music. I was always seeing colors and wanting to put colors and textures together. And that was something that I've always followed, rather than thinking of music in a mathematical way. And so when I started learning about it, I didn't realize it was unusual. I just thought everybody experienced music that way.

The Collaborative Process
Bryan Senti has been a great collaborator. He collaborated with me on some of the last seasons of Transparent. We've done some series together, a series called Save Me. The first part of 1 0 0 1 was born out of a moment when I was in Los Angeles, and we were just working in a kind of improvisational way, and we just hit a space that I just felt was very special. And so we sort of took this long improvised piece and slowly carved it out into an actual form. He's an incredible composer and amazing violinist. 

*

When I was in Italy, I connected with an engineer named Francesco Donnadello. And he ended up being one of my lifelong collaborators. He's just an incredible engineer and the way he thinks about sound and recording... Since we met, he's touched everything that I've done, all the records, and helped me record them and mix. When I moved to Berlin, he eventually moved to Berlin as well and opened a studio. Then he started working with Jóhann Jóhannsson and Hildur Guðnadóttir, and he's just an incredibly special human. I learned so much about recording from him. When you're translating music, ultimately, it has to be in a format to be listened to, and how much care you put into it can really help create depth for the listener.

*

I had the band Dévics for many years with the singer Sara Lov, and we did five records. And we did a lot of touring in Europe. And that's basically how I ended up staying in Italy. We were recording a record at the time, and then I decided to stay. For me, those were my formative years in music. I didn't do conservatory or go to music school.

The Art of Film Composing

The film Lion, when we got involved, there was a pretty early cut. So it was about trying to get into the picture and what would really work with the scenes, but also to sometimes just put it away and just really get to the heart of the film, too, because there was a big overarching feeling to the film. The feeling of home and the feeling of being connected to your mother and this cosmic connection that was calling him to find her. So there was a moment of getting into really taking these bits that we'd been working on outside of looking at the picture and then making them work inside the picture, which is a lot of work. It's actually hard to kind of take something, and then you have to fit it into a box. Because film is a bit of a box. It has limitations, and there's time. It has to hit marks. When you're making music for yourself, you don't have to worry about that.

Is the Human Experience More than a Series of Data Points?

Just knowing things as a series of data that can be processed, I don't think that really quantifies the human experience. And I think that that's for me, maybe that's the good side of this advancement of AI. It's going to make us look human consciousness and realize that we're capable of so much more. And we're capable of connecting on a much, much deeper level. So I think that this is, you know, it's going to be a moment of reckoning.

Music has the power to create a strong sense of empathy. And I think that that's probably what we need more of. Music can really help foster that and I think it helps that music is a universal language. I think that there needs to be a point in time when we need to recognize that we're all living on this tiny planet, which is a speck of dust in the universe, and we need to feel that. That's what I hope.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Hannah Lumi with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sophie Garnier and Hannah Lumi. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Katie Foster.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).
Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What will happen when Artificial General Intelligence arrives? What is the nature of consciousness? How are music and creativity pathways for reconnecting us to our humanity and the natural world?

Dustin O’Halloran is a pianist and composer and member of the band A Winged Victory for the Sullen. Winner of a 2015 Emmy Award for his main title theme to Amazon's comedy drama Transparent, he was also nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA for his score for Lion, written in collaboration with Volker Bertelmann (aka Hauschka). He has composed for Wayne McGregor (The Royal Ballet, London), Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Ammonite starring Kate Winslet, and The Essex Serpent starring Claire Danes. He produced Katy Perry’s “Into Me You See” from her album Witness and appears on Leonard Cohen’s 2019 posthumous album Thanks For The Dance. With six solo albums under his name, his latest album 1 0 0 1, which explores ideas of technology, humanity and mind-body dualism, is available on Deutsche Grammophon.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST

Your album 1 0 0 1 is a thematic exploration of nature, consciousness, technology, and artificial intelligence, implied in the title that suggests a binary code. Can you just discuss the organizing principle of the four parts of the album?

DUSTIN O'HALLORAN

It's really like a journey from our connection with nature to where we are now, in this moment where we're playing with technology. We're almost in this hybrid space, not fully understanding where it's going. And it's very deep in our subconscious and probably much greater than we realize. And it sort of ends in this space where the consciousness of what we're creating, it's going to be very separate from us. And I believe that's kind of where it's heading – the idea of losing humanity, losing touch with nature and becoming outside of something that we have created.

It started as a dance piece with choreographer dancer Fukiko Takase. And we had met when I was doing a dance piece with Wayne McGregor with another project that I do called the Winged Victory for the Sullen. We did a piece called Atomos, and Fukiko was one of Wayne's principal dancers. And I just loved how she was able to express in movement. It was a very profound experience to realize how connected music is to dance, this sense of communication without words, and how it gets elevated when you bring dance and movement into music.

Human-made Perspectives on AI

In making this record and with the dance, I didn't use any AI in the creation of this. This idea was to create just a perspective that's very human. And I feel that's something that is unique to us. And this idea of being reflective and even critical of itself. I think that it's trying to find the magic that I think exists in human creativity, and I wanted it to be very, very much human-made. So, every element is very analog in a sense. I use electronics, but I also use them in a very analog way

Knowledge, Wisdom & Quantum Physics

I think it's really a crossroads between knowledge and wisdom. And I think that wisdom for me is so connected to nature and the information that we get from nature. We ultimately are part of the natural world. And the knowledge of knowing things and facts and these kinds of bits of information doesn't necessarily mean that we are going in the right direction that we know things. In this space, a lot of wisdom is being lost. I find that, going back to what you were saying about being connected to an earlier time. I feel that that's true. Language is being diminished. There's so many things that are being diminished in this moment. And yet, we're creating something that is going to have vastly more knowledge. But this is where it splits. And what is the idea of consciousness? Is wisdom something that's external? Is it something that is more related to quantum physics and the quantum world, more than just the physical body and the physical brain?

What is the value of our consciousness and creativity?

And I think when all of a sudden music and art started to come out, it was a wake up call to what is our purpose. Like, what are we? What are we bringing to humanity, to the human story? And I think it's interesting because a lot of artists now are concerned about it. What is the value of our consciousness? Consciousness has been something that I've been reading about. It's a vastly understudied part of science, and it's going to become very, very relative very quickly. And I think that it's getting to the core of creativity. What is creativity and ultimately where do we want to go? How are we going to connect with each other?

Creating Spaces for the Human Imagination to Flourish

People want human stories, and people want to connect. And I think that it's such a powerful thing, and it's moving so quickly. Just in my lifespan, it's happened. My generation is the last generation to remember a world without the internet and what that was like. What did we do with our time? What did we do with the in-between times? And I think a lot about people growing up now. They have no idea there were moments when you could be bored and your mind would wander. And what you actually access in those times and how important it is. There's so much happening right now. I think that it's a very interesting time, even if there are a lot of concerns.

Iceland has been really great in that sense that there's so much going on and things are speeding up so quickly. And Iceland is very connected to nature and you can't really escape it here. It's just around you constantly and it doesn't take that long to get into just a vast open space. And for me, I really appreciate that, just the space I feel in my mind. And I feel like there's a lot less noise. And that's really good creatively. I think that having these huge natural occurrences like volcanoes and this incredible wind that happens during the winter, all of these very elemental properties.

The Way Sound Moves Underwater

My father had a scuba dive business in Kauai. So I grew up scuba diving since I was about eight years old, and that was a pretty big impact on just my early years of experiencing nature and especially being under the water. The way sound moves underwater, sound waves move much faster in water. So whenever you hear something, it sounds like it's all around you. And I've been lucky enough to hear whales sing and dolphins. So, that was a great way to grow up and experience this whole part of the natural world that most people don't get to.

*

The thing that with nature that I think is most profound is that it's always truthful. And I think that that's something that always resonates with me. Whenever I'm in raw nature, there's just an undeniable truth and a sense of how it's supposed to be. And I think that that's something that I reach for in my own music where I try to take myself out of my own single being and try to be in touch with all of it. And that's just something that's so resonating in nature, the sense of wholeness and connectedness. 

When I'm writing music, I don't think I'm ever specifically trying to capture any of these moments specifically. I think it's just the way your mind works when you're in nature and the way you're able to hear yourself and peace, really. So, for me, there's always this very strong connection to creativity in nature.

*

Creativity is the core of consciousness. It's such an important part to understand, that relationship to ourselves. And where do those sparks come from? I think there's a kind of universal consciousness of creativity. I think our best moments are when we find silence and those are the moments where we're able to tune in to grabbing these ideas that are bigger than us. I always find that those are the moments where you really connect with other people because people I think people internally feel that universal connection.

Exploring Creative Freedom

I was lucky. My mother was very open-minded and didn't really get in the way of how I wanted to express myself. She was just encouraging and helped make sure that I was around the tools and the things that I needed to do it, but gave me a lot of space. And so that was my experience. I don't have the conservatory experience, which is a much more analytical, mathematical way of approaching technique. I've had to do a lot of work on my own with tech, trying to catch up with some of the technique that I didn't get in the early years. But ultimately, with education, I think the idea of being graded on art gets really conceptual because, ultimately, it's when you feel unjudged and you feel free, then I think that's when you can really get in touch with interesting things

Synesthesia & Music

It's funny, I didn't really think synesthesia was strange until I got older and I realized that I was always thinking of colors when I'm writing music. I was always seeing colors and wanting to put colors and textures together. And that was something that I've always followed, rather than thinking of music in a mathematical way. And so when I started learning about it, I didn't realize it was unusual. I just thought everybody experienced music that way.

The Collaborative Process
Bryan Senti has been a great collaborator. He collaborated with me on some of the last seasons of Transparent. We've done some series together, a series called Save Me. The first part of 1 0 0 1 was born out of a moment when I was in Los Angeles, and we were just working in a kind of improvisational way, and we just hit a space that I just felt was very special. And so we sort of took this long improvised piece and slowly carved it out into an actual form. He's an incredible composer and amazing violinist. 

*

When I was in Italy, I connected with an engineer named Francesco Donnadello. And he ended up being one of my lifelong collaborators. He's just an incredible engineer and the way he thinks about sound and recording... Since we met, he's touched everything that I've done, all the records, and helped me record them and mix. When I moved to Berlin, he eventually moved to Berlin as well and opened a studio. Then he started working with Jóhann Jóhannsson and Hildur Guðnadóttir, and he's just an incredibly special human. I learned so much about recording from him. When you're translating music, ultimately, it has to be in a format to be listened to, and how much care you put into it can really help create depth for the listener.

*

I had the band Dévics for many years with the singer Sara Lov, and we did five records. And we did a lot of touring in Europe. And that's basically how I ended up staying in Italy. We were recording a record at the time, and then I decided to stay. For me, those were my formative years in music. I didn't do conservatory or go to music school.

The Art of Film Composing

The film Lion, when we got involved, there was a pretty early cut. So it was about trying to get into the picture and what would really work with the scenes, but also to sometimes just put it away and just really get to the heart of the film, too, because there was a big overarching feeling to the film. The feeling of home and the feeling of being connected to your mother and this cosmic connection that was calling him to find her. So there was a moment of getting into really taking these bits that we'd been working on outside of looking at the picture and then making them work inside the picture, which is a lot of work. It's actually hard to kind of take something, and then you have to fit it into a box. Because film is a bit of a box. It has limitations, and there's time. It has to hit marks. When you're making music for yourself, you don't have to worry about that.

Is the Human Experience More than a Series of Data Points?

Just knowing things as a series of data that can be processed, I don't think that really quantifies the human experience. And I think that that's for me, maybe that's the good side of this advancement of AI. It's going to make us look human consciousness and realize that we're capable of so much more. And we're capable of connecting on a much, much deeper level. So I think that this is, you know, it's going to be a moment of reckoning.

Music has the power to create a strong sense of empathy. And I think that that's probably what we need more of. Music can really help foster that and I think it helps that music is a universal language. I think that there needs to be a point in time when we need to recognize that we're all living on this tiny planet, which is a speck of dust in the universe, and we need to feel that. That's what I hope.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Hannah Lumi with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sophie Garnier and Hannah Lumi. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Katie Foster.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).
Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.