I need to force that clear room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan.
I'm an editor at TheRinger.com and joining me in the studio, he can't believe he got cut out of Infinity War. It's an degree wall. Listen, it's not determined yet. There's still some, it's a fluid situation.
Andy, we're going to talk quickly about the Avengers Infinity War trailer, but we have a very special show today. Yes, we're very excited to welcome not one guest, not two guests, but three guests to talk about the new Hulu Marvel TV show Runaways based on what I think is one of the best comics in the last 15, 20 years. Brian Cave on's Runaways. We have a very unique interview because not only do we have the creators of the TV show, Josh Wert and Stephanie Savage, who you know from The OC and Gossip Girl and many other shows on your television boxes, but we also have Brian Cave on, the creator of the comic.
And they've done no press together to talk about how they got along, how they worked together, how they made changes, or didn't make changes. So it was really cool to have them all in to talk about the process of bringing Runaways from comic to screen. So we're going to get to that. But it's kind of just a Marvel show today, right?
It is. We got to talk about this Infinity War trailer really quickly. Because Chris has takes. Let me tell you guys just a little window into our life here.
Chris has been texting me about memes. Just letting me try. I know I'm up on the memes. But he's also been texting me about Josh Brawlick's appearance.
Josh Brawlick, man. First of all, so we've been building to Infinity War for 10 years, right? We personally as well as the culture. This is where it's all going.
And now they have actually, the reason why I'm actually have my temperatures up on this is because they're like, everything changes in Infinity War. Everything the stakes get raised finally. Because I think you've even seen a couple of things where it's like, there aren't really any consequences in the Marvel universe. You know, like in the Disney Marvel Universe.
But it's much like comic books where Wolverine dies. And everyone gets excited by the issue. And then 18 months later, Wolverine checks. Nothing really can change.
Right. And I think that it's important to recognize that, like, in a lot of the things that we talk about within genre, especially within superhero or sci-fi, our concept of consequences can be a little bit thrown out of whack. But I was just laughing at myself watching the Infinity War trailer, which looks fine. And it looks like I will be very, very interested to see how they manage the more than a dozen major movie stars speaking parts they have to shuffle around.
Much more than it does. Is the fact that one of the things that we've always talked about as Marvel has a villain problem. There's not convincing enough heavy in this universe to balance out all the good. To the extent that they've even had to with Civil War, had to try and find tension from within the group of veterans.
The heroes' ones. But Thanos is supposed to change all of that. And I, Lord, I audibly gefawed at the first shot of Josh Brolic pounding this pavement. It's a problem.
Yeah, man. It's for real problem. And he looks like a Pixar gorilla. The thing is this.
When they first, I mean, the whole trailer is about the experiments. It's made in a way. It's basically the trailer is about Nick Fury's voice, not the voice saying, like, we wondered if we could do this. Like, there was such a question asked and answered.
And we brought all these totally disparate heroes together. Remember when this all still felt a little cagey and uncertain. And they were just suggesting these things would be linked in the tags at the end of the films. We first saw Thanos in the first Avengers movie, which is five years ago, than six years when Infinity War comes out.
And he wasn't even played by Josh then. He was just a CGI creation. And it was really just a, you know, it was a, they were casting a line in the water saying, this is a villain from the comic books. We will spend the next six years telling you about him, making you fear him, hopefully casting him.
And concurrently in the comic books, we're going to make him a big deal again. And hope that that sort of trickles up. But then it was like, well, here's a big purple guy from space who's in love with death. Yeah.
We are at a point now with the movies, with especially the Marvel movies where they feel so indestructible, it could have been just Josh, Josh, Bralon and Broly. I'm saying Broly in his, no country for old men costume. And it would be fine in a way. I don't know he needs to be purple with a ridge chin anymore.
I mean, I think we've moved past fealty to the comics. I think the other thing is this is going to be a little bit of a schism because I don't care about it. Infinity stones. I don't understand them.
It's a great point. And he's like, check out these rings. I'm like, you ain't Kobe? I don't know what we're talking about.
You don't respect the jewelry? I just don't understand what they do. At the end of the trailer, he's got two championships. Three more to come.
Are you kidding me? Yes. I'm like, aside from the fact that it looks like there's 37 people in this movie, it's also just like, I don't really care about this. But obviously, the thing about this movie, the trailer, is that for whether it's good or bad, it seems like it's a movie that's on point of view.
When first shows up in this movie, he does not seem like the same dude who was lolling with everybody in Ragnarok. It just seems like this is its thing where we're worried about the fate of the world again and everyone's going together together. A lot of friends are going to be there. Fine.
Fine. It also makes sense, six-wise, because, unlike Justice League, this has been building. They have been building to this point, where now maybe we actually will have some stakes and care to some degree about what happens to these people. But look, I got to say, when the time to talk about the movie, we'll talk about the movie and we'll judge it on a artistic appearance.
At this moment, I am just kind of impressed by, I feel like Ron Burgundy was all east of the cheese. Honestly, because they are just like, here's the largest thing you've ever seen and we pulled it off. And this week also, Vanity Fair has these multiple covers of like, we've got all these stars together. They do enter Robinson, who is one of our favorite online culture writers, she does this interview.
And I mean, no disrespect to anyone involved when I say, no news is broken in this. The news is that they took these photos. The news is that they got them all together. The story has become, they control the story of what you take.
I'm taking off whatever journalism cap I still own and just being like, I'm just impressed with the hustle. Sure. There's no story here other than Kevin Feige being like admitting that all their contracts are going to lapse after Avengers 4. And it's just going to be a lot of Tom Holland and Ben and Dicomber batching.
OK, wait. All right. Let's get to our interview with Stephanie Savage, Josh Schwartz, and Brian Cave-On. We're talking about Runaways, which is on Hulu now.
We can watch the first four episodes, new episodes, premiere every Tuesday in season one. And by the way, we didn't say this so much in the interview. Go to your comic book store if you have access to one and get Runaways Volume 1, which captures issues one through 18. If you're not the comic book person, this is a great comic book and obviously led to a really interesting TV show that we're going to discuss now.
Here's our interview with Brian Cave-On, Stephanie Savage, and Josh Schwartz. Let's get into it. And this is truly the first time we've all been talking about the show. So we have no idea what Brian.
So Josh and Stephanie, you have been doing press for the show as the adapters, creators of Runaways television show for Hulu. Brian Cave-On is here with us as well. Welcome, thanks creator of the comic book. First time doing press together.
This is exciting. Little of the sparks fly. It's really interesting. Well, Brian, yeah.
All of my grievances are going to happen here. This is the perfect place for it. It is the best of a season. We are going to talk about the show, of course, and a little bit about the comic book.
But since we have all of you here, we really wanted to make it more of a conversation about adaptation and how this works. Interesting. And the best way to start. Which I know that ahead of time.
Well, you won your time. Yeah, yeah. I think the best way to start is with Runaways the comic itself. And so that means turning to Brian and asking you about it.
Because I remember reading the comic falling in love with it over 12 years ago when it came out right, 0405. 2003. It was 3, yeah, yeah. And I remember a friend of mine who worked in TV saying about the Runaways that this is the single best original idea Marvel has had in 30 years.
That's nice. And then saying I can't believe Brian gave it to Marvel. Which is a whole separate thing. But can you talk about just the Cliffs Notes version of how the series came to be?
Yeah. So I guess it was probably around 2001 or 2002. And I was a struggling young comic book writer. And I heard that Marvel was looking for teen books.
And I didn't really like any of their existing teenage books. So I thought I would just throw something new under the pile and see if it stood a chance. I just wanted to think both what was a comic that felt very 21st century, but also felt like a Marvel book. And so Runaways is just trying to reverse engineer what Stanley and Jack Kirby would do, trying to come up with a really hooky idea that had something to say about society.
And was hopefully a little bit more subversive than DC Comics. And it was kind of an interesting moment at Marvel because they were trying a lot of new things, throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. And you were able to make the series without any existing connection to Marvel Universe. Mostly right.
I mean Captain America is on the first page. But it's not really him. I was never good at those kind of events where you had to work closely with other books and collaborate. And I just thought if we had to collaborate with them.
I thought if we set it in Los Angeles, it would just be a way that the kids would kind of know that Captain America and Spider-Man exist, but kind of the way that I grew up in Cleveland that I knew celebrities existed. But you wouldn't actually run into them. So that we would have our own little corner of the Marvel universe. Until the Avengers film in Cleveland.
Of course. Yeah. Yeah. I was just cleaning the cycle.
The Square and Circle. For Josh and Stephanie, how did you guys encounter the book? I mean, because this has been sort of a holy grail as an adaption for me. And I was wondering, how did you pitch your vision to Marvel?
First encounter the book around when it came out, which was I believe this first year of the OC as well. And we were saying, maybe Heinberg, was that who turned you on to it? It was. Yeah.
First point in front of me and said, must read this book. And I thought, well, I'm not going to say that no other book had just the references and the characters and the emotional lives of the characters and the metaphor, using the stories of metaphor of parents and kids and times family trauma. Because I realized we should say for people who are listening to this podcast, we don't know what we're talking about. Central, you can see the show is about your kids.
Every teenager thinks her parents are evil. Whatever parents actually were. Right. That's good.
Right. The way it just flowed each way. You can holly with it. By the way, I've said that a thousand times.
And only recently people have said, you know, not every teenager thinks the character. I was like, that line was a slam dunk. We all thought, no, I had a very healthy normal relationship with my parents. Everyone will be able to identify with this concept.
And only now I'm finding out some people think it's very strange. Sorry. But it's funny that every one of us wanted to explore, which is that not all kids would have the same reaction to seeing their parents do this terrible thing. And for some kids, their parents being evil makes the most sense and actually explains quite a bit.
And other kids in the story couldn't conceive that at all. In the complications of it. It seemed like right from the book was published that this could translate to other mediums, even before we entered this era where everything that Marvel was published is becoming something, one way or another. Can you guys sort of talk about the journey?
I know that Marvel is trying to adapt it for a while as a movie. Then obviously Marvel TV became a thing. Where was the property? I guess I'll put it to you, Stephanie.
Where was the property when you guys came into it? Well, it had been on the, when we originally sat down with Marvel, as a general, it was because we had just moved over to ABC from Warner Brothers and we were like, they have Marvel. We should go talk to them. And we sat down with Jeff Loeb and Meghan Bradner and Jeff very politely, but forcefully laid out the fact that they had this like plan to launch six shows.
It was going to happen in a very specific order and they weren't really thinking about runways and that was maybe we were talking about runways. They were only talking about, yeah, they were doing this. This was the Daredevil plan. And we were just like, we left that meeting going great.
We'll like check back in 15 years. Yeah. They have like all these shows launched. You didn't immediately pitch Teen Punisher.
And then they were able to actually execute that plan in like 18 months. So, yeah, we heard that it moved from features to, that it was no longer a feature development and television was going to have a crack at it. So we immediately went in and wanted to plan our flag and, you know, and pitch our, sing for our supper with it. And we didn't realize that we went in for that meeting.
They were thinking the same thing that Jeff and Meghan were also wanting to talk runways with us. So, and Brian, like, obviously everyone knows that the idea of creators writes a tricky business in comic books in general. How did all three of you navigate this? Brian, I imagine there have been versions of this long story where you maybe were going to be more involved, versions where maybe you want to just walk away completely.
You seem to have found at least at the beginning of this interview a happy medium. Yeah. It's the best. I mean, I knew when I created it with Adrian Alfona, the artist, who I should say is very much an equal co-creator in this, that it didn't belong to us.
We were giving something to Marvel. And at the time as a young writer, I made a great living, writing other people's characters. So, I didn't object to creating something that would hopefully live beyond us and be handled by other creators. So, Marvel didn't have any sort of legal or moral obligation to keep me involved at any stage.
So, it's very nice that they have. And I'm so grateful that Josh and Stephanie have, you know, asked for any input whatsoever. They certainly, they don't need me. And the show has been great.
So, yeah, it's been the ideal. It's a dream come true, really, as a creator, to just have people come to you and say, not only do we have a vision, but we're going to do all the heavy lifting and make you look good. It's great. I just get to hide my basement and write comic books.
Well, they go to endless casting meetings. Let's talk a little bit about adaptation. I was wondering about, you got this, you got the comic in which the inciting incident they get on the run very early on after the Pride ritual, but you guys have taken the decision to sort of not slow things down, but establish a lot more. And not only are you translating something from a comic to television, but even our kind of concepts of television are shifting almost every month with a new show about what you can and can't do and how fast or slow you need to go.
So, coming from the background that you guys came from, what were some of those? Just moving too fast or sorry. No, I'm curious about what kind of conversations you had about, like, this should happen in episode X or Y or Z. And what were some of those early conversations, Brian, were you part of the breaking of the story and how did you guys talk about breaking the story for the season?
Yeah, I mean, I think for us it was always about how do we take those 18 issues in that first volume where the story really is, the runaways versus the Pride, and open that up and unpack that and live inside that story for as long as possible. And so that meant a lot of conversations about the pride themselves and the parent characters. And, you know, we talked to Brian a lot about sort of the storytelling choices that were made and things that inspired, you know, those decisions and how would he feel if we did this or that. So it was very much a collaborative conversation.
Yeah, and Marvel originally in letting us play in the sandbox, the first thing that we did is we went off and we wrote a spec script that had no home in mind. So it wasn't written for a specific buyer. It was just kind of written like what we thought it should be. And we wrote a pretty extensive Bible.
And we shared those materials with Brian because we wanted to make sure that he was happy and that we hadn't done anything heretical. Got some pretty positive feedback. Absolutely. Was a visual look at the show pretty instrumental?
Like, did the Bible have a lot of stuff about how the show would look eventually? The Bible was more about sort of mythology and backstory and, you know, pride, mythology and kind of where we saw the show going in the future. But it was always about being grounded in our real world in Los Angeles and in, you know, these homes and where, like there was a lot of conversations about cable. Who lives in the palisades and who lives in the California, who lives in the California and the right.
There's a lot of that because that was important. We really wanted to lead with the reality of the story. And then when we ended up hiring Brett Morgan to direct the first episode, obviously he has an extensive background and documentaries and very little. And scripted.
And he's like, well, if you guys are calling me about directing this, then clearly you're looking for something different. So the approach was always about characters first setting in our world and making that because it gets pretty, I mean, there's a dinosaur. There's a magic staff. There's some crazy shit happening.
Well, not magic apparently, right? That's true. Magic at least as far as the, it seems quite, it seems quite, it seems quite, it seems quite. I think there's a little bit of a tendency.
Yeah. I think there's a lot of some shows, many, many of which I like quite a bit that you will always have more good ideas. So get all your good ideas out as fast as you can. And I felt like the show was paced a little bit differently.
Where it was like, I could tell that you were saying- No, no, no, you guys have more good ideas. You guys are seeing things rather than the world. Like I love Ozark, but Ozark is like an entire season in one episode. That's how the first season should end, right?
No, our first version of the script was closer structurally to Brian's first issue, which is they find, they witnessed the sacrifice pretty early on. Yeah. At the end of the first act. Yeah, like 15 pages end of the script.
When we landed at Hulu, we got a note that you never get, which is, could you take the end of your teaser and make that the end of the show and open up this whole world of characters and really dig into the emotional lives of these characters. Usually if you're at a network, they're like, could you take the end of your episode and make that the end of the teaser. Or the end of season one. Right.
So that was a great luxury and that led to a lot of really interesting conversations about like, who were these kids before they show up for this event? It's amazing because as a fan of the comic for a long time, and I would go back and read it and say, oh, there's just so much here that could work in TV. It's right there. And then of course, the actual work of making TV is very different.
Brian, you've worked in TV as well pretty extensively. So I can imagine you had similar thoughts, which is on the page, it's so cool to see the pride in each parent group has their own super villain costume and they're all completely articulated differently. And then also for you, Josh and Stephanie, one of the hallmarks of the OC and Gossip Girl as well is that the kids and the parents were interesting and you gave time to both. Then you walk into a TV show where you have to have 12 parents be in the cast and then that's the reason we killed Hernandez's option.
That's a pretty easy fix right away. Yeah, that was early Stephanie. It's like, I did the math. And balancing was a part of history.
Balancing was a part of history. Balancing was a part of history. It was all about the causes, missing cast. Smart.
But this is a balancing act that's got to be a challenge even now when you're making the show because you have a huge cast of service and not just a service but to establish. Yeah, and we know that and yet it hasn't felt like that in breaking the story. The characters that started in the book are so distinct and the runaways themselves pop off the page. So those characters came so fully formed and the parents themselves also felt effortless in terms of those stories laying out.
No, and it did inspire the idea of doing the second episode as a rewind of the first episode where you see the events from the point of view of the parents until a certain point and you get the story catches up. Because we just felt like if we can really establish those characters early, you'll know who they are. You'll be able to be invested in their stories and you're not going to be in the middle of episode six going like, wait, whose parents are those? No, it makes a lot of sense too because if you've done, if two is just like a continuation like that, then I think you're still trying to piece together the distinctions between the parent characters because they show up so intermittently in the first episode.
So that's why I really liked about the second episode. Although I also remember going back and I just yesterday went back and reread Runaway's One for the first time in a while and I just didn't remember that Alex's dad just fully stabs the girl's dead. Yeah, it's a, I think I remember originally in the comic it was actually they, I think they sacrificed a baby and I think it's something hard to always like please Brian, this is so gruesome and it is ostensibly a kids book that you're writing and suddenly it's a teenage prostitute getting stabbed as a first day in the writer's room Brian's like, what if it's a baby? It's fine with it, I can tell my story and speak my truth.
But it is, I do know whenever I've met with adaptations and people say, oh the comic is just storyboards for the show or the movie where it's set, I know that it is doomed because yeah, these are wildly different mediums and so I'm always eager for the changes. So I wanted you to talk specifically about that because obviously right now one of the books you're writing is Saga which is just a glorious creation of By You and Fiona Staples and I've heard you say in other interviews, feel free to say it in this one too if you feel so inspired. But you know one of the joys of writing that is you're writing it to be a comic book, specifically to be a comic book, it is not storyboarding for any other medium and it is just exploding the glories of what you can do in a comic book. Among those things are in your main cast are fuck robots.
There's a way to put it. There's a way to put it. Yeah, this is a fun show. You have a ghost nanny with her in drills hanging out.
These are main characters, this would be hard to do even on who's no doubt expands a budget. Can you talk about the glories of comics and why certain things, not just for budget or reasons, why certain things work on panels and they might not work on the screen? Yeah, I mean it's a very different medium. One that the audience has a little bit more interaction with.
You're sort of in charge of the pace of reading a comic. It's a little bit more immersive that way. But I mean there are drawbacks. I just think that music and the runaways show both the sort of needle drop songs and the score are so incredible and that's just something that comics obviously we don't have the benefit of music.
So there are things that I like about each medium. But yeah, comics, particularly with Saga, was just my frustration of oh here's the sort of big budget spectacle that I like but you can't bring that to sort of a cable mature drama. So how can you combine the two? I think that's something that really only comics can do at present.
I'm actually making some playlists for people. Yeah. I'm actually going to incorporate into one of these like comicsology apps or something. Yeah, like you, yeah, they could do a greeting card.
I don't know. I don't know. I check out those motion comics out there which always seems to me to combine like the worst of animation with the worst of comics. I was wondering too about like when you're watching, you know, there was a moment like in the first episode of Gertz Walking Behind, you know, and she's like talking about the tutoring and it's just a great way the scene is played and staged is so great but there are so many little gestures that the actors will do that brings that scene even more to life.
And when you see something like that where it's actual, you know, these representations of things that you've been writing for such a long time. What's that like to watch? I mean, it's incredibly satisfying when it's done as well as it's been done here and just it does, you know, one of the big joys of the comic is working with Adrian Elphone. I hadn't really done comics before and his style was so unique and most young comic artists feel like they're sort of aching someone else and Adrian just looks like himself and he was sort of ahead of his time and I've talked about his designs were so good.
I always thought the runaways would eventually get dopey costumes to run around in and his sense of fashion was so unique and I was like, no, let's just let them be kids and to sort of see that translated not just the faithfulness to the characters but the look and vibe of the comic is that's something I didn't anticipate. That's something that our costume designers both commented on was just like, oh God, where is this going? You know, and they were so just because of like, what are they going to put the costumes on and what are they wearing in the panels that we're going to have to match to and they loved the comic was so like, it meshed in the time and contemporary and so much thought and detail like put it and put into all that stuff. And we do get into the Carolina flare jeans.
What do you call them? Where do you slay for your jeans? Is that what it was? Yeah, I know we're going to try and like do Easter eggs for the fans but that's one we're not going to do.
The hardest part of the adaptation honestly was figuring out how to work in a reference to Arsenic and Old Lace. Brian's like, good luck with that. That's tricky one. We'll have more from Brian K.
Vaughan, Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz in just a moment but first I work for the sponsors. Today's episode of the watch is brought to you by Hotel Tonight. Let's take a second to chat about our sponsor Hotel Tonight. Awesome app for finding and booking great deals at great hotels.
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The show has one WTF moment after the next, oh, and it is based on the extremely graphic novel by Grant Morrison and Derek Robertson. Happy premieres December 6th at 10-9c. And now back to our interview with Brian K. Vaughan, Josh Schwartz, and Stephanie Savage.
Just in terms of the process, the process is that Brian alluded to being happy to be removed from, like just casting and imagining and visualizing and grouping together. How difficult was that process and what were your kind of benchmarks along the way? What did you know you needed to accomplish as you were seeing people, as you were putting groups of them together? Well, I think first of all, our goal was, as Brian was saying, it wasn't going to be a literal translation of the book where you could just flip the comic book on screen and that would be the story that there would be some changes, but it was always essential to us that the spirit of the comic book be translated.
And obviously that starts with the alchemy and the chemistry of the runaways themselves. And when those kids started to come in and you started to, oh my God, that's Kurt and Allegra Acosta walks in before she's even started reading lines. You're like, that's Molly. She's so effusive and joyous.
Yeah. You know, Greg Sulkin walks in in every woman in the room and some Anna Swoonie. You're like, well, that's Chase. But he has like a really sweet side to him that would be surprising.
And you start to see that the first time we saw them all together was really exciting and it felt like, you know, it felt special. Yeah. And I think for me, it was really important. I am not a comic book person.
I fell in love specifically with this book and the characters in the world that Brian created and the voice and the humor that was there and the heart that it worked for everybody. So as much as we were going to be excited about, like, there have to be pinball machines in the games room. And, you know, Alex needs to wear these kind of glasses, which I love all that stuff. But it also, if you didn't hadn't seen anything and didn't know anything, that you would never feel like you weren't invited to this show that no big hand came up in your face and said, this isn't for you.
This is only for people who know, you know the comic already. Yeah. I mean, we see that a lot. In the past, you've seen it, but with thrones, there was a lot of like, people just sort of being like, wow, it's not quite exactly how that's supposed to happen.
Or, you know, or the faithfulness of it was something that people really champion. One thing that we talked a lot about on the pod is this idea of Trojan horsing. Like you have a story that you want to tell, but you sort of dress it up, whether it's with a genre or, you know, a lot recently with Superhero. We we talked a lot like when was it winter soldier came out about like they were trying to make a 70s thriller that was going inside of you.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And with this one, you know, you guys are obviously veterans of working on. Griseled veterans, please.
Griseled veterans of working on like teenage themed shows. Like, I don't feel like this is like a Trojan horse thing. I feel like you guys have as much veneration for the actual mythology around, you know, the super hero stuff that's happening within the story. And it's not just like, well, what we really wanted to do is make a high school show, but we'll top it with this.
Right. Do you guys ever think about things in those terms? Absolutely. I'm sure by pitching stuff, they're like, well, we'd love to get this from you.
But can you put a superhero in it? Yeah, no, we talked a lot when we were doing the OC originally that that was a Trojan that, you know, Fox wanted 90210 and there was a lot of talk of like, okay, Ryan is our blue parry who's our, you know, Brendan, right? Brendan? Yeah.
Who was Gabriel Kertera? He was a little bit more determined to tell him where that went out. But that we, so we had to deliver a certain amount of beaches and, you know, bikini, she's saying we would have delivered that. Yeah.
But hopefully that the characters would be surprising. The adults would be more built out than you expected. So if we could provide the trappings of the show they were looking for, then we could sneak our, our characters in. Yeah.
At that point in time, you could not have pitched. We really want to make my so-called life or freak some geeks because those shows did not last a whole season. We're canceled. But you could pitch 90210 and then that kind of came together like 90210, but the Seth character was definitely someone who had never been in a nighttime soap opera.
Yeah. So. And I was expecting almost a different take on things because you'll see, like when we first met years ago when you're making that show, that was a time when Fox wanted to big four was like, let's put young people on television. And that's also, you know, let's let the adults be characters.
There was a type of show that was quote unquote broadcast that has been, I think, either narrow cast of that existence or push to very specific broadcasters only. And so I wondered if that was just part of the business now, which is in order to tell those types of stories, you have to add, you know, in case of the runways, you have to add the super heroics or in case of gossip where you have to add the fantasy land known as the every side of the thing around the thing. But you say there was already, there was a totally, there was just a different set of gatekeepers and expectations. Yeah, I think so.
And that show in particular worked for Fox because 90210, I think, was a part of its fundamental DNA. And I don't think you could have sold that show to ABC or NBC at the time or even the WB. Peter Roth was like, that's a Fox show. So now I think it's interesting because one of the things that we talked about is with runways is this idea that if it's a quote teen show, does that mean if we write this show on spec which we were doing, does it have only, you know, these two or three homes because they're really the only places where you can put teens on TV.
Or if we try and make it work for, you know, a network, are they going to say, you know, we need more about pride and can they be a law firm or an abductor or something? Yeah, no bad idea. That's a good pitch. A divorced woman restarting her life.
Cardio thoracic. So, Hulu actually turned out to be a great home because they were really comfortable with us doing both. And I realize we've been talking about your relationship separately, but we haven't actually talked about the specifics of how it functioned. You guys got the go-ahead, the green light to work on the show.
Then you reach out to Brian, obviously, I believe the word, heretical was used. I don't think we've ever used that before. It's very important to Jeff Loeb, who runs Marlboro Television and obviously is a writer and is really important to him that Brian would be a part of the process early on and sort of get the materials early. And so when he reached out to Brian and we heard that Brian liked it, then we set the lunch.
That means otherwise when you would have been. That means he wouldn't be mad at us. We set the lunch. And then we, at the meal, we said, you know, please come into the writer's room.
Come, hang out, we want you to be a part of this as much as you want, but you are invited, please. And was anyone in the room when you got there or had they given you that? I was like, here's the room. I just walked in.
I was just plastic doing it on the ground. And Brian was like, I don't know. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be that weird for people.
I want everyone to feel the freedom to like, you know, pitch their ideas and say what they don't like and what they want to change. And we said, just come for lunch on the first day. And we were very fortunate that he came for lunch on the first day and had a good time and came back, I think, for the first month. I just went and leave.
I was like, yeah, I was like, I mean, it's free food. I didn't realize. I don't have to pay. I was like, I'm like, sugarfish day one.
We got a heart. Smart experience. I lost my skin. You're giving you an appreciation for the things that happened in that room.
Sure. I know I have done a few writers rooms and they're really hard. And that was a nice thing about this. Even before casting began, it was such a diverse inclusive room of writers.
And I liked the writers so much. And you could tell that came from many different backgrounds and they were each going to bring something interesting and new to the show. So yeah, I think I just wanted to be there to give permission, you know, not that they needed it. But early on, yeah, there was that talk at Hulu about, can we slow things down a bit?
I wanted to let them know. I wish we had had had the luxury to do that with the comic. And when we were doing runaways, I was always sure we're going to get canceled by issue five or so. So that's why we have this breakneck pace of like just every idea we ever had, just pump them out in each issue.
And if I'd known me, I'd have the luxury of an entire season. I'd say, let's slow things down a little bit. Yeah. I feel like this is a recurring theme with you because I also read that you had a planned out for saga after five or six.
I've always made anything that I've ever done. I've always had an escape hatch or a look that things are going to go south because they usually do. One interesting thing to realize as we're talking about it now that you, Brian, you said that you were a young comic book writer when you to break into Marvel with this young teen book, you were a young teen actress then when Britney Spears was wearing those jeans. Yeah.
Justin Stephanie, you've written teens, different eras of your own lives. Saga, obviously. That's our focus on the parenting. Exactly.
Because you know, Saga's a book about parenting from the parents' perspective. The parents' are key role in this as well. How do you, and I guess I'm throwing out all of you because I'm curious how you do that in your work, Brian, and then also for you guys in the TV show that you're writing and continuing to develop, try to stay true to the young people's voice because that is important in entertainment and in your work, but also we're all in different places. I'll include myself.
We're all in different places now. If you were running runaways now, it might be a different book, I guess. Oh, no doubt. Yeah.
That was the couch out of the man. Yeah. I think I fancied myself at the time saying, oh, I understood both sides of this equation very well with the young people and the parents. And then, yeah, Saga is a comic book about a response actually becoming a parent and realizing that, oh, your parents, they're not gods.
They're just very sleepy people trying to do an incredibly difficult job. So yes, I have a lot of new found sympathy for parents that, yeah, this felt like such an opportunity with this show, that the parents in the comic book were hopefully not too mustache twerly, but they're villains. And I love the idea of a show that gives them as much weight as the children we get to know them as well as the runaways of terrific. And hopefully they're not villains.
You know, in the traditional sense, our pride went to get to know them. They're compromised. They're in over their heads. They've made some decisions that regret like any adult.
Sure. Yeah. At least they didn't sacrifice a baby. They did a teenage runaways, so I said them.
And in terms of speaking to the voices of the kids today as we get older, I mean, that's where the cast can be incredibly helpful in trying to have a mind meld with your actors because obviously they are the age of the characters. They're on the streets speaking that slang. Anything on, it doesn't have to be TV, but I'd be curious to know anything that blew you away this year, TV wise. Ooh.
Blown away is like strong language. Oh, wow. I have to literally even get everything I see. Headline stepping sounds.
Nothing from the away. I'll jump in the deuce bandwagon. I think that's... You're sitting here at the bandwagon.
Exactly. It's terrific. I just think it's, and it felt like that first season of The Wire where the first couple of episodes is like, okay, I'm still getting the lay of the land and finding out all these characters. And there were somewhere around the fifth or sixth episode, they were like, oh, I'm deep in.
Yeah. This is a lot to say about the world right now in a very unexpected way. So yeah, I'm loving the deuce. I think that came out this year.
It was like, what if Michael J. Fogg... What if Martin and Flag got to be Spider-Man? Is that a fusion of so many loves?
Big, sick, good place? Excellent. That's good. That's good.
That's good. Watch stuff. Yeah. See, that was a gun to rose just for 17 hours last night.
I knew you were going to find a way to bring that in. Yeah. I did really like Amade's Tale. I'm Canadian.
Got a dilute. So everybody grew up reading that novel. I thought you were going to say you knew everyone in it. Close eyes.
I knew a lot of the supporting actors, but I thought it did a great job of adapting material that is really tough to adapt and was very beautifully directed and acted and kind of just elevated everything in a way that I think did kind of create a new template for a poetic television. Yeah. Big little eyes. Also people who do the nighttime serial drama.
Yeah. You appreciate that. And that was actually really interesting because I thought that David Kelly wrote it. And if you actually just listened to it, you're like, yeah, that sounds like David Kelly.
He didn't learn to write in a new way. It's just the execution completely came together in a way that transformed it into something super unique and it was just seen before. They shot entirely on a beach too. So that's it.
One Red Morgan's documentary Jane. Oh, nicely done. One last thing for it let me go about the show. They're going to run away.
That was my question. But really you said you have the 18 issues, first 18 issues as sort of a different kind of bible. As you were developing this first season and hopefully beyond how far beyond those 18 books have you considered? Are you excited to get to how much have you told Brian about deviating?
Do you want to do it now on live on live on live on live on live? Well, we have. We're talking about plans for season two that will go beyond where that final book in the first volume ends. And I think we're going to be incorporating some new ideas that are not in the books and then taking- Hopefully some ideas from Brian.
Hopefully some more ideas from Brian. I guess I'm about baby killing. And then thinking about what things from future issues we want to incorporate in our second season and there's definitely some ideas being bandied about. Looking back now from the vantage point of finishing the first season of the show, would you put CGI dinosaurs in all your shows?
Do you realize that that was super soft? Yeah, it's mostly puppet. It's an incredible puppet. It took 35 minutes.
We broke boots. It's not news actually. It's like, yeah, it's incredible puppet and designed by the team that designed the dinosaur puppet for Jurassic Park. It's like a six person.
So it's not one dinosaur. It's six kids inside a dinosaur. It's very similar to the Bojack Out person. But it's like six people operating every eye blink and nostril flare and it's this incredibly lifelike creature that it's been great for the actors too.
It's much better to bond with that. Do you think those guys only make dinosaur puppets? Like they're so good at it. I just think you know I love the OC.
But every time they went back to Chino, there was also a dinosaur. Just to increase the feeling of tension and otherness. Somewhere out there are foxes listening going. It's time for the discussion.
Yeah. Alright. Well, thank you all for joining us today and I'm happy for the rest of the rest of the season. And Brian, I hope you also come back sometime so we can geek out with you over saga.
Would you like a separate step outside and you guys considered it? You're looking at the way the dinosaur looks at food. We're going to show up on Tuesday. Tuesday's on the Hulu service.
I'm the only on the Hulu service. Can you say network? I don't know. That's fine.
I never say that again. Thanks guys. Thanks guys. Bye.
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