It’s kind of like the way you guys put a completely new spin on the medical drama, which was once a fairly routine template.
The bucket of stories and ideas the writers walked in with for both seasons, we used a tenth of what they had and filled up ten hours twice. There’s a finite amount of good stuff. I think it’s only limited by how many hours in a week for people that are really good are willing to put in, and how open the business becomes to these other voices who are potentially as talented as the people we know by name and just need the opportunity. It’s like the New York Times magazine piece about women in the entertainment industry and the tag line was, “Just get us in the door.”
That’s really what it’s about. It’s like, just get us in the room and once we’re in the room then it’s on us but we’re not getting in the room. Again, that’s a whole other— you’ve got this whole spectrum of experience and narrative perspective that we haven’t tapped.
Let’s talk “The Knick” spoilers from season two.
Let’s put it this way, we had this all planned out very clearly from the very beginning.
Even Thackery’s death?
Yes, absolutely. I said [to Clive Owen] from the beginning, if it matters to you, we are going to kill you at the end of season two, just so you know. He’s like, “Okay. Good to know.”
I just said, “That is the design. That’s what we’re doing. We are looking at the show in two-year increments and that is the shape of the first two years.” We knew he was going to have a self-surgery. We had the pictures of the guy that actually did this procedure on himself successfully and so we knew how we we’re going to kill him. We knew that before Clive had even read the script. Everybody signed off.
Wow.
I’m going to do the first two years and then we are going to break out the story for seasons 3 and 4 and try and find a filmmaker or filmmakers to do this the way that I did. Like this is how we want our template to be, every two years, whoever comes on, has the freedom to create their universe.
It means they don’t have to shoot it the way I shoot it. They don’t have to score it the way I score it. They don’t have to cast who I’ve cast. They have maximum freedom to come in and just go, “I want to wipe the slate clean.” That was our design from the beginning and so that’s what we’re pursuing right now. We’re working on story for [seasons] 3 and 4 and making a list of people who we think would be a good fit because the demands that are pretty specific.
Well, at the speed the show works, it has to be physically taxing.
It’s a more of a mental thing than anything. When you see the stats for season two, we never did a 12-hour shoot day. We don’t work long days. We worked efficiently and quick.
You didn’t work long 12-hour days? That’s insane. A movie shoot can easily be 15 hours daily.
[For] some people, not me. There [are] reasons that you go more than 12 hours a day. You’re making “The Revenant” which just looked like the shoot from hell and it’s just impossible. I watched that movie and just went, “I’m so fucking glad I wasn’t there.” I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near that. That’s an exception, but generally speaking in an environment like this, there are two reasons you go over a 12-hour day. You don’t know what you’re doing or you’re obligated to shoot a lot of coverage. That’s what takes up time. The reason we can work this fast, as you know watching the show, is we don’t do coverage.
You guys don’t do a lot of takes, right?.
Right, unless it’s something crazy elaborate. And then the editing at night— that’s the part I love the most. It doesn’t feel like a 16-hour day for me —because the last three or four hours are the editing reward for me. I’m sure if you did an MRI of my brain editing after a day of intense shooting like it’ll looked like a Christmas tree because I’m like, “Okay. This is the cherry that after all that physical work. Now, I get to do the fun part.” It’s mental, not physical. It’s more like leaning into it, it’s a Jedi mind trick where you go, “It’s not really that crazy a schedule.” Because I’m always doing exactly what I want, time doesn’t seem…
If you were working on a show in which you felt like you were never getting to do what you want, it would seem interminable. I got to the end of season two and I was like, “That was more fun than season one and maybe it’s because we went twice as fast.” Greg Jacobs felt the same way. Same length of shoot, bigger, more difficult canvas, but I just had so much more fun. I realized that’s what it was. It’s like, “Oh, I made all these decisions.”
After the end of season two, you’ve blown up the “The Knick” in nearly every way. Are you guys reinventing and starting over then with new casts, characters and locations?
[Pauses] The good news is we’ve got some time. I mean, it’s not going to get shot next year. We need time to really write it out. Of course, I immediately start thinking of doing it one director and shooting it like a film because its really economically efficient. I’m thinking, “Oh, we have a year. Let’s write both seasons and shoot both of them back to back and not stop at all.” That’d be the super efficient way to do it. Now, that may be a little much. That’s 150 days for somebody to work on it non-stop basically.
That’s what you would want to do yourself. Other filmmakers not so much.
[Chuckes] It’s fun to think about. In terms of the script especially, because the longer the ability to make the tapestry of the narrative threads more complicated is increased exponentially by how much time you’ve had with the whole thing before you shoot it.
The idea of like, “What if we do write seasons three and four and have both of them written by next fall but don’t shoot until spring of 2017,” then you really are talking about like a 20-hour thing where every line and every reference has some echo in connection to every other line. It’s been conceived as a whole, you know? It could be amazing. That’s what we’re definitely thinking about.
“The Knick” seasons 1 and 2 are now available on DVD, Blu-ray and digital formats.
