The best parts of any story to me are the unexpected things.
There's this thing in TV that I find hysterical where the writers and creators will ask us if you want to know what happens to your character or if you want to experience it episode by episode. In the theatre, we always know the ending; we always know where the character is going.
[Dennis] Etchison would write stories that were just punch lines at the end. You wouldn't realize something horrific was happening until the last paragraph.
An audience who watches my shows knows who I am, knows that right when they think I'm going to make a joke, I'm going to blow something up, or during the worst peril, I'm going to have someone give someone a kiss - it's just going to happen.
I feel like the big twist shows are now off the table. I think Westworld was probably the last one to Trojan horse this idea of the young man in black. They were doing non-linear storytelling, but disguising it. Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy have spoken openly about how they just didn't think people were going to figure it out that fast.
It's not like the original movie where you thought it was the mother committing the murders, but it was actually the son. I don't think it's possible to create the kind of shock today that we created in 1959. And I don't even want to try.
I love to go into a movie and have no idea what's going to happen in it.
There's not much TV these days where you really get that element of surprise. There are so many spoilers all the time.
In episodic TV you have to keep things secret to keep the viewer in suspense.
When I was writing 'The Luminaries,' I read a lot of crime novels because I wanted to figure out which ones made me go, 'Ah! I didn't know that was coming!'
I'm a facist about spoilers. I'm the biggest pain in the ass to the marketing and promotions department. If I had my way, the commercials would be 30 seconds of black with a few words on them.
Destiny plans a different route and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn't have expected.
