‘Fargo’ creator Noah Hawley calls YouTube his biggest competition

Noah Hawley, creator of TV series ‘Fargo’, ‘Legion’ or ‘Alien: Earth’, remains optimistic about the industry.

“It has been a process of becoming optimistic,” he explained in Canneseries.

“We’re in between the old and the new model, but there are masterpieces in every generation and we just have to figure out how to make them now. It’s a bigger question about what tech companies have done to Hollywood – we’ve all been influenced by it. They often come into the industry, flood it with money and everyone feels, ‘Oh, it’s a renaissance.’ Then it all dries up.”

The past few years have been a challenge. “Our biggest competition is YouTube, which spends zero dollars to make anything. You produce hundreds of millions of dollars in movies and TV and lose focus every day on things that are free.”

Hawley started out as a novelist and still writes, but “TV is the fastest way to talk to the culture,” he said.

“If you have something essential to say, TV is a better medium.”

“Someone recently called me ‘the franchise whisperer,’ which is valuable to be at this point — our industry is so focused on franchises and existing IPs, and audiences will view them more reliably. I also have a reputation for being an original storyteller, which doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I interpret these brands — what is ‘Fargo,’ what is ‘Alien’ — and tell you a brand new story that will evoke the feelings you had watching the original.”

He’s also behind ‘Legion’, taking on the X-Men universe.

“Freud wrote an essay called ‘The Uncanny’ in which he struggles with the human belief in the supernatural. It’s when familiar things behave in an unknown way. A story about a haunted house is disturbing because your house isn’t supposed to do that. [I thought:] What if ‘Breaking Bad’ was about Walter White becoming a supervillain? I found Professor X’s son, who is actually mentally ill. He has these powers, but he’s not sure if they’re real. And if he doesn’t know, that’s the show.

Dan Stevens played the lead role.

“He had very serious food poisoning [when filming the pilot]. Every time we say “cut!” shouted, he had to throw up in a bucket. and then dance again. That’s the dedication of actors,” Hawley joked.

He doesn’t rewatch the originals before starting his shows, he admitted. Instead, he thinks about the emotions he remembers about it.

“When I think about it [Ridley Scott’s] ‘Alien’, there is a strong emotion of discovery surrounding the life cycle of this creature. It starts out as an egg, comes out and attaches itself to you, and you think it’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen. But there is more! Then the chestburster comes out,” he laughed.

“In the second film you already know that evolution, so replace your surprise with suspense. To give you the same feeling as when you watched Ridley’s film, I had to introduce new creatures.”

The second season of the series is underway. “Fargo” has had five seasons so far.

“To me, ‘Fargo’ is about the battle between decency and cynicism. It’s not about good and evil; it’s about people who believe in the worth of others and those who don’t. David Thewlis says in the third season, ‘The problem isn’t that there’s evil in the world – the problem is that there’s good. Who else would care?’ In my country we are not going in the right direction. Decency doesn’t win; cynicism does,” Hawley said.

“In season 5, everyone on that show was a Republican. Different versions of a Republican, but still. I tried really hard not to be political with a capital P, but to talk about the humanity underneath.”

If the second season was about “the death of a family business and the rise of corporate America” ​​and the third was about “deconstructing the phrase ‘this is a true story’ in the world of alternative facts,” the latter was about the need for a legal system.

“One man, a sheriff, who believes he’s right is no better than a bad guy. There’s a cohesive mentality when you watch ‘Yellowstone’ or ‘1883,’ rooted in the idea that no one can tell a man what’s right or wrong. He knows it in his bones. There are scenes where [Jon] Hamm lists some ridiculous laws, but that doesn’t mean the law itself is ridiculous,” he said.

“I went into that season believing that there was a significant audience that believes he’s the hero, and my job was to push them by asking, ‘Are you still with him?’ But no one ever calls to say whether it’s working or not.”

Despite the many iconic male characters over the years – “Billy Bob Thorton showed up with that hair and I thought, ‘We’re making the same show.’” – women still carry the stories.

“These franchises, to me, are feminine. If women weren’t at the center of these stories, I’d be doing it wrong.”

When interpreting well-known brands, his first mission is authenticity.

“You have to say, ‘I understand what ‘Alien’ is.’ Once I achieve that, I can do the original. I don’t consider it ‘fan service’. It’s about feeling like you’re right. These things have to stand on their own two feet.”

For ‘Alien’ he came up with ‘the Peter Pan metaphor’.

“This story is about humanity caught between the monsters of our past and the monsters of our future, like AI, which feels like the world today.”

Has he used AI yet?

“Not yet, but we’ve had these conversations. If I spend $150 to $170 million to make a season of ‘Alien,’ that’s a lot of money, and companies are desperate to find ways to spend less. I remain open-minded about how storytellers can use it, but it shouldn’t replace them.”

He added: “I wrote this novel and it has a plane crash and underwater scenes, so it’s expensive to make. But at the heart of it is a human drama. If all the bigger stuff was AI, would it be okay to have this movie out in the world? The only way to see Kubrick’s ‘Napoleon’ would be if they shot parts of the movie and used AI for the rest. It’s inevitable. I’d rather be in control of the solution to a problem than have it happen to me.”