The Living Reminders Episode 14
October 14, 2014
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| Photo Credit jacobsphotographic |
Hosts Mary and Blake interview Tom Perrotta, author of the book The Leftovers. Tom is a screenwriter, Academy Award nominee, and author of novels such as Election and Little Children. The New York Times has dubbed him as “an American Chekhov whose characters even at their most ridiculous seem blessed and ennobled by a luminous human aura.” We know him best as the author, co-creator and co-executive producer of our favorite show on HBO, The Leftovers.
In this episode, you'll learn all about: the inspiration behind The Leftovers, how it started on HBO, the differences between writing for TV and novels, changes from the book for the show, Saving Mr. Banks, Tom's favorite character and episode, alluding to the actual departure, the importance of the ladies in the car in “The Garveys At Their Best”, fortune cookies, how awesome Carrie Coon really is, cake, and more of Justin Theroux's package.
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The Living Reminders: Tom, thank you so much for joining us here on The Living Reminders.
Tom Perrotta: Thanks for having me.
TLR: Now you have a pretty wide variety of novels that deal with a number of different subjects. So with this in mind, what was your inspiration for The Leftovers?
TP: There were a couple things. The first thing to say was I had just gotten very interested in the Rapture, the Christian concept of the Rapture. My last book was about the culture war between evangelicals and secular liberals. And so in the course of writing that book, The Abstinence Teacher, I read a lot about the Rapture and started thinking about it, and I went from having a kind of very skeptical and somewhat satirical view of it, to for some reason just trying to take it seriously. And it just stuck in my head as a kind of really interesting scenario. And it seem to fit my own way of writing. I write sort of suburban, domestic novels about ordinary Americans. And itching to be the opposite of apocalyptic stories that involve zombies or nuclear wars. And it just struck me that I could write the least apocalyptic story that was out there. Cause it’s obviously a time when people are really obsessed with the Apocalypse as a storytelling device, and I thought I could put an interesting twist on it and one that fit my own style of writing.
TLR: Well, I love the choice that you made by having it focus on the people that were literally leftover. A lot of the movies, like you said as of late, have succumbed to this detriment of, “Oh, my God the world is going to end, and we have this one person that can save us or there’s a chosen one, or if you don’t do x, y, or z the world is going to blow up.” And you totally went the opposite way, and it was extremely refreshing. I just wanted to say that.
TP: The other thing is for me. It struck me as being a really beautiful metaphor for the kind of loss that almost everybody suffers at some point in their lives. It’s a particular kind of grief that you feel when somebody is here one minute and gone the next. It’s a terrible thing when someone is sick, and it takes them a long time to die. That’s really hard on everybody. But it’s somehow a different kind of wound when somebody dies in an accident, or some kind of violent act, or they just suffer a heart attack and they die. When you’re not prepared for that loss and somebody is here one second and gone the next, that’s a particular awful kind of loss, and the Rapture is kind of metaphor for that. It’s just you disappeared from the world.
TLR: (Blake) Yea, I know I really related to your book a lot because my Mom passed away very, very suddenly when I was eighteen. And I didn’t have time to grieve or anything like that because everything just moved so quickly. I remember in the show Reverend Matt was saying of Meg that her grief was hijacked by the Departure. And I really ended up feeling the same a lot, and that’s why I can really connect to your novel, and to your book. I thought it was great. We actually interviewed Kath Lingenfelter, one of the writers on your show, and she talked about her loss and her grief and how she dealt with her parents. And she opened up to us a lot. And she was going over that with Damon Lindelof when she got the job. So Damon Lindelof and you have created this show, and Damon is serving as the showrunner. Can you talk to us about how that came about and what happened and how the show got designed?
TP: Yea, sure. When I was writing the book, it really struck me that it was too big a story to fit into the space of a feature film. And beyond that it was really, like you guys and like a lot of other people right now, I feel like this is this huge energy around TV. There are amazing stories being told. And it struck me that The Leftovers had the potential to be a good TV show. So, of course I thought let’s try HBO. They’re the ones who have kind of created this revolution in long form TV. So my agent sent the book to HBO, and they were very receptive to it. So I went in and met. And what we had agreed on is that we would talk about potential showrunners. Because I am a novelist not a TV producer and I kind of knew don't put this in my hands because I really wouldn’t know how to make the show. So they said why don’t you make a list of possible showrunners, and we’ll make a list of possible showrunners. And, I swear this is true, we both had Damon at the top of our lists. It was really a very simple decision. And we said well let’s talk to him about it. And amazingly enough he was also really excited about the idea. We just had to wait a while because he was under contract with ABC. And then he and I just started talking about what kind of show we wanted to make. And we wrote a draft of the pilot, and we got feedback from HBO, and things evolved. It was actually pretty straightforward process considering how long it sometimes takes to get from book to screen. It took us two years from the day we met to the day we actually went into production on the pilot.
TLR: Talk about that timeline a little bit. Was that shortly after Lost had ended? Or was that something that happened a little after that?
TP: Lost may have ended a couple years, but he had...you’d have to ask him about the details of it. All I know is that he was still under contract with them.
TLR: Oh, OK. It’s great that you guys both, you and HBO, picked Damon Lindelof, because some can argue that he gave birth to this new Golden Age of TV with Lost. So it’s amazing that you guys could come to an agreement on that, especially with this kind of storytelling that you have created with The Leftovers.
TP: Yea, it was very interesting. We come from different ends of the storytelling world. I’m sort of a literary fiction writer, and Damon comes out of this pop culture world of sci-fi and comic books and obviously TV; but it turned out we have a lot in common. We grew up pretty close to each other in New Jersey. We read a lot of the same stuff. And our storytelling instincts turned out to be pretty close. I guess I felt I was learning a lot from him too. So it was a very good collaboration in that way.
TLR: Yea, sounds like a great relationship. Now along with Damon you both wrote episodes one, five and ten. So I wanted to know what the difference for you was between writing books and writing for episodic television.
TP: It couldn’t be bigger. I mean it’s just an entirely different process. I mean when I’m writing a book, it’s just me, and every word is mine, every decision is mine, so it’s a very pure expression of my sensibility and my style. Writing for TV is just the complete opposite. It’s an enormously collaborative thing. In pilot Damon and I wrote together, there was just two of us, so that was maybe a little closer to my normal work style, but still, to add one other person is to change the whole dynamic of the process. But then in the room there were six or seven of us. And what you have is just this sort of long conversation-several days long conversation-where you’re going through the script line by line and beat by beat, and you’re evaluating everybody’s ideas and trying to agree on what we think is best. And not everybody always agrees, and so you have to have a kind of consensus. It can be a kind of nerve wracking process. But it’s also kind of wonderful, because you have people coming up with ideas that just, well you know I had obviously created the basic concept and the characters etcetera. But people would come up with ideas with like “the loved ones say…” and that never occurred to me while writing the book. It turned out to be just a hugely fertile addition to the story. The metaphor I always use is it’s the difference from being a solo artist, going out and singing a song with a guitar, and joining a band and just playing rhythm guitar. But there’s something great about having all that help and all those other visions enhancing your story.
TLR: I know it’s totally off base, but I just watched Saving Mr. Banks, the story about the author who wrote Mary Poppins and how Walt Disney made it into a movie. And I honestly just saw it this weekend knowing we were going to be interviewing you-and of course you are nothing like the character who wrote that book-but she was saying that this is my family, and I thought this up, and I thought the buildings would be different, and just the struggle that she had in the beginning. I understand what you’re saying. I’m a musician actually, so you’re right, playing by yourself and then having a whole ensemble to work with. But I think it’s great that you were able to admire these other people as well who saw things that you didn’t get to see because you hadn't worked necessarily on those bits before. So that’s interesting.
TP: Well it helped that I was a veteran screenwriter, because I’ve had time to kind of absorb the whole kind of ecos of collaboration. It just doesn’t make sense to go in and say “I’m here to collaborate but by the way this is mine.” That just doesn't make any sense. I think as a writer you have two choices. One choice is to just step aside and say here’s my book, adapt it. And that’s a perfectly reasonable choice. That’s what happened with me and Election when that became a film. I didn’t have anything to do with the script or the movie. With Little Children I wrote the script with Todd Field. And that was really exciting for me to actually work with the director and be part of that collaborative process. But with The Leftovers, I really wanted to be part of it in a day to day way. But I also didn’t want to be an obstacle. I wanted to be part of the collaborative mix. That was just a choice I’d made, and something I was prepared for because I had spent time collaborating in the past.
TLR: Speaking of that collaboration, what’s your favorite change the show has made in comparison to your book? I mean Kevin’s occupation, or Amanda Warren’s character as the mayor, or even Nora and Reverend Matt being related?
TP: Well I had mentioned the loved ones before. I thought that was kind of an amazing addition and one that reverberated throughout the show. I really loved Nora’s job with the Department of Sudden Departure. I thought that was ingenious. Because in the book Nora is just basically kind of a separate character. She’s really off on her own. She’s just trying to get through the day. She watches Spongebob and keeps a diary to help her remember her kids. And she rides her bike a lot just to sort of get out of her own head. We realized talking about her, that’s not a very dramatic occupation for a character. So I think Damon came up with this idea of the questionnaire for the Department of Sudden Departure, and again, what seems to be such a small idea has all these amazing repercussions within the story. So those two I think, Nora’s job and the loved ones, were two of my really favorite additions to the show. I love Amanda Warren as the mayor as well. She fills the space that Kevin used to fill there. But she’s such a wonderful actor and the character is really wonderful too.
TLR: Well speaking about characters, when you were writing them and now being able to look at the show, which actor is closest to what you had in mind when you were writing, in terms of look and performance?
TP: That’s an interesting question. Cause I don’t often really visualize the characters when I’m writing. It’s just something...I don’t know what’s in my head exactly. And you’ll notice in my book I don’t spend a lot of time on physical description. Characters kind of...I don’t know what I see in my head, maybe people I used to know, but they’re just made of words. But the character in the show that comes closest to the version that’s in the book is Aimee, who is played by Emily Meade, who I think is just a wonderful actress. And if you read the book, and the show’s Aimee and the book’s Aimee are very similar. I think it’s just amazing to see a character embodied. She is so intimately familiar to me. I think she is just a wonderful actor and character.
TLR: Do you have a favorite character to write for? Speaking of that. And do you relate to a character most? And between the book and the show, is it different?
TP: That’s sort of interesting. I didn’t find any of the characters in the book especially harder than others to write about, and I’m not sure any of them felt easier. I think Kevin and Nora, they’re the sort of heart and soul of the book, and they turn out to be the heart and soul of the show as well. They were always rich characters to investigate.
TLR: One of the most beautiful scenes in the show this season is the Departure scene at the science fair. So what was the motivation for actually not showing the departure? You know we looked at other people, but you just eluded to the fact that people disappeared. Blake: With that light, it was gorgeous, gorgeous scene when the light goes out. Was that something that you played into?
TP: I think we often felt in discussing the Departure that basically the idea is someone is there one second, and they’re gone the next. It’s the kind of thing we’re used to in photography. It’s a simple editing trick. And I don’t think we ever felt to look at it head on was to get to the truth of it. Because if something like that happens to you, I would imagine, all that you experience is a moment of confusion. It is really in the aftermath of that confusion when you realize that that person is actually gone and that’s what matters. And that’s what this show does too, it isn’t about the disappearance, it’s about the witnesses. I think you’re right to say, it’s almost like looking at the sun, it’s too much. And so we show the people who see it, we show the light bulb going out, you kind of just get the surrounding truth rather than the kernel.
TLR: With that in mind too, with witnesses and that confusion, mass confusion, and fear feeling it all at the same time that reminds me of the Guilty Remnant. These people were scared, I think. And I think they were confused, and they didn't know what to do other than remember what happened. They are trying to make everyone else remember. Because I think that was the only option they felt they had. So, with that in mind, we have Patti and Gladys who sacrifice themselves in the show. Is this something that’s part of the Guilty Remnant’s end game and if there is an end game is there one? Or is there not one?
TP: You know I think it’s important to remember that only three years have passed from the moment of the Departure. And it seemed like a really interesting interlude of time to me. Because it’s enough that the event it had sort of receded into the past a little bit, but in terms of the history of religion, that’s nothing. And, in fact, it took hundreds of years before Christianity sort of codified itself. And people understood what was meant when they talked about Christianity. Because the early Christians thought that Jesus was going to come back any day. And after the disciples died and a couple of generations went by, people started to say “Uh-oh the second coming that he foretold, might not happen any time soon.” And it kind of had to reconfigure itself. Religions continue to redefine themselves and change their doctrines. So to me the Guilty Remnant is a religion in the earliest stages. Meaning they don’t really know what they believe yet. They know that it feels good to wear white. They know that set themselves apart by smoking. They know that it is important that they not talk because the one thing that they do believe is that there’s nothing that they can say to explain this event. And because there’s nothing that they can say to explain this event, there’s nothing worth talking about. So I think they have a few basic ideas, but to me it’s like religion always begins with action rather than doctrine. And I think that they are improvising to some degree. And somebody like Patti is a genius improvisor. And maybe fifty years from now somebody will sit down and write the scriptures of the GR. They haven’t been written yet, so I don’t think they have an end game, I just think they have a lifestyle that feels right to them in the wake of this event that was so traumatizing.
TLR: Is sacrifice part of that lifestyle? Do you think?
TP: I think, yea, in the book especially, the word martyr and martyrdom appears over and over again. And that’s obviously something that is a huge part of ancient religions and a huge part of some contemporary religions. This idea that you are willing to die to achieve some kind of religious goal or some kind of personal...or to get some kind of personal reward. That’s a familiar one. They are borrowing from other religions with their vow of silence, for instance, or with their clothes that set them apart from the rest of the community. They are borrowing the concept of martyrdom. In the book the GR is just furious with the way that the world seems to be moving forward and forgetting that this thing happened. So they just keep upping the ante to make sure that people don’t fall into this kind of sense that we’re moving on; we’re healing; that it’s getting better. They just really want to jolt people awake. And I think it’s interesting toward the end of the show, actually in the finale, Patti is screaming “Wake up” at Kevin. That’s part of the Guilty Remnants. They are always trying to shock people into a kind of alertness that is also an uncomfortable alertness.
TLR: Well I’m going to change gears on you, Tom for a second, alright? So there are many questions that are not supposed to be answered and that people are left with. (Blake: And we respect that by the way) There is one question during the episode “The Garveys at Their Best.” Kevin goes for a jog-a very memorable jog, because he’s walking in these sweatpants and it’s a little distracting. I’m just gonna say, Justin Theroux jogging in sweatpants distracted a lot of people, myself included. Anyway, when he takes a break and he’s smoking a cigarette, these ladies come up in a car and they’re like “Hey, are you ready?” And he doesn’t know what they’re talking about, and they drove away. So can you please shed some light on that? Can you answer that question a little bit? What the heck went on?
TP: See, I think this was something that I think different writers had different opinions about. To me, my impulse was always that the Departure had just happened on a very ordinary day. And that that was the real horror and power of it. That just on an ordinary day, the world changed in a kind of permanent and shocking way, and it’s going to take people a long time to understand the meaning of this change. I think Damon was very interested in the idea that there were sort of tremors happening around it for people who were tuned in. So, for instance Patti, when she’s in therapy with Laurie, she’s claiming that the world is going to end. Now interestingly Laurie says, “well you’ve said that before.” So it’s unclear whether or not Patti is constantly feeling the world is going to end, and that day it does. I think the show really thrived in that kind of ambiguity. Is Patti foretelling the Departure, or is she just happens to be right that a stop clock is right twice a day? And I think this car with four riders in it is something similar. It’s either just the kind of random thing that just happens to anybody on any day, and they just sort of forget things, but because something terrible happened right after, it suddenly seems symbolic. Now I noticed that some people were speculating that these people were some kind of, maybe some early cell of the Guilty Remnant, which I don’t think that’s the case. I think that if it’s any type of symbolic, the thing of it was were they possibly the Four Horse People of the Apocalypse. We they a harbinger of the Apocalypse? (Mary: That’s because they were in white. That’s why. They were in light colors. But that’s good. That’s good to know) Yea and I think the idea from my perspective is that all kinds of things happen everyday that would seem symbolic if something terrible happened right after them. There’s something about a terrible event that leads everyone to kind of go back to the events immediately preceding it and they want to see something meaningful. So I say a random thing happened to Kevin. And you can say this ominous thing happened to Kevin. Which is that these people were somehow harbingers of the Apocalypse, and they came to him. And I think that the show will, maybe some day it will be explained further but I’m not sure. To me I’m very interested in the way huge events create this sort of pressure to find meaning around them.
TLR: That episode, “The Garveys at Their Best,” it blew my doors off, and I think it blew a lot of people’s doors off. But for you. of all the great episodes that you put out this season so far, do you have a favorite?
TP: Yea, I just loved “Guest” episode number six. The one about Nora going to the DROP conference. I thought that was just an extraordinary episode of television. And I thought that her meeting with Holy Wayne. Again that’s the kind of thing that didn’t happen in the book Holy Wayne was completely separate from Kevin and Nora. And the fact that the show found a way to bring the two of them together to show what I thought was unshowable, which was Wayne’s power. I felt it was mind blowing and really deeply moving.
TLR: I love when she asks him, “Will I forget them?” Tom: Oh, I know!) And Carrie Coon, she was just a revelation for this show. As a matter of fact, I just saw her on Gone Girl and she, Oh my God you guys have a find in her and her representation of Nora. I couldn’t see her in Gone Girl without totally seeing her as Nora. And it was...Ah man, she is awesome right?
TP: You know, Damon and I saw her audition tape where she read the speech that she gives in the pilot. You know, it’s just her in front of the camera. And I have to say I thought a couple of times it would make me cry. There was so much emotion right there right away and we both said yep there’s Nora. I was just really...it just went right to the gut.
TLR: So, Tom, after this first season, there are a lot of people that just loved this show. Our listeners are among that group. They are die-hard listeners, they want to come to us and listen to us every week and they just want more and more and more. We’ve asked every person we’ve interviewed this same question. And I am just really interested to hear what you have to say about this which is what do you want us as viewers to feel after we’ve watched that first season or particular episode?
TP: I guess I understand why you ask that question. And I don’t think there’s a single, simple answer from my perspective. You know we wanted to provoke people. We wanted to make them think. We wanted to scare them. We wanted to make them cry. We wanted to make them appreciate the people in their lives. And we wanted them to care about these characters. It never struck me that I was going for one particular thing, or that we were going for one particular feeling. I think the show did inspire a lot of sadness but also a lot of wonder. There were moments that felt kind of magical and deeply moving and complicated. And we made a show that made people think about the meaning of life. And that’s a pretty big subject. But if you were willing to kind of follow the show down that dark path that it followed, I think you would start to think about some pretty deep questions about why we’re here and what it all means and that’s kind of a very ambitious thing for a TV show to want to do. But I think if you were receptive to the show, that would be the outcome.
TLR: With that dark path in mind, when we interviewed Kath Lingenfelter she had posited that the show ultimately was about confronting grief and confronting yourself, your own existence, but in the end it was about hope. Do you think you would agree with that?
TP: Uhm…..
TLR: And it’s OK if you don’t. It’s OK if you don’t.
TP: Of course, obviously. I think any kind of storytelling is an act of hope. Even if it’s kind of really dark storytelling. I think we ended on a moment of hope which is basically a hope that people can still connect and that the meaning of life is in connection and loving people. So, yea, I do think that there is that hope. But for some other characters, hope is something much bigger which is in that traditional apocalyptic narrative. Is there someone or something who can make the world right? I think there’s that level of hope I don’t think gets fulfilled in this story, but this other more every day hope which is that we can find people to love and be loved by. That is the kind of hope that you’re left with in the show and that’s the kind of hope that seems more real to me.
TLR: Well, thank you so much, Tom. That was honestly, couldn’t have asked for a better answer to that question. And it has been such a delight having you here on the podcast “The Living Reminders” with Blake and I, so thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us.
TP: Well thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it. And of course tomorrow will be October 14, the Day of the Departure.
Mary: I know. I know.
Blake: Alright Tom, thank you so much. It was an absolute honor like I’ve already said. And hopefully we will be able to talk to you again soon. Hopefully we can arrange that.
Mary: Do you eat like a piece of cake on October 14? What do you do?
TP: (Laughs) I looked in my refrigerator and there’s nothing there.
Mary: Oh no! Well Tom thank you so much once again. And we may talk to you again in the future. Who knows my friend?
TP: Well, OK Thank you so much.
TLR: You’re welcome. You’re welcome. Take care.
TP: OK, Bye, bye.
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Do you want more chat about The Leftovers? Get your fix by listening to The Living Reminders Podcast with detailed show discussion and amazing interviews with cast, crew, writers and directors of The Leftovers on HBO.
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