I tend to write the episodes in the middle of the season, which can be a challenge because you've got to balance all these threads that have begun - and also make sure they will make sense with the overall plan going forward.
For a lot of people, 4chan is their tree house - they go there to hang out. You can actually see the culture shift with time zone. Seeing how threads unwind and unravel is just a thrill, and you can't really share that magic.
My work has threads of ideas from all over the place. I try to crystallise them in something simple and direct that the viewer can then take where they want.
When I first entered the corporate world, doing good and making money were seen as separate and contradictory threads. Challenging that notion set my career - and life - on a new course.
I think 'Mudbound' reveals the interconnectiveness of our stories. You can't separate out threads of history and race as economic construct. 'Mudbound' makes it very plain. Race is about commerce; it's not an actual thing. It's a fiction that was created to basically divide resources unequally.
Early 2000s, we get Enron, which tells us the books are dirty. And what is our repeated response? We just keep pulling the threads out of the regulatory fabric.
Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists.
I was a millionaire twice over and half again before I was twenty-one. I stole every nickel of it and blew the bulk of the bundle on fine threads, gourmet foods, luxurious lodgings, fantastic foxes, fine wheels, and other sensual goodies.
Parents are like shuttles on a loom. They join the threads of the past with threads of the future and leave their own bright patterns as they go.
When you tell a story, there are imperatives of structure, of style, of pacing and all of this, that are there simply because you want to make it a good story. When do you introduce your characters? When do you put them onstage, when do you take them off the stage? How do you weave the different threads of the narrative together?
