When you think about Game of Thrones now, what happens? It depends on what part I’m thinking of. Like, sometimes it will just strike me out of nowhere that Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion ended up being the f–king worst. And then I’ll get mad, all over again, about what they did to Daenerys. Who is responsible for all of this residual angst? Not the actors – they did their thing and it’s not their job to write the scripts as well. So, just put all of your anger at the feet of David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who completely boned the story in the final seasons. Benioff and Weiss basically went into hiding after that terrible final season, but they appeared at the Austin Film Festival this weekend and they revealed all. One reporter live-tweeted it – you can see the full thread here:
At 3PM David Benioff and D.B Weiss #DnD started a session at the #AustinFilmFestival, I am a little late, but will live tweet as soon as I get there. #GameOfThrones
— Needle & Pen (@ForArya) October 26, 2019
Here are some of the biggest problematic reveals:
David is describing the pre-meeting with GRRM who was questioning their bona fides and “we didn’t really have any.” We had never done TV and we didn’t have any. We don’t know why he trusted us with his life’s work.”
— Needle & Pen (@ForArya) October 26, 2019
Imagine the doors that open for you when you’re a mediocre white man. Imagine a writer handing you his life’s work and you know that you are so deeply unqualified to take charge of it, but hey, you’re white and a man, so you’ll figure it out.
Dan is saying that #GameofThrones was basically an expensive film school for he and Dave. For example, they had no idea how to work with costume designers, and it was a huge learning experience.
— Needle & Pen (@ForArya) October 26, 2019
Imagine HBO paying millions of dollars per episode so that these two a–holes could “go to film school” in real time.
The moderator asked why they chose to write all the episodes by themselves: “Because we didn’t know better.” David said HBO wanted them to hire other writers and they decided to have Bryan Cogman, their assistant, write four episodes.
— Needle & Pen (@ForArya) October 26, 2019
Imagine being so privileged and out-of-touch that you fail to do basic research on the characters you’re writing AND you insist on writing as many of the scripts as possible.
Dan wanted to remove as many fantasy elements as possible bc “we didn’t just want to appeal to that type of fan.” They wanted to expand the fan base to people beyond the fantasy fan base to “mothers, NFL players”…
— Needle & Pen (@ForArya) October 26, 2019
OH MY GOD. “Yeah we didn’t care about the built-in fans of the books whatsoever, we just wanted to make a show that bros and soccer moms would like.”
Did you really sit down and try to boil the elements of the books down? Did you really try to understand it’s major elements.
No. We didn’t. The scope was too big. It was about the scenes we were trying to depict and the show was about power.
— Needle & Pen (@ForArya) October 26, 2019
“We just wanted to be ensconced in our bubble of ignorant privilege, honestly.”
So… now we know. They really didn’t care and we wasted a decade watching these two dudes completely screw up the f–king story.
Photos courtesy of Getty and WENN.
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