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-Game of Thrones-HBO-

Kurb

By Kurb,
in Huddle Lounge

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The Saltman Apprentice

The Saltman

Posted
Posted

Pretty Good Interview with George RR Martin Concerning the TV Series and other interesting Tid Bits.

Not sure if it was posted already but here ya go:

http://collider.com/george-r-r-martin-interview-game-of-thrones/86337/

Did they ask you about changing things that aren’t necessarily seen or heard in the books? Did they run ideas by you to make sure that it fit with the overall universe, or did you just give them that lee-way?

MARTIN: I knew they wanted to do the stories, but I couldn’t really dictate. I didn’t want them to feel that I was just peering over their shoulders saying, “No, no, no, that line won’t work.” You have to give them freedom to do their own thing. They had the book, and I knew they were going to stick fairly close to the book. Given the parameters that we had, I knew what was going to be in the pilot and where it was going to end. It has a pretty strong cliffhanger ending. We were all on accord on that. Initially, all they wrote was just the pilot.

Have they talked to you about altering any of the characters?

MARTIN: There have been a few conversations about that. I don’t want to get too specific because it would spoil things, but there is one character who dies in the first season of the television show, who does not die in the books until the third or fourth one, and who dies differently than the way they had him dying. I flagged them to that, so that they were aware of it, but they decided to go ahead and keep their take on it. So, if we get to a third season, and to the place where that character originally died, and we haven’t diverged too much from the main storyline, they will have to make some sort of corresponding adjustment there because they will no longer have that character around, to kill a second time.

Can you talk about the casting for Jon Snow, who’s played by Kit Harington, and Tyrion Lannister, who’s played by Peter Dinklage?

There were two characters that we were all in perfect accord with, even five years ago, and that was Sean Bean as Ned Stark and Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister. They were our first choices and, really, our only choices, far and away, for those roles. We never even auditioned for the part of Tyrion Lannister. Peter Dinklage was the only one we ever wanted. We knew he would be great for the role and, thankfully, we landed him. He’s magnificent. He’s a fabulous addition to the show and he’s a joy to work with. The part of Jon Snow was much different. We kicked around a few names for it, but we really didn’t have anyone strongly in mind. It’s a younger role, so you need an actor who’s relatively new. We looked at a lot of young British actors for that part. Some of the actors who are playing smaller roles in the show initially came to our attention because they read for the part of Jon Snow. We looked at many people, and Kit Harington really, really stood out. He was one of the strong contenders, right from the first. He had a great look for the character. His performance was wonderful.

With your fans being so avid, how do you think the reaction will be to some of the changes, specifically some of the details that have been eliminated to transform the story into a television series?

MARTIN: Well, if my own reaction is any key, I think the vast majority of my fans are going to be thrilled and delighted by what they see. I think 95% will be very happy. They may have a quibble, here and there, where they say, “You left out my favorite scene,” or “You left out this great line.” But, their overall reaction will be very positive. I’m sure it will just be a small minority that will not like it, for various reasons. Some won’t like it just because they don’t like a particular actor, or they don’t like the story. I admire the passion, and there are some people who are very passionate and know these books, inside and out, and know every detail, but they are not going to be able to get over the fact that things are changed and that there are omissions.

What characters do you find the most difficult to write for, and why?

MARTIN: The hardest of the viewpoint characters to write has been Bran, for two reasons. One is his age. He is the youngest of my viewpoint characters, and it’s difficult to write from the point of view of a child. It’s not impossible, but it slows down the process a little. You have to think about everything that’s going on and ask yourself, “How would an 8-year-old see this? How would an 8-year-old describe this? He would not use the same words as a 30-year-old. He might not understand certain things, even though he’s seeing them or hearing them. He might not understand the context of what he’s seeing or hearing.” You have to look at all that. It makes it a little slower and requires a little more care to write about a character that young.

In writing the books, is there one character that you wish you could have killed off, or maybe killed off sooner, but they just became too important to the story to do that with?

MARTIN: No, not really. The main deaths and plot twists have all been planned, since the beginning, but some of these deaths are hard to do. I’ll reach a point where I’m about to write something that’s very hard to write. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to write it because I’ve become so attached to these characters and I know what’s going to happen to them. But, I’ve known what their fate was going to be since I began the series, a decade and a half earlier, so I go through with it.

When you went into this, did you intentionally take the children, put them in an adult setting and force them to be in very adult and complex situations?

MARTIN: Yeah, the children were always at the heart of this. The Stark children, in particular, were always very central. Bran is the first viewpoint character that we meet, and then we meet Jon and Sansa and Arya and the rest of them. It was always my intention to do that. As for the harshness, the whole series is harsh. My inspiration have grown, not only from Tolkien, but also from history and historical fiction. I tried to blend some of the tropes and traditions of fantasy with those of historical fiction, while doing this. If you read about the real Middle Ages, as I do all the time, it was a brutal time for everybody – for men, women and children. Children weren’t sentimentalized, the way they are today. They were frequently made to work, from a very early age. They were taken into battle. Boys become pages and then squires. You’re riding into battle with your knight, as a 12-year-old squire, but you’re there, and people are hacking at you with swords and shooting at you with arrows. You’re not at home, being protected. It was a different age with a different mind-set. I did want to reflect that.

Lost executive producer Damon Lindelof’s recently revealed that he was in the middle of reading and loving Game of Thrones, when he heard that you didn’t like the ending of Lost, and it turned into a Twitter explosion. Do you have any thoughts on how that all went down?

MARTIN: I actually missed most of that because I spent all of last week in Los Angeles. I flew out to watch the first two episodes, and I had various other meetings. I don’t take a laptop or anything with me when I travel, so whenever I’m on the road, I fall way behind on the latest stuff that’s on the internet. So, I’m vaguely aware of all of that, but I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I will definitely comment on my blog or something, at some point, but I have to actually read what was said. Although I did, indeed, say that I pretty much hated the ending of Lost, I loved the show. I was a huge fan of the show. I watched it every week, for however many seasons it was on, and it was one of the best things on television, at that time. But, I wish it had ended differently.

It’s been rumored that you like to take forever to write your books because you put a lot of time into them. So, if you do get five seasons, will you have enough time to write your sixth and seventh books, in order to finish the story?

MARTIN: There’s no denying that it’s taken me a real long time to write this last book, and the one before it, which actually began life as part of the same book. But, I haven’t always taken that long. The first three books in the series came out much more quickly, and I’m hoping that the troubles and difficulties that I’ve been going through are just difficulties affecting this particular volume and, once I’ve delivered it, I will pick up speed again. Hopefully, The Winds of Winter and The Dream of Spring – the last two books in the series – will go much more quickly. Although nothing has been decided, I think we will have a number of seasons to go. We’ve done Game of Thrones as 10 episodes, for this first season. With Clash of Kings for the second season, that’s a slightly longer book. I would love it, if we got 12 hours for that one, instead of 10, but we could probably do it in 10. Once you hit the third book, A Storm of Swords, it’s too big. It’s 500 manuscript pages bigger than the second book, which itself is 100 manuscript pages longer than the first book. There’s no way that they can do that in one season, so I think you would have to divide that one into two seasons. And then, when you hit the fourth and fifth books, which would have to be recombined, the fifth book is even longer than Storm of Swords, so that’s another two seasons, for three seasons total to cover those two books. So, I have a considerable head start. If I could just finish these next two books more quickly than I did the last two, I think I’ll be fine.

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Porn Shop Clerk Enthusiast

Porn Shop Clerk

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no i'm pissed because i have one chapter and the epilogue left then i gotta wait 10 years to find out if characters died or not

i mad!

at least i can get back to my regularly scheduled life in an hour or so

:edit: martin is also a fan of cheap sleazy pulp so i'd totally expect him to enjoy something like lost

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Bronn Contributor

Bronn

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no i'm pissed because i have one chapter and the epilogue left then i gotta wait 10 years to find out if characters died or not

i mad!

at least i can get back to my regularly scheduled life in an hour or so

:edit: martin is also a fan of cheap sleazy pulp so i'd totally expect him to enjoy something like lost

you read entirely too fast... I'm only on page 325 or so... lol

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