Obviously, when you do something with drama and comedy in it - and by that, I mean a scene that has drama and comedy in it - you know the minute you introduce music, you're either scoring the drama or you're scoring the comedy, and therefore the scene becomes either dramatic or comedic.
The great amount of fun that I have is I can cast dramatic actors to play comedic roles, and I can cast comedic actors to play dramatic roles because, really, there's no such thing. There's just actors.
The first dumb idea was to do it at all - to take 'Fargo,' this beloved classic, and turn it into a television show. The second dumb idea, when you do it and it works, was to throw everything out and start again.
The great thing about making an ensemble show is it becomes modular. It might work on the page to cut from one scene to another, but on the screen, it's more powerful to take that second scene and move it first or move it later.
The thing with making your art your business is: It's a business. You can't sit around waiting for the muse, especially when you run a show, and you're in production, and an outline is due, a script is due, and a reshoot is due. No. You look at the calendar, and you go, 'OK. I can write from 4 to 6.' So you write.
There is a difference between movie actors and TV acting, especially with movie stars, which is they know their face is 20 feet high on the screen. They know they don't have to do much.
There is the moral spectrum in 'Fargo,' and you see it in other Coen brothers movies, where you have a very good character on one end and a very bad character on the other.
There's a sense you get from the Coens' work, like 'No Country for Old Men,' where you put these characters in situations, and you just let this painful amount of time take place. Part of the tension is just how long it takes to get out of that scene.
When I sold my first book, 'A Conspiracy of Tall Men,' it was part of a two-book deal. It wasn't hugely lucrative, but it was enough money for me to quit the paralegal job I had in San Francisco.
The prospect of being a father made me ask myself a question. How do you know what kind of adult your child will turn out to be? And how much can you control that?
Tension is all about, 'Why is this taking so long?' The interesting thing about that is that it's also the tension of comedy. The tension of drama and comedy is similar, and that's why usually you can get a big laugh in a really tense moment because people need that release.
Making 'Fargo' for FX has been the highlight of my career. A writer can search his or her whole career for a network partner who truly understands and encourages their vision. For me, the search is over.
It used to be for writers that that six seasons and a movie thing, that's the holy grail as writers - your series goes eight, 10 seasons, you're set for life.
In a traditional TV show or movie, your hero is always where the action is. But in real life, at the end of the movie 'Fargo,' when Bill Macy is arrested, Marge is nowhere to be found because it's a different jurisdiction, and she wouldn't be there. I took that to heart.
I've always been really attracted to playing with structure. To take the story of 'Fargo' and break it up in such a way that's it's not linear, per se.
I'm not that guy who thinks I have all the answers. Writing is a means of communicating, and if enough people say, 'I don't get it,' it's worth looking at.
I'm attracted to ensembles: you get a lot of really good moving pieces. It's sort of like a horse race in a way, especially when you know that everyone is on this collision course. It's like, 'Who's going to make it?' And you can put people together in unexpected pairings.
I was part of a writers' collective with 21 writers and filmmakers called the San Francisco Writers' Grotto. We had our own office space in this old converted dog and cat hospital, and we had a basketball hoop outside. I'd bring my dog to work every day and write.
I think the age of the modern media campaign has created a new icon, the celebrity-in-chief. Political elections have become wars fought by candidates with opposing values.
I think people used to read 'War and Peace,' and now they don't; now they sit around with their tablets and watch 'Downton Abbey' and 'Breaking Bad' or whatever, and they want the things that they watch to be better so that they can feel better about themselves for watching it.
