YouSaid · the spoken record

Bruce Miller

lines on the record: 92
first: 2017-05-10
most recent: 2017-05-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I don't Yeah, I just recently watched all of West Wing Because I'd like that administration better. So it was like 900 hours of West Wing. It was very funny. It was fine all at once. It worked just fine. It's interesting. Writers have always tell me, oh, Bin versus this. I'm like, yeah, listeners, don't get locked here.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just depends how you're going to write it. It just depends. I just need to know ahead of time. I don't necessarily prefer, but you don't want to create something for binging. And then all of a sudden they decide to show it week to week. It's just a different animal. And things work beautifully. I mean, I mean, I know that I went back and binged lots of shows that had been on when I, you know, through the years and they were on weekly and they certainly held up beautifully as I just recently watched.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Where I made large changes. You've been twitified, right? Yeah, but wait a minute. So I think that's the way that I Did you but you preferred that versus binging or do you not? It depends how you're going to write it.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it has a social media aspect, but also it was a book. And so I think that people have, there are people out there who have a lot more knowledge. And I found that people, you know, quite careful readers of the book can really see where I made small changes and where I made large changes. You've been Twittified, right? Yeah, but wait a minute. Subtly. And it's nice because I haven't heard too much criticism of the fact that you actually do have to turn a book into a television show. You can't just film it. But what I was hoping is that when you watch it and that it's an enjoyable or entertaining, thrilling ride as a show, but then afterwards there's enough to think about and chew on and discuss that you can milk 40% more out of the experience. So I think that's the way that I kind of try to make use of the week between episodes is to have enough.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want Yeah, yeah. I think you get used to, and also especially after you see a show, but this one's such a slap in the face. Kick in the stomach that there is a benefit to having a chance to breathe in between. And the other thing that I've found that's been really nice is that I was hoping that the social media universe would help people fill in some of the blanks so that I could be more subtle, especially in the first few episodes of a show like this where you have so much to establish. And I think have a moral and genetic predisposition towards not ever doing any kind of explaining. So I try really hard not to have any of that stuff. And so I think that it's nice that there's a supportive.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I couldn't not watch the rest, which is, I wanted to binge it, which is interesting. I'm so used to binging now because of cards is now coming out in May or June 1st or something like that, May 31st. I'm going to watch the whole thing. Yeah.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And to sign up for Hulu. And for me, it was great. But I certainly made the first three to be digested a little bit at a time. And I imagine some people got a stomachache. I know my niece called me and said she hasn't slept for a night and a half now.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's spectacular in it. And so, you know, it was really their decision, but having so many friends and seen so many people go through the process of, oh, I wrote a show for this network and it didn't have any commercials. And I didn't think of that. Or they did have commercials. Or all of them were coming out in one day. And I want to know what that does to the audience. How do you tell a story where you're really blending one episode into another? So we've had writers have been having those conversations for a while about how that changes storytelling. And I think that it's important for us to be thinking ahead. I mean, just because, you know,”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, we put three episodes up at once. It really was up to Hulu in terms of what their model was, but it certainly was the first question I asked. Because from a storytelling point of view, having things that are once a week is very different than having things that you binge all at once. And so I tried to make decisions that I could be a little more, I could stress people out a little more because they had some time to recover and also I could really.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can't have any conversation. No, absolutely. We've been talking about the world which Margaret created and now has been dramatized in this series. Can you talk a little bit about the look and feel of the movie? And then I want to talk about what it's like to produce for Hulu or a Netflix slash Amazon kind of thing in this new Hollywood. But one of the things that's really interesting about this is how it how you didn't first of all you didn't binge like a house of cards, correct? You wanted to do it over, you put three episodes up at once, but not the whole thing.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're kindering. I hope it certainly made me appreciate the messiness of life now and the messiness of the arguments that we can have. There's some good arguments in the show that don't really go anywhere that don't settle anything in the past, which I think is frustrating to us now, but it seems like such a delicious pleasure when you're stuck like Offred is that you can't even have a conversation about what color she's going to wear that day. You can't have any conversation. No.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah, we're all tracked. There's so much out there, which is one of the things when we flashback that I love is how messy the world is. And it certainly makes me appreciate, it makes it easier to drive home from work and all the traffic and music playing and people walking around.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If fertility rates fell, and I said to you, listen, you're a fertile woman, the government wants to give you better healthcare for free because you're more valuable. Or vouchers for food because we want to make sure that you're. And then we also want you to come in and get an example all the time. And then we want you to register when you get pregnant just so we know there's lots of kind and very smart ways that seemingly smart ways that that could be happening well before it turns into something nefarious and terrible.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kind of that part. But in terms of how people kind of end up, you'd say, well, no one would ever register as a fertile woman, you know, if you called someone and said, but I looked very closely at the development of World War II and how they knew in a time where there was much lower tech who was gay, who was Catholic, who was this, who was that. And what ends up happening is...”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I mean, I think there's a combination of things. We tried to be very practical about what would disappear if fertility became an issue, including cell phones. I mean, the idea that anything that even there was a rumor that had affected fertility would be gone. So there's rumors about cell phones. There's rumors about cell signals. There's rumors about Wi-Fi. There's so a lot of those things would already be gone, not entirely, but as much as possible. Just for the idea of trying to promote fertility. So, you know, we tried to track.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's also about the tech of it because you can't think of all the things we are tracked on today. I mean, the ability to track us if a government like this took power, it's very easy to take control of the citizens. I mean, that's what I think you depict really well, even though it's just a credit card. You can think of 900 other ways to figure out who was gay, who was not gay, because gay people obviously got arrested and killed and sent to the outer limits of the...”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fertility had dropped 90-95%. The world, the entire world would change so much in so many different ways. Right, absolutely. And so people would be a lot more open to anything, anybody who says, I have a solution, even if it's a spiritual solution, would rise in power immediately. I think people would be terrified of something like that. That we couldn't have children. Yeah, I mean, I think just a world where people in general can't have children, as opposed to it's the exception. And I think it would be terror that grew very quickly, like in the movie Children of Men, where all of a sudden you realize, hey, I haven't seen a child around for a while or hey, I haven't, you know, and there's moments in this series later on. We tried hard to, it's hard to find a way to visualize falling”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, there's room with switches that control assault. There is, actually. It seems like it's so plausible and also so terrifying because it doesn't seem like there's any route to undoing that. But, you know, you have to put that in the context of the world that they're living in. You know, it feels a little like Gilead comes on quickly. But if you lived in a world where...”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Margaret wrote it before that the scene in the book's not quite the same. But the turning off of people's credit cards based on their gender was something in the book. I mean, so Margaret 35 years ago, that was, you know, possible. And it was just something so scary. You feel so powerless because, you know, just one switch somewhere in a big, I assume, some giant room full of switches can do some room.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Felt like they were allowed to say those things. And that, to me, was the thing that struck me most during the political season leading up to the election. And since then, that everybody, that the people with very dark thoughts have suddenly been verbalizing them in cruel ways, in ways that I didn't think people even thought before, and certainly things that I don't think people would have said to each other that are all kind of coming out. And so that part of it, I felt really aligned with how people were thinking now.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is kind of funny. Yeah, we just tried very hard to put them in, that was consulted with Lizzie and Samira. What do you go running in? Trying to make those decisions, you don't want to kind of lay over what you think someone would be running in that someone else might think is slutty. So we just kind of let them say, okay, well, what exactly would you wear if you went out running? And we had lots of different options and they had lots of different things that they wore out. And we didn't change that at all. And I think the thing that's so startling for me in that moment is just the venom that this guy has. And it seemed to me that it was just, you know, something was happening in the world where people were...”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then she goes into the coffee shop, which is now being run by a man when it used to be run by a woman. And he insults what they're wearing and says they shouldn't be wearing that. And then their credit cards don't work because this is a tech attack at the same time on women, which is interesting. Can you talk about that? Because I can't believe you did the yoga pants thing and then United did the yoga dance thing kind of thing, which is kind of funny.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At least just personally, that's the nervous relationship it has to the world that's going on today, absolutely, where we have a government that, you know, in some ways they proclaim a leader. Well, we have a leader, but we also have a government that in some ways is trying to promote a hands-off philosophy and in other ways trying to promote a very hands-on philosophy. And you don't know, you know, it's so unpredictable. Just like Gilead, they have this moral purity. And meanwhile, they're acting horribly behind the scenes. Yeah, every practical thing they do is terrible, but all their proclamations are moral.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think it isn't even, it's a populist government turning into a populist government. I mean, I think anytime a government kind of is taking more control and getting more involved in people's lives, that's always scary. And the thing about a totalitarian state is that just like its name, it tries to control the total person. So there's lots of scenes in the book where I found it absolutely fascinating, the moments where the state enters into your bedroom or into your most intimate relationships between you and your significant other, between you and your children. And here you get to see that. And that to me feels...”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Changing it, which I'm Absolutely. But she was Thank you. I don't know. I mean, I think that for me, it always felt like I was dying for more. So the perfect time to have a sequel would have been five minutes after I finished the book. But yes, I mean, I think that the world has changed, the politics of the world have gone in some directions that certainly Margaret feels like kind of dovetail into just the feelings of having a big impersonal kind of cruel-hearted government and the people who are being governed over feel completely helpless and it feels like an intractable situation whether it's whether they're coming from a religious point of view or another point of view. I know that I certainly always relate to the material on that level. Just the faceless, cruel government.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've Margaret is quite alive. She is Yeah, she does. I saw her being interviewed just recently in person with Elizabeth Moss, who plays the main character offering. And someone asked her if she was going to, since this is going on, if she was going to write a sequel, and she said, no, she was working on something else. I don't know. She didn't really give a reason why not, but she wouldn't say what she was working on because she didn't want her editors to know because she's changing it, which I'm like, at this point, Margaret Octwin could do whatever Margaret Octwood wants to do. Absolutely. But she was like, I don't want them to be mad at me. I was like, don't worry, Margaret. You can do whatever you feel like. But what was interesting is that she didn't want to do a sequel when this is a perfect time to do a sequel, correct? Or not?”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thinking that she did and there's all sorts of stuff that she's up for discussion now that we're kind of teasing apart the book and we've tried to modernize it and that brings up all sorts of questions. So we've been able to kind of tap into to keep it in an Atwood world and an Atwood story as much as possible. We're in a unique position of having someone, usually when you adapt a classic, the author is quite dead and Margaret is quite alive. She is. But also, you know, usually when you adapt a classic, even if the author is around, it was written so long ago and there's so much intervening work in Margaret's case. She's so prolific. But she has a startling memory for kind of how she arrived a particular story decision. So I certainly don't remember why I decided to call someone Bob instead of Steve 35 years ago, but boy, Margaret does.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, I think there's kind of a dog chasing a rabbit kind of aspect to that. Luckily, we don't have that. We're not following along Margaret writing ahead of us. But we have, just by mining the book and also Mark has been very involved from the beginning. And there's all sorts of...”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Things that were, as I read, were mentioned in the book that you really wanted to explore. So in some ways, I don't feel like we go. The book ever. I mean, we're extrapolating out from what she's done, and we're also exploring parts of the world that she mentioned and talked about and described, but kind of didn't ever get us there.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think a lot of people, including me, get kind of frustrated when you get to the end of the book because it ends. It ends rather abruptly. Part of that is because the point of view of the main character is so strict in the book that anything that she sees, we see and anything she doesn't see, we don't see. And so when her story kind of ends, our vision into the world is shut off. But we expand that point of view a little bit in the show and little starting in little ways and then in bigger ways. But the book also, Margaret Outwood just creates this incredibly rich world and there's”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. So this is also a book that had a beginning, middle, and end, and had a movie that was the same thing. It had an end and a central conclusion. This is a series that's lasting how long Because it's individual shows. It's individual shows.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I always say owner that her name is what's called a patronymic, which is a name made from the male person, the head of the household. And languages, there are other languages that have patronymics in it that isn't always considered a terrible thing. But she is, of Fred, we do find out her name in the TV show in the book. It's never mentioned. And it is one of the most kind of just on a bass level kind of gut-wrenching parts of it is that she doesn't even have a name. And you get into kind of the, it's not, it changes when she moves from place to place. She loses of Fred and she'll become of.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And our heroine, even though kind of whilst enduring the horror, definitely keeps one eye on the fact that this is the craziest, bizarre, kind of sad, pathetic thing that she's ever been involved in. So it's nice that she doesn't lose that. Right, and it's her”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, or formalized. I mean, formalized, institutionalized rape in such a weird, like, but domestically, you know, a home institution. I mean, it's horrible on every level, but also absurdly arcane and specific.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it is as literal a biblical adaption as I've ever seen. I mean, it's called the ceremony. You know, in the book, it's described very specifically, and we tried hard on the show to take all of that and just work out kind of the practical kinks about how you would actually do that. But it involves all the husband and the wife and the handmade all together at the same time. One of the reviews I think called it a joyless three-way. And it very much is a joyless. Oralized.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The handmaid's tale takes place. The book, it takes place in the near future, right? The book was published in AD6, and it takes place just in the near future. And it is after a totalitarian theocratic coup has taken place in the US. And the government is being run under very kind of strict Old Testament Christianity, kind of a perverted version of Christianity. And the main character, Offred, plays a handmade. It's a world where fertility rates have fallen quite precipitously. And handmaids are fertile women who are gathered up and kind of made property of the state and then given to live in the houses of higher level people in the community in order to try to get pregnant so that those people can reproduce.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Excited as a fan, you know, like, ooh, it's going to be a TV show. And I was, you know, I loved the book and I had reread it over the years and I had listened to the audiobook with Claire Danes, which was spectacular. And so, you know, I was just waiting for it to come out. But every year or so, I would have my agents check and see what the status of it was. Half because I would hope that there was a job for me, but half because you're just excited for it to come out. They checked and it found it turned out that Eileen was busy doing Empire and who had acquired the project. And they were looking for someone to run the show. So that all happened well before the election, well before the election began, even before people were really starting to talk about the real primary candidates.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I read the book when I was in college and so when it was made into a movie and it's been adapted quite a few times. It's been a ballet. It's been an opera. It's been everything you can plays. It's been a whole bunch of different things, everything you can imagine. When I came to the project, the original writer was Eileen Chaken.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I mean, basically, for the last 6,000 years, you know, we've been basically telling stories that are. About one or two hours long, you know, and that's just continued. So it isn't my job hasn't changed all that much in terms of the writing part of it and the narrative part of it. But the environment has changed just incredibly around me.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some sort of cable and then gradually it started kind of started to hear about stuff on pay cable and then you start to hear about stuff that's going to be on streaming services and now that world has exploded in terms of the amount of shows that they're making original content. So I was in a very kind of traditional storytelling world but In fact, my job doesn't change all that much.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I had worked on a lot of different shows over the years, some network shows, some cable shows. The industry really changed a lot in the time that I've been in it. The first few shows I worked on ER and I worked on Everwood. They were pretty big network shows. And then gradually I just, I mean, all the jobs that I got and all the things that were offered were on either”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I started in features a very, very long time ago, but quickly moved it to TV. It seemed to suit my, I like it better. You get to work with other writers, which is... Something you don't get to do in the future world.”
2017-05-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Behind the scenes of 'The Handmaid's Tale' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT