[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] "On Story" is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

"On Story" is also brought to you in part by the Bogle Family Vineyards, six generation farmers and third generation winemakers based in Clarksburg, California.

Makers of sustainably grown wines that are a reflection of the their family values since 1968.

[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story," a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators and filmmakers.

On The Last of Us: A Conversation with Craig Mazin.

- One of the points of "The Last of Us" is that the other base emotion is love.

We have love and we have fear.

And love is the thing that sends the most fuel to fear.

So, what do we think about this love now?

And when I was first describing this to HBO, I said, "This is a love story and the bad guy is love."

So now what?

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] [Narrator] This week on "On Story," Emmy-winning creator and showrunner, Craig Mazin joins us to discuss his process of adapting the smash-hit video game into the episodic television drama series, "The Last of Us," and how he balanced humor and humanity within an apocalyptic world.

[typewriter ding] - I emailed Casey Bloys, who is the head of HBO, and I said, "Look, what is it that you guys want?"

Because they didn't want "Chernobyl."

I know that.

And he said, "We want whatever makes you levitate."

And around that time, there's a guy that works at Sony who's in charge of basically trying to get all of their titles adapted.

And I had met with him years before and he had this long list of all these PlayStation games, and I'm a big gamer you know, and I look through the list, I'm like, "Where's 'The Last of Us?'"

"Oh yeah, no, Neil Druckmann is doing that for Sony as a movie."

And I'm like, "It's not a movie, it should be a TV show, but...

fine."

And then he came back around this time I was looking for something to make me levitate and he said, "So 'The Last of Us' could be now possibly a thing."

And then apparently he's like having an argument with the Sony people about, they're like, "Well, which should work on 'The Last of Us' with this person or this person?"

He goes, "Like, where's like, I dunno, like, where's the guy who does 'Chernobyl?'"

And I was like, "I tried calling you so many times."

[audience laughing] And he was like, "Oh, oh."

And so we sat down together and talked about it and I emailed Casey back and I said, "Okay, I'm levitating.

Here we go."

- But video games and TV is not much of a thing, or at least there's not much of a blueprint for that.

Like, why were you excited about just even the possibility of that medium?

- A lot of video games are themselves adaptations of other things.

I mean, I played almost all of the Halos, but it is so adaptive of Aliens, in particular of the second Alien film, James Cameron's Aliens.

So you start to feel a little bit like you're getting a copy of a copy of a thing.

"The Last of Us," it's genre and it has zombies in it, but the story and the way the story unfolds and the way the characters unfold, it just felt so, it felt, right.

So I had a feeling that I wanted other people to feel, and in my head I just could see it.

- Dad.

[door creaks] [eerie music] [helicopter whirs] Dad.

[soft eerie music] [tone on TV] [TV voice] Indoors, law enforcement and emergency services are in the area and will be in contact with further instructions.

[thud] [gasps] [dog barking] Stay indoors.

- So you find that trust with each other and with HBO, they give you the green light.

And so here you go.

It's day one.

Like how do you start a project this big?

- Well, do you have kids?

- I don't.

- Yeah, so the great thing about having your first kid is you have no [beep] idea what you're in for.

And if people did, there would be none of us.

It's a little bit like that.

You're so excited to get your show and you get your show and then you're like, "Oh no."

But the things that you don't know, it's great that you don't know them.

You would run in fear.

So the first time you go in with this kind of insane, we've just gotta make it work fear/confidence.

And making a television show like "The Last of Us" is a creative effort, it's art, it's writing and acting, but it's also a massive business.

So it's very stressful, but it's also very exciting.

And when it's going well, it's the best feeling in the world.

[typewriter ding] - I imagine you're not like actually putting words onto the page yet.

There's something more conceptual or early, but, so how are you doing that and how are you like finding progress through just this investigation?

- Well, a lot of it is just saying, "Okay, we know roughly what the shape is here, but like, okay, now there's a lot of space in between."

So sometimes there's subtle differences.

And then of course when we do depart, sometimes we depart wildly from the game.

Our big hope is that a lot of the things that we do that aren't in the game, people feel like they were in the game.

I think a sense of dissatisfaction is the most valuable sense you can have as a writer because the young writer in me wants to be done and the old writer in me is like, "You are never done."

So how can we make it better?

- Video games is just a totally different medium than TV or film, POV.

Just the way you move through that world is entirely different.

Did anything surprise you as like, "Oh, this is gonna be really hard to adapt into this new medium?"

- No, not there, because I knew what, I knew why I connected to the game.

And there were moments that you've connect to the action.

And then, alright, where do I show the audience that action?

I think it's a mistake that some people make when they adapt video games.

They think they should be adapting the gameplay, they should not.

What we're really talking about with "The Last of Us" are characters, relationships above all else, and the major events that test those relationships.

- I imagine when you're talking about that there wasn't a lot of challenges.

There are also I imagine where a lot of exciting opportunities where you could leave the character that you would otherwise be playing as in the game.

As you started working through this, I guess like, was there anything that was like making your mouth water anything about like, "This is so great that we can totally do this part differently?"

- I mean it was really just the overall concept of being able to, like you said, leave the character, but even in the leaving of the character, there were opportunities to leave what we saw in the game and see more or see differently.

So like one of the very first conversations Neil and I had about story after we set this thing up, we're just sitting in his office and we're just sort of imagining, and I said, "I had this thought," this was like an early, like, "I wonder how this is gonna go."

We've gone 20 years into time after the outbreak and we meet Joel again and he just casually dumps this kid's body, this infected kid's body into a fire.

And we just see this guy who was sobbing over his child is now dead inside, even if it's children.

And that was kind of like, that was the best part, because why would I think of that, because of what happened in the game.

The game can only show you so much before it hands you the controller back, they call it being on the stick.

People wanna be on the stick, they wanna move their character around and do stuff.

We don't give you the controller ever.

So all those options were so exciting and so really you just begin to think about it like it's new.

[typewriter ding] - The cold open of episode one is you going for it.

And in a way that was so surprising and I don't even know why it works so well, but can you talk about coming up for that?

[Dr. Schoenheiss] Probably something similar to influenza.

[Josh Brener] Because of air travel.

[Dr. Schoenheiss] Through the air, coughing.

[Josh Brener] I'm sorry.

I meant people on planes.

That was something you described in your book.

- Yes, a new virus in Madagascar, say, could be in Chicago within a matter of weeks and we end up with a global pandemic, pan, meaning all the whole world becomes sick all at once.

- Hmm.

And Dr. Newman, you're also an epidemiologist, I presume the prospect of a viral pandemic keeps you up at night as well.

- No.

[Josh Brener] No?

- No.

- Alright, well that's our show.

[audience laughs] - No, mankind has been at war with the virus from the start.

Sometimes millions of people die as in an actual war, but in the end, we always win.

- But you, just to be clear, you do think microorganisms pose a threat?

- Oh, in the most dire terms.

- It was one of the first things I wrote and it was important to me to sort of say, we the show acknowledge there is a pandemic right now.

It is killing millions of people.

And I was a little nervous about starting, I mean, think about the expectations of the audience, especially everyone who played the game.

The WTF factor must have been massive when it started that way.

And I think about this when we're editing all the time, but also when I'm shooting, when I'm directing is I'm way more interested in somebody's reaction to something scary than I am in seeing something scary.

A lot of times I'll say to my editor, "Okay, this is good except don't show me and then show her, show her, show her face change, then show me."

[creature screams] And that's kind of what happens there, is you've got this guy who's us, "It's ridiculous, I don't believe any of this.

I don't believe any of this.

I don't believe any of this."

And then, "Oh, I do."

And that seeing him get scared is the permission for everyone to go, "I think I'm also allowed to be scared."

- For instance, the world were to get slightly warmer.

Well now there is reason to evolve, one gene mutates and an ascomycete, candida, ergot, cordyceps, aspergillus, any one of them could become capable of burrowing into our brains and taking control, not of millions of us, but billions of us.

Billions of puppets with poisoned minds, permanently fixed on one unifying goal, to spread the infection to every last human alive by any means necessary.

And there are no treatments for this.

No preventatives, no cures, they don't exist.

It's not even possible to make them.

- So if that happens.

- We lose.

[typewriter ding] - I kind of wanna talk about Bill and about Frank because I mean, you talk about departures from the game.

This one is maybe your biggest, and I imagine the riskiest, you're leaving both of your characters for almost a full episode in episode three to tell a totally different but beautiful love story.

[calm music] [Bill laughs] [Craig] The big risk that we didn't necessarily consider was that we were stopping the action of this series dead in its tracks and asking people to start up fresh again with two other people.

In the game Bill is alive, Joel and Ellie get to his little town.

He's there, there is no Frank, he's like the grouchiest possible Bill.

And one point, he's refers to his former partner, Frank.

They no longer are together.

And only later do you realize the nature of the word partner.

And on your way out of the town, you and Bill all eventually find Frank's body.

He has hanged himself and left a suicide note.

And the nature of the note basically is, "I was trying to get outta town, I was bitten by an infected and killing myself, but also I'd rather, essentially, I'd rather be dead than have to spend one more day with you."

[exhale grunts] I mean, but see, the thing is you're, this is important to understand.

It worked really well in the game because when you're playing, you're winning all the time.

When you're watching a television show, we don't give you the opportunity to succeed.

The only successes you're gonna have are the ones we're gonna show you.

Before we send Ellie and Joel on this journey, we needed to at least say to the audience, "A win is possible."

It's really important.

Otherwise it will feel like we're just watching two people circle a drain.

There has to be some sense that you can make it in this world.

And even if it ends in death, it ends on your own terms peacefully and beautifully.

[typewriter dings] - I am curious about writing fear.

How do you approach fear, writing for fear and understanding if it's going to actually make the audience scared or is it more of a direction thing?

- No, it's on the page.

I'm very literal, not meaning fixed and rigid, but word based about all this stuff.

So in my script, I will routinely write what the actor's thinking like dialogue in the action area.

You'll be able to read their thoughts.

The actors can read their own thoughts.

They will never be said.

But it gives everyone context and defines the nature of the fear.

Fear is really underlying everything.

It's the or emotion.

One of the points of "The Last of Us" is that the other base emotion is love.

We have love and we have fear and love is the thing that sends the most fuel to fear.

So what do we think about this love now?

And, you know, when I was first describing this to HBO, I said, "This is a love story and the bad guy is love.

So now what?"

- Yeah.

- And I'm fascinated by that.

And people talk about what Joel does at the end of the show.

I agree and disagree with him at the same time.

There are two sides to that argument.

And the answer I always give is, "Yeah, they're both right."

It's just, they're also both wrong.

- So I imagine for you the most important aspect of season one is Joel and Ellie and the journey from them not liking each other to that profound love.

How did you map that out?

Like were you actually organizing like, "In this episode we're feeling this way, in this episode we're feeling this way."

How did you make it feel real?

- Yes, absolutely.

And you make it feel real by constantly asking the question, how would one feel here?

It was important to me, for instance, at the beginning of our third episode, for Joel to be angry at Ellie for something that really wasn't her fault.

And for him to not apologize and to show him that she didn't like him either, but it was very important to say, we have to get through, let's say six hours, and then we're done with each other.

Because I think that's what would happen.

- Nobody made you go along with this plan.

You needed a truck battery or whatever, and you made a choice.

So don't blame me for something that isn't my fault.

[birds chirping] [water flowing] [birds chirping] [water flowing] [birds chirping] [water flowing] How much longer?

[Joel] Five-hour hike.

- We can manage that.

- I didn't want to feel like, "Oh, they're already beginning to have this rela--" people don't-- that's not how it works.

Just because the show wants them to have a relationship doesn't mean they get to have a rela-- no, it needs to happen for a reason.

And the reason in that, and it was something that we talked a lot about, obviously, really comes down to the note that Bill leaves for Joel, which is to say, "You're here to protect someone."

Bill doesn't know that Joel failed to protect his own daughter.

He just knows that Joel is like him.

Somebody whose function and purpose is to use their inner badness, their violence and their cruelty to protect somebody who is innocent and good and beautiful and that person is Tess and she's dead and there's this kid in there who needs to go exactly where he needs to go.

And that's why the relationship starts, that moment when they drive away.

And Ellie gives him that look and I actually get quiet emotional about it because what we come to understand is, she had to kill her own freshly minted girlfriend like three weeks earlier.

- No, no, no.

[calm music] ♪ ♪ - And here she is smiling because she has someone now and it's also clear that she wanted him to want her, but she knew he didn't until he did.

And that's how it works.

The story can't make it happen until it's supposed to happen.

And we mapped that out very carefully.

[typewriter ding] - So talk about the scene with Ellie's mother, the flashback and why you chose to put it in the very last episode.

- Well, that was a story that early on came from me asking Neil questions.

One of the questions I asked was, "Okay, Ellie's growing up in this federal orphanage, but where did she come from?"

And he said, "Well, there was a story we were gonna do, it was an animated thing and then we're gonna try and maybe do it as like a da da da."

And I was like, [beep] doing that.

I mean, are you kidding me?

[Ellie's mom grunting and heavy breathing] [Ellie's mom grunting and heavy breathing] [Door banging] [creature growling] We felt it was important to put there because, we were coming back around to Marlene.

- It's not too late.

[Craig] And Marlene had revealed herself to Ellie as really the person who had been raising her in a sense, just Ellie doesn't know.

Ellie didn't know that Marlene had been watching her and that Marlene had indeed put her in an orphanage to keep her safe.

Marlene is as close to a mother as Ellie can have, and Joel is going to kill her.

So bringing that concept back and reestablishing Marlene in the timeline.

So it wasn't just, "Oh, here's Marlene in a hospital," felt like had good utility there.

You know, just in the hardware plot thinking of things.

The other thing that we thought was important was to reconnect Ellie to her own childhood because she is a child.

She's 14 years old, we maybe lost sight of that.

The things that she can do are pretty remarkable.

Her ability to survive is remarkable.

And then we see her literally born in violence.

But when we come back to her and we come back to her face, we are reminded that she is still a child and she's now feeling the weight of it all.

She has, she has lost something.

And here's poor Joel trying to get her to wake back up again.

And we could just start with her feeling sad, but there was something that felt so much more brutal and beautiful about seeing how this poor kid never took, not literally one breath before violence was a part of her life.

- We have to go talk about the finale.

Everything leads up to this.

It is the moment everyone's waiting for.

It is a video game and you have to make this feel dramatic.

I don't know, how do you kind of thread that needle?

- That was difficult.

We collected all this footage of Pedro Pascal doing this rampage through a hospital with gunfire and squibs and kabooms and things.

And our very talented editor, Tim Good, put together, you know, a really good action montage.

And I was like, "It's good."

But there was like, "Why am I feeling nothing?"

And what I didn't wanna do was wait for the moment where Joel scoops Ellie back up in his arms to go, "Oh, now I feel something."

Because then what was the point of all that?

And I don't know, we've gone through version after version.

I'm driving home thinking about this and I call up Tim and I say, "Put 'All Gone' under this."

[music "All Gone"] Then it was there and I was like, "This is it."

This is not exciting.

This is not root for Joel.

I feel sad for him because he's destroying himself and laying the seeds of destruction for his own relationship with the one person he loves in this world through this.

I don't want to feel good.

I don't wanna root for this.

I also don't wanna condemn him.

I just want to feel the heartbreak of it.

It's tragic.

And that's how that came together, really was choice of music in the end, just transformed the whole thing.

And then we recut the whole thing.

And out of that came a lot of interesting things that, I mean, we were certainly aware that we were firing in a narrow target.

And on one side you have people who have never played the game and know nothing and don't like zombie shows.

And on the other side you have people who played the game and are really rigid and like, "Change nothing.

Joel's beard isn't thick enough."

[audience laughs] And we're trying to somehow like throw the dart right between those and get them all to agree as much as we can.

And, and uh, I think we did all right.

[typewriter ding] [Narrator] You've been watching On The Last of Us: A Conversation With Craig Mazin on "On Story."

"On Story" is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story Project that also includes the "On Story" radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about "On Story" and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

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