[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - The best response you can have to a payoff in a thriller is someone goes, "Oh, right, I forgot, of course..." [multiple voices chattering] [Narrator] On Story offers a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.

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[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.

This week's On Story, "Barry" co-creators Alec Berg and Bill Hader.

The world of crime is very, very high stakes but very low drama for Barry.

But the world of acting is very low stakes, but very high drama.

He's trying to deliver one line in a piece for Sally in some crap theater in front of an audience of nine people.

But like that's much more important to him than, you know, saving his own life is.

[paper crinkles] [typing] [typewriter ding] [Narrator] This week on On Story, "Barry" co-creators, Alec Berg and Bill Hader discuss the process behind developing their award-winning dark comedy HBO series about a professional hitman who falls in love with acting.

[typewriter ding] - Can you talk about that dance of working together in your particular case and how you sort of split those creative functions even though you're both doing them?

- We just started from a place of like, well what's interesting and what would be fun?

And you just sort of build it one brick at a time and you just sort of follow it wherever it goes.

Like I sort of have likened the process to like two idiots standing at a piano and just hitting notes and going, "Oh that sounds good."

You know, or, "That doesn't sound good with that."

It's an enormous amount of trial and error, which is probably, maybe not time-wise or energy-wise the most efficient way to write, but you know, it seems to be working.

- For me also is just trying to find the personal aspect to it.

You know, I was on "Saturday Night Live."

And I have terrible anxiety.

I'm really have stage fright.

I don't like being in front of a lot of people and I just was telling him like the irony of this, that you know, I got this job, but it was like slowly killing me.

[Bill chuckles] And then it was like, oh, that's an interesting emotion.

And then we just kind of talked about that.

And then it was like, you know, the thing you said earlier, what if I was a hitman?

You know?

And then it was like, well, if he does, you know but he hates it, you know, but he's naturally good at killing people, but it's killing him.

It's a thing, it's is ruining his soul and well what does he want to be?

And then we very quickly were like, "He should be in acting class."

And then it was kind of like, "Oh, what if Travis Bickle from "Taxi Driver" had to hang out with the, he found his salvation and redemption with the people from Waiting for Guffman?"

And in that, and that in and of itself kind of brought the tone together.

- That was us banging at the piano.

It was like, we'd kind of guessed about an actor.

It's like, "What's the opposite of being a hitman?"

Like, what's something that's like very, you know, dramatic and flighty and, you know, kind of not hardcore, you know and immediately after, it was just kind of a random stab at like, oh, those are juxtaposed.

And then we started finding all of these.

- I remember saying, because I had been in improv classes and it was like this weird therapy, you know?

And I remember Alec going like, "Hitman in an acting class is really good."

And then that was, that's when the lunch took a turn where it was like, oh no, we're in love now.

[laughing] [typewriter ding] - You've got some great folks clearly on your team.

How did you go about, I mean this is so in y'all's head so much so because it's Bill's character, right?

How did you go about assembling that team of people and knowing, you've got some people from "Atlanta" here and you've just got a really interesting group of people together.

So clearly this is working for you.

So how did you determine what you needed in that room outside of yourselves?

- I'm going to sound really pretentious here, but Kurosawa always wrote with like five people and he said it was, because I'm a film nerd.

I have the Criterion Channel, just so you guys know.

But Kurosawa wrote with five different people.

And he said cause you can't write from just one point of view.

You can't see a human being just from one point of view.

You have to see it from five different points of view to have a fully formed person.

And it's kind of the same thing where you bring in people that have different strong suits that we just don't have.

You know, like Liz Sarnoff comes from, you know "Deadwood" and "Lost," and these other great shows.

"Alcatraz" and these other things, you know and she just has a story sense that, I mean, I don't think either of us really have and I think Liz Sarnoff is someone who brings very bold story moves.

You know, she's always the one pitching like, a good example I would say is, you know, the end of episode six of season one, where they're in the car and I remember same pigeon and you see the car gets shot and it flips, you know, and then, you know, whatever.

And she said, "No, no, no, no you should just cut right in the middle of them shooting.

So we just think everybody died."

[metal music] - Woo!

- Runnin'!

[metal music] - Taylor they're already here!

They're already here!

- What the [beep]?!

- Taylor, stop!

[gunshots] - That's a very Liz Sarnoff thing.

Just make everybody go, "Wait, did everybody just get murdered?"

And then in the next episode reveal what happened at the top of seven, you know.

- But you also need writers who sometimes when you say, "They want this to connect to this" you need writers who go, "Why?"

- Yeah.

- Why, that's not what you should want.

And then we need to explain to you why, right?

That's a bad idea.

You know, there was a, a thing, sorry to interrupt Bill.

But there was a thing season one where we had this idea that Barry gets Sally a laptop.

- Hi.

- How's it going?

Hey, how did it go?

- Great.

Yeah, it all went so great.

- Okay, great.

When, when do you find out if you got it?

- What's with the laptop?

- Oh, this is for you.

Yours is cracked so I bought you a new one.

- That's like three months of my rent.

- Oh.

I'm sorry.

Do you want a drink?

- Oh, I... well, I already have a drink, so.

- Alright, cool.

- I just, I haven't said hi to Natalie, so.

- So we were explaining where we thought the story went and a couple of the writers, particularly the women in the room were like, "That's a super creepy, weird gift."

And we were like, "No, no, it isn't."

- Yeah we were two dudes being like, "That's a really nice gift."

And they're like, "You're creeps if you think that's nice.

You sleep with a guy once and he gives you a laptop.

Like what, what are you joking?"

And we were like, "What is wrong with that?"

you know.

- Eventually we, you know, because we respected and trusted their point of view.

And we were like, "Okay, we'll wait.

Okay, if that's wrong, then what would happen because of that."

And then we started going down this other road.

And again, it was like standing at the piano and it's like, "Oh, okay.

This note is wrong.

So if this note is right, what comes after that?"

And we chased it down a totally different path and got something that ended up being much, much better.

- I remember going, "Well, if we do that, then Barry and Sally are breaking up mid season," and Liz went, "That's way more interesting than them being together all season."

[laughing] And I went, "Oh, okay, that's kind of true," you know?

- Yeah.

- I go, "What do you mean?"

She goes, "I don't know, something's happening?"

[laughing] [typewriter ding] - You're talking about beating on a piano.

But to me it sounds kind of like a mix of intuition and that you've got people with story sense but it's also like, what's the right?

Where's the right thing?

Where's the right place for us to go here?

Like, how do we move on from here?

Seems like you're working this out through these episodes rather than having it laid out.

Like you said before, with all this backstory and information, but I mean, that's a little risky, right?

That's like kind of a risky way of going about a show.

- Yeah, it's terrifying, terrifying.

- I kinda always see it as like, you know, we call it filling buckets.

You'll kind of go, "Oh, that scene seems like it wants to be in episode four some place.

And that scene wants to be here."

Like for instance, season one, we kind of knew Barry goes up on stage and something bad has happened.

And he actually has like this cathartic guilt, a realization that he's this killer and he has some kind of grief moment that is conceived as good acting.

- It was my first tour.

[wind whistles] I was on fire watch with my friend Albert.

At an OP and uh- - Albert?

- Yeah?

- You want to take a look at this?

- Why, what do you see?

Let me see.

Oh yeah, about 700 yards out, right?

[Barry] You see that?

- We saw, whatcha call it, some suspicious activity.

And Albert was doing surveillance on the... - Keep going.

- And so we had that.

And so we start writing towards that and then two months later you're talking and then you go and you go, "Oh, what if he has to kill his friend, Chris?"

And we go, "Hey, that could be the grief moment."

And then everything just like snaps together.

And you're like, "Oh, thank God."

So it's a lot of patience.

And it's a lot of talking it out.

- You made a lot of choices in that scene that are kind of crazy.

I mean, I wouldn't have necessarily have thought it would be intuitive that these two people would jump up on stage and started acting it out, you know?

And that was, again, I'm going to throw out risky because it just felt like, "Wow, that could really, really not work."

You know, like that could really be kind of icky.

- I think that scene of, and correct me if I'm wrong, Alec.

came out of us talking about what's the acting class doing this season?

And we didn't, season one, they did the Shakespeare festival and we were kind of like we don't really want them doing another writer's work or another series of plays.

And it was like, "What if it's more personal?"

And instead of it being this awful thing, it was actually one of the best moments of his life.

It was the first time he ever felt accepted.

And then we talked about it.

It was like, "Oh, what if the audience," you know, the you see the juxtaposition of what happened in Afghanistan which was, you know, here, Mariah said, it's like a kid who's the new kid at school who's really good at asteroids.

You know, like everyone's like "Whoa!

How cool!"

and this community that he gets from murdering somebody who he doesn't see that we don't see.

So he has no real connection to this human to what these actors think he must have gone through.

[gunshots] [Albert] No way, no, no, no, no.

[gunshots] - You killed them both, soldier.

- I...

I killed them.

[sobbing] I killed someone.

Oh God.

Oh God.

I killed someone.

[sobbing] I'll never be able to forgive myself.

- Is that how it happened?

- Mother [bleep]!

What?

[screams] Are you [bleep] kidding me?

He got 'em!

[Albert] Both of them?

- Smoked both those [bleep].

Dude this silent [bleep] is a [beep] stone cold killer fellas.

From 700 yards.

- Oh my God!

- I was going to take the bib off, but forget it.

[typewriter ding] - You have a very nonconventional piece here.

So it's, to me a little bit more than just telling a story and trusting in that process.

I mean, you've got an absurdist layer here.

You've got drama, like outright drama and then clearly comedy, right.

And so, so there that's a lot to mix together in 30 minutes, right?

And keep people and plot.

Is it something you two are always thinking about?

- It's more intuitive and it's, it kind of goes back to that idea of, you know, following, you know, the emotion and the logic of things, you know and you kind of go, I remember, as someone's seen it or critics on interviewing us goes, "I don't get why the bad guys are funny."

And I go, "Well, they don't know they're bad guys."

You know?

- I just get call from home.

- Okay.

- They are sending Lucky's replacement.

They are sending Stovka.

- What?

Stovka is coming here!

Oh my God!

- Who's Stovka?

- He is best assassin in history of Chechnya.

- Yes!

- A legend.

- Oh ow, okay, it's still tender.

But he is beyond legend.

Okay.

He has taken out whole armies by himself.

He must've murdered over, what hundreds?

- More, way more.

He's unreal, simply unreal.

- Okay, when I was kid, I saw him once walking out the discotheque.

He flicks cigarettes at bird, knocked it out of the sky.

When will he be here?

- Within hour, they said.

- Yeah, real quick, what does this mean for me and Barry?

- Will probably kill you.

- I haven't checked with Goran yet.

- They came to LA with a dream, just like Barry, you know?

And they're just people.

And so you're writing it from their point of view.

What do they want?

How are they feeling?

How are they, you know, how do you relate to them?

A big turning point for us, you know, and writing the show I think, was this the scene where Barry kills Chris because it was kind of a moment in season one where you were like, "Okay," you know you just get to that place of what would happen here?

- So I'm gonna, I'm gonna to drop you off.

And then I'm, I'm going to keep my fat trap shut.

[engine starts] And then, you know, I promise you no one will ever know any, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[gunshot] [engine running] [engine stops] [car door slams] - And it wasn't, it was him killing Chris.

But also once that scene ended and going, "Well, can you be funny after that?"

And we both come out of comedy.

And I think anybody would say, "Well after that, you know you can't have any jokes or anything because that's such a sad scene.

And it's so terrible."

And it was like, "Yeah, why not?"

You know, these other people these other characters don't know about that.

They don't know what just happened.

So why can't they, why would they stop being funny?

And then we did it and no one said anything.

It held together.

And I think the reason it holds together is because it's honest, everyone's being honest.

- Many men making much money.

Many men making much money.

- All right, everyone let's focus.

Bring it in, bring it in.

All right, listen, it's two minutes until curtain.

Two minutes.

It is a veritable who's who of Hollywood out there.

The red-headed reader from ICM and Daniel Melman from Gersh.

- He came?

- All right now, listen.

I wish you Godspeed.

I wish you courage.

And no matter what happens loud, fast, and keep going.

Hands in.

- Yes.

- One, two, three.

[all cheer] - I also think weirdly the show is about a guy who is in one very dark, violent world who's trying to make his way into a lighter, happier, more communal place.

The more jarring the tone sometimes shifts from one to the other weirdly the more it puts you with Barry, right?

In this sense of like, "Oh, the audience is going through the same kind of growth and struggle that Barry is because Barry's getting ripped back and forth between these two worlds.

Something goes from super dark to super funny.

It is, it's surprising and jarring.

And you're kind of with, like that's Barry's emotional journey is that, you know he's simultaneously having to kill people and having to audition, you know?

And it's also, I think very telling what Barry cares deeply about.

That was another thing that we landed on very early is we kind of landed on this idea that in the two worlds the world of crime is very, very high stakes but very low drama for Barry.

Like people are dying, but he's not emotionally moved by it.

He's kind of dead to it.

But the world of acting is very low stakes, but very high drama.

He's trying to deliver one line in a piece for Sally in some crap theater in front of an audience of nine people.

But like that's much more important to him than, you know, saving his own life is.

[typewriter dings] - I'd love to talk a little bit about Barry himself and just the, I mean, to me, he just he's just such a fascinating character.

I think he's so attractive in some ways because of what he isn't, you know, I don't like him.

I don't dislike him.

I don't, I find him to be somebody though that, he's around.

He's just interesting.

He becomes whatever is in the room.

He sort of soaks it up like tofu.

How much of you is in this and in your writing process how much are you thinking of it as you're writing it and sort of self correcting?

- I will say Barry's kind of always the last thing we think about.

Alec can attest.

I'm like one of those people I don't really, I don't really write well for myself.

I like writing for other people, but when it comes to me I'm like, "Hey, no, no, no, we'll figure it out."

If you put it on its feet and you kind of go, was that all right?

It's like, does that makes sense?

You know, and I think a lot of it, you know, again without sounding too pretentious or whatever kind of comes from yeah, yourself and feelings that you've had of not fitting in, wanting a community, feeling guilty, falling in love with somebody and not knowing how to handle that, you know, and looking for a mentor, you know.

Meeting a mentor, a codependency, you know.

All those things are things that I can, you know, relate to on some level.

But I have a very hard time being able to like, you know intellectualize it in a writers' rooms.

So it usually comes out as like, you know, "Maybe he would say something like this," you know.

- Some of the stuff that I find like that fleshes Barry out so much are the two relationships with, I mean, he may be bad at his girlfriend relationship but really he's a terrible picker of a father figure.

And he has these two people who are equally narcissistic and, you know, maybe one more evil than other, but you, the relationships there they do feel very real to me even though the Stephen Root's character, Fuches is so insane.

- Stephen Root's character, Fuches, in the initial version of the pilot that we actually shot was a very dark, angry, threatening, ominous kind of bully of a character.

And when we started writing the series and it was it was one thing that HBO was really helpful with is they were just like, "Look, we know what a Hitman is.

We know what an actor is.

We know what an acting teacher is.

We know what a fledgling actress is.

We don't really know what a hitman agent is."

And so that it's not something off there.

And when we started thinking about, well, "Okay, who is Fuches and how would he have gotten to Barry?

And how would Barry have gotten into this?"

We started realizing that Fuches being like a family friend who was kind of like a low rent con man who had sort of pretended to be Barry's friend and really a father figure to him, not a boss.

- Oh, God, I'm worried about you, buddy.

It [bleep] looks like the old Barry.

Where he had a purpose.

- No, I just, I think I'm just burnt out.

You know what, maybe I need a break.

- Hey you know what I think?

[Barry] What?

- I think what I think what we should do is shake things up a little bit, you know?

So instead of burning another small town hood in some snowed in Russellville [beep].

What do you say to a little trip out to sunny Los Angeles?

- You came here to give me an assignment?

- It's the Chechen mob.

Come here.

A guy by the name of Goran Pazar and he's an outsider to handle, nothing embarrassing.

It's great money.

Get us a lot closer to where we need to be to hang it all up some day.

- Not only was that character much more fun but it actually made it much more kind of sad and it made Barry's relationship much more, I think heart-wrenching that it was like, "Oh God, this guy.

Barry really trust this guy.

This is like his only friend the only guy he talks to in the span of a day and the guy's clearly manipulating him."

And so that change, I think, made a huge difference in the way we wrote the show.

And we found a ton of humor that wasn't there before.

- You start there and then as it starts to flesh out and you start moving along with the journey of Barry's changing, you know, you start to realize like, you know, Fuches, it's really complicated, but he really loves Barry.

Like, that's the closest that he's, you know once you talk about, well this is the closest this guy has ever come to really loving somebody.

So, you know, you have, you know it's a very complicated thing but then that gives Stephen something to play.

And again, that comes from being in a room and everybody talking about, you know, mentors and father figures and what they themselves being mentors to people and what relationships they've had with people that were kind of complicated and messed up.

And then you put that in there.

[typewriter dings] [Narrator] You've been watching a conversation with Alec Berg and Bill Hader 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.

♪ ♪ [projector clicking] [typing] [typewriter ding] [projector dies]