 |
 |
|
Carnivale creator Dan Knauf looks back at the first season and offers a sneak preview of season two.
HBO: Let's get right to it: where will the show go in season two?
DANIEL KNAUF: Well, I think in episode 8, we saw a real change, as far as the show accelerating, picking up steam. Now we will pick up episode one of the second season at the moment we left off in episode one.
HBO: Right.
DANIEL KNAUF: There's a lot going on in season two, a lot.
HBO: So you think I mean it, it you expect to sort of pick up at that at that accelerated pace?
DANIEL KNAUF: Oh yeah, and it's going to accelerate from there.
We've laid all our groundwork now. Everybody knows who Brother Justin is, and so we've got all our back-story in there. Now we can start really moving forward.
HBO: When we first talked before the season began, you said that the theme of season one was alienation. Now that you can talk more about the storylines, can you elaborate?
DANIEL KNAUF: Alienation and self-discovery probably would be my amended version of the first season. Two people who have been disconnected from humanity for some reason but have found out why and what they are.
HBO: What will some of the themes be going
forward?
DANIEL KNAUF: This season is going to be about gathering power. On both stories, now that they know who they are. Very early in the season there's going to be a reveal-- why do you have these powers? And what is your destiny and what
do you need to do with these powers?
It's about Justin building a power base; on
Ben's side, it's more a matter of, of passing an
awful lot of tests.
HBO: What about the other characters? How has someone like Sophie evolved over the first
season?
DANIEL KNAUF: Oh no. I can't tell you what Sofie's status is. [LAUGHTER]
But as far as like all the other characters go,
everybody has a role and in the A story. There
are also B and C stories, as far as the inter-
relationships between the carnies and the freaks. You know similar to like the, the Jones-Rita-Sue thing. And the Jones-Rita-Sue thing feeds into what you know happens with Jones in the second season.
We're gonna see quite a bit of conflict within
the carnival.
HBO: Hmm.
DANIEL KNAUF: As far as people choosing sides, people losing faith and people fighting to keep their faith. I know this sounds hideously vague, but I don't want to blow any surprises.
HBO: Did you did you have to sort of sit down and map out a strategy as far as season one's finale? To strike that balance between
satisfying people at some level, but also not
tying up every loose end?
DANIEL KNAUF: Yeah. I think it was a delicate balancing act because there were a lot of questions raised in the first season and we owed the audience some answers. But at the same time, to answer everything at that point, let's just close the book and put it back on the shelf, because we know what's gonna happen.
HBO: Right.
DANIEL KNAUF: So you do want to leave some things open for the big storytelling. But you don't want to have people feeling like, oh my god; all this show does is raise questions.
HBO: If you listen to interviews or read the message boards, it seems the main question fans wanted answered by the end of the season
was who was good and who was evil. Did you
think that that question is answered in the
first season?
DANIEL KNAUF: I'm a little close to it, but frankly I was surprised that that question even went on past the first episode.
To me, the battle lines are fairly clearly
delineated, even in the first episode. But in
this kind of complex storytelling, nobody is
going to be presented as a twirling-mustached
bad guy. If you watch like interviews with
mass murderers, they seem like ordinary guys. They don't seem particularly creepy. The fact is, if you're gonna be a successful predator, you're gonna have to present a pretty nice face to the public.
HBO: Right.
DANIEL KNAUF: On the other side, a guy in a white hat doesn't present that much interest to me. There's gotta be the temptation. Everything's a choice. Free will is such a huge part of this, and not all the choices are gonna be the right ones.
You could sit down and say, okay, Ben's a healer. And he lays his hands on little girl's legs, and the crops are just collateral damage. But then again you could look at it a different way. You could say that Ben is really good at destroying things and the collateral effect is you know this little girl's walking around now.
HBO: Hmm.
DANIEL KNAUF: And to me that's the real question about Ben. Is he a healer? Or is he an assassin? Or both?
HBO: During our live chat following the finale, Nick Stahl said the only thing he'd change about his character is he'd like Ben to get some more action with the ladies. Is there any hope for him?
DANIEL KNAUF: Action? I'll make no comment.[LAUGHTER]
HBO: Not that kind of action.
DANIEL KNAUF: The problem is that the car chase is only going about twenty-two miles an hour. But you know hey, they're old cars. [LAUGHTER]
You know the Ben Hawkins character is going to become more and more activated. He knows what he's supposed to do now. The man that goes into Management's trailer at the end of episode 12, he's been set off on a task. Now it's not necessarily gonna be something that he wants to do. And it's not something that he feels good about doing all the time. But he has to do it. He's compelled to do it. Again, free choice is always a factor in there. He could walk away from it. You know he could be tempted away from it. But time will tell to see if he stays the course.
HBO: So Carnivale has been renewed for another season. What do what you think the fans' role has been in terms of getting the getting the
show picked up?
DANIEL KNAUF: They've been critical. I mean these people have been so passionate. I read virtually every posting there is. When I look at those postings, I don't read, "Hey dude, bitching
episode." [LAUGHTER] That's not the kind of
postings we get. I mean this is like a big part
of their lives. And to me, that's insanely
satisfying. And I think that HBO felt the same
way. These folks know that passion is something that's only going to grow, and so here comes the second season.
HBO: Were you surprised at the intensity of the fan interest?
DANIEL KNAUF: Well, first of all yes. I mean you'd have to be deranged or the most insufferable egotist in the world to not be surprised, you know what I mean?
HBO: Yeah.
DANIEL KNAUF: But I was deeply gratified. Sometimes I would read things where people would say, "I know what he really meant when he named
somebody this. And if you take the letters
and it creates an anagram of that." And I'd
think, boy I'm smart. [LAUGHTER]
We would sit here and we'd put together these dream sequences and they'd just be, boom, boom,
boom, boom, boom. There'd be three frames of a shot that give a little something away, and we'd be thinking, "This is so fast that hardly anybody's gonna see it." But we forgot about things like Tivo. People will watch these
things frame-by-frame, and they'll post them
on the Internet, frame-by-frame.
HBO: What can those fans expect from the next season?
DANIEL KNAUF: It's gonna be something that nobody's expecting. We're just gonna try to continue to blow minds, you know. And take people to places they've never been before.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Carnival Fact
Achondroplastic dwarfism is the most common type of dwarfism, and is characterized by an average-size trunk, short arms and legs, and a slightly enlarged head and prominent forehead.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
FATE Game
Try the strategy card game that puts a twist on Tarot!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
