Noah Hawley, con't.

“I turned in my draft in August of 2001. But [in the story] there are conspiracies and a plane crash and so, in Sept of 2001, it became moot. Eventually I’ll get back to it; it hasn’t stopped being a relevant story.”

A script for Other People’s Weddings (2004) is in the works, and Hawley’s finding financing for production of his newest feature script, what he calls “a twisted family drama” about a drug dealer who returns to the family he walked out on ten years earlier.

Hawley hasn’t abandoned fiction completely. Before moving to LA to work on Bones, he completed a new novel, The Punch. The author says he’s taking his time finding a publisher, hoping to avoid past mistakes, like taking the first offer that comes along and having a book be marketed inappropriately.

“Other People’s Weddings was originally called Divorce: A Love Story,” he says. “It’s a pretty dark book, but they put a pretty woman in a wedding dress and a big bouquet of flowers on the cover and suddenly it looks like chick lit. It’s weird to have something published as the opposite of what it is.”

In the meantime, he keeps busy with his TV and film projects, and learning to play the Hollywood game.

“Basically half of Hollywood is getting into a room with people and telling them a story when you pitch a show or a movie,” the poker-faced author explains. “And it makes you a better writer, I think, to understand how to tell a story in fifteen to twenty minutes and learn what engages people and what makes them care enough about these characters to want to know what happens next.”

Noah Hawley, con't.

The author says he enjoys the collaborative nature of the work, which helps the writers keep pace with the breakneck shooting schedule. “We shoot a new episode every eight days which means we’re always prepping – we start shooting, we start prepping the next episode, then we’re tweaking the writing on the episode behind that,” he says. “You’re trying to stay ahead of the production train, so it’s not easy.” An interesting difference between writing for television and for film: The director obviously calls the shots on a film shoot, while the writer is all but ignored; in TV, the director is just a journeyman who shoots – the writers control the creative process and the direction of the show. “What’s good about TV versus any other medium is how immediate it is,” Hawley explains. “I wrote episode nine, we shot it three weeks later and it [aired in February and was] seen by, I don’t know, eight million people, and that’s a pretty satisfying speed at which you work. At the same time, there are so many cooks in that kitchen that there’s a lot of compromises that get made and a lot of decisions that aren’t mine. “Fiction clearly is the medium over which the writer has the most control. With a novel, you will get some editing from the publisher, but no one’s going, ‘What if it was an animated musical?’ ” On the other hand, Hawley says TV and film are arguably better mediums when it comes to telling stories to a larger audience. “It’s a sad day as a fiction writer when you realize the most widely read book is going to be read by fewer people than who go to see the least-watched movie, you know? Like, Deuce Bigalow 2 is going to be seen by more people than read pretty much everything except for The DaVinci Code.” Both of Hawley’s novels are being adapted for the screen. Conspiracy was optioned in 1998 by Paramount. After an unsuccessful first script, Hawley was hired to write it himself.	“I turned in my draft in August of 2001. But [in the story] there are conspiracies and a plane crash and so, in Sept of 2001, it became moot. Eventually I’ll get back to it; it hasn’t stopped being a relevant story.” A script for Other People’s Weddings (2004) is in the works, and Hawley’s finding financing for production of his newest feature script, what he calls “a twisted family drama” about a drug dealer who returns to the family he walked out on ten years earlier. Hawley hasn’t abandoned fiction completely. Before moving to LA to work on Bones, he completed a new novel, The Punch. The author says he’s taking his time finding a publisher, hoping to avoid past mistakes, like taking the first offer that comes along and having a book be marketed inappropriately. “Other People’s Weddings was originally called Divorce: A Love Story,” he says. “It’s a pretty dark book, but they put a pretty woman in a wedding dress and a big bouquet of flowers on the cover and suddenly it looks like chick lit. It’s weird to have something published as the opposite of what it is.” In the meantime, he keeps busy with his TV and film projects, and learning to play the Hollywood game. “Basically half of Hollywood is getting into a room with people and telling them a story when you pitch a show or a movie,” the poker-faced author explains. “And it makes you a better writer, I think, to understand how to tell a story in fifteen to twenty minutes and learn what engages people and what makes them care enough about these characters to want to know what happens next.”
		Hawley says he likes doing his part to inject some creativity into a business full of recycled ideas. “We joke on the show about whether we’re in Cheeseville or just in the neighboring town,” he says with a smirk. “I don’t really believe in doing something if you’re not going to at least try to make it original, but I’m not always the final arbiter and a lot of times people will want to push things in more predictable directions.” As he ponders a second season with Bones – the show was just renewed for another year – Hawley says he’s grateful for all of the options he can explore in his line of work. “There are some writers on TV that have no career otherwise, so it’s helpful for me to have so many choices,” he says. “With the book now shopping, with the TV stuff, and in film, I like each medium for different reasons and I see no reason to pick one. So I guess my goal is just to continue to get away with stuff.”

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