Director Jack Bender’s original idea for Hodor’s death scene was far more brutal

Lost veteran Jack Bender directed the last two Game of Thrones episodes aired, “The Door,” and “Blood of my Blood.” With his stint over, he sat down for interviews with both The Wall Street Journal and The Observer to discuss his time on the show.

First of all, Bender confirmed, or at least added more support to, the contention that Season 7 of Game of Thrones will be shorter than what we’re used to. “There are five directors who do ten episodes, two each,” he said. “In fact this coming season there are only going to be seven episodes.” More on that as it develops.

Bender also admitted that the original concept for Hodor’s death in “The Door” was actually far more brutal, which seems almost impossible. Unsurprisingly, Bender (who had never directed Thrones before now) was courted specifically to do that episode, due to his experience with time-jumping shows like Lost.

Early on I had the idea to make it one shot that just pushes in and gets closer and closer, and then the parallel high shot that gets closer and closer to Wylis, who became Hodor. I talked about it with Dave and Dan a lot. I said, “What the dead would be doing to Hodor would be ripping his clothes off once they got through that door. They would be ripping his flesh off. If the dead can go through wood, they’re going to be tearing Hodor apart.”

And they said something to me that really stuck. Which was “If it’s too horrific, we’re not going to feel the loss of Hodor.” And that was my compass the entire time, to make us really care at the end. I still wanted to make it scary enough, see Hodor surrounded and engulfed by these skeletal arms and long fingers, that were eventually going to smother and kill and rip him apart, or whatever they were going to do that we didn’t see. But to not let the horror of it overwhelm the emotion of losing that character and making it really land on the idea that he was sacrificing himself so his friends could get away. That was the dominant idea.

I’m kinda glad they didn’t have Hodor literally ripped to shreds—that would have been too much. Bender also has high praise for Sam Coleman, who played Young Wylis. Talking to The WSJ, Bender said they did tons and tons of takes to get the timing of the sequence where “Hold the Door” turns into “Hodor” right. Bender says he didn’t want it to feel like a documentary on epilepsy. “I’ve gotta say, that kid [Sam Coleman], he was terrific. He just did it over and over again, which allowed us to get various rhythms to play with in editing, depending on how fast we wanted to build the sequence. We knew we needed different options, which he did beautifully.”

Bender also got a major kick out of doing the “play within the play” scenes, comparing them to his time directing Shakespeare and Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He told the Observer: “It was funny, because David and Dan wrote those scenes somewhat tongue in cheek. Kind of mocking some of the history of the show. And I took it a step farther. I rehearsed it like a play. There’s a lot more to that play that ended up in the show.  Then I ran the whole show for the show-runners, like we were the Game of Thrones Players.” He says they didn’t act out every last scene from every season, but that there was a ton left on the cutting room floor. You have no idea how much I want the Game of Thrones Players acting out the entire show to be an extra on the Blu-ray. Bender tells The WSJ he suspects they will.

The easiest scene, he told The WSJ, was the one between Sansa and Littlefinger.

"That is a scene that has hardly any movement in it. It’s one of the stiller scenes I’ve ever directed. But their performances were so riveting that I didn’t have to jazz it up. And my plan was to do it kind of like that, very simply. The DP and I talked about it, and that was my first day of shooting on the show. … Their acting was so subtle and so brilliant, it just allows you to say, ‘Thank you,’ and not have to jazz it up."