Video: David Benioff and Dan Weiss on making Game of Thrones, criticism, what’s next, and more

(Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

David Benioff and Dan Weiss began the process of adapting George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books over 10 years ago, and have been running the show ever since. During the 2016 Sun Valley Writer’s Conference this past July, the pair stopped by a show called Dialogue, which runs on Idaho’s public access station. The two gave a lengthy, thoughtful interview about the origins of the show, the criticisms it’s received, where it’s going, and much more. The guys are articulate and contemplative. It’s a good watch. Check it out below.

Benioff and Weiss didn’t know anything about television production when they took on this challenge, but that ended up being an advantage. “If we had known what we would have to know to do this well, I think the intimidation factor may have gotten the best of us,” Weiss says.

"But we were just filled with excitement over the prospect. We knew that done right George’s books could really be something tremendous and we just were so excited we just kinda barreled into this situation without really knowing what we didn’t know is that there were unknown unknowns."

Thank goodness for that.

Some highlights from Part 1:

• David Benioff once worked as a DJ on KMTM in Moose, Wyoming. On the midnight shift. Huh.
• Benioff once wrote a thesis on Samuel Beckett. Host Marcia Franklin brings up a quotes from him. “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” They admit that they basically ripped that line off for Davos’ line in “Oathbreaker.” After Jon has come back from the dead, he tells Davos he failed, to which Davos replied, “Good. Now go fail again.”
• Weiss read 1000 pages of ASOIAF in two days. Yeesh.
• When the host brings up “sexposition,” Weiss says that they haven’t done that in a long time. It’s true that the casual nudity rate on the show has gone down over the past couple of years. Unfortunately, they don’t talk about what brought about that change.
• Benioff on the criticism that Game of Thrones depicts too much rape: “I fundamentally disagree. I think the idea that depicting a brutal crime indicates endorsement of that crime is ridiculous.” Weiss: “It’s arguable that sanitizing representations of violence is more harmful than more graphic depictions of violence that make you feel the way violence probably should make you feel, which is uncomfortable and horrified.”
• The showrunners wholeheartedly deny that they made changes to Sansa’s story, or to the story more generally, after the uproar following Sansa’s rape by Ramsay Bolton in Season 5. Basically, they point out that the show is planned out far ahead of time, and that they knew where characters like Sansa and Cersei were going in Season 6 before Season 5 even began shooting.
• On the end of the show: “We know enough about it now that we could write the final episode today if we had to.”
• Benioff and Weiss are well aware that Game of Thrones isn’t the title of Martin’s entire series, but thought that title was “the best descriptor of the entire show” because of the way so many characters try to play each other.
• Benioff doesn’t get spoilers. “Not only is it like looking at the last page of a book and learning what happened, but it’s then ripping out that page and putting it on the library wall so that you can ruin it for everybody.”
• Benioff and Weiss have an interesting writing process. One of them writes the first half, the next writes the second half, and then they switch and edit each other.

In the second part of the interview, the showrunners discuss the show’s elaborate special effects, how the show has helped the economies of the places where it’s filmed, and what kind of legacy they hope it will leave.

Highlights from Part 2:

• Franklin: “How much about being Jewish infuses what you do, how you write?” Weiss: “Well, we worry a lot.”
• Benioff and Weiss have nothing but wonderful things to say about Breaking Bad. (Star Aaron Paul is an Idaho native, which is why Franklin brings it up.) Like Game of Thrones, they consider it a show with a firm beginning, middle, and end. Benioff also names The Wire as among the shows that have a uniquely literary quality to them.
• Weiss gives us an idea of big the dragons get in Season 7. “They’re like the size of a DC9.” He calls that “the final size.”

• Benioff and Weiss were very involved in the casting process, which usually isn’t true of writers in the movies. They credit that with a lot of the show’s success.
• Benioff and Weiss next plan to adapt Dirty White Boys, a novel by Stephen Hunter. Among its best assets: there are no horses involved.
• Lest we forget, Benioff and Weiss are both novelists themselves, and are interested in returning to it when they have the time. Right now, they very much do not have the time.

Thank you, Dialogue!