Game of Thrones with George R.R. Martin and Michelle Fairley

okay lords and ladies jeonyul boiled leather slather some wild boar on a trencher of hard oak bread and expose your breasts because we have to do that at least once an episode and put your hands together for an actress who's so committed to us nerds that she's played not just the mother of the King in the north but the mother of Hermione Granger as well Michelle Fairley hey ty I don't have any cash on me so I've just won five dollars a nineteen cents from Frank from Ty Frank hey Betty I'm Dan sister doing it huh that's how good it is when you're celebrity I get paid no Michelle uh you're Game of Thrones journey you weren't actually in the pilot you came on at a later date yeah so how how yeah like they'd obviously already shot it did you get told here's a sure bet jump on board yeah no they shot a pilot and I aw do I went through the audition process and and then I I was called the next year actually on st. Patrick's Day and I was still sober at that time and I was told that the pilots the game of thrones was actually going to series and would I want to play Catelyn Stark so essentially like they came to you they said this is going to TV you're being offered the role boom yeah that's not bad that's pretty good no it is a good size yeah then um when you first read the scripts how did you think the story was going to pan out well I knew they were novels I think they were based on novels and you hadn't read them no to my shame I hadn't but I have now and so I mean I was just intrigued by the the quality of the pilot was incredible you they're really rich intense dark world and the women were really strong and it was a very into it was it was such an appetizer of what was to come actually and it made me actually go out and buy the book the first book to to actually read it in the hope that I would get the part and and she's such a layered character and the interaction with her family and with Ned of course her so much of Catelyn that is based on being the wife of Ned and being a mother and also because it was being made by HBO so you knew you were going to get quality and amazing directors and writers David and Dan who write the script and Brian as well and it's just an amazing pot of incredibly talented artisans here at the top of their game in every field in costume hair makeup props sound you know armoury no fighting you know horse riding everything it's just a delight it's brilliant I think that first episode you sort of say you know a happy family life at Winterfell and that is literally the last you ever see it it's it's just it's ripped if I they love that stuff here apparently but it's just ripped apart just right from there and then just layers just get pulled off Caitlin's character let's get pulled off other characters as well and yes I was the only one that had a that HBO put and no nudity clause into so I got to keep all my clothes on so that's it so HBO wrote that into your control yeah they put it as offensive or oh well I can't say I was disappointing to do it yeah yeah okay um but then I guess as the story goes on you just get more um I think like desperation is what drives your character she goes on she just realizes that everything she hold dear is just slowly falling apart and she's just trying to grab the bits before they disappear and I mean how did you as an actress just show that whole journey of to somewhat is falling apart oh well not you know going to stanislavski's no absolutely not I probably wouldn't be able did it get tough up like as well that's what you want that's what you want as an actor you want to be pushed you want to have to go to places that you don't normally get the chance to go to and and it the way it's written it's so beautifully graduated with David and Dan and and they they're painstakingly honest about what they write and the first season you would it you know we were given six scripts to begin with then we read we table read the six and then as we started to shoot the next six were given to us and it's always incredibly exciting when you get the scripts because it's like you know yeah to read the whole story you don't just go always my generally but so you read read oh you read them all because it would be totally cold like you wouldn't know what's going to happen no because they don't always stick to the novels because creating a television program is very different to the to writing a novel and you can't put everything in you know you only have ten hours of television for a massive novel and you have to make it dramatic and it's about keeping an audience and it's about making them love characters and and not letting them get ahead of you even though they have read the books do you ever look at a decision that Caitlyn has made you know it may be taking Tyrion captive or freeing the Kingslayer and go oh why did she do that I basically started a world war oh well do you think you would have done it differently no I don't think I know I think you know you I mean of course in retrospect you go oh for sake what did she do that for but you know in retrospect that it's drama it's and also she's being misled by Littlefinger you know whom she as has known all our life and trusts intensely and you know it's a genuine mistake it also but also like the the the good decisions that she has like hey Robb don't send Theon off yeah like that Rob's like be quiet you're just my mom you know you're just a woman and that's like something where you go god she got something right and then they're still not even letting her do anything she just gets yeah but you see this is a very interesting because what's also but her as well as her son is king of the north but she doesn't want him to be king of the north because she knows what it entails but actually at the same time she's not sending a master king of the north school you know to go this is how you be king of the north you know so he's in the process of of making mistakes and he has to be allowed to make those mistakes but she wants him to maintain an integrity towards the people who serve him the people who served his father towards his upbringing his honesty's his you know its honor as a stark but you know not you know that path is not easy he is going to make mistakes and he has to be allowed to veto decisions um how did you find out about the red wedding well um practically I think within you know the first day of starting work it's like oh my god do you know what happens to your character really who was saying that like friends or no cost my new cast mates you'd read the book you know ii mean i read it continued to read on i read per series who ever sort of like the big readers like the ones who just absolutely read it all straight away oh there are some ron Donaghy who was in season one ron was incredible actually because he knew george's work before game of thrones he'd read some of George's books from way before and also some of his short stories actually I think Ron has actually read one of George's short stories for for audiobook as well so there were flames came strapped you in oh my god you're gonna die spectacularly yeah no no he I mean he's a very easily in talega one and and I'd worked a lot I'd worked with him at the National as well so we knew each other anyway as he's role in the show Ron was up at Winterfell and he was my escort he took me around and Theon gives him a very nice ending unfortunately gotcha alright so they might have seen that one coming as well um and so and so what people were just saying well there's this thing that's going to happen or did someone just blurt it out to you and you went why one you know if I wanted to I could have looked it up online but I'm crap at anything online so but then it's just you just you know it's one of those things it's intriguing because you sort of like think well what is that and also David and Diane had been asked in interviews by someone previously when would they feel they had achieved something with in Game of Thrones within the you know when would they feel it was a success if not being presumptuous and and they sort of like looked at each other and went when we achieve our W okay all right and that was it okay and so did you get a shooting script for season three and there was just a day it said you know Michelle bring a change of clothes and might get messy or um no well again the scripts came in you know in two blocks they come in six and and you're sort of like thinking well you know you guys who watch it know that and every series is there are ten episodes so the first two episodes are really important they have you have to get the audience and the first two and the last two nine and ten are also incredibly important all the others in between are also very important you know these are the really important ones because it's getting people in and it's making people come back again and so nine is the one where all the chaos happens and ten is they sort of like the calm after the storm and then the sort of like the footwork for the next season so we knew it was going to be episode nine and I am so I think a lot of us did online as well like a lot of us like oh is it customary yeah wait I think you know you can sort of grow you know when you watch the series and that I was actually working in Toronto when they were meant to show episode 9 but then they didn't show it because they put on they postponed it because they wanted to show another film or something so it's like far they still not been said they had to wait till next week but you were getting texts from all your friends overseas or no I mean I'm very sort of like once it's done it's done I come you know and I love it to pieces I love my work and I'm diligent and responsible and grownup about its young at heart I yeah but you know so you you know once it's out there once you've done it it's in the hands of the director and the producers and you can only put your faith in them and rightly so and trust that they will be able to go through your takes after take after take and go and David nutter who directed episode 9 oh I keep buying that's why it's awkward I don't only have that they're either uh he's he was wonderful you know how many takes did you have we just had to okay I just - so it was you know strap on the fake throat again well actually the first no that was good but can we get it to be more tragic please yes well the first couple were dry runs without you know the natural yeah yeah yeah and and I think we only did the blood once surgery I think so that was it and then did you all go out and have a sort of you know red wedding dinner drinks or something oh no it wasn't you know it was open a crowd of a week and the crew and everybody involved had worked so hard the whole week that everybody felt at the end of a massive sort of sense of achievement and just so wasn't exhausting it was exhausting yes I think everybody was on working on adrenaline and a nerves and tension feared simply because it was it's it's important it matters it values you know - and everybody had worked so incredibly hard the prosthetics guys everybody and it come accumulated in that final thing and and yeah but it was it was felt great to have completed really days how exhausting is filming Game of Thrones just on a general day like not necessarily the red rain because I imagine like like it would be almost like being back in medieval times you'd be actually putting on proper armor you'd be in the market or is it incredibly clean I don't know well I mean it depends on where you are if you're in studio it's clean and it's warm but if you're outside it's wet cold dark muddy but that's also fun that's also great as well because you know that if it's raining your costume gets heavy so you move differently you know of his muddy field it gets caked in mud and the guys it's really interesting Richard me plays Rob you know once the armor and everything goes on you create a different resonance within your chest so your voice sounds different so when come to maybe a couple of months later when you have to do ADR audio digital you know on in London wherever it is it's getting that resonance back in your voice again because you've stopped filming and there you are in a t-shirt and a pair of jeans and you don't have cloaks and armor and layers and chains and swords and you know so it's all these things add to your character and the way you move and everything so the very it's all about just layering on before you even get into the studio I did ask um on Twitter if anyone had any questions and one is about Richard someone called Avery said what was your favorite scene with Richard Madden oh gosh there's so many I love Richard and and he's fantastic I mean that's one of the another joy of Game of Thrones is the friends you've made actually for life and Richard is one of them and and I was very fortunate that I had a majority of my stuff was with Richard and and I just adore him and I trust him implicitly and and I think it would I mean I mean it for me personally it's I'll never forget the way he he said mother that's pretty nice that's that's sweet that's nice he'll never say it again but that's that's beautiful that's really nice yeah another question I got this one is from Olaf's me I hope that's a real name ah if you could exact revenge on any character on Kaitlyn's behalf what character would it be and how oh dear well well first of all I think Walder Frey will get a yea bashing guys right um and then I'll you know I think it would you know wipeout the Lannisters basically actually how would you want rolls rolled afraid to dawn I don't think I can say oh by bit yeah no spoilers I don't know if any of you have recently seen a there was a terrifying picture of a guy and naked man in Red Square in Russia Oh have you imagine that for Walder Frey yeah to pity he's mates with Roose Bolton because that's the kind of business that's Roose Bolton's yeah um one of the questions from my friend Jamie he said surely you guys have had like you look at all the food on the show so you've had some sort of team bonding we've eaten some sort of crazy meat or drunk some sort of crazy liquor like a like a full-bore or an elk or something well all the food that you see is all it's all real Wow yeah they have amazing I don't know really what the proper word you know the professional term is but they have there's a in the new studio they have a kitchen and they there is a lady with a team who prepares all the food for the feast and and they cook them all and at the red wedding there was fish and by Friday that place was hummin so you'd and you never have alcohol you always have something that looks like red wine or white wine or B or whatever it's never ever alcohol but you just don't eat the food and anyway I don't eat meat anyway red meat so well then ruins my question that's why I was fearing when I was asking it um do you like you say that you all like hang out a lot as a cast and I mean we've all seen photos of Peter Dinklage and then a heady partying down and you know like obviously you guys have a great time but the other thing is the show is very episodic you know there's lots of people in lots of different places do you meet up to a table read and then like you know never see Emilia again well that's the way it's structured and actually as the season has progressed as the seasons of progress they scheduling has got tighter because they know the beast that they're dealing with now so they know what is going to be shot in Croatia what can be done in studio what can be you know because there's massive studios in Belfast and they have sets there and there are courtyards in Croatia which are actually shots in studio and Belfast and then they use different locations around the north of Ireland as well as well as Iceland so if if you're working in Belfast in studio or around the countryside you have a chance of bumping into the Night Watch or that long Wow but so yeah Effie are you you know because there's always two units working at once but you know then come September time when they take off to go to Croatia you know you might never see the others again so but there is a huge possibility that you never your paths never cross you just work with your people or the or the other cast members who are doing the other unit and um I guess are the other thing is with so many like awesome props lying around you've got massive swords you've got suits of armor surely at some stage you have taken an amazing selfie like the first thing I did when I went to the Tower of London was like pick up a sword and smile for my eyes yeah like um well you were not allowed to take photographs no no it's it's and you have to respect that but sometimes we do yeah so it's always quite you know and so yeah I'm pretty sure if I was to go through my collection there'll be some that would be alright so you've had a mr. mm-hmm before just before we let you go um I would if I you know if I did meet if I did just bump into Emilia Clarke in the street and I was like its Khaleesi I would get her to say where are my dragons in right do you have a line that you see as your catchphrase or a line that you know that people tell you because I've prepared one for you have you ah right there on my honor as a Tully and as a stark let him go or I will cut your wife's throat but like that I reckon you could whip that out you let me say like I Oh with all that emotion yeah no guys could help you get into character if you want yeah you wanna be the knot yeah yeah I'll hold a knife to your throat like uh I was like possibly going to say welcome home Ned or something there's the happier times are the ones that you treasure see love is a journey you'll be back on the morrow okay Thank You rose Michelle Fairley guys thank you very much thank you very day let's realize that probably should have Porto Telegraph were down here hahaha I should start by saying that if you know if you want to just you know grab your laptop and do half an hour of writing that's perfectly fine I'm totally ok but otherwise we can have a good old chat I don't I don't actually use a laptop so I guess I have to fly homing I can't you will yeah I'll leave now no George you said I've heard you say a couple of times actually that when you wrote Game of Thrones you did it because you wanted to make a book that was as big as your imagination so my first question is did you ever imagine that the book would be this big ah no ah in a word so you filed in a way in either sense I mean I didn't know that the book would be physically as big actually when I began I didn't know what I had I thought of even for you know a moment or two it might be a short story or a novella but i rapidly decided that it then and sold it on the basis of being a trilogy so as you now know I'm now working on book 6 of the trilogy so it's gotten a lot bigger than I thought in that terms but also of course the success of it has you know whenever you write a book you want it to be a success and you want it to be perhaps a bigger success than you've had before I'd been very lucky in my career I'd had a number of a number of successes some books that did very well mind you also some books I did very badly but I'd had a good career in Hollywood successes failures nominated for awards winning some awards so I'd done okay but you always hope that the next one is going to be the home run and that turned out to be the case but on a scale far more than I ever could have dreamed so this is all this is so pretty amazing and amazing thing still still keep happening well to be here on the other side of the world and to have all these people who know so much stuff about about what you've done must be a real thrill I have been here on the other side of the world before I was I was reminiscing this is about my fifth or sixth trip to Australia I think that the first time I came here was in 1990 when I was the guest of honor at the Australian national science-fiction convention my friend Steven Bowsher who somewhere in the audience was my my liaison who invited me down for that we were in a I think there were about 200 people there at the entire convention we were in a hotel called the diplomat here in Melbourne which was one of the biggest fleabags you could ever expect it had it had a bar about the size of this table which was troublesome because the bars are the centres of a traditional science fiction convention and so they were about 40 people jammed into the bar and one of them was Peter Nichols smoking his big cigars so we all were smoking a cigar that that weekend it was right across from Luna Park I remember I could look out my windows and see that hideous demon face that actually inspired the White Walkers which is well this this time we've rolled out the real red carpet for is the finest theater that 1975 has to offer so fantastic it's I think I like it it's very cool I think it'd be fair to say based on what you just said that you don't write to a plan the writing more just you know grabs you in and you just sort of chase it yes no I I mean I do know where I'm going I know where the story ends I know the fate of the principal characters no I'm not going to tell any of you but there is a considerable amount that you discover in the process of writing that's the fun of writing actually I've talked about in many other interviews about the two kinds of writers they had the gardener and the architect you know the architect is like an architect planning a building when he plans a novel he knows how many stories is going to be and how many windows it's going to have and how it's going to be he did and what the roof is made of and where the plugs are going to be in each wall and etc etc and he works all of that out and blueprints all of that or outlines it in the case of a novel before he drives the first nail or writes the first sentence the gardener digs a hole and throws in a seed and sort of waters it with his blood and hopes that something interesting comes out now you know mind you the gardener knows certain things the gardener knows whether he print planted a potato or germanium but and it would be very surprising if you plant a potato and a germanium comes up but a lot is discovered in the in the process I I think all writers are some combination of these two but they they tend according to your personality to one side or another and I'm much more on the gardener side I am you know I think like 90% gardener as were somebody like JRR tolkien who you know one of my literary idols who started out writing Lord of the Rings as a sequel to The Hobbit and it grew considerably the tale grew and the telling as he said as mine has is there anything in the books that you would say is a pleasant surprise something you just you know started writing and and now you go wow that's become a major thing and I never thought it would happen sometimes characters push to the forefront and become more important than you thought they would be I know I've been doing the the supernova conventions in Brisbane then we're moving to one in Adelaide and there are some other people from the show here on on that supernova circuit including course Michelle Lena Headey was there also Jerome Flynn who plays Bronn the mercenary bronze a clear example of a character that really grew in any act of writing I mean I I knew that I didn't want Tyrion to die in the hands of Lysa Arryn so I knew that someone had to step forward and fight for his behalf when he he demanded a trial by battle in book 1 and I knew it was going to be one of these to sell swords that Tirion would cleverly manipulate the the guys desire for wealth but i actually had two guys I had brawn and a character named chicken and it was almost flipping the coin which one died and which one stepped forward and bran was the one to step forward and even at that point I thought well maybe Tyrion will use him and discard anymore but you know I need him through the mountains and then he proved useful because it was someone a Tyrion could actually talk to and then he started talking back and he had some funny lines and his personality kind of developed and you know they're all like words that you're typing as well that this isn't two people at this stage like right right this is words that I'm typing but I don't know where they come from and then of course when you get the show you cast a wonderful actor like electrum in it and he really makes that part his own and suddenly the character even more appealing you don't know like something you're saying that you don't sometimes know where it's going to go but all of us have no idea where it's going to go but do you offer I intend to keep it do it well bugger um I thought I was going to under wheedle it out of him guys um do you sometimes look at the speculation on the internet and go oh my god how are they coming up with these theories you know I I did once upon a time a long long time ago but I've given up doing that um actually they did the Internet Ice and Fire Community Game of Thrones community of course has grown hugely over the years and like the series has it actually began right here in Australia the very first web site ever devoted to the series was started by a guy named Peter Gibbs who was called Dragonstone and it was based here in Australia and it was the first bulletin board where people would post their theories and discuss them and talk about who was the favorite character or who would win a sword fight or you know what secrets they thought I was hiding or not hiding and when that occurred and now we're going back to around 1998-99 that this Dragonstone started I did look at it I was very flattered to have a website entirely converted to fans discussing not fantasy in general and not science fiction in general but specifically the series that I was working on and I read some of the discussions but then it rapidly dawned on me you know I should not be doing this for one thing I don't want to actually post there because the minute I post there the free discussion among fans were all more or less equal ends and it becomes instead everybody gather around the author and ask him questions and that's a distortion of what the format should be I didn't want to do that and the other thing is yes some of the theories were incredibly wrongheaded and amusing in that sense some of them were clever and maybe I hadn't thought of them but now I'm saying you know that would be good idea have you done that no I don't want to do that either because that and you know then I'm like taking ideas from from the fan I don't want to I want this to be my own ideas and then the other one was of course some you know I have certain things that I'm laying clues for that there'll be revelations later on some people had put together those clues even as early as 1998 or adding things together I said well what do what do I do with that what do I do with that these people have guessed the secret that I'm going to reveal in book 6 people have already guessed that here and to is just out you really have two choices there you can ignore it and proceed with your plan despite the fact that some people know where you're going or you can get old panicky and say oh my god they figured it out I can't let that be I'll have to change it I'll have to go in a different direction and I think some writers do that and I think that's always a mistake yeah you know if you've planned your book that the butler did it and then you read an intranet someone has figured out that the butler did it and you suddenly change in midstream and it was the chambermaid who did it then you screw up the whole book we should get these just foreshadowing early on and you've got these little clues you planted now they're dead ends and you have to introduce other clues and your retconning it's a mess so I decided as early as dragons dragon stones heyday and I think that site had gone away by 2000 or so that I would stay off the fan sites and let the fat let those be for the fans let those be for the readers let them argue their theories whether they're right whether they're wrong but I don't need to know about that one thing that people try to do on the internet is they watch the show and then based on what isn't included in the show they assume that isn't important in the books for example Jeyne Westerling survives but Talisa doesn't now is that a fool's errand yeah it's again is it just people massively overthinking everything people do overthink a number of aspects to this you know eye color ah yes VAT and other things people overthink my my own comments here I mean we have some of you one doubtedly rush home and then tweet or post on Facebook about this some of you are probably tweeting even now and I will make some joke or some offhand comment and and of course what you're it's being repeated in tweeting and all that day all of the context and the tone of voice is taken out of it and suddenly becomes like a papal pronouncement we're going over it oh you use this word instead of that word that must mean this thing and and it's it's a little kind of scary the freight that can that can be generated by some of that yeah but the the show the show is the show in the books of the books Dave and Dan are doing a great job and they're doing a very faithful thing but they're they're operating under constraints that I don't have and budget running time you know the practicalities of production so there are places where the two are going to diverge and they are going to diverge I'm not going to I'm not going to once again go back and make the chamber may do it so that the butler did it because because of something David and Dan and did in the show and if there are indeed at the end there are differences well so be it there are in virtually every movie that was uh every every movie adapted from a book every television series adapted from book these differences exist you never get a complete transliteration one of the themes that I seem to say in Game of Thrones is there's some characters who are they have a sort of sense of entitlement there's a reason why they did not deserve but they get everything maybe they were born to a certain father or they're you know they were born in a certain castle or whatever and other characters who because of fate are denied certain things maybe because they're a bastard or they're a dwarf or a woman right without a sort of dichotomy that you're really trying to explore there the idea of people who feel they're entitled to things and people have to struggle to get them well I've always had a certain attraction to cripples bastards and broken things and yes there are a great number of the the viewpoint characters in particular Game of Thrones who are suffering under one handicap or another Unitarian is a is a dwarf and of course the women are reacting against it rules expected for their their sex in a medieval society in the society of Westeros Jon Snow is a bastard Sam is not as fat and it's not the kind of a Lord that people yeah want for that time so that so there's a lot of people in a brand gets gets paralyzed I find these characters with problems interesting as for the entitlement yeah I'm kind of looking at that you know it's one of my pet peeves about a lot of the fantasy that's out there is I read a lot of fantasy not necessarily the current stuff is actually better but if you go back to the period in the 70s and 80s and and 90s before I really began Game of Thrones there's a lot of fantasy out there that takes place in the Disneyland Middle Ages where they have castles and wizards and and knights and kings and and yet they don't really seem to understand how those societies work they don't have a real grasp on it and particularly the the aspects of the the class Society which had teeth in those days it had teeth and you know if I read one more scene where you know the the spunky peasant boy tells off the spoiled princess and you know they wind up having a romance yet the spunky peasant boy who told off the spoiled princess would have his spunky peasant tongue removed would hot hot spunky pincers uh for daring to speak that way to to his better I mean they're the the kings the lords had enormous power over the people in the lower social classes and the idea is that we have of justice our yesterday rooted in that time they're rooted in things like the Magna Carta and English common law but those things were far from developed in our present reason I mean it was the dark ages for a reason I know that term is no longer politically incorrect but screw it all it's still the best term for that particular early Middle Ages I think another thing I noticed is um you find just one thing that a character loves or they hold dear and then you find the most brutal way to rip it away from them like I said before with Michelle like just the way her family gets systematically torn away from her or like Jamie it's just bang your sword hand is gone now what do you do is that something that you try to do do you try to do you try to just find really how to destroy your characters life in an exceptionally specific way based on what they hold dear do I do that how did I now that I've said it are you questioning whether you're a sadist or not oh no I think you you know you you have to take your characters and you have to put them through crises that's what that's what fiction and drama is all about is is not you know your your hero has a really good time but things have to happen that close to characters to to question who they are and what their place in the world is and what the meaning of it all is to go through the dark nights of the soul and times of fear and terror and all of this you know I've always taken as my mantra the William Faulkner's words in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech where he said the human heart in conflict with itself is the only thing worth writing about I think that's true of all fiction of literary fiction such as Faulkner wrote but also of science fiction and fantasy and historical novels and nurse novels and whatever I mean if you have if you have real characters grappling with real problems the human heart in conflict with itself doesn't matter if it's in a castle or a spaceship or whatever if you have that then then you have power and if you don't then you don't and and Jamie losing a hand losing the very thing that he defined himself on is is crucial to I I think where I want to go with the character and he questions what do you what do you make of yourself if you've lost that and of course I have Tyrion now going through several things I mean he's always focused on the things that he he did not have like his father's respect or admiration or you know perhaps women didn't look on him the way he would have liked them to look on him and all that stuff but in the aftermath of the events of the recent books he's now realizing the things that he did have that he's now lost like the Lannister name and a vast fortune and gold that could allow him to buy and sell anyway he's been reduced to the most primal difficult situation where he has nothing but the clothes on his back and even those don't belong to him and his his wits his tongue so yeah that's what that's what drama comes out of I love exploring that stuff do you ever like um you know do something like cut Jaime's hand off and then go bug her I wish I could still see him sword fight why did I do that there is something you've written and you've gone why did I do that no no no I'm pretty happy with most of what I've done you know there are there are a few things that that you were not aware of because as a gardener with the kind of writing style that I that I use I go down a lot of dead ends so there are moments of why the hell did I do that but they never appear in the books because hopefully I say that before the book comes out and then I I rip out that chapter or I revise that chapter so you know something something different happens instead it feels better it works better for me so hopefully none of those things will make it at the print although you know you never know I look back on books I wrote 20 years ago you know before before Game of Thrones and I did by the way guys write books and short stories before Game of Thrones available at your local library yet still there are a lot of them there but I look back at some home and and see from the benefit of hindsight things I could have done differently things I could have done better you hope you're always improving but still the guy maternes is perfect I think so pretty much yeah I have a I am bad with eye color but that's what Elio and Linda for they they correct me on my eye color and I have a horse that changes sex he's not supposed to change sex or she's not supposed to change he just seems to do so right this androgynous horse is a I think it was brands for section it was I think it was a dance um uh yeah that changes from a a mare to a gilding or something in that between books so that was pointed out to be my fans my fans are very eagle-eyed they miss they missed nothing you bloody bastards old here tonight um is is it strange seeing something you've written and you've imagined in your own head on a screen um it's a little bit strange at first but it's also very exciting and it's something that I'm used to I mean I did work in television for ten years so I still remember 1986 I believe it was the first of my scripts ever to be filmed was uh being filmed for the Twilight Zone revival and they were building it on the soundstage behind my office they were building the sets that I described and I we were starting to shoot in two days we're having rehearsal and I was wandering around a daze I wandered on this soundstage and here were like thirty carpenters and painters and set designers working creating a set that I described and he were costume people sewing together costumes that I had described and to to put the actors in and here were actual actors some of whom I had heard of and seen in other films who were practicing lines that I had written and and that's you know that was tremendously exciting but of course like anything else you know the the first time is the most exciting and then you you get used to it and it becomes part of what you did and I work in that business for 10 years so when my fourteenth scrip was being filmed it was you know well let's go over and see them doing costumes I hope they're not screwing up anything then the excitement wears off I did go away from television to film for quite a few years though so when when we visited the Game of Thrones set in Belfast for the first time it was almost a rush to return of that that feeling from the first twilight zone especially by the scale of it I mean Game of Thrones is a huge production much bigger than any show that I previously worked on and the fact that we have we have the largest soundstage in Europe in the soundhole and we're using the entirety of it it's it's called the paint hall it's on the old Harland & Wolff shipyards where they built the Titanic and many ships that did not sink and you know that they used to paint the holes there you can imagine the scale of this room and that's now entirely devoted to Westeros the throne room set is in one one of the four pods and another one is the high whole of the Ahrens and you can just wander from one to the other and they have various bedrooms and all that and that's something I see in five countries simultaneously and then you know Belfast and in Iceland and Morocco and Malta and Dubrovnik we've done a tremendous amount of growth Nick and Croatia beautiful city so and and there are armies of people doing stunts and sword fights there so we have a whole armory we could equip an actual medieval army if we needed to admit on track negotiations don't go through well admittedly the swords would be dull so they might lose a lot of battles but uh but you know we could there there's racks and racks of swords and helmets and cloaks and things like that just waiting for our soldiers to Don them you did say before that sometimes you might say like a little sentence in an interview and it gets taken out of context so this my be one but on the subject of you know things you write and seeing on the screen I read that the Iron Throne as you see it on TV isn't like you imagined it no it's it's a I mean it's pretty cool and and I think it's it's become for for millions of people the iconic Iron Throne because they've seen it so often on TV and they're replicas of it but if you if you read the books the Iron Throne is considerably bigger I mean way bigger than than the one on television it's also much uglier that they actually made if if any throne made of swords can be considered attractive the one the television version is fairly attractive and I repeatedly make the point in the books that the Iron Throne is asymmetrical it's ugly it's like a giant hunched beast it's full of sharp edges and and things like that it was hammered together by blacksmiths from a huge pile of half-melted swords you know just grabbing them and trying to build something that when it wasn't designed by a chair designer or any kind of artistic sense of design I yeah so so yeah I've been and it's been very difficult just from my descriptions to portray this I mean I think they did a very good version for the show but of course I've been involved from the beginning on other Ice and Fire sub rights deals with comic books and calendars and art books so they've been I don't know 20 30 artists over the years who have taken a crack at depicting the Iron Throne and none of them have ever got that right I mean somebody giving them pointers or guys well some in some place I do give them pointers but I don't have that opportunity and even when I do give them pointers I'm I'm not an artist I can't draw it so I can say things like I've just said to you well it's asymmetrical and it's ugly and it's built by blacksmith and it's sort of it hunches like a beast it should have something it should have an oppressive feel to it and you know and then they draw something based on these admittedly impressionistic phrases and bits of description that I give but the one I worked closest with was on the on the most recent project with the French artist Marc simonetti and he'd done a version of the Iron Throne a couple years ago that was still not right but was the closest that I'd ever seen and when it turned out he was going to do it again he and I went back and forth we must have exchanged a dozen emails and we finally I finally got one that I really quite like and it's I think it's going to be in world of Ice and Fire but you know we could never have built that I mean for the set I mean this is where the practicalities come in into play it despite the size of the paint hole which is huge it's still soundstage you would have needed the the throne room in the books is the interior of st. Paul's Cathedral you know and and they weren't going to let us film in st. Paul's Cathedral for a number of years and the throne you know dominates it and has to be you know like 30 feet tall or something like that and and I don't know 20 feet tall big tall thing where the King on it looks over the room I mean that's described that at numerous points when you're up there you're looking down on everyone the way I am looking down on you peasants and little people see I can see the top of your head and see that that's psychologically very important to a throne it it makes you and I up here feel dominant over these well there are those people up there I don't know oh dear they're there yeah they would have the dominance over us well I don't know but there's even people up in the Eyrie up there doesn't that that's right I can't see them later in my ass is there anything that you've seen in the opposite way you've seen in the TV series and you've thought that's that's right that's how it should have been that Philip Pullman said that when he saw Nicole Kidman playing mrs. Coulter he was like why did I write her as a brunette in Northern Lights she was always going to be a blonde um well I mean I think our cast is extraordinary so some of them are just like my characters come to life even if they are different I mean that you know Peter Dinklage who was really the only person we ever considered for Tyrion is really very little like Tyrion as he's described in the books I mean Peter is considerably more attractive than Tyrion and he's also taller if you read the descriptions of Tyrion I don't think I ever give his precise height but he's clearly a shorter man probably by almost a foot than then then Peter is armed what Peter is Tyrion I mean he's made that part his own and he's inhabited it completely aria in in my head doesn't have the kind of face that Maisie Williams has a you know MIT Aria has much more stark ish face a sort of a lean a kind of narrow face but Maisie once again is is Aria she's she's made it her own so I think for the majority of the audience and for millions of people around the world these actors have have redefined the rules maybe not necessarily for me at least when I'm writing it though because I I've lived with these characters for so long I began writing this in 1991 the series you know came along like 15 years later so there were 15 years for these characters and their descriptions and the look of the castles and all that to set down roots it's it's hard for that to change for me do you love your characters or do they drive you insane at times or yes both both yeah deeply I do I do love them even even the bad guys even the ones I kill even Ramsay Bolton Ramsay's a misunderstood fellow why don't we misunderstanding he had a hard childhood yeah as a good excuse yeah do you like killing your characters no I don't do why you do it so much George I do think it needs to be done big fan of death up there okay you know Valar morghulis all men must die I think it's part of life and art needs to reflect life particularly if you're if you're writing a fantasy novel an epic fantasy you know certainly since the days of Tolkien so many fantasy novels have been about war I mean there's a war to center loaded rings you know they have Sauron and his his great armies of Orcs and and south wings and easterling's and and other Ling's are all moving out and the free man of the West are fighting against them and of course in my in my books they're considered it'll be more complicated war going on but you look at all of the other writers who've been in between and is there's wars and Wars and Wars now I'm not saying you have to write about war there many other interesting things to write about and I've written about some of them I don't have a war in all my books but if I'm going to write about war if any writer is going to write about war then I want him to treat war honestly and one thing I I know about war from people who served in Vietnam and served in other wars is you know it does bring out the beast in men and anybody can die it doesn't matter if you're the hero I think everybody who died in any war thought they were a hero right to the moment that the bullet blew off the table Adair's ago um so it era Tate's me when I when I I'm watching a movie and or reading a book and the hero is going through incredible dangers him and his six buddies and none of them die you know maybe one of them gets wounded at some point but they they will survive pretty much untouched at the end I mean and Tolkien which I read when I was young and and at a pretty formative age I think that book had an immense influence on me and it does have some powerful deaths in it it the death of Boromir still resonates me that was that was a powerful moment the death of Gandalf in the mines of Moria when when the Balrog drags him down to the thing and he says fly you fools and that's enormous ly powerful because you know especially at that point in the book as Gandalf is the Gandalf is a father figure Gandalf is the guy who has the answers Gandalf is the one who knows what they should do and how they should do it and suddenly he's gone and the you know down the hobbits are on their own with Strider and Boromir and people they don't necessarily trust because their relationships are still fairly new at that point and they're facing untold dangers and they don't have Gandalf the warned them of exactly what's around the next turn and Bend that's a hugely powerful moment which I actually if it'd been me again if we stayed dead I think you know bringing them back as surprising but the it in some ways it undercut the power of that moment and by setting up those moments Toki and also set me up for the moment where it seemed like Frodo had died you know when when I'm reading the end of the the two towers and shelob's stabs him and he seems to be dead and Sam took takes the ring and then the book is over you know and you have to wait for the next book I really thought Frodo was dead I thought token had earned his stripes with me he'd killed Boromir he had killed frettin now he killed Frodo my god I really don't know what's going to happen in this book anyone can die and it became so much more exciting in that point because anyone could die that peril was real and that's the feeling I want my readers to have that if you're going to here is the feeling you want your rate is to have yes actually you know in a word if you're going to write about fearful situations I want you to have fear and the right kind of fear I mean we we go on rollercoaster rides and we're scared right at rollercoaster rides are scary supposedly but we're not really scared we know that we're going to get off the roller coaster after three minutes and however high we go and then we plunge down and there's a certain thrill in a and I guess an adrenaline rush or something like that so we like to be scared in certain senses but that's one kind of fear but there's another kind of fear that you feel when like you're all alone and you're walking in a bad neighborhood and and suddenly you hear footsteps behind you and your turn and you see see some people come in and you don't know who the hell they are and you know that that's a moment or a moment that a soldier or a policeman or anyone fears when they're in a situation where where their life is on there on the line I that's a that's a much more visceral kind of fear and that's the kind of fear I want to read it or feel I mean I think writing is about strong emotions I want you to to be afraid when I'm putting the characters in a scary situation when a character dies I want you to grieve for that character as you would for a friend or a loved one or a parent and it's entire you know vicarious experience which is my goal as a writer I want you if I'm going to describe a feast I don't want to just say yes and then they ate a feast it was delicious I want you to I wanted you to smell the food and taste the food whether it's delicious food or bad food or whatever I smelled the particular things if it's a Gauss Thai want you to have the excitement of getting caught up and who's going to win the joust if it's a sex scene I want you to get hot and bothered or I want to I want you not just to read my work but to live my work that's I know they're giving away this book bags here that the some of the I guess one with the VIP tickets that says a quote I said a couple years ago about a reader a reader lives a thousand lives before it dies the man who never reads lives only one but I've always felt that I I think reading is about vicarious experience I look back on cocaine which I read I go like I said when I was 12 and 13 and I remember things that happened in the book of you know from half a century later as if I live them I don't remember the actual things that I lived at that time I have forgotten who sat behind me in geography class and you know what I was doing that June you know of my 13th year and all that so much of this memory is gone but but the memory of these great books that I read at that time not just Tolkien but HP Lovecraft our buddy Howard Robert a Heinlein some of the books I was reading for school and all that the classics of literature Dickens and so forth Shakespeare those are very much part of me and I think they're part of us all all of us readers we absorb this stuff and it shapes us as much as the real events of our real lives so in that sense it is real so I think for all of us here you've created something that's done that for us so thank you very much George now I do believe it's time for question and answers I believe we have a microphone there there and up in the Eyrie there um so if people want to make their way to the microphone have we got something it I can't actually see cuz I'm blinded by these lights are we getting Michelle here or here yeah is he comes is she coming Oh Michelle no she's at the bar okay she's hiding back you come nope thank you George for doing my job there as well that was fantastic to know you've got my back so um with the questions let's keep them like tyrion lanister and short and sharp and sometimes hilarious have we got someone down here yep I am I've got a question I've noticed in your writing some tropes like soft as summer silk or in half a heartbeat I've had the pleasure of enjoying your books through Roy dotrice --is you know classic Shakespearean training and I read the first in the last book so I picked those up and I just wanted to ask there's a kind of a oral quality that I possibly reading into your work but I want to know how you've been influenced by oral tradition and uh yeah yeah oral tradition well I know the question for George yeah I love you know I love the oral tradition of storytelling I you know it's a it's obviously not as popular in ours that once was its it it was of course much more important in preliterate societies but I still do love I mean frequently at many conventions I will read a chapter aloud those of you who are going supernova I'm going to try to do that at the Adelaide supernova I have a chapter from winds of winter I want to read aloud it's it's great when I read something aloud to an audience like this or or whatever because you can see I guess it's like you guys doing live stage as opposed to doing and doing film you get the immediate reaction you you get the laughter if it's funny and if it's supposed to be funny and there's no laughter then I better rewrite um so and you can you can also sense on suspenseful scenes or something like that you could see what's working I never failed to read a chapter aloud then I go back and make some changes in it afterwards the cadence is the rhythm of the words all of that can come through and you can see where something is clunky you can see where dialogue isn't working so yeah I love that in the middle I leave up here there we go do we have a question for Kay Arthur Michele okay you look just like her hi mr. Munn I think you're a wonderful author um the first spec I write of yours was tough voyages when I was 12 which is a fabulous book and if you haven't read it go read it yeah yeah really good book changed my life I've read it dozens of times um on that note you have wonderful wonderful books that you've written that aren't gameofthrones related will any of us have the joy of seeing that on the big screen or on TV well you know you never know I would certainly be in favor of it I get options all the time right at the moment the wild-card series is is under optioned by Universal Pictures in the sci-fi channel so they're developing that for a potential movie franchise possibly spinning off to a TV series I've been talking to a director about fever dream I have a few routine script I wrote a dozen years ago that is in turnaround which is a Hollywood term for hell and other people come nosing around on other books occasionally but you know unfortunately it's a crapshoot they contact your agent you get a deal most of the time nothing happens to it except you know they send you some money it's nice to get them it's nice to get the money but but you know you can never tell I mean it do you wind up with a lot of projects that don't come to fruition as an actor or everything already go by the time you know there was one that I had signed up to actually this September that's all what what month is this November isn't it is it November is it descent I remember it Oh November December Christmas all back boy well you Christmas trees I've been seeing Christmas trees everywhere in Australia and um yeah it was meant to go in November and it's being postponed now until March I think yeah so that's happening a lot yeah the only thing that's pretty sad is theatre because they have to schedule so far in advance because the people are literally sitting there as well you can't delay it if they're just sitting there sorry this is still in development you um yes we go to the the top is there anyone at the top as a question for Michelle yes uh not a question for Michelle I'm so I'm sure okay no don't worry a question for Michelle yeah um on the internet we saw a book panel where you discussed about those damned Australians and their prevalence to download stuff I was just wondering if you wanted to make a couple of comments on on the way that television has changed in the time that you were working on it especially now in terms of opening your work up to newer perhaps paying audiences well there's no doubt that we live in interesting times as and the words of the famous Chinese curse everything is changing in the entertainment field and in terms of distribution and publications and and marketing yes Australia led the world in illegal downloads during the first season a game of Thrones yay well Doug and it it wasn't even close it was overwhelming you guys you guys were illegally downloading a show like five times more than any other country in the world but it's legal you know it the reason was I gather I mean I wasn't here at the time but what I was told is that the the Australian network that had purchased the show was had decided to delay at six months and you know once upon a time you could do that and each marketplace was separate the internet and it did not exist and YouTube did not exist and none of these illegal download sites existed so each market could buy a show and show it or not show it and show it at anytime they wanted I mean Beauty and the Beast the show that I wrote for back in the back in the late 80s when I came to Australia for first time in 1990 I was still on the air in the United States and it was being shown in Australia but it was being shown like 3:00 in the morning on Thursday nights so I was a writer producer on that show and I was signing my books and talking about my short stories which there's almost no interest in being a beast because nobody thought I was seeing it because it was being so badly mangled in the time it was being aired you can't do that anymore on a popular show I mean that's why those downloads occurred as people didn't want to wait six months they wanted to see it at the same time and even now I think it's being showed would one day delay because they learned and even though one day is too long for some people I think we're heading for a global marketplace and the same thing is true in books of course Amazon is changing everything the fact that we have you know in the english-speaking world we have cut up these markets between the British market in the American market and you know who can send books it you can't enforce that anymore you know if you're in Australia and you want a book and it's out in America but the British Edition is not out you just order it from Amazon for America or somebody imports it whether it's legal or not it's all becoming one big global marketplace and and I guess that's good in some ways but it's also bad in some ways because I think you're going to you're going to lose some of these publishers that in Australia or you're going to lose some stations I mean Netflix may conquer us all we may all belong to Netflix and Amazon by the end I don't know what do you think of all this stuff here um well yeah it's I mean I'm completely computer illiterate so I wouldn't know how to download keep the TV stations in business yeah I mean I don't even subscribe to I think uh to any satellite channel so I watch DVDs when I still love that thing of sitting at home or wherever it is a no-tell room of like going just one more one more one morning wave o'clock in the morning do ya after dating and I did it with the wire and I do it with Breaking Bad and it's night and I just love that you know it's lovely and it's in your own time but it's it's a very it is changing dramatically and and I think television and Internet companies are going to have to work together to accomplish something - we have a question from The Groundlings eye and I was actually at that National Convention but I was too so I'm not sure it counts in 99 my question is about considering how many projects you have going you've got the calendars you've got the books the show writing the actual you know finishing the books how do you quarantine your writing time do you just have months where you you go home and you shut yourself off or is it how do you actually find the time along with everything that comes along with having a wildly successful series well it's it's I don't write when I travel and I know some people some of my fans are very upset about that and think I should but you know believe me I've tried I died you know back in the 90s and even the 80s when I would take a laptop that they were new then and kind of heavy there's like a briefcase but I would take them on trips when I was going to Europe or something like that and I would try to write in my hotel room or try to write on the plane and they would be very frustrating I'm a creature of habit I need I can only write I don't want to be disturbed I tell people you know don't don't bother me don't put through any phone calls nobody come in here leave me alone all day that's when I write so I don't write when I travel but at home I work almost every day now do I write fiction almost every day well I tried to but sometimes life conspires against that too there's you know that there's a lot of good stuff about the level of success I've had but it also brings with it certain consequences in a tremendous amount of mail and email and business stuff I've been hiring assistants to try to take some of that off my shoulders but it's not something I'm getting used to I'm still still learning how to delegate stuff and I do think frankly to be honest with you guys I have to learn to say no more particularly when this thing really started burgeoning even before the show I mean the last few years when I was hitting the bestseller lists very high I started getting a lot of invitations to other projects and a lot of invitations to travel and I try to keep my word and keep my promise when I give a commitment I go through with it and I said yes to a lot of things that sounded like fun of whether it's a convention or a book tour or interviews and other projects I love doing other projects I love editing books I love writing short stories I have other stories that I want to tell that I'm not nice and fire so I said yes to a lot of things and then little few years into it I was saying why do they say yes to all these things I have to learn to say to say no occasionally here and I've joked about that on my on my blog I talk about all the monkeys on my back but I have would not have felt right canceling those obligations once I had taken that on I I don't do that so I've been doing them but one by one I've been getting the monkeys off my back in there there are much fewer monkeys it's not the big one of course is winds of winter and that's King Kong and my obligation is to show we're also up there and it's son of Kong but the other monkey's are relatively small or dead so I'm doing the best I can as well I can say do you have a question for the middle I'd love to get another question for you Michelle because I don't mind I'm happy listening do we have anyone up there or um hi um we've seen with bran and also the Red Queen like the power of the Lord of Light and also the old gods but is there a particular reason why we haven't heard from the seven yet I don't I'm not sure what you mean by heard from you know a postcard a telegram email I don't attend none of these gods have been on stage I mean people believe in them just as people believe in the seven but I I don't intend to ever actually bring a God on stage and have him interacting with people I'm not sure any of the gods and Westeros are real I'm not sure that any of the gods in real world are real I'm I'm a doubter in that sense which is not to undermine not to say that the people believe in him don't don't believe in them I mean in in the books I think the the seven can be seen most strongly in some of the Davos chapters you know I recall the this section where Davos lives through the Battle of Blackwater and it's found clutching this rock and it's saved he really does feel that ad mother he had a vision of the mother and she appealed peered to him and he feels that the seven are instructing him to kill Melisandre so his faith in the seven is driving some of his his beliefs and Catelyn in the book also has a hesitating religious faith in in the face at seven yeah yeah it's a duty but other than that you know it works on a on a more and romantic and symbolic function and a literal one at the top do we have some at the top obviously your characters are extremely personal to you I just wanted to know that out of Theon Greyjoy and Jaime Lannister which would you be most proud to have as a son right question I think baby bran would be a good answer I don't know it depends on what kind of father I was there there's a lot of father-son stuff in the books which you know is something that I like people to think about there's a lot of mother-daughter stuff in the books too of course that is one thing I wish I could do more of it but I didn't do enough of in Game of Thrones before I rip the Starks apart I would have liked to have shown more scenes with a cat actually interacting with her her two daughters kids yeah I mean there are scenes of her interacting with a with the boys but not so much the girls because doing girly things after emailing yeah right and stuff like that and cat is very busy running her castle absolutely and I mean there is the the the scene in in the first season where you you have Sophie or you know you're breaking hair and she's talking about what a dreamboat Joffrey years i sedated and she wanted to marry him right now and right then of course that's it haha that's not actually in the book David John having a laugh oh yeah that's doodie you know there's always fun scenes see that's one of the things I wish and I've told David and Dan this from the beginning I wish we had more hours because we we have 10 hours but like Boardwalk Empire is 12 and and Treme had like 13 and and you know some of these other HBO shows have slightly longer seasons than us we're hitting all the high spots but we'd there are little personal scenes like that one that I think we could have more of including some scenes from the books that deepen the characters in their relationship and if we had more time we could do it but of course time is money and our the show is already very expensive and David and Dan and made it clear that their heads would explode if they had to do three more episodes this season I don't know how those guys are surviving it anyway my job is easy compared to this but in reply to your question Jaime Lannister ah I think we got time for one more even get one more question from down here so make it the best one okay Oh pressure yeah George people have such a sense of ownership of your work to the point where if they see you're not working on them they get really angry and I think we've all seen some pretty disgusting things that have been said on the internet about that now personally I think those people can go themselves okay but do you just put that out of your mind when you're writing or has it affected you in some way and do you think sometimes you know maybe I maybe I should be writing more you know I always think well always is too big a word but I frequently think I should be writing more but then again I always have you know I mean this is one things that I think some of the people were critical of me don't don't seem to understand them and how many times I say it is that I've always been a slow writer it's just nobody was aware of it because they weren't waiting on me but yeah you know I wrote my first four novels without a contract you know which is very unusual I mean mostly in in the publishing business you do you do a sample chapter two and then you do an outline at rest of the book and your agent sends around the publishers and then you get a contract with a deadline I didn't want to do that because I didn't want the deadlines I knew that would I don't like deadlines so I wrote entire novels dying at a light and fever dream and so forth nobody even knew I was working on those novels I just sat all by myself I wrote it and it was completely done I sent it to my agent and said here it is here's a novel sell it and they did ideally that would be to where I would work on this - but of course you can't do that with a with a series of any any sorts well there are days even when I write 10 pages that I wish I'd written more damn I ran out of steam I should have written 12 pages but not that I write 10 pages off in a day that's a lot of work but do you find a pressure to it oh yeah instant I do find pressure and and you know I think all writers have have or well maybe not all many writers have deep insecurities I don't know somehow it's something that feeds the writerly personality and I suspect actors have this too you know yet you get a hundred good reviews and you get one bad review and that's bad one just obsesses you're right that's why I don't read them yeah you know read your reviews no never yeah no because I think it's it is that classic thing if you really believe the goods you've got to believe the bad you know so mm-hmm I don't read them um so I don't know what's that did I answer the question I've lost them back there excitability you you have to try to put that stuff aside and when the work is going well and I do put that stuff aside you know I shut myself out of my office and I forget that everything exists that the my publishers are waiting for the book or the fans are waiting for the book I forget about the show I'm just in Westeros I mean I'm with some particularly character with REO or brand or Sansa and I'm in a scene and I'm wrestling with the words okay what what do they say next how do I say that how do I describe what's happening how do I make it vivid and evocative and you know I beat my head against a sentence and nothing else enters that it's just me in that sentence wrestling in in the pit at that point you know afterwards when I shut off the computer for the day and go over maybe other things enter my mind but not that I can't ever be distracted from from that well I think we're all prepared for you to take as much time as you need to because we know that when the book comes it will be absolutely perfect and amazing and no one will die right yeah ladies and gentlemen our Michelle Fairley george RR martin

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Keywords: Ideas, Melbourne, Australia, Conversation, The Wheeler Centre, Victoria, Writing, Game Of Thrones (Award-Winning Work), Michelle Fairley (Film Actor), George R. R. Martin (Author), Literature (Media Genre), Book, Books, Publishing (Industry), HBO (TV Network), Red Wedding, Catelyn Stark, Catelyn Tully, Dan Debuf, Supanova Pop Culture Expo, Supanova, Winter is Coming, Series, Fantasy (TV Genre), Television (Invention), Reading, Library, Novel, A Song of Ice and Fire

Id: vLkvLpPWWvI

Length: 88min 1sec (5281 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 26 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/spelledWright]

I laughed when he said 'him and his 6 buddies', that was on point.

But a few minutes later he talks about Gandalf on Lord of the Rings, and that bringing him back to life takes something away from the weight of his death and if he would have written LotR, Gandalf would have stayed dead. But GRRM does this too in his books, even if death changes the characters (and also I think Gandalf changes too a little bit because of his death).

[u/giants888]

I predict that in the books, Jon Snow will remain dead.

Then it will turn out that just like he switched Gilly’s baby with Val’s, he himself was switched out as a young baby by one of Cat’s handmaidens who saw how much she hated the baby and was worried she’d do something to it.

Samwell travels the North and discovers the hidden Jon Snow, he was raised as a bastard and given the name...Jean. And so the story continues with Jean Snow in the lead. He is exactly the same as Jon Snow but his favorite food is poutine.

[u/EndofPi]

Yo, WTF, George just spoiled LOTR for me.

[u/clothy]

This gives me hope. He won't write something that stupid.

[u/peleles]

He doesn't like heroes that "die" but don't, survive multiple ridiculously dangerous experiences, and come back from the dead.

• Thoros, capable of resurrecting the dead, and Beric, resurrected six times, just feeling the effects.

• Dany magically survives one fire and two (possibly three) assassination attempts, is saved from near-certain death at Qarth by Drogon, who whisks her away from danger at Meereen, and will almost certainly save her again from the Dothraki.

• Tyrion survives two trials, two battles, one encounter with a greyscale victim, one near-mauling by lions, and enslavement.

• Arya survives King's Landing, multiple near-captures, runs conveniently into a faceless man who hands her three wishes, then into the Hound.

• Bran and Rickon successfully hide from Theon, evade capture despite having no experience escaping trackers, then Bran reaches the Raven after running conveniently into Sam, then into Coldhands.

• Jon will come back from the dead.

GRRM is a master of the trope he's bitching against, and Ned's death and the Red Wedding do not undo that. And that trope was the least of this seasons troubles.

[u/TheLastStormKing]

That's assuming the white walkers are the "bad guys". Georgehas never said they are evil and always skirts questions regarding their motivations. I think of them as bizarro Valyrians. A race that used magic to transcend humanity. Who is to say the first valyrians weren't created by shadowbinders in valyria like the walkers were by the children

[u/newboy97]

This was part of a larger discussion about killing off central characters in stories.

I found it kinda interesting how George has time and time again talked about these kind of tropes and people praise him for avoiding them, but then the show ends up falling for them.

I wonder how he felt when he first heard about these plot points that were planned for season 7 and if he thought they were the exact thing that has always irritated him in story telling. And did he say anything about it?

[u/rustythesmith]

If you keep watching you'll learn that Jon Snow is his Frodo.

[u/renatofq]

To me this sounds bullshity, because we are full of people coming back to life and though-he-was-dead moments in asoiaf. And, on Jon's death we all know he will not stay dead