Jake Fruia
One of the things we like to spotlight on HDSLR Shooter is good storytelling. For those who haven’t seen Hannibal, its story and the way it’s told make up quite a chunk of the show’s appeal. Add in some rating bending murders, a tasty cast of psychologically flawed misfits, and savory shots and visuals, and you have a concoction worthy of even Hannibal’s keen tastes.
But how did all these pieces come together to create the perfect dish? The creator himself, Bryan Fuller, explains exactly how to the Writers Guild of America, West. He talks about where the idea for Hannibal came from, how they devise their grisly murders, and how they manage to weave so many separate elements together.
Written by Denis Faye
Bryan Fuller, showrunner of NBC’s new acclaimed series Hannibal, dishes on what made him want to take on everyone’s favorite brain-eating sociopath and where the show draws the line when it comes to its bloody, graphic violence.
Bryan Fuller’s childhood was filled with funerals.
But unlike the joyfully macabre endings that litter his shows (Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, and the new NBC series Hannibal, to name a few), the deaths of his youth were more mundane. “There were just a lot of old people in the family,” the veteran showrunner shrugs.
The way the grown-ups around him reacted to these deaths, however, was somewhat unique. “Everybody went out of their way to make sure funerals were positive events for a young child,” Fuller tells the Writers Guild of America, West Web site, explaining his penchant for creating shows like Hannibal – a prequel to the literary adventures of everyone’s favorite brain-eating sociopath. “There was a lot of ‘This is a celebration of this person’ as opposed to ‘Oh my God, that’s horrible’ because you don’t want to put that on a kid’s head.”
The experience created a positive association that’s served him well as a writer. “Death is an honorable, awesome, horrifying experience that ranges from something serene to something horrifying,” he says. “There’s a story in the punctuation of every life and that punctuation informs the sentence before it.”
You can read the full interview at the Writers Guild of America, West website: www.wga.org