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THE WALKTHROUGH
Daniel Knauf tells us his plan for the end of Carnivle
By Todd VanDerWerf
Feb 22, 2013 12:00 AM

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Carnivle creator Daniel Knauf recently sat down with The A.V. Club to talk
through the complete run of the cult HBO series. Part one, which deals with
season one, can be found here. This part deals with season two and his plan for
the four seasons of the show he never got to make, due to its cancellation.
The A.V. Club: The show has rich interpersonal relationships,
especially with Jonesy and Sofie, or Jonesy and the Dreifuss family,
which have nothing to do with the genre content. How did that come
about?
Daniel Knauf: Ill watch Lord Of The Rings, and he has to get the ring, hes got
to throw it into Mordor, but who gives a shit without the relationship with Sam?
At the end of the day, all of that big sweeping stuf is just an excuse for
interaction between characters. For meespecially with TV, because TV is a
really instant medium, and youre having these people in your living roomits

not only their relationship with each other, but youre vicariously having a
relationship with the characters through other characters. To me, storytelling is
all about the interaction. Its an excuse to vicariously live through other
characters. Thats just always been my definition of storytelling. The rest is just
an excuse to throw all these characters together.
One thing Ive never seen, and felt fortunate My father had polio as a child,
and he recovered from it, but he had post-polio syndrome. He was 32 years old,
and he literally woke up and couldnt walk. Never walked again. This is like,
1960. Back then, if you were in a wheelchair its like, Okay, youve been cut
from the team. You dont go to work. Youre invisible now. My dad didnt know
that. He just opened up shop in his hospital bed. He was an insurance guy. He
just kept doing what he did. He put three of four kids through college and made
a really good living. In those days, going out with my dad, he was just my dad,
only in a wheelchair. Hed go fishing and bowling, whatever he could do, he did.
But wed go out, and people would always react, so there was always this I
remember he took me to the track one time, to Hollywood Park, and Latinos
were walking up and brushing up against him, and I said to my parents,
Whats going on, Dad? Why do these people keep and he said, Well, Ive
been told its good luck. That if you brush up against someone thats
unfortunate, its good luck. A lot of people never saw him, they saw the chair.
In this show, when I was writing Samson, I didnt write a little person. I wrote a
guy. What I really wanted to do is have people like the bearded lady, like Lila
three or four episodes in, I always pictured some guy looking at Lila, finding
himself getting a little bit of a hard-on, like going, Oh my God, what am I
thinking! Shes got a fucking beard! [Laughs.] And thats what Tod Browning
did with Freaks, where you just stop seeing the diferences and start
recognizing what we all have in common.
TV is so full of beautiful people. People who look like that are bigger freaks than
my freaks were, I think. I mean, how often do you see a nine out of a physical
10 in the course of a day? I just loved casting people that looked like people.
There was nobody on there that even the cooch girls, I remember the first
thing out of my mouth when we were casting was, I dont want to see any
hardbodies. I dont want to see any silicone. I want to see girls that look like
girls that are comfortable in their own skin. Which, to me, is the sexiest thing
in the world. Sure enough, thats what they did. And some of them were big
girls. Dora was a big girl. But she was fabulous. You couldnt take your eyes of
her. It was neat to be able to do that.
AVC: When youre balancing out an ensemble cast, certain characters
get priority. There were a number of characters from season one that

didnt carry over to season two. How did you decide who you were
going to focus on and who you were going to cut?
DK: A lot of them were, it was just being told [by HBO], Okay, we didnt do as
well in season one as we expected to do, and were going to pick it up for
season two, but youre going to need to cut some characters. I had plans for
the Siamese twins. We probably would have been better of casting them in
seven out of 12. I had plans for Gecko [John Fleck]. It was just one of those
things. We hadnt written for the twins. We really hadnt given John enough to
do. John Fleck is a great actor, and he was wasted in the first season. Every
time he was on, he was terrific. But we were just sort of handed it. And you just
sort of go, Okay, and move on. But we had some pickups later in the season.
The he/she character, I forget what we called him [Bert/Bertha Hagenbeck,
played by Paul Hipp]. But the he/she character, Marilyn Manson wanted to do it.
That fell through due to a stupid set of misunderstandings and
miscommunications.
There are some characters that break out, and everyone wants to write for
them. Amy [Madigan] as Iris. I mean, heres somebody who wasnt even in the
pilot, and she was amazing. These things just happen in the course of any kind
of TV show. Some people break out and work. Others, not as much.

AVC: What were your plans for some of those characters

who had to be cut?
DK: With the twins, I wanted them to kind of be like Radar OReilly was
inM*A*S*H, sort of the harbingers of whats coming up next. We never really
got to play them that way. Their usefulness became less apparent. There was
something creepy about Siamese twins. Well, even twins, like in The
Shining and shit.
Gecko, I always thought hed be our Mr. Spock. That hed break out. He sort of
did, a little bit, and probably could have if wed written to it a little more. But
we never did. I never thought of him as big in the context of Bens arc, or
hyper-arc, or meta-arc. [Laughs.] [Aside.] Thats really Hollywood. But you want
those characters that are a little of. A little oddball. A little strange. They have
this relationship, he and Dora were best friends, and once Dora dies, I think it
really kind of sucked a little bit out of the Gecko character. And its funny,
because I had to fight really hard to keep him in the beginning.
There was one character I had, his name was Shoton, who ran the medicine
show, and he was a full-blood Indian, lived in a teepee. There are these
characters that didnt even make it out of the living room. [Laughs.]
AVC: One of the interesting things about the series arc is that Ben is
so reluctant to do what he ultimately has to do. Its very hard to write

a character resisting the series premise. How did you approach that
as writers?
DK: You just have to activate him in other ways. You can be actively reluctant.
Thats the way to do it and play ithes never passive. Hes actively turning
away from his destiny. Youre his audience. Youre going, No, no, no! Just seize
the day. Be what you can be! and hes saying, I dont want that. I cant have
that. I cant support it. Itll kill me. To me, its part writing and a large part
acting, performance. And Brother Justin is a reluctant Antichrist. He doesnt
want that. Take this cup away. I dont want to be the devil. And Clancy
[Brown] did the same thing. He just actively said, No, no. I dont want it. So
when you actively try to deny your faith, you do things like Ben does in the
pilot. Okay, Im out of here, and walking away to find yourself walking right
back into it. Eventually, you reach a point: Okay. Fine. What the hell. Lets do
this. Once you start riding the horse in the direction its going, thats where
you find your power.
I didnt realize I was a TV writer until I was writing TV, and it was like, Oh!
With films, youre writing it, and three years later, it comes out, and you have
no connection to it. With TV, youre writing stuf in the morning, and in the
afternoon, they can actually be shooting, so its like heroin for somebody like
me. There it is! I just wrote that yesterday! I didnt realize that as a TV writer
until I ended up there. But in the meantime, people were like What about TV?
And Id be, I dont want to write TV, Im a movie writer. Things like that.
Youre activelynot doing something. Thats basically how to write it and how to
act it.

AVC: What were other ways you made budgetary sacrifices

for season two?
DK: I think between the two things I recounted before, which was cutting a few
of the characters and then streamlining production and eliminating company
moves and maximizing the number of days wed be inside as opposed to
outside, that pretty much fixed the issues. A lot of people say, Oh, it was the
budget that killed the show. And I think what killed the show is just the ratings.
Really. Because they expected us to do much better.
One thing that did give them pause in the first season, not when they finally
cancelled it, was the Internet activity, because theyd never seen anything
remotely like it. The Internet activity on Carnivle was just like a tsunami, and
they didnt know what it meant. They had no way of quantifying it, to this day. I
think we had 4,000 followers on the Yahoo board when the show went of the
air. I think its up to 7,500 or something now. So the fan base has actually
grown since we went of the air. When you go of the air, the fan base normally
doesnt grow. Genre shows tend to do that more often because its a cult show.

But I was on Wolf Lake, and it feels like we had a bigger fan base then than we
did when we went of the air.
Its a show not everybody got to see, and they sort of turned each other on to
it. Thats another aspect of pay cable. Im a little surprised that nobody has
picked it up on basic cable or somewhere else. More than a little annoyed that I
cant get a Blu-ray version of it. Sometimes I feel like were the redheaded
stepchild of HBO, that they want to forget they went to the carnival and move
on to other things. But then I go to HBO, and I see people in their offices, and
they still have theirCarnivle blankets, and theyre fans, big fans within the
next generation of people who went to work for HBO, so thats probably not so
true.
AVC: When you started season two, the network wanted a
confrontation between Ben and Justin. What were some other
directives you were looking at for that season, either self-imposed or
network-imposed?
DK: They definitely wanted Brother Justin in the mix, and we were given that
from the top. Brother Justin and Ben are going to go head to head in the
finale. It was like, Yeah, I know. Of course.

AVC: Had that always been your plan?

DK: Oh yeah. We couldnt tease that out any further than we had. They didnt
want to pace it out a little bit more, but that was more, we wanted to do more
of what we were doing at the tail end of season one. We had a lot of creative
freedom on the front side, but on the back side, sometimes wed shoot things,
and theyd go, Oh, this needs to be reshot, or Were going to cut these
scenes. When I get into the horror aspects, they were really queasy about I
had to fight like hell for the masks episode, and it was a big fight. I remember
saying, This is a horror show. This is in the horror genre, and theyre going,
Thats not the way we see it. Its drama. No. Come on!
They would always pull back on things like that scene where Brother Justin had
that fit in front of Balthus [Ralph Waite] and Iris where hes on the floor, hes
got the black eyes and shit. And Id actually written in, I wanted to give him
baboon teeth. I wanted actually to have him open his mouth and have this
mouth full of fucking baboon teeth. Like big, yellow, ugh, totally George
Romero, and it was like, No, were not doing that. No, its not going to
happen. Again, I cant say whether that would have been over the top. Maybe
it would have been. It probably would have been. But at the time, hey, I would
always be pushing those horror, those genre things. We were writing about
demons and angels here, lets show some flash, you know? The crying Jesus
with the blood, and we had, like, maggots coming out. The producers cut was

much more horrific than what they cut it back to. Most of the creative control or
compromises happened after we shot.
AVC: Were there any choices that the network imposed that you think
actually hurt the show? Because the things youre talking about right
now are matters of degree. Was there anything
DK: That really fucked us? [Pause.] No. Id like to come up with something,
because we all love to paint the networks as bad guys, but I cant think of a
single thing. I really cant. Given how demanding and challenging the material
was, they gave us a surprising amount of creative latitude on this show. Much
more, probably, than we deserved, especially given our ratings. So HBO truly
was what we think of HBO. At least at that time, and even today. They serve as
the last bastion for artistic freedom, to some degree. But other than the fact
that we had to cut a few characters out, and that hurt, it certainly wasnt
crippling to the show. It maybe even streamlined it. Maybe made it a little bit
better. It certainly snapped things into focus. So no, not really. The only thing
they did that was terrible was cancel it. [Laughs.]
And I remember writing to [HBO exec] Chris [Albrecht]. I wrote him a long
letter. I said, Please reconsider this, because I think the next season is going to
be the season. Because our numbers were trending upward. I think we
beat Deadwoodin our finale. It felt like it was poised to having been an old
insurance man, I was pretty good with trends. I really was sad to not have it go
forward. Its still sad.
I wrote a letter to the fans when we got cancelled, and I remember writing, I
know a lot of you are going to write angry letters to HBO, but keep in mind that
no one else would have done this show. So its really hard to be, Oh,
thosebastards. What a bunch of fuckers. Theres no way anyone else would
have done this. With someone who had never written a TV show before? To
make me an executive producer and give me the kind of creative control I had,
even though I had to kind of earn it and keep it, the fact that they did that was
so great. And the money! Fuck, this was the most expensive show on the air at
the time, I think by far. I think they were spending somewhere in the
neighborhood of $3.7 million per episode, which today is nothing Well, not
nothing. That would be a lot now. But then, it was insane. It was almost
irresponsible of them. [Laughs.] If I was a stockholder at HBO, Id be calling to
get their head examined. Its hard to really resent people that took that much
of a leap for finally waking up in the morning and realizing, Oh, who did I
drunk-dial last night? [Laughs.] I cant get mad at them for coming to their
senses.
Since theres five years between season two and season three, I secretly kind
of wonder, You know, we could pick the story up. All our actors would be

older. Even if Ben was, because Ben gets really hurt. We start out season
three, Ben is really living in that niche where Management was living, and hes
kind of fucked that up. Brother Justin is similarly fucked up. It was hard living,
too. You looked older. So Im thinking, We actually could pick it up.

AVC: How much did you tell the actors about their ultimate
arc, particularly Clea DuVall?
DK: Generally, actors are not as interested in where the character is going in
the long term. Theyre more interested in where the character has been,
because thats the main thing of their performance. I suppose you would
behave very diferently if you knew what your future was, and that definitely
would be inexplicable to the audience. Whys he avoiding air travel? What
possible reason could he have? So actors, I think, are focused more on Where
has my character been?
I dont remember talking to any of the actors about where theyre ultimately
going to end up, because that didnt interest them. They didnt need that. What
they really needed was, Okay, whats my relationship with my mother? When
did this happen? All those things. And all that stuf was in the [series] bible. Id
given them all very detailed character descriptions of their pasts, and they
would fill in the blanks and write their own character descriptions, and do what
they do as part of their process.
[pagebreak]
AVC: Season two moves at a much faster clip. You said some of that
was because you condensed 16 episodes of story into 12. What were
some of the choices you had to make along the way to make it move
more quickly?
DK: We had this incredible runner where they find Lodzs body, and no one
knows the situation with Ben. And Tracy Torm [a writer on the show], this was
sort of his dream. And it turns out [Lodzs] body has been They still meet up
with that other carnival, and theyre saying hes, like, the body of some
archduke. Its one of those things they used to do in carnivals, where they say
its the body of John Wilkes Booth, but its fucking Lodz, and its a glass coffin.
[Laughs.] And theyre like Oh my God, hes dead! And Lila goes, Oh,
somebody killed him! So they get into this whole thing, and Ben becomes,
obviously, a suspect. I dont remember a lot of the details, but the ending to it
was just so perfect. They have the carnival for a funeral. They have one of their
little party funerals, and Samson, as I recall, is struggling to figure out what
nice thing he could say about Lodz, and he cant think of a thing. Hes at this
glass coffin, and they throw the dirt on him to bury him, and Ben and Samson

are standing there having this conversation, and right at the end of the
conversation, you hear this crack, and the dirt goes Thwoomp! [Laughs.]
I remember that as being a sort of runner. We were going to play that whole
thing of Lila trying to prove they had murdered Lodz, and bring them to justice
at the wagon. So we had to abandon that whole thing.

AVC: What were your plans for Lodz?

DK: Honestly, it wouldnt have worked. The plan I had for Lodz is that he would
continue all along to be serving the wrong master. I always had an idea that at
the very end, he has this sort of Alec Guinness at the end of Bridge On The
River Kwaimoment where he realizes for the first time, Oh God, what have I
done? and is instrumental in saving Ben. But that would be six seasons down
the line, and we wanted to keep him alive as an instrument of evil inside the
carnival, and maybe moving over to Brother Justins side and feeding Brother
Justin intelligence and so forth. Back to almost a spy. But it wasnt to be. We
just used his ghost.
AVC: When did you first start to get the sense that season two might
be the end of the road?
DK: Not until well after we completed it. Let me put it this way: We felt doomed
from episode three on, because the numbers were not coming up. The numbers
were going down. We had this amazing, set [ratings] records, opening episode.
Then it went [makes declining noise], so we felt doomed every day. Whereas
other shows, two or three episodes in, HBO would have these huge
announcements: Were only three episodes in, and weve already ordered
another season. We didnt get that. So we finished the first season, and we
were waiting and waiting and waiting. It wasnt until literally almost the last
possible minute that they could contractually do it, we got that order for
season two.
Then after we finished season two, I had hopes, but it really wasnt until they
called. They called and said, Look, we want to do a two-hour movie to wrap up
all the stuf that hasnt been wrapped up, and I said, I cant compress 48
hours of story into a two-hour wrap-up. And thats not why people watch the
finale anyway. I mean, no one gives a shit about how the story ends. They give
a shit about what the characters do, the interactions. I just felt like, Why dont
we just write a synopsis and publish it? It would be as gratifying.
[The movie] was on the table for a little while, and I took a big old pass on it. It
wasnt because I was holding out or anything. It made no sense to me. It still
doesnt. I dont even know how I would do it. That came and went real quick.
Then they were moving on to other things, but in the meantime, shit, they were
getting death threats. The fans went apeshit. Thousands of letters. They

crashed their servers multiple times. When they made the announcement,
people went completely out of their minds. Our fans were just ardent. It was
shitty. Youre sitting there, and youre in the middle of a book, and somebody
comes and takes the book away. That made them crazy. But what are you going
to do?
AVC: In season two, you have more references to things like Rennesle-Chteau and the royal bloodline of Christ. Did you have plans to
incorporate Jesus into your overall mythology?
DK: Jesus was an Avatar, so no. I mean, yes, hes part of the bloodline, but hes
not The way I figure, Avatars are like anybody. You can have a really good
agent; you can have a really shitty agent. There are really good Avatars, and
there are kind of shitty Avatars. Scudder was a really shitty, half-ass Avatar.
Jesus had it going on. Caligula was a great Avatar of darkness. He had his shit
together. Other than that, no.
Where I was going with that was in the third season, we were going to end up
in World War II, with a search for information to bring down Brother Justin on
the carnival side, so the carnival would actually return to its roots. Then [Ben
and Samson] have to pull everyone together. Sort of a simple, Avengers
assemble! In the third season, we were sort of reassembling, and then the
following season, the carnival would go on tour. That tour would take them
through places where theyre gathering things they need in order to go to
battle. Brother Justin is supporting the Bund. He is up against [the U.S. war
efort]. Hes kind of like the voice of Father Coughlin, literally. Then I think the
final episode really was about them trying to keep the bomb from going of.
Just trying to stop this thing from happening. And you cant.
AVC: In other interviews, youve said free will does exist in this
universe, but the characters seem to get jerked down the path theyre
supposed to go down anyway.
DK: Personally, I think we have the illusion of free will. Its like, say I pick this
book up, and I read to here. I dont know anything past here. Well, that doesnt
mean all this doesnt exist. The way the universe makes sense to me is that I
cant imagine the universe turning on a dime, like theres two entire, separate
futures because I decided to have donuts this morning instead of an Egg
McMuffin. That universe makes no sense to me. How can you have precognition
in there? How can you have an instinct of whats going to happen next, if the
entire thing changes because a butterfly got squashed on a windshield or some
bullshit like that? I think the whole thing is just written out pretty much like a
book. But the thing is, just like a book, you have the illusion of moving through
time, even though time exists. Even if its already been written, we have the
illusion of free will. And youre accountable for it. I mean, just because

technically its all written, you choose to do things. You dont know you dont
have a choice. If you choose to do bad things, maybe youre going to be held
accountable for them if theres an afterlife. Youre still responsible for being
bad. To sit there and go [deadpan] Yes, well, its my destiny to be a prick,
[Laughs.] that doesnt cut any ice.
So in a sense, I think the whole thing is about destiny, but the characters in the
context of that are still making choices based on who they are, what the
circumstances are, whos to benefit, whos to be hurt. You just do the best you
can with what youve got at a given time. Its basically a tapestry, and were all
standing with our noses against it, and what we see are a bunch of threads. We
cant make out this big hunting scene that if we step 30 yards back, wed be
able to see. I think each one of us gets so close to whats going on that we
cant see it. I think everything is pre-written. You can try to escape your
destiny, but eventually, youre going to end up doing what youre destined to
do. And that carries through. You see it constantly throughout Carnivle. But
thats just this writers worldview.

AVC: What were your plans for what would have come in
the four unmade seasons?
DK: Like I said, Im not going to claim I knew the minute detail. Season three is
five years later. We find Jonesyhe survived his gunshot wound and is pitching
for a professional baseball team. His wife [Libby] is a typical baseball wife back
in 39. The carnival is completely split up; everybodys gone their separate
ways. The only vestige of the carnival as it was is Ben and Samson, and theyre
working at another carnival, still on Managements trail.
Then on the Brother Justin side, we find hes become this incredibly politically
influential radio preacher. And theres Iris and Sofie, and theyre both in this
fight. Hes a shell, almost, and these two women are in a power struggle over
whos controlling Brother Justin. Sofie is Brother Justins wife. Of course, shes
his daughter, but he doesnt know that. She knows that. She could bring him
down pretty easily, but shes afraid of herself now, too.
Then we introduce, in the very first episode, you see this 4-year-old kid come
running up and hugging Brother Justin, saying Daddy. Is this Brother Justins
child, or is this Bens child, because they both had relations with Sofie? That
would kind of tee us of to the second one. That would take us through the war.
And then the first half of that would be, Avengers assemble, winds of war
calling them together, gotta get this group back together again. Bens like,
This isnt just about me. This is about us. And pulling everybody out of their
lives and answering this call, and moving into going to Europe to try to acquire
these documents or I knew they were going to be talismans. What theyre

going to need when theyre engaged in this war. Then thered be a

confrontation of some sort at the end of season four.
Then taking us to the end, its all about the [atomic] bomb. Its all about the
Manhattan Project and worrying about it, finding out what it is. The Germans
have a competing project, and trying to stop it. Trying to stop the bomb from
happening, because in Bens mind, detonation of the atom bomb is the end of
the world. What he doesnt realize is that its just the end of his world. To him,
its an end to Avatars; its an end to everything. But hes misinterpreted it. Hes
interpreted it as the end of the world. He thinks hes saving the world, but what
he learns before the end is that, I have to let this happen, because if I dont let
this happen, mankind will remain in a state of adolescence. He learns thats
really why Sofie is called the Omega. She is the only female, the last Avatar.
What its all leading up to is two Avatars, she and Ben having this child. They
actually have to sacrifice this child in the blast. That was my crazy notion.
Now I have to kill you because I told you. [Laughs.]

AVC: Have you ever considered trying to do it as a novel or

a comic book?
DK: Constantly. Yeah. Marvel, we had it all set up. At one point, they wanted to
go forward and do a series of graphic novels, and they just couldnt turn the
corner with HBO. Since then, yeah, Ive considered it. But one of the things that
makes me a little crazy about Hollywood is, theyre idiots when it comes to
their contractual stuf. If I write a novel, its like Random House publishes the
novel, copyrights it, but when you do business in Hollywood, they say,
Everything in this thing, in all forms, in all potential forms invented and
uninvented The language is draconian! throughout the universe. We own
everything in your head. We own everything. And its like, If you own
everything, at least exploit those rights, please. Could you please exploit the
rights? And if youre not going to exploit the rights, can I at least have them
back, so I can exploit them? Its just a silly way of doing business. They do it
because they can, and thats all.
Lets say I take a new-project idea to Sony, and they give me that language. I
go, You know, this whole copyright-influential-property thing, Im not so hot on
that. Ill take less money if I can retain the copyright or the ancillary rights,
theyd say, Take a fucking hike. If I go, Well then, Ill take a hike. Im going to
go to Warner Bros. And Warner Bros. has the exact same contractual
language. Its basically an illegal trust. Its like the mob. Artists are first to give
up intellectual rights to do business with Hollywood. But theyre not rights you
give up in any other medium. Its BS.
Carnivle is one thing. I hate telling people I cant I did a Kickstarter
campaign for BlackBxx, and I had a person who donated $1,500, a really

generous donation, and I had something in there, the Kickstarter-type stuf, Ill
take you out for dinner. And I did, I took him out for dinner. It was his wifes
birthday, and he said, Would you mind sending my wife an email? Shed get a
big kick out of it. And I sat down, and I thought, Im going to get this guy so
laid. He was going to give it for her birthday or Christmas or something, and
he wanted me to write a note. I sat down, and I just wrote a scene with Jonesy
and Samson at Christmastime, and it was like putting on the most comfortable
pair of shoes Ive ever had in my life. It was like, [exhales] I cant believe how
good it feels to be walking around in these shoes. The dialogue just spilled
out, and they were alive and three-dimensional. The characters are still alive,
and they have so much to say, and it was joyful writing it, and then sending
this to another person who got immense pleasure from it. And Im going,
[disbelieving pause] What the fuck? Okay. It didnt make sense to spend $3.5
million an episode. So lets do a graphic novel. Lets tell the story! But theyre
on to other toys now. Its like doing business with that kid down the street
whose parents give him really bitchin toys, and hed just leave them broken in
the backyard. It makes me crazy, Hollywood.

AVC: What do you think it would take to make them

interested?
DK: I think somebody who was a super Carnivle fan who went to work for HBO
going, Im so excited to work for the network that did Carnivle, and just
being a vice president or president and championing the idea of it. Itd probably
jump back in. Theres also the possibility, too, that I may be able to go and
approach them with another project they really want to do, and I might be able
to say, Look, as a condition to the deal, Id like you to sell me the novelization
rights. Theres always horse-trading that can happen in the future. You just
never know. Maybe in a few years, somebody will approach them and say,
Hey, lets move forward. Its awful not having it in your own hands. To be
dependent on fate. Whim. Whatever.
AVC: Is there a certain thing you had really wanted to show in those
last four seasons that youre sad you never got to do?
DK: Its the full scope of the idea, the big idea. The big idea that we were
children until we detonated these two bombs out in the desert. We always say,
Oh, isnt it a horrible thing? Oh, its the nuclear age. Now we wrestle with
destroying ourselves as a species, and its looked upon as a completely
negative thing. But in a way, I look at it as when we were able to put away
childish things. Thats when we got our first apartment. Thats, people started
to go, Hey, wait a second. I think right up until that moment, the idea that we
could destroy ourselves was absurd. Now we take it for granted. We start to
look at it, Well shit, we got the holes in the ozone layer. We become aware

that were capable of existential destruction, and I think thats part of growing
up as a species.
I mean, homo sapiens rock. When you see a bunch of people trying to push a
whale of a beach, I go, Okay, what other fucking species does that? That just
makes me feel like we are diferent. We arent a part of the animal kingdom.
Weve got something going on. Yeah, were capable of horrible things. Were
capable of holocausts. But were also capable of such amazing things. To me,
the exploding of the nuclear bombs was in a way a declaration of
independence from nature. In a way, to almost celebrate it. But its a cautious
celebration. It would be nice to have gotten that idea all the way out there. It
didnt make it.

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THE WALKTHROUGH

Daniel Knauf tells us his

plan for the end
of Carnivle
By Todd VanDerWerf
Feb 22, 2013 12:00 AM

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Carnivle creator Daniel Knauf recently sat down with The A.V. Club to talk
through the complete run of the cult HBO series. Part one, which deals with
season one, can be found here. This part deals with season two and his plan for
the four seasons of the show he never got to make, due to its cancellation.
The A.V. Club: The show has rich interpersonal relationships,
especially with Jonesy and Sofie, or Jonesy and the Dreifuss family,
which have nothing to do with the genre content. How did that come
about?

Daniel Knauf: Ill watch Lord Of The Rings, and he has to get the ring, hes got to
throw it into Mordor, but who gives a shit without the relationship with Sam? At
the end of the day, all of that big sweeping stuff is just an excuse for interaction
between characters. For meespecially with TV, because TV is a really instant
medium, and youre having these people in your living roomits not only their
relationship with each other, but youre vicariously having a relationship with the
characters through other characters. To me, storytelling is all about the interaction.
Its an excuse to vicariously live through other characters. Thats just always been
my definition of storytelling. The rest is just an excuse to throw all these characters
together.
One thing Ive never seen, and felt fortunate My father had polio as a child, and
he recovered from it, but he had post-polio syndrome. He was 32 years old, and he
literally woke up and couldnt walk. Never walked again. This is like, 1960. Back
then, if you were in a wheelchair its like, Okay, youve been cut from the team.
You dont go to work. Youre invisible now. My dad didnt know that. He just
opened up shop in his hospital bed. He was an insurance guy. He just kept doing
what he did. He put three of four kids through college and made a really good
living. In those days, going out with my dad, he was just my dad, only in a
wheelchair. Hed go fishing and bowling, whatever he could do, he did. But wed go
out, and people would always react, so there was always this I remember he took
me to the track one time, to Hollywood Park, and Latinos were walking up and
brushing up against him, and I said to my parents, Whats going on, Dad? Why do
these people keep and he said, Well, Ive been told its good luck. That if you
brush up against someone thats unfortunate, its good luck. A lot of people never
saw him, they saw the chair.
In this show, when I was writing Samson, I didnt write a little person. I wrote a
guy. What I really wanted to do is have people like the bearded lady, like Lila

three or four episodes in, I always pictured some guy looking at Lila, finding
himself getting a little bit of a hard-on, like going, Oh my God, what am I thinking!
Shes got a fucking beard! [Laughs.] And thats what Tod Browning did
with Freaks, where you just stop seeing the differences and start recognizing what
we all have in common.
TV is so full of beautiful people. People who look like that are bigger freaks than my
freaks were, I think. I mean, how often do you see a nine out of a physical 10 in the
course of a day? I just loved casting people that looked like people. There was
nobody on there that even the cooch girls, I remember the first thing out of my
mouth when we were casting was, I dont want to see any hardbodies. I dont want
to see any silicone. I want to see girls that look like girls that are comfortable in
their own skin. Which, to me, is the sexiest thing in the world. Sure enough, thats
what they did. And some of them were big girls. Dora was a big girl. But she
was fabulous. You couldnt take your eyes off her. It was neat to be able to do that.
AVC: When youre balancing out an ensemble cast, certain characters
get priority. There were a number of characters from season one that
didnt carry over to season two. How did you decide who you were
going to focus on and who you were going to cut?
DK: A lot of them were, it was just being told [by HBO], Okay, we didnt do as well
in season one as we expected to do, and were going to pick it up for season two, but
youre going to need to cut some characters. I had plans for the Siamese twins. We
probably would have been better off casting them in seven out of 12. I had plans for
Gecko [John Fleck]. It was just one of those things. We hadnt written for the twins.
We really hadnt given John enough to do. John Fleck is a great actor, and he was
wasted in the first season. Every time he was on, he was terrific. But we were just
sort of handed it. And you just sort of go, Okay, and move on. But we had some

pickups later in the season. The he/she character, I forget what we called him
[Bert/Bertha Hagenbeck, played by Paul Hipp]. But the he/she character, Marilyn
Manson wanted to do it. That fell through due to a stupid set of misunderstandings
and miscommunications.
There are some characters that break out, and everyone wants to write for them.
Amy [Madigan] as Iris. I mean, heres somebody who wasnt even in the pilot, and
she was amazing. These things just happen in the course of any kind of TV show.
Some people break out and work. Others, not as much.
AVC: What were your plans for some of those characters who had to be
cut?
DK: With the twins, I wanted them to kind of be like Radar OReilly was
inM*A*S*H, sort of the harbingers of whats coming up next. We never really got to
play them that way. Their usefulness became less apparent. There was something
creepy about Siamese twins. Well, even twins, like in The Shining and shit.
Gecko, I always thought hed be our Mr. Spock. That hed break out. He sort of did,
a little bit, and probably could have if wed written to it a little more. But we never
did. I never thought of him as big in the context of Bens arc, or hyper-arc, or metaarc. [Laughs.] [Aside.] Thats really Hollywood. But you want those characters that
are a little off. A little oddball. A little strange. They have this relationship, he and
Dora were best friends, and once Dora dies, I think it really kind of sucked a little
bit out of the Gecko character. And its funny, because I had to fight really hard to
keep him in the beginning.
There was one character I had, his name was Shoton, who ran the medicine show,
and he was a full-blood Indian, lived in a teepee. There are these characters that
didnt even make it out of the living room. [Laughs.]

AVC: One of the interesting things about the series arc is that Ben is so
reluctant to do what he ultimately has to do. Its very hard to write a
character resisting the series premise. How did you approach that as
writers?
DK: You just have to activate him in other ways. You can be actively reluctant.
Thats the way to do it and play ithes never passive. Hes actively turning away
from his destiny. Youre his audience. Youre going, No, no, no! Just seize the day.
Be what you can be! and hes saying, I dont want that. I cant have that. I cant
support it. Itll kill me. To me, its part writing and a large part acting,
performance. And Brother Justin is a reluctant Antichrist. He doesnt want that.
Take this cup away. I dont want to be the devil. And Clancy [Brown] did the same
thing. He just actively said, No, no. I dont want it. So when you actively try to
deny your faith, you do things like Ben does in the pilot. Okay, Im out of here,
and walking away to find yourself walking right back into it. Eventually, you reach a
point: Okay. Fine. What the hell. Lets do this. Once you start riding the horse in
the direction its going, thats where you find your power.
I didnt realize I was a TV writer until I was writing TV, and it was like, Oh! With
films, youre writing it, and three years later, it comes out, and you have no
connection to it. With TV, youre writing stuff in the morning, and in the afternoon,
they can actually be shooting, so its like heroin for somebody like me. There it is! I
just wrote that yesterday! I didnt realize that as a TV writer until I ended up there.
But in the meantime, people were like What about TV? And Id be, I dont want
to write TV, Im a movie writer. Things like that. Youre activelynot doing
something. Thats basically how to write it and how to act it.
AVC: What were other ways you made budgetary sacrifices for season
two?

DK: I think between the two things I recounted before, which was cutting a few of
the characters and then streamlining production and eliminating company moves
and maximizing the number of days wed be inside as opposed to outside, that
pretty much fixed the issues. A lot of people say, Oh, it was the budget that killed
the show. And I think what killed the show is just the ratings. Really. Because they
expected us to do much better.
One thing that did give them pause in the first season, not when they finally
cancelled it, was the Internet activity, because theyd never seen anything remotely
like it. The Internet activity on Carnivle was just like a tsunami, and they didnt
know what it meant. They had no way of quantifying it, to this day. I think we had
4,000 followers on the Yahoo board when the show went off the air. I think its up
to 7,500 or something now. So the fan base has actually grown since we went off
the air. When you go off the air, the fan base normally doesnt grow. Genre shows
tend to do that more often because its a cult show. But I was on Wolf Lake, and it
feels like we had a bigger fan base then than we did when we went off the air.
Its a show not everybody got to see, and they sort of turned each other on to it.
Thats another aspect of pay cable. Im a little surprised that nobody has picked it
up on basic cable or somewhere else. More than a little annoyed that I cant get a
Blu-ray version of it. Sometimes I feel like were the redheaded stepchild of HBO,
that they want to forget they went to the carnival and move on to other things. But
then I go to HBO, and I see people in their offices, and they still have
theirCarnivle blankets, and theyre fans, big fans within the next generation of
people who went to work for HBO, so thats probably not so true.
AVC: When you started season two, the network wanted a
confrontation between Ben and Justin. What were some other

directives you were looking at for that season, either self-imposed or

network-imposed?
DK: They definitely wanted Brother Justin in the mix, and we were given that from
the top. Brother Justin and Ben are going to go head to head in the finale. It was
like, Yeah, I know. Of course.
AVC: Had that always been your plan?
DK: Oh yeah. We couldnt tease that out any further than we had. They didnt want
to pace it out a little bit more, but that was more, we wanted to do more of what we
were doing at the tail end of season one. We had a lot of creative freedom on the
front side, but on the back side, sometimes wed shoot things, and theyd go, Oh,
this needs to be reshot, or Were going to cut these scenes. When I get into the
horror aspects, they were really queasy about I had to fight like hell for the masks
episode, and it was a big fight. I remember saying, This is a horror show. This is in
the horror genre, and theyre going, Thats not the way we see it. Its drama.
No. Come on!
They would always pull back on things like that scene where Brother Justin had
that fit in front of Balthus [Ralph Waite] and Iris where hes on the floor, hes got
the black eyes and shit. And Id actually written in, I wanted to give him baboon
teeth. I wanted actually to have him open his mouth and have this mouth full of
fucking baboon teeth. Like big, yellow, ugh, totally George Romero, and it was like,
No, were not doing that. No, its not going to happen. Again, I cant say whether
that would have been over the top. Maybe it would have been. It probably would
have been. But at the time, hey, I would always be pushing those horror, those
genre things. We were writing about demons and angels here, lets show some
flash, you know? The crying Jesus with the blood, and we had, like, maggots

coming out. The producers cut was much more horrific than what they cut it back
to. Most of the creative control or compromises happened after we shot.
AVC: Were there any choices that the network imposed that you think
actually hurt the show? Because the things youre talking about right
now are matters of degree. Was there anything
DK: That really fucked us? [Pause.] No. Id like to come up with something,
because we all love to paint the networks as bad guys, but I cant think of a single
thing. I really cant. Given how demanding and challenging the material was, they
gave us a surprising amount of creative latitude on this show. Much more,
probably, than we deserved, especially given our ratings. So HBO truly was what we
think of HBO. At least at that time, and even today. They serve as the last bastion
for artistic freedom, to some degree. But other than the fact that we had to cut a few
characters out, and that hurt, it certainly wasnt crippling to the show. It maybe
even streamlined it. Maybe made it a little bit better. It certainly snapped things
into focus. So no, not really. The only thing they did that was terrible was cancel it.
[Laughs.]
And I remember writing to [HBO exec] Chris [Albrecht]. I wrote him a long letter. I
said, Please reconsider this, because I think the next season is going to be the
season. Because our numbers were trending upward. I think we beat Deadwoodin
our finale. It felt like it was poised to having been an old insurance man, I was
pretty good with trends. I really was sad to not have it go forward. Its still sad.
I wrote a letter to the fans when we got cancelled, and I remember writing, I know
a lot of you are going to write angry letters to HBO, but keep in mind that no one
else would have done this show. So its really hard to be, Oh, thosebastards. What
a bunch of fuckers. Theres no way anyone else would have done this. With
someone who had never written a TV show before? To make me an executive

producer and give me the kind of creative control I had, even though I had to kind
of earn it and keep it, the fact that they did that was so great. And the money! Fuck,
this was the most expensive show on the air at the time, I think by far. I think they
were spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.7 million per episode, which
today is nothing Well, not nothing. That would be a lot now. But then, it was
insane. It was almost irresponsible of them. [Laughs.] If I was a stockholder at
HBO, Id be calling to get their head examined. Its hard to really resent people that
took that much of a leap for finally waking up in the morning and realizing, Oh,
who did I drunk-dial last night? [Laughs.] I cant get mad at them for coming to
their senses.
Since theres five years between season two and season three, I secretly kind of
wonder, You know, we could pick the story up. All our actors would be older.
Even if Ben was, because Ben gets really hurt. We start out season three, Ben is
really living in that niche where Management was living, and hes kind of fucked
that up. Brother Justin is similarly fucked up. It was hard living, too. You looked
older. So Im thinking, We actually could pick it up.
AVC: How much did you tell the actors about their ultimate arc,
particularly Clea DuVall?
DK: Generally, actors are not as interested in where the character is going in the
long term. Theyre more interested in where the character has been, because thats
the main thing of their performance. I suppose you would behave very differently if
you knew what your future was, and that definitely would be inexplicable to the
audience. Whys he avoiding air travel? What possible reason could he have? So
actors, I think, are focused more on Where has my character been?
I dont remember talking to any of the actors about where theyre ultimately going
to end up, because that didnt interest them. They didnt need that. What they

really needed was, Okay, whats my relationship with my mother? When did this
happen? All those things. And all that stuff was in the [series] bible. Id given them
all very detailed character descriptions of their pasts, and they would fill in the
blanks and write their own character descriptions, and do what they do as part of
their process.

[pagebreak]
AVC: Season two moves at a much faster clip. You said some of that was
because you condensed 16 episodes of story into 12. What were some of
the choices you had to make along the way to make it move more
quickly?
DK: We had this incredible runner where they find Lodzs body, and no one knows
the situation with Ben. And Tracy Torm [a writer on the show], this was sort of his
dream. And it turns out [Lodzs] body has been They still meet up with that other
carnival, and theyre saying hes, like, the body of some archduke. Its one of those
things they used to do in carnivals, where they say its the body of John Wilkes
Booth, but its fucking Lodz, and its a glass coffin. [Laughs.] And theyre like Oh
my God, hes dead! And Lila goes, Oh, somebody killed him! So they get into this
whole thing, and Ben becomes, obviously, a suspect. I dont remember a lot of the
details, but the ending to it was just so perfect. They have the carnival for a funeral.
They have one of their little party funerals, and Samson, as I recall, is struggling to
figure out what nice thing he could say about Lodz, and he cant think of a thing.
Hes at this glass coffin, and they throw the dirt on him to bury him, and Ben and
Samson are standing there having this conversation, and right at the end of the
conversation, you hear this crack, and the dirt goes Thwoomp! [Laughs.]

I remember that as being a sort of runner. We were going to play that whole thing
of Lila trying to prove they had murdered Lodz, and bring them to justice at the
wagon. So we had to abandon that whole thing.
AVC: What were your plans for Lodz?
DK: Honestly, it wouldnt have worked. The plan I had for Lodz is that he would
continue all along to be serving the wrong master. I always had an idea that at the
very end, he has this sort of Alec Guinness at the end of Bridge On The River
Kwaimoment where he realizes for the first time, Oh God, what have I done? and
is instrumental in saving Ben. But that would be six seasons down the line, and we
wanted to keep him alive as an instrument of evil inside the carnival, and maybe
moving over to Brother Justins side and feeding Brother Justin intelligence and so
forth. Back to almost a spy. But it wasnt to be. We just used his ghost.
AVC: When did you first start to get the sense that season two might be
the end of the road?
DK: Not until well after we completed it. Let me put it this way: We felt doomed
from episode three on, because the numbers were not coming up. The numbers
were going down. We had this amazing, set [ratings] records, opening episode.
Then it went [makes declining noise], so we felt doomed every day. Whereas other
shows, two or three episodes in, HBO would have these huge announcements:
Were only three episodes in, and weve already ordered another season. We
didnt get that. So we finished the first season, and we were waiting and waiting
and waiting. It wasnt until literally almost the last possible minute that they could
contractually do it, we got that order for season two.
Then after we finished season two, I had hopes, but it really wasnt until they called.
They called and said, Look, we want to do a two-hour movie to wrap up all the

stuff that hasnt been wrapped up, and I said, I cant compress 48 hours of story
into a two-hour wrap-up. And thats not why people watch the finale anyway. I
mean, no one gives a shit about how the story ends. They give a shit about what the
characters do, the interactions. I just felt like, Why dont we just write a synopsis
and publish it? It would be as gratifying.
[The movie] was on the table for a little while, and I took a big old pass on it. It
wasnt because I was holding out or anything. It made no sense to me. It still
doesnt. I dont even know how I would do it. That came and went real quick. Then
they were moving on to other things, but in the meantime, shit, they were getting
death threats. The fans went apeshit. Thousands of letters. They crashed their
servers multiple times. When they made the announcement, people went
completely out of their minds. Our fans were just ardent. It was shitty. Youre
sitting there, and youre in the middle of a book, and somebody comes and takes
the book away. That made them crazy. But what are you going to do?
AVC: In season two, you have more references to things like Rennes-leChteau and the royal bloodline of Christ. Did you have plans to
incorporate Jesus into your overall mythology?
DK: Jesus was an Avatar, so no. I mean, yes, hes part of the bloodline, but hes
not The way I figure, Avatars are like anybody. You can have a really good agent;
you can have a really shitty agent. There are really good Avatars, and there are kind
of shitty Avatars. Scudder was a really shitty, half-ass Avatar. Jesus had it going on.
Caligula was a great Avatar of darkness. He had his shit together. Other than that,
no.
Where I was going with that was in the third season, we were going to end up in
World War II, with a search for information to bring down Brother Justin on the
carnival side, so the carnival would actually return to its roots. Then [Ben and

Samson] have to pull everyone together. Sort of a simple, Avengers assemble! In

the third season, we were sort of reassembling, and then the following season, the
carnival would go on tour. That tour would take them through places where theyre
gathering things they need in order to go to battle. Brother Justin is supporting the
Bund. He is up against [the U.S. war effort]. Hes kind of like the voice of Father
Coughlin, literally. Then I think the final episode really was about them trying to
keep the bomb from going off. Just trying to stop this thing from happening. And
you cant.
AVC: In other interviews, youve said free will does exist in this
universe, but the characters seem to get jerked down the path theyre
supposed to go down anyway.
DK: Personally, I think we have the illusion of free will. Its like, say I pick this
book up, and I read to here. I dont know anything past here. Well, that doesnt
mean all this doesnt exist. The way the universe makes sense to me is that I cant
imagine the universe turning on a dime, like theres two entire, separate futures
because I decided to have donuts this morning instead of an Egg McMuffin. That
universe makes no sense to me. How can you have precognition in there? How can
you have an instinct of whats going to happen next, if the entire thing changes
because a butterfly got squashed on a windshield or some bullshit like that? I think
the whole thing is just written out pretty much like a book. But the thing is, just like
a book, you have the illusion of moving through time, even though time exists.
Even if its already been written, we have the illusion of free will. And youre
accountable for it. I mean, just because technically its all written, you choose to do
things. You dont know you dont have a choice. If you choose to do bad things,
maybe youre going to be held accountable for them if theres an afterlife. Youre
still responsible for being bad. To sit there and go [deadpan] Yes, well, its my
destiny to be a prick, [Laughs.] that doesnt cut any ice.

So in a sense, I think the whole thing is about destiny, but the characters in the
context of that are still making choices based on who they are, what the
circumstances are, whos to benefit, whos to be hurt. You just do the best you can
with what youve got at a given time. Its basically a tapestry, and were all standing
with our noses against it, and what we see are a bunch of threads. We cant make
out this big hunting scene that if we step 30 yards back, wed be able to see. I think
each one of us gets so close to whats going on that we cant see it. I think
everything is pre-written. You can try to escape your destiny, but eventually, youre
going to end up doing what youre destined to do. And that carries through. You see
it constantly throughout Carnivle. But thats just this writers worldview.
AVC: What were your plans for what would have come in the four
unmade seasons?
DK: Like I said, Im not going to claim I knew the minute detail. Season three is
five years later. We find Jonesyhe survived his gunshot wound and is pitching for
a professional baseball team. His wife [Libby] is a typical baseball wife back in 39.
The carnival is completely split up; everybodys gone their separate ways. The only
vestige of the carnival as it was is Ben and Samson, and theyre working at another
carnival, still on Managements trail.
Then on the Brother Justin side, we find hes become this incredibly politically
influential radio preacher. And theres Iris and Sofie, and theyre both in this fight.
Hes a shell, almost, and these two women are in a power struggle over whos
controlling Brother Justin. Sofie is Brother Justins wife. Of course, shes his
daughter, but he doesnt know that. She knows that. She could bring him down
pretty easily, but shes afraid of herself now, too.
Then we introduce, in the very first episode, you see this 4-year-old kid come
running up and hugging Brother Justin, saying Daddy. Is this Brother Justins

child, or is this Bens child, because they both had relations with Sofie? That would
kind of tee us off to the second one. That would take us through the war. And then
the first half of that would be, Avengers assemble, winds of war calling them
together, gotta get this group back together again. Bens like, This isnt just about
me. This is about us. And pulling everybody out of their lives and answering this
call, and moving into going to Europe to try to acquire these documents or I knew
they were going to be talismans. What theyre going to need when theyre engaged
in this war. Then thered be a confrontation of some sort at the end of season four.
Then taking us to the end, its all about the [atomic] bomb. Its all about the
Manhattan Project and worrying about it, finding out what it is. The Germans have
a competing project, and trying to stop it. Trying to stop the bomb from happening,
because in Bens mind, detonation of the atom bomb is the end of the world. What
he doesnt realize is that its just the end of his world. To him, its an end to Avatars;
its an end to everything. But hes misinterpreted it. Hes interpreted it as the end of
the world. He thinks hes saving the world, but what he learns before the end is
that, I have to let this happen, because if I dont let this happen, mankind will
remain in a state of adolescence. He learns thats really why Sofie is called the
Omega. She is the only female, the last Avatar. What its all leading up to is two
Avatars, she and Ben having this child. They actually have to sacrifice this child in
the blast. That was my crazy notion.
Now I have to kill you because I told you. [Laughs.]
AVC: Have you ever considered trying to do it as a novel or a comic
book?
DK: Constantly. Yeah. Marvel, we had it all set up. At one point, they wanted to go
forward and do a series of graphic novels, and they just couldnt turn the corner
with HBO. Since then, yeah, Ive considered it. But one of the things that makes me

a little crazy about Hollywood is, theyre idiots when it comes to their contractual
stuff. If I write a novel, its like Random House publishes the novel, copyrights it,
but when you do business in Hollywood, they say, Everything in this thing, in all
forms, in all potential forms invented and uninvented The language is
draconian! throughout the universe. We own everything in your head. We own
everything. And its like, If you own everything, at least exploit those rights,
please. Could you please exploit the rights? And if youre not going to exploit the
rights, can I at least have them back, so I can exploit them? Its just a silly way of
doing business. They do it because they can, and thats all.
Lets say I take a new-project idea to Sony, and they give me that language. I go,
You know, this whole copyright-influential-property thing, Im not so hot on that.
Ill take less money if I can retain the copyright or the ancillary rights, theyd say,
Take a fucking hike. If I go, Well then, Ill take a hike. Im going to go to Warner
Bros. And Warner Bros. has the exact same contractual language. Its basically an
illegal trust. Its like the mob. Artists are first to give up intellectual rights to do
business with Hollywood. But theyre not rights you give up in any other medium.
Its BS.
Carnivle is one thing. I hate telling people I cant I did a Kickstarter campaign
for BlackBxx, and I had a person who donated $1,500, a really generous donation,
and I had something in there, the Kickstarter-type stuff, Ill take you out for
dinner. And I did, I took him out for dinner. It was his wifes birthday, and he said,
Would you mind sending my wife an email? Shed get a big kick out of it. And I
sat down, and I thought, Im going to get this guy so laid. He was going to give it
for her birthday or Christmas or something, and he wanted me to write a note. I sat
down, and I just wrote a scene with Jonesy and Samson at Christmastime, and it
was like putting on the most comfortable pair of shoes Ive ever had in my life. It
was like, [exhales] I cant believe how good it feels to be walking around in these

shoes. The dialogue just spilled out, and they were alive and three-dimensional.
The characters are still alive, and they have so much to say, and it was joyful
writing it, and then sending this to another person who got immense pleasure from
it. And Im going, [disbelieving pause] What the fuck? Okay. It didnt make sense
to spend $3.5 million an episode. So lets do a graphic novel. Lets tell the story!
But theyre on to other toys now. Its like doing business with that kid down the
street whose parents give him really bitchin toys, and hed just leave them broken
in the backyard. It makes me crazy, Hollywood.
AVC: What do you think it would take to make them interested?
DK: I think somebody who was a super Carnivle fan who went to work for HBO
going, Im so excited to work for the network that did Carnivle, and just being a
vice president or president and championing the idea of it. Itd probably jump back
in. Theres also the possibility, too, that I may be able to go and approach them with
another project they really want to do, and I might be able to say, Look, as a
condition to the deal, Id like you to sell me the novelization rights. Theres always
horse-trading that can happen in the future. You just never know. Maybe in a few
years, somebody will approach them and say, Hey, lets move forward. Its awful
not having it in your own hands. To be dependent on fate. Whim. Whatever.
AVC: Is there a certain thing you had really wanted to show in those last
four seasons that youre sad you never got to do?
DK: Its the full scope of the idea, the big idea. The big idea that we were children
until we detonated these two bombs out in the desert. We always say, Oh, isnt it a
horrible thing? Oh, its the nuclear age. Now we wrestle with destroying ourselves
as a species, and its looked upon as a completely negative thing. But in a way, I
look at it as when we were able to put away childish things. Thats when we got our
first apartment. Thats, people started to go, Hey, wait a second. I think right up

until that moment, the idea that we could destroy ourselves was absurd. Now we
take it for granted. We start to look at it, Well shit, we got the holes in the ozone
layer. We become aware that were capable of existential destruction, and I think
thats part of growing up as a species.
I mean, homo sapiens rock. When you see a bunch of people trying to push a whale
off a beach, I go, Okay, what other fucking species does that? That just makes me
feel like we are different. We arent a part of the animal kingdom. Weve got
something going on. Yeah, were capable of horrible things. Were capable of
holocausts. But were also capable of such amazing things. To me, the exploding of
the nuclear bombs was in a way a declaration of independence from nature. In a
way, to almost celebrate it. But its a cautious celebration. It would be nice to have
gotten that idea all the way out there. It didnt make it.