WILDEST DREAMS
INSIDE THE MIND BEHIND PSYCHO-SCI-FI MANIAC…
Cary Fukunaga doesn’t really know what he’s spent the last few months making. “I’m still struggling to actually explain what this show is about,” he laughs, talking to Small Screen from the editing suite as he puts the finishing touches to Maniac, an all-star sort-of comedy, sort-of drama that’s sort of about pretty much everything. “It changes a bit depending on who you’re talking to. But the entry point is… in a nutshell… on the surface, at least… the story is about two people taking part in a pharmaceutical drug trial, which opens up parts of their brains, with the intention of curing them of whatever neuroses or psychoses they have. And then, after that… chaos ensues.”
Thankfully, Fukunaga didn’t have to pitch it to anyone. Netflix approached the director with a juicy proposition: “Make a show with any actors you want to work with, where you can play with any genre you want,” he recalls. It’s the kind of project that’s rarely offered on a plate to a filmmaker; Fukunaga earned it thanks to a track record that includes True Detective, Sin Nombre and Beasts Of No Nation.
While Maniac is based in part on a Norwegian show of the same name, Fukunaga worked with short-story writer Patrick Somerville to come
up with a completely fresh concept – one that sees Emma Stone and Jonah Hill’s characters free-falling through their dreams and memories.
CASTING STONE
“We haven’t even used [the original show] as a jumping-off point,” insists Fukunaga. “The only thing we kept from it was the basic aspect. We kind of completely rewrote the characters. And the plot. And the situation!” A lot of trial, error and experimentation went into finding Maniac’s final form. “We wrote so many versions of dreamscapes that never made the cut,” he reveals. “We had to ditch an entire WW1 set.”
If there’s one thing Fukunaga has been certain about from the start, it’s his leading lady. He approached Stone before he even had a script. “I’d wanted to work with Emma for a while,” he says. “I met up with her and gave her a brief idea of what the show could be… but we had nothing, basically. I mentioned that it could be a two-hander, so she wouldn’t have to carry the burden of the whole show, and she suggested Jonah Hill. They hadn’t worked together since Superbad, but they’d been talking about it for a long time, so we just FaceTimed him right there and pitched him the idea. Again though, I literally had no idea what the show even was.”
Drawing in other talent, such as Sally Field, Sonoya Mizuno (Ex Machina), Julia Garner (Grandma), and Girls’ Jemima Kirke, Fukunaga
got the wheels in motion on perhaps the most ambitious show ever made that no one knows much about. The first two episodes of this 10-parter explore the normal-life backstories of Stone and Hill’s characters. But the rest of the series barrels off into a fantasy-based mix of intersecting stories that take place entirely inside our protagonists’ unconscious minds.
“We couldn’t go too outlandish, but there was definitely a lot of excitement that we could basically do whatever wanted,” says Fukunaga, still a bit frazzled by a tough shoot and a tight budget. “We had to limit the scale in a way that made the script achievable without breaking everyone’s souls. But the appetite was for showing as many different worlds as possible. It’s not like a grab-bag of ideas, but in your dreams you have multiple genres, and even in the same dream those genres can switch. That’s all unconscious, and all slightly unsettling, but it’s just how our minds work.”
COlOUR ZEAl
Becoming interested in psychology after his work on The Alienist and
It, Fukunaga researched colour therapy to help visualise the interior world of Maniac. “I wanted to use colour to create mood and emotional manipulation.
A lot of the stuff we did is tied to potential future ways that we could actually rewire our brains. There’s a lot of real science here that we’re playing with.”
The trippy sci-fi madness of Maniac is a big departure for Fukunaga, who’s better known for hard-hitting social drama. But it’s something he’s wanted to do for years. “When I did one of my first short films [Victoria Para Chino], which was about a group of immigrants trapped in a refrigerator trailer, I sort of became entrenched in the drama world. But I’ve always enjoyed comedy and I’ve always wanted to play around with stories that have a lighter heart.”
Already hoping for a second season (with a fresh cast, à la True Detective), if only to have somewhere to put all his unused ideas, Fukunaga has little idea what viewers will make of his passion project. “I just hope everyone likes it,” he laughs nervously. “Hopefully it’ll all make perfect sense when you watch it too.” Paul Bradshaw
Maniac SeaSon 1 launcheS on netflix on 21 SepteMber.
‘i’ve always wanted to play around with lighter stories’ Cary FukunaGa