You leave the supernatural in Night Country ambiguous as to whether it’s actually the paranormal or hallucinations. I’m interested to know how you interpreted it.
I’ll never tell you that, ever. Obviously I have an opinion. But it’s very, very intentional that you can read every single event in the series with different paths.
There’s a Danvers [Jodie Foster] way of watching, where every single event can be perfectly explained with reality, and with science. On the other path is the Evangeline Navarro [Kali Reis] way of watching the series: [the idea that] at a higher level, enough bad shit has happened that the cosmos, the universe, the things that lay beyond the curtain, have said enough. They’ve woken something that’s coming through, and speaking to us, and taking justice into their hands.
In every single aspect there’s a rational explanation. And there’s a magical one, too.
Why did you pick that Ferris Bueller scene, and The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout,” as a recurring motif? I read one interpretation that it was the song playing when Danvers’ son Holden died.
Maybe it was playing when he died, I didn’t think about that. I’ve read that theory on the internet, and I find it very plausible. I love it when people complete your work in a way that makes sense, and I find it funny when they complete your work in a way that doesn’t make sense. [Laughs.]
But Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is just magnificent, and the happiest, sunniest movie in the world. And that’s the absolute opposite of everything that happens in the series. Everything gets so fucked up, and so wrong, so mysterious, so extreme, and so rotten.
At what point did you decide that Travis would be Rust Cohle’s dad?
When I realized that it was going to take place in Alaska. I knew that I was going to the Arctic, that was my vague idea. And when I got to the question of True Detective, I was like, well, Alaska!
But I’d forgotten completely about [Rust’s time in Alaska prior to season one] — I had seen the series ages ago, I thought it was pretty good. I had issues with the ending because I’m an insufferable asshole. But then I sat down and watched it again, and I was like, oh: I was a little asshole. [Season one] was so good throughout. I felt the ending was well-landed; it was so well-done from beginning to end.
So it seemed silly to me that I’d set this show in Alaska, which I’m saying is the same universe [as True Detective season one], and not have Travis Cohle. The effort was not to cram every reference to the first season I could, it was just an effort to be consistent with the universe.
There are a couple of other unanswered questions. Who wrote “we are all dead” on the whiteboard?
That’s Clark. He comes up [from the ice cave], everybody’s gone, and he knows that she [the ghost of Annie K.] is going to come. So he writes that and goes back into hiding.
