How out of touch can one exec be? "Midnight Mass" creator Mike Flanagan spills the deets on the dumbest stuff he dealt with on set.
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00:00 How out of touch can one exec be?
00:03 Midnight Mass creator Mike Flanagan spills the deets on the dumbest stuff he dealt with on set.
00:08 Warning, this video contains fast-flashing images. Viewer discretion is advised, especially for those with photosensitive epilepsy.
00:16 One of the main characters of Mike Flanagan's 2021 Netflix miniseries Midnight Mass was Riley Flynn, played by Zach Gilford,
00:24 a once-wealthy venture capitalist who lost everything when he accidentally killed someone in a drunk driving accident.
00:30 The series was about Riley's return to his remote ultra-religious hometown to pick up the pieces and wrestle with his newfound atheism.
00:38 Flanagan revealed that one of the Netflix executives, tactfully left unnamed, couldn't understand how Riley didn't have a job lined up when he returned to his small town.
00:46 Recall that Riley was not only destitute, but had just been released from prison. Not only was he depressed, but ex-cons don't often have a lot of upward mobility upon their release.
00:56 The executive couldn't abide by that notion, and told Flanagan exactly how the character should be improved.
01:01 In a now-deleted thread on Blue Sky, Flanagan shared, in part,
01:06 "Wish I'd kept a record of some of the gems from my time at Netflix. Bad notes are bad notes, but that place was special.
01:13 I pointed out that Riley trying to find purpose and having absolutely nothing was important for how we meet the character, but they wouldn't be dissuaded.
01:21 We at least need him filling out job applications."
01:23 It seems that the higher-ups at Midnight Mass wanted a montage at the start of the miniseries, wherein Riley had a bunch of doors slammed in his face.
01:31 The exec couldn't accept that Riley wasn't in a headspace to look for a job and that his employment status wasn't relevant to the story at large.
01:39 Something in the heart of the Netflix exec insisted, however, that Riley not just sit around.
01:44 "Okay, so it had to be a montage. The thing about montages is that they require a lot of work.
01:50 They need to be filmed in multiple locations, and each location requires a new set of actors.
01:55 A three-second clip in a montage doesn't take three seconds to film. When Netflix realized that, they changed their tune a little."
02:02 Flanagan continued, "So we added a few scenes to the pilot script. Each one meant we had to find a new location, just for one shot of Riley asking for, and filling out, a job application.
02:13 When they realized the impact it had on the budget to create this sequence, they let it go.
02:18 Can you add some dialogue about him acknowledging that he should be filling out job applications?
02:23 We added several lines. I cut them in post."
02:26 "We're gonna do great things."
02:28 Now that the job hunt was taken care of, though, Netflix insisted that Midnight Mass be scarier.
02:34 It was a horror show, and to Netflix, that meant more monsters and jump scares.
02:39 It seems religious and existential dread aren't great selling points.
02:43 Notably, Netflix wanted to have footage of a monster killing the cats at the beginning.
02:47 It shouldn't be a mystery what happened to the cats, they felt.
02:50 It should be an evil, supernatural angel, on camera, killing them.
02:54 Flanagan spoke of the pressure to add scares to the series, saying,
02:58 "One scene they insisted on doing as additional photography was to help explain what happened to the cats.
03:04 They pitched a scene where we see the angels stalking and killing a stray cat. I hated it. They dug in, though.
03:11 If we don't see this, no one will understand what happened to the cats, and this will add a huge scare to the pilot."
03:17 This time, Flanagan surrendered.
03:19 He filmed a stalk and kill scene with a cat that he hated and felt was out of place.
03:24 He likened the scene to a low-rent slasher he most certainly didn't want Midnight Mass to resemble.
03:30 "Ultimately, we lost the battle. So there is this scene in the first episode where we follow a cat who just walks around,
03:36 and then there's a POV shot through the bushes, and then it gets grabbed out of frame.
03:41 It's like a feline Friday the 13th scene. It remains the stupidest scene I've ever filmed."
03:46 [music]