This. Is my pride and joy. A gift for my dad, who played Zork with me when I was a kid, and with his dad when he was a kid. I designed this pattern myself and had a great time puzzling out how to hide the glow in the dark letters!
Pattern: “West of House” by me Fabric: 2x1 on 18ct Blue-Grey Aida Started: 11/27/2021 Finished: 12/25/2021
“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?“ ― Edgar Allan Poe
I wanted to know if any of the characters in your shows and movies had an early, different name than the one presented to us viewers? If so, could you give some examples and the reason for the changes?
I remember watching Hush and paying attention to Maddie's alternative endings for the Midnight Mass book and I think there were a few characters names that weren't mentioned in the show? Or scenes that didn't make it into the actual series.
I find very fun and fascinating to learn about early plans, concepts and stuff for any format of story and compare it to the final profuct. It's also very enriching for some reason in my opinion, but I actually understand if you don't feel comfortable or simply doesn't want to share early stages details.
This has only happened occasionally for me, generally my early outlines and my final products are pretty similar. But it has happened - development is a very iterative process, and things are always changing, especially early in the process (and sometimes, unfortunately, very late in the process as well).
In Hill House, Olivia Crain was initially named Mary. I ended up changing it for a very simple reason: I had an aunt named Mary, and I was pouring so much of my extended family’s true stories into the series that it felt too close to home.
It’s not just characters who change - sometimes plots can really pivot. I recently dug up the very first pitch document for Hill House, and the whole finale hinged on a twist where you discovered there had actually been six Crain siblings - Abigail was a Crain, she had died at Mary’s (Olivia’s) hands, and the kids had convinced themselves she had been an imaginary friend or a ghost.
We ditched this idea because it strained credibility that all five Crain siblings wouldn’t remember having a sister, and we made Abigail the Dudley’s daughter instead, saying she only ever interacted with little Luke.
In the original script for Hush, the movie ended with Maddie setting the house on fire in order to signal for help, and killing the intruder by trapping him inside while it burned. We had to conceive a new ending during prep because we couldn’t burn down the house we were renting to shoot the movie.
In Midnight Mass, the sheriff’s name was originally Sheriff Daniels. Doctor Gunning was a man, named Brian Gunning (named for my favorite teacher from High School.) Those characters evolved beautifully as the story developed.
In the fifth episode of Midnight Mass, in the original outlines, it was Erin Greene who was turned into a vampire. She goes to Riley’s house and asks him to row her out to the water, and it was Erin who burst into flames at sunrise, leaving a shocked Riley to row back to the island to do battle with Father Paul.
But in the writers’ room, we realized that wasn’t the best version of the story. We had them switch places, we killed Riley, and we realized the show was so much better with Erin Greene rowing back to the island to do battle with Beverly Keane.
In The Midnight Club, there was no Paragon cult storyline at all for most of the development of the show - in fact, almost all the way to production. We wrote the whole series without it, and when the writers room was disbanded and the episodes turned in, there wasn’t a single mention of it on the series.
We had conceived the show so that life was very ordinary in the hospice itself - Ilonka and the other patients at Brightcliffe lived in the stark reality of their situation. There were still “ghosts” at Brightcliffe (the Mirror Man and the Cataract Woman were always there), and there was the fateful wager about looking for a sign from the afterlife, but otherwise the Brightcliffe storyline felt fairly grounded. That way, the fantastic stories they told at night (what we called the “B Stories”) would be a real escape. The “B Stories” were much bigger, as well. They made up about 60/70% of a given episode.
Months after the writers room had been closed and disbanded, and all ten episodes of the season had already been locked and turned in, Netflix pivoted and demanded major creative changes. They wanted a supernatural mystery engine to the main Brightcliffe storyline, and they wanted less focus on the “B stories”, believing the viewers wouldn’t care about those. (I remember thinking at the time that they very much wanted the show to be more like Locke and Key).
The Paragon Cult storyline was frantically added, the character of Shasta was hastily invented, and the focus and balance was shifted away from the B stories and more toward the A stories. They wanted the episodes to play 60-70% at Brightcliffe, and to drastically truncate the B stories (there was even some talk of removing them entirely, an idea we fought hard.)
The Paragon Cult storyline, along with a number of “mysteries of Brightcliffe” threads that ultimately didn’t have anywhere to go, were added to the series without the benefit of having any other writers. I had to do it by myself, and I had to do while I was actually filming Midnight Mass.
I preferred the original series we had turned in. I always felt like the cult storyline made the Brightcliffe section of the show feel indistinguishable from the “B stories” the kids told at night, and it felt weird to keep seeding “mysteries” at the hospice that could never really pay off.
Changes are made for all sorts of reasons, and can come from anywhere, that’s just the nature of the business.
As an avid Christopher Pike fan, I really really would have loved to see you original plan, as well as the show continue. I never thoughtthose books would see life as a TV show and I was so happy you got to bring them to life. I’m sure Netflix or someone has the right, but man would I love to see the Last Vampire books done too.
