For this special Silo season 3 bonus episode, Elysia is joined by Silo series book author Hugh Howey and Silo TV showrunner Graham Yost to discuss the tricky process of TV-making and adaptation – from why worldbuilding details were changed, to how key scenes came together, to how Peter Gabriel won himself a spot in Stensen's Ark.
This episode avoids future book spoilers as usual, and saves season 4 discussion until the end of the conversation – listen to the intro for a more detailed spoiler warning.
Links:
- Silo season 4 trailer
- "The Mystery of the Pez" TV tie-in short story
- Hugh Howey's season 3 Reddit AMA
- Silo photography by Rekha Garton
Stay tuned to this feed for a season wrap episode (send us your feedback!) + bonus separate breakdown of the S4 trailer.
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00:25 --> 00:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Hello, and welcome to a special bonus episode of Woolshift Dust, a silo TV podcast.
00:31 --> 00:33 [SPEAKER_00]: My name is Alicia Brenner.
00:33 --> 00:51 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm here today without my usual co-host, Luke Midup, but Luke and I will still be back for two more episodes over the next week, our final Malbag episode for silo season three, and a separate episode, breaking down the first teaser for the final season, but you
00:55 --> 01:00 [SPEAKER_00]: you will hear to other voices, very special voices to silo fans.
01:00 --> 01:17 [SPEAKER_00]: You are about to hear a conversation I had with both silo book author Hugh Howie and silo TV showrunner Graham Yost who joined me together to talk about the tricky adaptation choices that went into bringing this story from page to screen.
01:17 --> 01:23 [SPEAKER_00]: with behind-the-scenes insights into how many choices were made and key scenes came together.
01:23 --> 01:30 [SPEAKER_00]: So thank you so much to both of them for their generosity with their time and their openness and sadness during this conversation.
01:31 --> 01:35 [SPEAKER_00]: We get insights into not only the adaptation process, but TV making in general.
01:36 --> 01:47 [SPEAKER_00]: Now as far as spoilers go, the usual policy applies that means that book discussion is only allowed when it relates directly to what has already aired.
01:48 --> 01:51 [SPEAKER_00]: But there are a couple special notes for this episode.
01:52 --> 01:58 [SPEAKER_00]: I did leave one suggestion of something big that happens in a silo short story in there.
01:58 --> 02:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Something that Graham Yoast mentions at one point,
02:01 --> 02:10 [SPEAKER_00]: It's, uh, if you have read the silo short stories, it's exactly the one you're thinking of, but it's again affirmed that it's not happening in this show.
02:10 --> 02:12 [SPEAKER_00]: So, um, it's not a show spoiler.
02:13 --> 02:20 [SPEAKER_00]: I did bleep another book spoiler that I mentioned, which is confirmed will be a topic in season four.
02:21 --> 02:25 [SPEAKER_00]: If you are not a book reader, you have not heard the words that I bleeped out.
02:26 --> 02:33 [SPEAKER_00]: If you are a book reader or especially if you're a book club member, then you'll likely recognize what was bleeped out.
02:34 --> 02:39 [SPEAKER_00]: But non-readers, you're safe from guessing it's something that you'll learn about next season and I will talk more about it then.
02:41 --> 02:53 [SPEAKER_00]: We of course do direct comparisons with book changes in this conversation, but of course we don't have as much time to go into the extra context of explaining the book versions of these stories here.
02:54 --> 03:02 [SPEAKER_00]: So these are all changes that I have explained in the episode breakdowns related to the TV versions of these plot points.
03:02 --> 03:06 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you're new to the podcast, you can dive into those back.
03:06 --> 03:09 [SPEAKER_00]: episodes if you want more context for some of the things that we talk about.
03:10 --> 03:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Oh and um we do openly at one point switch to talking about the season four teaser and some additional season four teases.
03:18 --> 03:26 [SPEAKER_00]: If you don't want to hear any of that then duck out when we start talking about Laura Innis right after we talk about Peter Gabriel and Colin Hanks.
03:27 --> 03:37 [SPEAKER_00]: The next episode will be Luke and I with our final mail bag of the season and that will be season four spoiler free and then the episode after that will be a deep dive into the season four trailer.
03:37 --> 03:46 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you don't want any season four teases, duck out after Peter Gabriel and see you for the mail bag then, but you're safe until them.
03:47 --> 03:48 [SPEAKER_00]: All right.
03:48 --> 03:48 [SPEAKER_00]: That's enough pre-emble.
03:49 --> 03:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Saddle up that unicorn and let's ride.
03:59 --> 04:22 [SPEAKER_00]: welcome back first i'll start with you how we author of the books of wool shift and dust after which this podcast is named we last spoke between seasons one and two so a lot's happened since then and i'm grateful to have you here to talk about it um happy to be back thank you for uh keep in the podcast going i'm grateful to grandma and apple for keeping the show going making it all possible
04:23 --> 04:30 [SPEAKER_00]: and speaking of Graham today's talk is extra exciting because you are not here alone you.
04:30 --> 04:34 [SPEAKER_00]: We are joined by the silo showrunner himself, Graham Yoast.
04:34 --> 04:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Woo!
04:35 --> 04:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the bullshit dust podcast, Graham.
04:37 --> 04:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much.
04:38 --> 04:42 [SPEAKER_02]: I usually don't get woes, so I'm very very happy to hear that.
04:43 --> 04:45 [SPEAKER_00]: welcome to TV Nerdland.
04:47 --> 04:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm really glad to have you both here to pick your brains because first of all just congratulations on the completion of what's in my opinion the best season yet.
04:57 --> 05:06 [SPEAKER_00]: I am myself a book reader so I knew where the memory hotline was going and so I was hooked into the episodes and intrigued from episode one.
05:07 --> 05:07 [SPEAKER_00]: But the
05:08 --> 05:15 [SPEAKER_00]: This is, yeah, especially a season that each episode was better than the last pretty much.
05:15 --> 05:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And the last two, I'm hearing lots of people calling them the episodes of the year.
05:20 --> 05:23 [SPEAKER_00]: So congratulations on pulling that off.
05:24 --> 05:25 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you very much.
05:26 --> 05:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, that brings us to today's topic is of course the recently completed season three, but I wanted to have a special focus on the talking about the art of adaptation.
05:37 --> 05:47 [SPEAKER_00]: I know there's a lot of complications and considerations that listeners at home might not have considered when they're looking at the journey from Hughes.
05:48 --> 05:57 [SPEAKER_00]: books that were written in 2011 to 2013 to this screen story that Graham is leading and when did that when was the first season was it 2022?
05:57 --> 06:14 [SPEAKER_02]: 2022 23 maybe it came out I know we started filming it in the fall of 21 and we went over until March of 2022 so I don't think it came out until the following year okay I think we've been
06:16 --> 06:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was over Christmas last season, and then it's all there.
06:19 --> 06:20 [SPEAKER_02]: It all gets lost at times.
06:21 --> 06:24 [SPEAKER_02]: It's unfortunate that we've often taken the memory drugs.
06:25 --> 06:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly, it's called aging, but it will pretend that it's in the water.
06:30 --> 06:31 [SPEAKER_01]: When was that first room, Grant?
06:31 --> 06:32 [SPEAKER_01]: That was before lockdown, right?
06:32 --> 06:36 [SPEAKER_02]: Like until it was, it was January 2020 here.
06:36 --> 06:39 [SPEAKER_02]: We're all hanging out and you remember someone said, hey, did you hear what's happening in China?
06:40 --> 06:45 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and it's like, oh, and then then we had that sense of, I don't know if we're going to be doing this much longer.
06:45 --> 06:48 [SPEAKER_02]: I think this is all going to go bad and we better go home.
06:49 --> 06:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
06:49 --> 06:50 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
06:50 --> 06:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Must have been one of the first like Zoom rooms, because like as soon as the room was ordered, it was like everything was being done remotely.
06:56 --> 06:58 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, into why it was all all remote.
06:59 --> 07:07 [SPEAKER_00]: And I spoke to a member of the right as room salt chiroces and he talked a bit about how it kind of continued to be a zoom room from there on, right?
07:07 --> 07:08 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
07:08 --> 07:08 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
07:09 --> 07:22 [SPEAKER_02]: What happened once I don't live in L.A. and so for me to go down to for the six years we justified and other things I would fly down Monday or Tuesday, fly home Thursday or Friday and spend a week basically in L.A.
07:23 --> 07:34 [SPEAKER_02]: And with the pandemic, finding we could do it on Zoom, my commute went from three hours and having to be away from home to 15 second commute down into the basement.
07:34 --> 07:38 [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, hopefully the end of the day, my wife unlocks the door so I'm allowed back home.
07:39 --> 07:44 [SPEAKER_01]: It was just a good immersion for writing on silo that known as a lot out of their houses.
07:45 --> 07:46 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, it was that.
07:46 --> 07:52 [SPEAKER_02]: But remember the fear, like, people going to want to watch this show because we're just emerging from underground.
07:52 --> 07:55 [SPEAKER_02]: And thankfully, they did.
07:56 --> 07:58 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think that maybe people love documentaries.
07:59 --> 08:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
08:00 --> 08:19 [SPEAKER_00]: And to say, linked into the zeitgeist, but then, and it's interesting that, you know, we talked about Hugh, you wrote these books starting, I mean, at least they started to be published around 2011, I think it was, and now, obviously, the season, people are commenting about the documentary nature of it in ways that we could not have anticipated.
08:19 --> 08:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Was that something, Graham, that,
08:20 --> 08:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Like, when things started happening in the news with Iran, did you go, oh shit, or did you, were you like, well, I guess that just makes us even more relevant.
08:30 --> 08:47 [SPEAKER_02]: We kind of went oh shit, but it was also, you know, the reality is I think, you know, you picked, you know, we're disgusted, but picked around because they are, they are a, they've been a perennial foreign in America side, since, you know, since the fall of the shot.
08:48 --> 08:53 [SPEAKER_02]: So it's sort of safe bet that they could be dangerous and also the idea that
08:54 --> 09:07 [SPEAKER_02]: creating some kind of nano weapon and AI is also just a lower cost thing for a state actor to do than would be a big nuclear program and all of that stuff seemed to fit no matter what the timeline was.
09:08 --> 09:12 [SPEAKER_02]: The weird thing was is that we called the operation
09:14 --> 09:41 [SPEAKER_02]: Righteous Hammer for Righteous Hammer was going to be the name of the in season three that Charlotte's on and then they're what so we we've filmed scene we've finished filming the the season and then that June was the first attack on on Iran bombing run and they called that midnight hammer as like oh great we can't even use hammer so we changed it to Righteous vengeance which also felt
09:42 --> 09:52 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think a little, you know, we were trying to mimic and mock these grandiose titles that get used for military operations.
09:52 --> 09:52 [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
09:53 --> 09:53 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
09:53 --> 09:54 [SPEAKER_02]: Let's go back to the literature.
09:54 --> 09:58 [SPEAKER_02]: Overlord for, for D-Day, which, but that was a great one.
09:59 --> 10:04 [SPEAKER_01]: And then there are also like F-35s shot down over Iran early on in the, in the conflict.
10:05 --> 10:09 [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, that's happening and we've already filmed those scenes and to, yeah,
10:10 --> 10:16 [SPEAKER_02]: And we just, yeah, it was just, well, you know, he wrote this a long time ago and we just stuck to that.
10:16 --> 10:18 [SPEAKER_02]: Was an easy answer for us.
10:19 --> 10:20 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, blame me.
10:20 --> 10:22 [SPEAKER_02]: That's like, that's your thing.
10:23 --> 10:26 [SPEAKER_02]: And I saw one, you know, one little comment thing.
10:26 --> 10:31 [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I, I like this until the anti Iranian, uh, you know, take on this thing.
10:31 --> 10:33 [SPEAKER_00]: It's like, just keep watching.
10:34 --> 10:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Just keep watching.
10:34 --> 10:35 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
10:35 --> 10:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
10:36 --> 10:36 [SPEAKER_01]: Don't worry, we're back, guys.
10:38 --> 10:42 [SPEAKER_00]: The way we normally do our podcasts is I'm the book reader.
10:42 --> 10:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Luke is has not read any of the books and I protect him religiously from books boilers.
10:47 --> 10:52 [SPEAKER_00]: For this conversation, if we have any books boilers, I'll sniff them out and release them as a separate bonus snippet.
10:53 --> 10:56 [SPEAKER_00]: So don't worry about that, but it's just been interesting.
10:57 --> 11:00 [SPEAKER_00]: to see him what he guesses and what he doesn't guess.
11:01 --> 11:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, a lot of it is coming through loud and clear, even to people who don't know the answers from the source materials.