Interview (Written): Bridget Carpenter (“11.22.63”)

An Los Angeles Times interview with TV writer-producer Bridget Carpenter (“Friday Night Lights,” “Parenthood”) about overseeing the Hulu mini-series “11.22.63” starring James Franco, based on the Stephen King novel.

Time travel is a very tricky thing — there are rules and consequences to account for on every level

We got very lucky with this one because, yes, there are rules to it, but they’re very simple. There are only two, really. Stephen King dealt with it so elegantly, we didn’t get bogged down with “this, if this” and “this, if this.”

We did not examine every fundamental paradox, which is inherent in the nature of an impossible thing. We just went, this is the rabbit hole, here’s how it works, he goes in it, the end. And that, to me, went, well, that’s how we’re going to shoot it. There’s not going to be special effects, there’s not going to be sparkly dust. You’re in and then you’re in. That, as a fundamental thing, drove us. We tried to use it, as King did, as a leaping-off point that triggers the story.

And then the story is the story. Time travel ceases to become the story. It is inherent in Jake and who Jake is as he moves through the world, but we don’t need to worry about it as the logistics of travel. It’s important in the beginning and it’s important in the end. And then in the middle, you’re good. There’s nothing to keep track of — you’re fine.

The book was previously optioned by Jonathan Demme, the director of “The Silence of the Lambs,” but he and King couldn’t agree on which parts of the narrative to keep or not. What was your approach?

I never knew about what Demme did. He might have been trying to make it a movie. I think the fact that I got to make it a series was a big deal, and I had a lot of freedom given to me by Bad Robot and Warner Bros and Hulu. They all said, take as much time as you need. However long it needs to be — it can be 12 hours, it can be whatever you want. And, so, at first, I was like, OK, it’s going to be this and it’s going to move really fast and it’s going to be four hours. And then I went away for a while and came back and was like, I think it’s going to be six hours. Then I went away again and I was like, I know it’s nine. That’s where we’ll stop — it’s nine. I actually was willing to do some heavy chopping to start with and then the more I dug into it, the more I thought I wanted to give everything its due but I always want to keep a pace.

Here is a trailer for “11.22.63”:

For the rest of the interview, go here.