Transcript
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Speaker: Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR. [Music fades out.]
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“Huddle Formation” from the album Thunder, Lightning, Strike by The Go! Team. A fast, upbeat, peppy song. Music plays as Jesse speaks, then fades out.
jesse thorn
From my house, in Los Angeles, it’s Bullseye. I’m Jesse Thorn. We are, as they say, living in the golden age of television. Pick pretty much any platform and you’ll be able to stream a drama that, just a couple decades ago, would have topped every critic’s year end list. Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Ozark. Whatever. I submit to you that even in a lineup as stacked as the one that is before us, on every streaming service we have, the show Fargo is really something. It gets its title from the Coen brothers movie of the same name, and at moments it is a continuation of the story of the film. At other times, there are references to other movies by the Coens—The Big Lebowski, Barton Fink, No Country for Old Men. Fargo is more than a tribute, though. It’s a beautiful, perfectly paced work of TV drama. Each season tells a different story—one that centers around a crime. Usually murder. The web around the murder gets more complex, the body count tends to rise, and some things happen that just can’t be explained. Maybe it’s a UFO sighting or a man reincarnated as a kitten, or a hitman with an almost supernatural ability to find his victim. It’s a very unique show. Fargo is created and written by Noah Hawley, our guest. And he’ll be interviewed by Julie Klausner. Julie is the creator of a TV show of her own: Hulu’s Difficult People. Fargo’s fourth season kicks off at the end of this month. This time around, it focuses on organized crime in 1950s Kansas City. We follow the story of the Cannon family: an all-Black crime syndicate headed by Loy Cannon, played by Chris Rock. While working to increase their power and influence, they come up against both the racism of the time and the powerful Fadda family—Kansas City’s ruling Italian mob. In this scene, we hear from Ethelrida—a young, teenage girl whose family gets involved with the Cannons. Ethelrida, played by newcomer, E’myri Crutchfield, breaks down the racial climate in Kansas City for ambitious Black folks.
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Music: Tense, low music. [A telephone rings.] Ethelrida Pearl Smutny (Fargo): See, the problem wasn’t that I was disreputable. Speaker: What’d you do this time? Ethelrida: Punched Dolores [inaudible] with my eye, of course. [Swapping to voiceover.] I was, in fact, a student of exceptional virtue and high achievement. [A door creaks open. Several thumps.] Ethelrida: The problem was the only thing worse than a disreputable Negro was an upstanding one. And so, I endured the slings and arrows of smallminded folk who, in their narrow thoughts, imagined they could teach me a lesson.
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julie klausner
Noah. Thank you so much for being here.
noah hawley
Oh, my pleasure.
julie
And congratulations on wrapping, I believe—was it Monday that you guys finished the season?
noah
Yeah. I think we had a small unit filming some driving footage, today. But we are wrapped. All the actors are back home.
julie
Should we get the COVID production questions out of the way? [Noah agrees.] Sooner than later? How… did the break in filming affect how you were planning to finish it? Did it change?
noah
Yeah, the—the script itself didn’t really change that much, except it forced me to really question, “Did I need every single thing?” Because I didn’t wanna put people in any more danger than I had to. You know. We had a 40-page memo laying out all the procedures. We had medical consultants. You know. We were covered in terms of protocol, although we were one of the early returners to filming. And the biggest thing that the five to six-month shutdown gave me was time. TV moves so quickly from idea to script to screen that—you know, you have to be a very good, instinctual storyteller. And this season, because it has 21 main characters and it’s a period epic, I certainly… really appreciated having the extra time to work the material after it had been filmed. We ended up creating an extra episode, in the middle, as we had two or three really long episodes that I felt like were gonna lose the audience a bit. And it was better to break the story up and focus it in a way that would really pull audiences through.
julie
So, in the clip that we opened the interview with, we heard Ethelrida—a young, teenage girl whose family gets involved with Loy Cannon. Ethelrida, played by E’myri Crutchfield, breaks down the racial climate in Kansas City for ambitious Black people. Can you tell me a little bit about this character? This is sort of the first character that is—I would say, like, a young protagonist whose eyes we kind of see the action unfold through.
noah
Yeah. You know, the interesting thing about Fargo—because it’s never the same story twice, even the setup and the dynamic of it are different, the time period—what is it that makes it Fargo? I guess is the question. And part of what makes Fargo Fargo—from the movie that Joel and Ethan made to what I’ve done is a kind of moral spectrum—a bar graph, if you will. On one side is a character who’s all good, which in the movie was played by Frances McDormand. And then on the other side, there’s a character who’s evil, played by Peter Stormare, in the film. And in the middle was Bill Macy, who was struggling with whether to make a good choice or a bad choice. And every time went with the bad choice. And so… as I think about these stories, I think about that. That bar graph. And for the first three years of the show, the character—like in the movie—who is all good has always been a cop. And that is not the experience of a lot of Americans, with law enforcement. And so, part of why I wanted to do a fourth season was to say, “What if that character, that Marge, is not Marge? Is not a cop? But is someone like this 16-year-old, biracial girl who stumbles upon a crime and is put in a position of being a de facto detective?” And that’s how we came to that set up.
julie
And, along those lines—I mean, one of the, at the very least, aesthetic elements of Fargo—the movie, the television show, the part of the country, the snowy weather that you’ve sort of challenged yourself to escape from is all of the Whiteness. The overwhelming Whiteness that one can associate with these stories. And in this particular season, you have so many strong, Black characters. How did you approach that challenge?
noah
Well, you know, this season is very much about the American experience. Issues of immigration and what it means to be an American. You know. The show has always featured different voices, from Bokeem Woodbine, in season two. We’ve looked at the Native American experience, in certain places. But yes, this season has a primary focus on what I guess I would call a kind of outsider experience. This collision in the Midwest, of what has been described as two great migrations—one of southern Europeans to American and the other of African Americans up from the South. And these two groups meet in Kansas City, in our story. Neither has access to the mainstream American experience. And so, they have to create an alternate economy—which, in our story, is crime. Though certainly, that is not the path most immigrants take. But the idea was to look at that collision and this idea of what it means to be an American. You know. I have my own American experience, which I have a grandmother who came over from Russia when she was five and—on my father’s side—I have more of an English migration, much earlier in American history. So, you know, I relied on the voices of other writers who I had hired and the actors that I worked with to help me explore experiences that weren’t mine.
julie
Let’s hear another clip from season four. This is a scene in which crime boss, Loy Cannon—played by Chris Rock—and his right-hand man, Doctor Senator—played by Glynn Turman—walk into a local bank seeking help with their very big, very lucrative idea.
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Banker: I don’t understand. If you got your own bank, what do you need us for? Loy Cannon: Simple. I’ve already got a customer base. What I need help with is convincing White businesses to take the card as a means of payment, so we can expand into your community and then go national. I was thinking a partnership. 60/40. Banker: No. [A dramatic, low music sets in.] Loy: No? I’m offering you a million-dollar idea. Doctor Senator: A billion-dollar idea. Banker: [Chuckles.] I’ll give you this, you boys have got a hell of an imagination. But the people I see day in, day out—hardworking people, family men? They’re just gonna spend money they don’t have. Loy: Mr. Winkle. Banker: And charging them high rates of interest? Preying on them when times get tough? Well, that’s just not what banking’s all about.
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julie
Could you just tell me a little bit about your intentions, going into this season and what sort of manifested in this scene?
noah
Yeah, I mean I think Fargo—for me, certainly in the last three years—has been a lot about the things people do for money. You know. There’s that line in the film, “And you are and it’s a beautiful day. And for what? A little bit of money.” And so, you know, if season two was about the death of the family business and the rise of corporate America and season three was about the sort of posed, corporate, weird, off-shore hedge fund—you know, richness. Then, you know, I was interested in going back this year and kind of looking at the original sins of American capital—which are the exploitation of free and cheap labor, through slavery and immigration and the idea that the last person off the boat—you know—does the worst job until they can work their way inside the American experience. You know. What I wanted to show with this scene with Loy is that… this is a guy who really is an entrepreneur and a genius on some level. And who, in another time period, might have been the CEO of a fortune 500 company. That path was not available to him, in 1950. But the ideas were still there. And so, to come in and to say, “I’ve invented this financial instrument called the credit card,” and then of course for the banker to say, “No, no, no. That’s not what banking is all about—to lend people money they—to let people spend money they don’t have.” You know, there’s two jokes there. And you know, for me, I thought it was a way to show the lack of options that a man like Loy Cannon has. This criminal world that he is thriving in is not his first choice. But if he’s going to do it, he’s going to be the best at it.
julie
And on the other side of things, you have people like Lester—Martin Freeman’s character from the first season—who seems to have been blessed with quite a few privileges and it’ll sort of never be enough for him.
noah
Yeah, there’s always a moment in my version of Fargo where the—where the worst person in the show says, “I’m the victim, here.” I think it’s literally said out loud in the first three seasons. And you know, I think that’s—on some level, that feels like part of villainy. Or at least modern villainy. Is there’s someone who’s taking advantage of other people, who claims the role of the victim, because their narcissism is so profound that it’s hard to—they can only see the world as working against them.
julie
I mean, is that a conscious effort on your part—just speaking of villainy, because there’s almost a biblical sense of good and evil in a lot of these seasons and in a lot of the Coen brothers’ movies, because some of them are—you know—kind of theological, where you have people like Javier Bardem’s character in No Country for Old Men. And then you see Billy Bob Thornton in season one or you see David Thewlis, in season three, and you think, “Oh, those people are sort of the incarnation of the devil.” And then you see sort of these kind of schmucks on the spectrum who could go either way. And I just wonder how conscious are you to include these gradations of morality in each season?
noah
I think that’s very deliberate. You know, one of the things you see in the Coen brothers’ films in the kind of recurrence of what I think of as a kind of elemental figure. You know. Whether it’s Anton Chigurh or the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse, from Raising Arizona. There’s always some character that may not be human. That may be some sort of vengeful spirit that’s blowing through the American wilderness. That was certainly the idea with Billy Bob’s character. And also, with David Thewlis’s character. That potentially… Lorne Malvo has always existed. And he’s—you know, you would have seen him in 1620 in Salem, and then another picture of him in 1850 in Philadelphia. You know. That he’s been blowing through the American landscape. You know, I think we play with this idea in this season—a sort of ghost story idea, in this season. The idea that our past haunts us. The things that have happened in this country, the things that have happened to the people of this country, it’s all still there in the land, in the buildings, in people’s genealogy. So, those elements are all there by design.
jesse
We’ll wrap up with Noah Hawley after a short break. Still to come: there’s a lot of violence on Fargo. Sometimes it can be pretty gruesome. Noah will tell us how and why he decides to use it. It’s Bullseye, from MaximumFun.org and NPR.
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Music: Twangy, quiet music. Chris Haxel: Activist Aaron Dorr tells his flock of pro-gun followers, on Facebook, that he’s tirelessly fighting their second amendment rights. But if that’s true, why do so many pro-gun republicans hate him so much? Speaker: Aaron Dorr is a scam artist, a liar, and he is doing Iowans no services and no favors. [Music ends.] Chris: Find out on the No Compromise podcast, from NPR.
jesse
Welcome back to Bullseye. I’m Jesse Thorn. If you just joined us, our guest is Noah Hawley. He’s the showrunner and creator of Fargo. The FX show is based on the Coen brothers film of the same name. Its brand new fourth season kicks of Sunday, September 27th. Noah is being interviewed by comedian, writer, and performer Julie Klausner.
julie
I wanted to play one more clip, which is one of my favorite moments of season three, which is this beautiful monologue that Carrie Coon’s character, Gloria, delivers in the season finale.
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Gloria: So, I’ve been trying to decide what to tell you about our grandpa. His demise. The root cause. Speaker: [Sheepishly.] He wasn’t really my grandpa. Gloria: Listen to me. He was one of God’s creatures, same as you and me. And what happened to him? That should never happen to anyone. Speaker: It was that storm, that you said. Gloria: It was, and it wasn’t. And I wanna say more. I do. But there’s violence to knowing the world isn’t what you thought. And you’re just a boy. Speaker: I’m 13 now. Gloria: You’re still a boy. You got your whole life to be grown. Only a few more years to be young. So, for now, just know that sometimes the world doesn’t make a lot of sense. But how we get through it is, we stick together. Okay? Speaker: Okay. Gloria: Good. Eat your popsicle.
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julie
And I remember watching that right after the 2016 election. [Noah agrees.] And trying to make sense of what I felt. The word “violence” was the only thing applied and I remember thinking, “This is such a beautiful adaptation of that speech that Marge has, to Grimsrud in the backseat of the car, in that movie. Which is, you know, a moral person trying to make sense of chaos and not necessarily coming up short, but just sort of acknowledging that her worldview is darkening and moving forward regardless. And I just wanted to know—I mean, you have these moments—to translate them, how much of your goals with the show at this point have kind of departed from the goal of representing these moments or themes from the original source material and have evolved into their own thing?
noah
Yeah, it’s interesting. ‘Cause the—you know, the more I live in a sort of Coen brothers world—which, on some level, is a Kafka world—you know, so much of what happens in those stories is kind of laid in with irony. But what I’ve found myself thinking in the last few years is that we’ve ended up, in America, with irony without humor. And that irony without humor is just violence. Right? If you tell a large portion of your population that they have to work hard to become American, but you don’t actually give them an avenue to become American in a way that you will allow, what have you created except a paradox? Now, some paradoxes are called jokes. Right? But in this case, the joke is on them. And so, what you end up with is an ironic setup with no humor to it at all. And that creates a kind of mental violence for people. And so, for me, part of the exploration in this season was to continue to explore that idea, that—you know, you’re asking people to follow certain steps to become something that they can never become and you are simultaneously judging them for not being that thing you won’t allow them to become. And the joke is on them.
julie
Speaking of paradoxes, I wanted to ask about how you deal with—there are certain ambiguities in Coen brothers movies as well as in previous seasons of Fargo that can be very frustrating as an audience member. I’m talking about the end of A Serious Man, even the box at the end of Barton Fink. Everyone has their own interpretations. I wonder—I’ve been thinking about this because season three ended with a very specific ambiguity that I know drove a lot of people crazy. David Thewlis’s character said, “This is what’s gonna happen.” Carrie Coon’s character said, “This is what’s gonna happen.” And my question to you is: do you think audiences are more tolerant of those ambiguities maybe since the Sopranos finale? I don’t know. But the second part of this question is, do you know what happens? [Noah laughs.] Or do you have to know what happens? And if you don’t know what happens, are you getting more comfortable with that? How has your attitude towards ambiguity changed?
noah
Well, you know, it’s interesting. ‘Cause I’ve always described Fargo as a tragedy with a happy ending. And certainly, in the first two years, that’s what it was. And it’s not happy for all the characters. It is a tragedy, after all. But for the characters who survive it the way that Marge survived, in the movie, there is a kind of transcendence and a kind of happy ending. And you know that—you know, her husband’s gonna get the three-cent stamp and she’s gonna have the baby and tomorrow’s a normal day. And that’s the reward. You know, I felt—as I was writing season three and in what was the aftermath of the election, which—you know, whichever side you’re on, it certainly caught everybody by surprise. And created a reality in America that was not the one we had been living in, previously. And I felt… so much ambiguity, myself, about what the future was going to bring, that it didn’t feel like I could force that happy ending onto it. I felt like, on some level, it would be a test for the audience as to whether they were optimistic or pessimistic about the future. And for those people who want to believe in the best—you know, the cops were gonna walk through that door and David Thewlis was going away for the rest of his life. And for the people who weren’t so sure, the other thing was gonna happen and the reality is that’s what was gonna happen anyway. Do you know what I mean? Like— [Julie agrees.] You know. And the Schrodinger’s cat idea, at the end—which was evocative of the Serious Man is like, “Well, it all depends on you.” And I like to engage audiences that way. You know. I’m a novelist, also. And I know, as a novelist, that the writer does 50% of the work. I write the words, but you tell the story in your head. The pictures that you see and, you know, filmed entertainment can be more passive, but I find it more interesting to try to create and provoke the audience’s imagination, so that they are an active watcher of the show.
julie
Do you think you know what happens or are you not sure? Does that change?
noah
Oh, no, I mean—I like to believe that the arc of history bends towards justice. You know, I want—I’m a Carrie Coon fan. I wanna believe that, you know, the—that the—
julie
That Gloria’s right.
noah
—the quote “good guy” wins in the end, you know. So, that’s my hope. You know, but on some level—
julie
But you’re not David chasing it. You’re not, like, “Teehee hee, I know that he’s dead.” But you don’t, or—
noah
No! I mean that—
julie
That’s different.
noah
I think the exercise of creating that ambiguity for the audience was an important one. I’m not taking it to my grave. It’s not—you know. I mean… you experienced the ending of that show. There’s nothing that I can do to change the experience of watching it. You know. I like to believe that the right person walked through that door, five minutes later.
julie
What is the show’s relationship to the Coen brothers, at this point? Are you still looking to their body of work for themes, element—are they tonally suggestive? Are they in the background, at this point? Or do you still watch them for inspiration?
noah
Uh, yeah. I do. I mean, the brothers themselves, you know, are godfathers of this show, in a hands-off kind of way. And, you know, I try not to bother them, I guess, is what I’m saying. I want them to keep making their movies. But, you know, I had—with this first hour—you’ll see, I had a lot of information to deliver to the audience very early. I had almost the history of true crime in the Midwest to deliver in the first 20 minutes. And I thought, “Well… where have I seen that done well?” And I thought immediately of Raising Arizona, in which the first 10 minutes of that movie is all information delivered to you in this almost perfectly complete, you know, montage vignette of Nick Cage telling the story. “I’m H.I. McDunnough,” and he tells you everything you need to know. It’s comedy in and of itself. It’s sort of brilliantly scripted, filmed, and edited. And I thought, “Well, that’s a good way in.” So, you know, for Ethelrida Pearl Smutny, you know, this is her history report and she’s telling both her own history and the history of crime in her city. And it became a way, which I use to more dramatic effect, but it became— [Julie agrees.] It became an inspiration for how to—for how to solve a problem.
julie
Right, at least structurally. [Noah agrees.] And then you have that gorgeous gender reverse for Raising Arizona moment, in the second episode. It’s exhilarating, as a Coen brothers nerd. And there was a lot of Hudsucker in that banking scene, I felt!
noah
Yeah, it’s kind of unavoidable, the Hudsucker, when you get a banker and a pneumatic tube. And, you know. It was fun and it was sort of the one moment in which I was asking Chris Rock—it was the one sort of overtly comic scene in the episode. Which, of course, for his character was hugely important and dramatic, but you know, the absurdity of it existed also.
julie
Has it been a goal of yours to make a series that people who are not familiar with the Coen brothers would still appreciate?
noah
Yeah, I mean it—you know, at a certain point, for me, their voice and my voice—you know. I stop worrying about if it feels like them. Certainly by the second season, when I was telling a much broader story, more of a period epic, and then into season three—I mean, you know, I have my own… stories I wanna explore and style, cinematic style, as a filmmaker, that I’m working with. You know. And… I think that the lessons that I continue to take for them are about tone of voice. You know. It’s about the balance of kind of… the grittiness and spirituality, the sort of—you know, mysticism on a certain level, that you would get from A Serious Man or—you know, balanced with…
julie
Barton Fink, or…
noah
—the kind of cold-bloodedness that you would find in No Country. You know, the range of tone and the balance of characters. You know, really the show is about trying to create a state of mind. You know, I likened it very early on to being asked to paint a picture of New York City without any of the buildings. The actual buildings. But it still has to feel like New York City and it’s like, “What is that, even? How do you—how do you do that? How do you adapt a movie without any of the characters or the story from the movie? What are you left with except the feeling that you get from watching that movie?” And I thought, “Oh, that’s interesting. How can I create that feeling with none of the elements that are there?” That became a really exciting challenge.
julie
There are some—in Coen brothers movies, as well as in the series—moments of violence that sneak up on you. And they’re sooo outrageous. So, sometimes they’re funny or sometimes they’re just—they’re almost like—they’re so harrowing that you [laughs]—you can’t even sort of feel the emotion around, like, the loss of it as much as you’re just sort of trying to recover. I mean, how do you balance that with the tonality of things like more nuanced character monologues and plot stuff? How do—how do you—how do you balance that, I guess?
noah
The thing is that Fargo is a crime story. There’s no way around it. And so, every year that has to be one of my main focuses, is the crime to it. And you know what I appreciate about the Coens’ violence—especially in the movie Fargo—is just how shocking it is. You know? [Julie agrees several times.] It’s always unexpected and very graphic and almost more graphic than it needs to be. And it creates—it does create a visceral reaction in you. You know. My… I have a mandate that violence should never be entertainment. I think too much of our… media that we consume is violence as entertainment. Without pointing any fingers, I—it's just not what I’m interested in. I’m more interested in creating a large cast of characters who you feel empathy for and who you know are on a collision course. And when that violence comes, you think you wanted it. But now it—that it’s here, you don’t like it. There are some very specific moments, you know, in season one—Glenn Howerton’s character was this guy named Don Chumph who was just kind of a buffoon. You know, who Billy—
julie
Oof! That scene on the exercise bike!
noah
[Laughing.] Yeah! Who Billy Bob was just sort of using and abusing and—
julie
He was like a cat with a mouse.
noah
You know, he staged this death scene for this guy where he taped him up. You know. He fired some shots at the window, the cops showed up, he set a tripwire. He set this whole elaborate, almost operatic execution for this guy, and I think—in the beginning of that sequence—you think, “Oh, Billy Bob’s this trickster and this mischievous character. This is really fun.” But there comes a moment in that sequence when you realize the inevitability of what’s about to happen and the fact that poor Don Chumph is just—he’s just an idiot. He’s not [chuckling]—you know, he doesn’t deserve this. Where I think it starts to sicken you a bit, as an audience member, and I think that’s important to have that transition. To go, like, “I thought I wanted this, but I really don’t want this.” And you know, I think that it was one of the first movies I ever saw which presented me with what appeared to be a hero—or at least, a protagonist—who I had to realize over time was a—was actually a despicable person. You know. And I’ve had these conversations. You know, I remember in the second season, having a conversation with Jesse Plemons, who is a very method actor and—you know, he—his character kills someone in the first hour and I noticed, the next couple of episodes while we were filming, his energy was really low. And I said, “What’s going on?” And he said, “Well, I just feel like I would see this guy’s face every day, that I killed.” And I was like, “Oh no. That’s acceptance. Right? Depression is acceptance. You’re in denial. Denial is up energy. Denial is, ‘Nope! Nope! That didn’t happen. We’re not thinking about that.’” You know, there’s a—there’s a hysteria to denial that is very much a part of Fargo, on some level. [Music fades in.]
julie
Well, congratulations on the fourth season and thank you so much for chatting with me, Noah. I’m such a big fan of the show.
noah
Excellent. Thank you so much.
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jesse
Noah Hawley, folks! Season four of Fargo premieres on FX this Sunday, September 27th. Julie Klausner, our interviewer, has a podcast of her own. It’s a very funny, comedy and interview show called Double Threat—which she co-hosts with our friend Tom Scharpling. Julie is also the creator and star of one of our other favorite TV shows, Difficult People—a comedy starring her and Billy Eichner. The two play struggling actor/comedians who aspire to make a name for themselves, but probably don’t deserve to make a name for themselves. You can watch it on Hulu. It’s really, really funny. Julie is supremely brilliant and talented. [Music fades out.]
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jesse
That’s the end of another episode of Bullseye. Bullseye, produced from the homes of me and the staff of Maximum Fun, in and around greater Los Angeles, California—where I am giving away a bed. I bought a new bed at the thrift store the other day and I’m trying to give away my old bed. It’s a nice bed. I bought it at a popular Swedish furniture store. And hopefully somebody’ll come get it from me, ‘cause it’s taking up a lot of room in my backyard. Our show is produced by speaking into microphones. Our producer is Kevin Ferguson. Jesus Ambrosio and Jordan Kauwling are our associate producers. We get help from Casey O’Brien. Our interstitial music is by Dan Wally, also known as DJW. Our theme song is by The Go! Team. Thanks to them and their label, Memphis Industries, for letting us use it. Special thanks, this week, to Bullseye special correspondents Jordan Morris and Julie Klausner. You can keep up with the show on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Just search for Bullseye with Jesse Thorn. And I think that’s about it. Just remember: all great radio hosts have a signature sign-off.
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Speaker: Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR. [Music fades out.]
About the show
Bullseye is a celebration of the best of arts and culture in public radio form. Host Jesse Thorn sifts the wheat from the chaff to bring you in-depth interviews with the most revered and revolutionary minds in our culture.
Bullseye has been featured in Time, The New York Times, GQ and McSweeney’s, which called it “the kind of show people listen to in a more perfect world.” Since April 2013, the show has been distributed by NPR.
If you would like to pitch a guest for Bullseye, please CLICK HERE. You can also follow Bullseye on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. For more about Bullseye and to see a list of stations that carry it, please click here.
Get in touch with the show
@bullseye.bsky.social
@bullseyewithjessethornPeople
How to listen
Stream or download episodes directly from our website, or listen via your favorite podcatcher!
