Wow, I love what this guy is saying, but I wish his audio wasn't so crappy.

Clearly he knew too much and HBO were trying to knock out his signal.

Ohh looking forward to listening to this.. Probably at home with headphones if the audio is bad.
I have not heard of the YouTube but I am way out of the loop on GoT stuff.
Looking over his videos I see -

Haven't finished but it's a brutal listen especially because this guy seems passionate and knowledgeable and I want to hear what he's saying. Maybe they can invite him on again once the show is finished. I did crack up when he brought up Ollie's best line. I drew a blank too.

I really wanted to enjoy this podcast, audio issues aside, but I am 1 hour in and Dragon Demands has not stopped talking. Not much lively banter in this one. I love the cast and the books, the show not so much. . . I get where DD is coming about Season 5 was the end for me. But it did not chap my ass as much as DD. Seemed like he pulled this talk out of the can and would not let the hosts get a word in . . . Note, I have not turned it off. Die-hard fan here!

Was an interesting podcast, although I think he went way too far with some of his statements. I don't think it's reasonable to repeatedly imply that Benioff is a "con man" or sociopath. The show has not been perfect and has certainly gone downhill once they got past the books. But it's still an ultra successful show and I think it's safe to say that HBO is very happy with its performance. Also I didn't really understand where the accusations of racism were coming from (I have not watched any of the referenced youtube videos though).

The points about the camera work and the actors were very interesting - at least what I was able to make out over the audio.

I was very interested in this podcast. This guy certainly is passionate about the show d and d created. I was most interested in the sections where he mentioned the on the fly story decisions. Like shooting Dorne at the last minute in 7 days and having to change the conclusion to the battle of the bastards. Is that information all correct? I’ll never watch the dvd commentary to investigate it myself. And the part where he was referring to them as alcoholics and potentially opiate addicts was out there. I’ve never watched a con panel they were on so I have no insight into this criticism of their work on the show or their public appearances in promoting it.

I agree with him in that I feel most of their changes were bad ideas that damaged the narrative and plot, but I would concede that as a show runner, of any show, you would need to rely on and play to your actors strengths.

I guess I always felt that d and d were making small to medium changes each season to put their own spin on martins material. I never understood these changes as some of them were very minor and really lessened some very visual cinematic elements of the story like taking out renlys peach or changing the edd fetch me a block line

At the end when he was making his call to arms I have to admit I wondered if Amin might call The Dragon Demands "fiddle boy."

I mean, I don't know that I disagree with anything he has to say though I also take it with a grain of salt and I think he seems to have a real dogmatic idea of what constitutes good drama or storytelling or TV and I just don't. Lots of ways to skin that cat. And he thinks the question "Why do I, almost exclusively a book fan even going back to the early seasons, give a mummer's fart what HBO does with their high budget licensed fanfic?" has an obvious answer and it's "yes!" while I just don't. I'm pretty content to let the show do its thing and I'll do mine and we can all be cool.

#TeamAshley

Yeah, I was very mixed about this episode. At the beginning, Dragon Demands seemed to argue that there was only one valid way of reviewing a piece of media, and it was through measuring the media against the stated claims of the creator, and that any interpretive/formalist/cultural critique coming out of "English major" reviewers was not only wrong, but symptomatic of the system's overall corruption; I vehemently disagree with the whole "objective review" position championed by a lot of geeks, and it was one of the things that I found so obtuse and cringeworthy about the Gamergate phenomenon.

Including the authors intention's in an analysis is fine (although I would argue that "behind the scenes" promotional material is hardly going to be objective); including the creator's biographical information is a bit odd but okay; offering a psychological evaluation of the author and then using that evaluation to describe their work is very strange; but saying that this narrow lens is the only framework for discussing media is madness. I mean, how would the Dragon Demands analyze GOT if there weren't supplementary material provided on the DVD and D&D never gave any interviews; or god forbid analyze a pre-DVD piece of art. He would have to do the same thing that people have been doing for hundreds of years - he would have to use critical reasoning, interpretation, and draw on theoretical frameworks. But then by the end of the interview he's declaring GOT sexist and racist, which were very un-GG things to say, so I couldn't really get a read on the guy, other than the fact that he takes GOT way more seriously than I do.

To me, the show was a solid (if shallow) adaptation for the first few seasons, but as it started veering off the books it fell apart. I can point to aspects I love (like the music, some of the performances) and to aspects I despise (sexposition, poor planning). I doubt it'll be the only adaptation ever made, especially since its source material hasn't even been fully published yet. I'm not particularly excited about the prequels, but I don't feel D&D need to be drawn and quartered for making a sub-par adaptation of a series I love, nor do I feel it tarnishes said series in any way. Dragon definitely makes some interesting observations about the creators prioritization of performers over character, but I doubt that's uncommon in the world of TV. I think if Dragon were searching for knowledge rather than a conspiracy, he'd find creators on other shows saying similar things about their actors, or lamenting how little time they had to write the script for one episode or how little time they had to shoot for another episode. Producing a TV show is exhausting work, and unlike novel-writing, there are deadlines.

Having said all that, I did find the podcast riveting, for good and bad reasons - I admire Dragon's hard work and articulation, just not his dogmatism.

Oh wow! This was like the Comic Book Guy come to life. Yet somehow I couldn't stop listening, despite how awful the audio was. It was a trainwreck I couldn't take my eyes (ears) off of. And his hyperbole overload at the end had me in stitches.

Finally got through listening.
Shame about the technical problems.
You guys were very gracious, I wish you had been able to engage in more of a conversation on the topics he raised as opposed to TDD just talking over himself.

I didn't really understand his call to arms or what exactly that if it was reported would end people's careers. And I assume that everyone in Hollywood is a narcissistic con artist with a prescription drug problem so ... :shrug:

I am glad he has found something that makes him happy and I wish him well.

FWIW - Scott Lobdell is not for everyone but I think the rage over Starfire's sexualization is largely misplaced.

I agree, he had some good points and interesting thoughts but he really needed you guys to engage him in a conversation so he didn’t end up stumbling all over his previous statements

Also I hadn’t thought about 25th hour since I saw it in 2003. I should watch it again, I remember really liking it

Benioff has staggered in drunk to every public panel appearance since Season 4. He showed up openly drunk to his own San Diego Comic Con panel for Season 5 ("I just took vodka shots right before the panel, don't ask me any questions").

He's always been a heavy drinker - got so drunk at the Season 2 wrap party that in a drinking game he shattered every bone in both his hands, and didn't notice for hours. Which is a "funny anecdote" he likes to remind people about. He was on Vicodin for a week after that. In Season 7, asked in a Time.com interview how he gets through the day, he half-jokingly said "Medication". He's also remarked in Season 7 interviews that by now he has severe lower back pain (from standing around in set so much for 7 years micromanaging everything), for which I guess he can probably get a prescription. I'm not accusing him of taking "illegal" drugs - but that he legally gets pain medications. Which he then stupidly mixes with heavy alcohol drinking, which you're explicitly not supposed to do, as it screws you up even more. Which is a widespread problems (look at how Heath Ledger and Prince died from prescription painkiller overdoses).

But I freely acknowledge that I'm not sure if he's on painkillers anymore. If that was just a one time thing. Yet even totally ignoring that...the alcoholism alone. He's a heavy drinker, always was.

Then the reached a point in Season 6 when I realized "I haven't seen this man publicly sober in two years". This includes other local podcasts like Oxford Union, SXSW, or that 2014 one which was recorded as a podcast (I cite it in the video I made of DVD clips about the invented Arya/Tywin scenes in Season 2).

But the video I posted a few lines up addresses this more.

Benioff fall-over drunk in his own Season 7 Blu-ray commentary (not "tipsy" but "fall over drunk on brandy"):

Are there no true knights among you?

Haven't you heard that Rhaenyra has an army?

I'm looking for some men to take over the kingdoms...

I yelled too much at Valkyrist in the front page's Comments section but I can't edit or delete those. I was startled that you were confused I might be one of those Gamergate types.

Starting over:



My goal was to discern the author's intent. "Why did Benioff and Weiss make these changes". And it turns out they bluntly admitted it in Blu-ray commentaries. It's just that no one bothered to check those. Confident in our own interpretations, Death of the Author style, rather than doing research to understand the context in which they were made.

I am not a Literature/Art type by training. I am a Historian. Well, hold a Master's in Medieval History - I'm not published or anything.

But I was trained to understand things in the context that their creator made them; you're trying to find out why THEY made it, not interpret your own meanings into it.

Along the way this got so obtuse that we weren't even doing basic research on Benioff and Weiss, just guessing why WE would make changes. And the analogy I use in the podcast....is trying to discern why Joffrey killed Ned Stark, by assuming why WE would do that in his place --- but we're rational and he's not. This would lead to theorizations about "he's trying to intimidate the Baratheon brothers" or "he's trying to goad Robb into attacking King's Landing as a trap".....when the reality is that Joffrey *impulsively* killed Ned, with zero thought to the repercussions. This doesn't mean his actions are "random", but that they're a pattern of behavior.

You brought up:



If you're suggesting "What would I do without Context"...or rather, "Try to analyze it ignoring the context".....it's not that I "won't", but that I cannot. No one can. Again, historical training: you aren't really "analyzing" something if you ignore it's creator's context, or even their own statements about it. You're hobbled. Not just that you're incapable of it, but that it is *wrong* to make such assumptions without more context.

As it happens....what would I do if we didn't have these smoking gun DVD commentaries? It would be a lot more difficult. But the fact is we have them...inexorably intertwined with the work itself.

If I didn't have them I'd be hunting down even more obscure magazine interviews Benioff and Weiss made about their own works.

"Theoretical frameworks" and patterns are useless against irrational and incoherent people. Benioff and Weiss have no idea what they're doing. My major point is that we were over-analyzing: attempting to impose rational frameworks of theoretical analysis on men who were behaving *impulsively*. "Show off the actors we like, emoting non-verbally, regardless of story context or internal logic". It's just celebrity actors miming at the camera on cue.

And I don't mean to insult your position that "Art" (capital A) can be open to interpretation beyond what the author's intent was. Though I do feel the author's intent is always the "starting point". And indeed...even medieval authors often liked to make artwork that provoked multiple interpretations, "think pieces" with no right answer (i.e. the Lady and the Unicorn, various literature).

BUT...the caveat I'm trying to stress here....is that Benioff & Weiss aren't making "Art". They're basically making celebrity actor demo reels. Given how absurd Season 5 onwards got (for those of you who haven't even seen Season 7...oh boy, where the hell do I begin? Even show-only critics declared it had abandoned all pretense of internal logic. Sending a raven from the Wall to Dragonstone, and dragons flying back to the Wall to rescue someone, in a SINGLE DAY?...)

"Art" can be judged beyond what the creator intended. But this is such a mess that it's not even "Art". Random Emmy-baiting. DVD commentary stating "we did this to show off the actors emoting heavily". There is no fictional storyline. It's not that there's a fictional storyline that I disagree with....they're not even attempting to create a "fictionalized story" or "art". This revelation hit me like a ton of bricks when I first saw that clip, posted above, of the Season 5 finale DVD commentary when they just bluntly admit "we rewrote Dorne to center on Ellaria because we're showing off that Indira Varma is in our cast". No higher reason. It didn't occur to me for over a year beforehand....it was difficult to think down to their level.

I hope this answered you better than my abrupt knee-jerk reaction in the Comments section earlier.

@TheDragonDemands - I'm wondering if you'd listened to episodes of APOIAF or VOK before jumping on an episode and then exploding on the front page of the podcast page. It feels as though your combative tone is very out of keeping with the typically calmer analysis and fun side of both podcasts. I haven't watched the show since s4 for various reasons but I find that the vehemence and personalisation of your attacks on the showrunners rather bizarre. It's just a TV show. If you don't like it, move on. It seems simply bizarre to me to expend such energy on vitriol on such a trivial aspect of the world. And if you genuinely think this is the first time in TV history, let alone any other industry, that people "faked it till they made it", or amped up a CV to get a job, that's deeply naive. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but I just don't think the vitriol you're peddling has a place here. GOT has brought a lot of joy to a lot of people. Just because it doesn't please me, or you, doesn't make it a giant con, or a prosecutable offense, or bad in some objective, horrifying way!

I'm sorry Dragon, but are you saying that you cannot critique any film/tv show/novel/short story/song/poem/painting unless you start by measuring it against the intentions of the author, and if those intentions cannot be sourced, you cannot critique it? So no analysis of The Illiad is permitted in your eyes, because Homer never gave an interview on Charlie Rose. Or are there exceptions?

It’s baffling for me to engage art in this way because I’ve always regarded ASOIAF as fundamentally about interpretation and subjectivity and the fog of history. It can be read through so many lenses – literary, folklore, history, military, psychology, feminism, existentialism, nihilism, conspiracy, and genre. All are valid in my eyes and each reading has the potential to enrich the text and imbue it with new meaning, meaning the author may never have intended (or at least cannot be quoted as having intended).

It's not necessarily your approach that I take umbrage with (although you're continual asides about "getting revenge" and "raising an army" do raise my eyebrow), rather it's the fact that you attempt to delegitimise all other approaches, the fact that you repudiate plurality. It’s not enough that your approach is the right way, it’s that all other approaches have to be wrong and wicked; no, art is not something interpreted and discussed and negotiated within a culture, it is what meets your criteria and nothing else, and all who deny that are your foes, dogs of the usurpers' D&D... worthless.

You answered your own question: you didn't watch the show beyond Season 4. To see how utterly humiliating Seasons 5 through 7 were. After 5-7..."rage" is the appropriate response.

Here's a link of the guest tweeting at Brian Cogman 50 times in one day.

http://boiledleather.com/post/164430570 ... on-demands

Well (and I feel really bad I was yelling at you too much in the comments section, posting angry instead of waiting for a more measured response)...D&D aren't making "art".

Homer's Illiad. Okay....well, if I'm trying to figure out "what does this say about Homer and his world?", other symbolic approaches are wrong. To an extreme, what if someone read a lot of Christian imagery and allegory into it? In a society that predates Christianity?

Another example: what if someone watched an Akira Kurosawa film with no context, and came to the interpretation: "Clearly, so much white color imagery is being used in this sequence, in the sets and costuming, because white represents Purity"......ignorant of the fact that, in the context of Japanese culture, "White" is traditionally the color associated with Death and Mourning (similar to Black in Western culture). Leading to a simply incorrect interpretation of the Akira Kurosawa film.

If I wanted to understand the works of Kurt Vonnegut....I would research the statements of Kurt Vonnegut.

Er...no.

I don't have to have watched seasons 5 to 7 to know that many people in this community have expressed nuanced and funny views both pro and con the shows without resorting to highly personalised vitriol. Your response is valid, and maybe it's appropriate to your experiences but it's not somehow objectively "appropriate". I find it deeply presumptuous that if I had only watched what you had watched I too would have had the same "appropriate" response.

And you still haven't answered my question about whether you'd listened to APOIAF before you were on the show?

Again who made you judge and jury and the sole arbiter of taste here?

Again who made you judge and jury and the sole arbiter of taste here?

Bloody hell - at what point is that tirade harassment? That's just not a normal rational proportionate reaction. I'm actually pretty disappointed, having seen that, that Amin gave him airtime on a podcast that has sought to be, and still typically is, a nice corner of the internet with pleasant debate and witty insider jokes. A mis-step indeed.

Yes, I have.

D&D deserve vitriol. I haven't seen a measured argument that they don't. They thrived on our tolerance for years.

As I say in the podcast....I'm not a book purist. My rage is born of the fact that I defended them for years...based purely on blind assumption that "they must be professionals". Then Season 5 happened, and then I actually sat down and scrutinized every piece of information I could find....and with horror, realized that they're not really "writers" in any technical/meaningful sense of the word.


But all I'm seeing here are various iterations of "you don't get to be angry at Benioff and Weiss" or "there are other ways to interpret them as art".

Is there any response on the level of hard facts? "Why did Benioff and Weiss make changes from books to TV series?"

Hate it or not, does anyone..."deny" the conclusion that "they just impulsively put actors they like into emotive scenes to show them off"....? Based on the evidence?