Jonathan Entwistle stumbled across a black-and-white indie comic book lying in a trashcan behind a comic shop in London.
He bought it and a couple more issues in the series for 70 pence each.
Weird is putting it lightly.
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I think I naturally do Wes Anderson and David Lynch in my own way, Entwistle explains.
But for me, what I was trying to add to it was Noah HawleysFargoworld.
So that is my main feeling about it.
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Had you been nervous at all when the reviews were coming out?Oh yeah, sure.
Im always nervous with reviews.
That has kind of blown me away, really.
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Id grown up with comics and I was keeping my eye out for anything.
I found this piece, this hand-drawn, black-and-white, little tiny facsimiled thing.
And I was like, What is this?
So I went inside and said to the guy, like, Whats this book?
And he said, Oh yeah, its a self-published thing.
6, and No.
Theyre 70 pence each.
And I was like, Alright, well okay.
And then I just thought they were amazing, but obviously, I didnt have a complete story.
So we started those conversations and this was, like, nearly 10 years ago now.
Its black and white.
And thats what kind of drew me to it.
When I read it, I just thought, How is this so cinematic with literally five lines?
That was what made me keep going through the thing.
Its so sparse and its so specific and its so beautifully edited.
As I understand it,TEOTEWwas initially a short film you made as a proposed television pilot in 2014.
Lets take it to Film4 in the U.K. and try and make a movie.
Go out and make that and well try and turn this into a movie.
So we kind of conflated two into one, and that was part of it, too.
Did you have to pitch the idea to Netflix?
Did they approach you?
Essentially, we already shot the first half of episode 1, kind of.
And we used that.
So it was a very easy sell.
I had to take that and the idea and the comic to producers at Clerkenwell Films.
And we spoke to a lot of people.
Its never one great crashing negativity.
Its literally a series of tiny solutions to problems and then suddenly you end up at a place.
Its mutual, really.
They came to us, we came to them.
It was a conversation, and they were super psyched about making the show.
Its not auteur-driven Sundance movies that were making.
To a certain extent, thats how it goes.
Charlie was just amazing to work with.
Thats all that matters to me.
She was doing something different with it.
The key is always about collaborations, just adding to it, and the art of compromise, right?
And other critics have tried to describe the show.
Noah [Hawley] does the same withFargo[the series]…. You mentioned the cinematic quality of the comic book and how you initially thought of this as a movie.
Just as much as anybody else does.
So, for me, its just about that.
So, I guess its kind of open and its not necessarily up to me, either.
Once the show was greenlit and we knew where we were, we shared the script with him.
So it was kind of its own thing to start with… Jessica Barden is one of the mainstays from the very beginning of this project with the short film.
We saw so many kids at the time.
I remember looking at the producer at the time and I thought, This girl gets the part.
I guess shes kind of crazier than Alyssa in real life.
Alyssa is kind of a conservative version of Jess, so it perfectly worked for me.
And that just made me feel like wed done it right.
Was it a scheduling thing that he couldnt return?Mmhmm.
It was a mixture.
It was lots of different things at play because Craig was considerably older and is considerably older than Alex.
Because theres thousands of people inGame of Thrones, and I know that Jess best friend lives with Maisie.
So its all very much part and parcel of the whole being English actors, really.
The End of the F***ing Worldis now available to stream on Netflix.
