Rolling stone game of thrones interview

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Arrow Created with Sketch. I know that in the years that followed you underwent some serious moral and political changes due to your opposition to the Vietnam War. I was, like many kids of my generation, a hawk. I accepted that America was the good guys, we had to be there. When I got into college, the more I learned about our involvement in Vietnam, the more it seemed wrong to me.

Of course, the draft was happening, and I decided to ask for the conscientious-objector status. I was what they called an objector to a particular war.

I would have been glad to fight in World War II. But Vietnam was the only war on the menu. So I applied for conscientious-objector status in full belief that I would be rejected, and that I would have a further decision to make: Army, jail or Canada. Those were desperately hard decisions, and every kid had to make them for himself. To my surprise, they gave me the status. I was later told — I have no way to prove this — that I was granted the status because our conservative draft board felt that anyone who applied for CO status should be granted it, because that would be punishment enough: Then it would be part of their permanent record, and everybody would know that they were a Commie sympathizer, and it would ruin their lives.

The divisions in our society still linger to this day. For my generation it was a deeply disillusioning experience, and it had a definite effect on me.

The idealistic kid who graduated high school, a big believer in truth, justice and the American way, all these great values of superheroes of his youth, was certainly less idealistic by the time I got out of college. Where does your imagination come from? Ideas are cheap. I have more ideas now than I could ever write up. You look at Shakespeare, who borrowed all of his plots. In A Song of Ice and Fire , I take stuff from the Wars of the Roses and other fantasy things, and all these things work around in my head and somehow they jell into what I hope is uniquely my own.

Your earliest novels, Dying of the Light and Fevre Dream , did well. But The Armageddon Rag temporarily stopped your literary career. Then you spent years in Hollywood, writing for TV series. Do you think your subsequent writing — which, of course, would be A Song of Ice and Fire — benefited from mastering screenplays?

Being there improved my sense of structure and dialogue. But there were constant limitations. It wore me down. We got into that fight on Beauty and the Beast. The Beast killed people. That was the point of the character. He was a beast. They wanted us to show him picking up someone and throwing them across the room, and then they would get up and run away.

Oh, my God, horrible monster! The character had to remain likable. It was the summer of I was still involved in Hollywood. It had been years since I wrote a novel. I had an idea for a science-fiction novel called Avalon. I started work on it and it was going pretty good, when suddenly it just came to me, this scene, from what would ultimately be the first chapter of A Game of Thrones.

It just came to me so strongly and vividly that I knew I had to write it. How long did it take to do the world-building work? Basically, I wrote about a hundred pages that summer. It all occurs at the same time with me. I just write the story, and then put it together. You fill in a few things, then as you write more it becomes more and more alive. I kept thinking about it and scenes for these characters. It was just never far from me. I realized I really want to tell that story.

By then I knew it was going to be a trilogy. Everybody was doing trilogies back then — J. Tolkien had sort of set the mold with The Lord of the Rings. Around , I gave the hundred pages to my agent with a little two-page summary of where I saw the book series going. My agent got interest all over town — about four publishers bid on it.

Suddenly I had an advance and I had a deadline, so I was able to say to my Hollywood agents: no more screenplays until I finish this novel.

Not particularly. Also, this story had such a grip on me. I thought these books could have the gritty feel of historical fiction as well as some of the magic and awe of epic fantasy.

With the exception of the fantasy elements, Game of Thrones might well have been a reimagination of the Wars of the Roses. I did consider at a very early stage — going all the way back to — whether to include overt fantasy elements, and at one point thought of writing a Wars of the Roses novel.

I wanted to make it more unexpected, bring in some more twists and turns. The main question was the dragons: Do I include dragons? I knew I wanted to have the Targaryens have their symbol be the dragons; the Lannisters have the lions, the Starks have the wolves.

Should these things be literal here? Should the Targaryens actually have dragons? How did you come up with the Wall? The Wall predates anything else. I can trace back the inspiration for that to I stood up there and I tried to imagine what it was like to be a Roman legionary, standing on this wall, looking at these distant hills.

It was a very profound feeling. Others that stand out… Adventure Time. How does it change things for you to be creating such a closely watched, inherently controversial epic in the age of the instant online social-media response? Social media has been central to the way the show has been watched by many people.

The show itself is a full-time job and then some. Presuming we make it out the other side, though… We were lucky enough to take this trip with many dedicated and wonderful people, two of whom are on the cover of this issue of your magazine. We all made this together, and we all got through it thanks to each other.

In what ways have Maisie and Sophie surprised you over the years? Their grace under pressure was evident from their first days on set — which were their first days on any set, ever.

They may not always act serious, but they are serious actors. Another surprising thing about both Soph and Mais is how decent and grounded they have remained, despite having grown up in the circus. If you want to read it for yourself, you can, right here.

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