Director's Notes Episode 265 - Labyrinth HQ

When we realized this year of Night Vale was going to be about Labyrinth, I got excited about the idea of exploring their headquarters. A few times a year, Jeffrey, Brie, and I sit down to talk about upcoming episodes, and then once we’ve mapped them out, we claim the ones we wanted to write, and I reserved this one right away. I didn’t have a strong idea for what would actually happen in the episode, I often don’t, but I had a good idea of the feeling I was chasing, which is often all I need.

From the start, Night Vale has been about a specific feeling. Back in 2012, when I wrote that very first paragraph about Night Vale:

Lights, seen in the sky above the Arby’s. Not the glowing sign of Arby’s. Something higher and beyond that. We know the difference. We’ve caught on to their game. We understand the lights above Arby’s game. Invaders from another world. Ladies and gentlemen the future is here. And it’s about a hundred feet above the Arby’s.

It gave me a feeling in my stomach that I knew I wanted to follow. That feeling, more than any specific plot or character detail, has been Night Vale’s mandate for me ever since.

Of course, it’s always a delight to write for James Urbaniak. James has more control over language and tone than almost any actor I’ve encountered. In a recent episode, I made a note on a line that Brie wrote indicating I didn’t quite get what she was saying, and she replied “oh, James will know how to perform it.” And he did, and it made perfect sense coming out of his mouth.

Is this the last we’ll see of Leonard? Almost certainly not. When you have an actor who is a master at delivering a monologue, you just want to keep writing monologues for him. But we’ll say goodbye for now.

Other notes:

-The Dental Underground is back. As you might remember, they were the villains of a novel-that-will-remain-unpublished which I wrote before starting Night Vale. The novel didn’t work, but I liked the Underground so decided to bring them into the world of Night Vale.

-As you might have seen, we’re announcing our new live tour, starting this summer on the east coast. We’re deep in the writing of it now, and I’m very excited about how it’s turning out. We’re trying a number of fun things we’ve never tried in a live show before.

See you in a couple weeks for a sequel to one of our earliest episodes.

-Joseph Fink

Listen here.

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