the
risk taker
NOAH HAWLEY
Why Austin? The Emmy-winning
Fargo
showrunner likes to say he mar-
ried into Austin. He and his wife, a
multigenerational Texan,
were living in
New York when he wrapped on the de-
tective series the Unusuals. The couple
came to Austin in 2009 to visit her folks
for a few weeks and never left. Hawley's
experience shooting the short-lived
mockumentary TV series My Genera-
tion
proved those instincts right. "The
crews in Austin are so amazing because
the flm community here sprang up
around the fact that people wanted to
make movies,"
he says. "It didn't spring
up around a tax credit, like [in] some
other markets."
The Power of Bad Ideas:
He ad-
mits that the notion of tackling the Coen
brothers' movie masterpiece, Fargo, for
the small screen was a "monumentally
bad idea." But FX agreed to let him
approach it as a stand-alone, true-crime
story told in chapters, as opposed to a
recurring series. "That seemed interest-
ing to me," he says. "For me this limited
series, this 10-hour movie idea, feels like
a new medium."
What's Next:
The second season
of
Fargo begins on October 12, set in a
different town and with a new cast of
characters. "It's like I followed up my
colossally bad idea [by] getting rid of
actors that everybody loved, [just] to do
it again!" he says, laughing. Meanwhile,
Hawley, who is also an author, owes his
publisher, Grand Central, a draft of his
next novel, an emotional thriller.
in his wor ds: "I'd rather
raise my kids in Austin [than
LA].… This is a place where
people are creative for the
value of being creative."
