Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon Quotes

“DAN WEISS: We were once at Comic-Con, and Samuel L. Jackson explained to us for five minutes why Joffrey absolutely, positively had to die and gave us all his reasons for wanting Joffrey dead.”
― James Hibberd, Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series

“At one point in this book, Clarke abruptly asked a rather existential question: “What is Daenerys?” One might ask the same of the show. What is Game of Thrones? There are many correct answers: an adaptation, a TV series, a fantasy story, a corporate enterprise, a snapshot of the entertainment world during seismic industry and cultural transitions. I saw the show as a seemingly impossible dream made real. Game of Thrones was the filmic equivalent of Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile—proof that with enough determination and sacrifice, a creative human endeavor can portray even the most expansive outer reaches of our storytelling imagination and, in doing so, captivate the world.”
― James Hibberd, Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series

“there’s the whole issue of sexual violence. But if you’re going to write about war—which I’m writing about, and which is what almost all epic fantasy is about—and you just want the cool battles and heroes killing a lot of orcs and don’t portray [sexual violence], there’s something fundamentally dishonest about that. Rape, unfortunately, is part of war today. It’s not a strong testament to the human race, but I don’t think we should pretend it doesn’t exist.”
― James Hibberd, Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series

“DAN WEISS: Near the end, pranks got difficult. Nobody trusts what you say anymore.”
― James Hibberd, Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series

“OONA CHAPLIN: I was actually crying while I was dead. The director had to come over: “Oona, you need to stop crying, dead people don’t cry. You’re dead, just be dead.”
― James Hibberd, Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series

“The producers were like, “You fucking hired him, you teach him!” So I had to teach a Bulgarian how to speak Dothraki when he doesn’t speak English. And he did great. I still have that tongue on my desk.”
― James Hibberd, Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series

“I called Dan: “Why is this blind hundred-year-old man chopping meat?” DAN WEISS: The actor doing the chopping, Peter Vaughan, is legally blind. So whatever he was doing, he’s a blind person doing it. I stand behind that.”
― James Hibberd, Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series

“In some ways, such scenes break all the rules of screenwriting—the rule is that every scene must propel the narrative forward, and most of these did not. But fuck it, that rule’s wrong.”
― James Hibberd, Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series

“ALAN TAYLOR (Director) I wasn't going to mention that because I got in trouble the last time I mentioned it. We didn't have enough heads. We had to use every head we had. [Bush's head] had been made for some comedy. Se we had to use it. I remember making some not-very-brilliant joke at the time, like, "You go to production with the heads you have, not the heads you want"--paraphrasing [Bush's secretary of defense] Donald Rumsfeld--because I was pretty angry at Bush and Rumsfeld at the time. I thought it was funny. Since then I've realized if someone made a joke like that about a president I believed in, I would have been offended too. I think I've probably mellowed a bit, though if you gave me the chance to use [Trump's] head I'd probably jump at it.”
― James Hibberd, Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series

“President Barack Obama would hit up HBO chief Richard Plepler for advance copies of Thrones episodes, even top secret season finales. And he got them.”
― James Hibberd, Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series