Director's Notes - 186 "The Many Lives of Frank Chen" (Patreon)

Good day from the rainy and cold woods. We had sun and warmth for a week or so, just long enough to make the trees prematurely spring into action, only for it to swing back to the 40s. It’s going to be time to get my sun lamp back out of storage, isn’t it?

Today we return to the story of Frank Chen. I have a plan for episodes on this subject through to next November, which is the deadline that the judge gave the city of Night Vale to produce one living Frank Chen. I knew that I wanted to use this story to look at the multiplicity of lives, the way that our lives can go in so many directions, and how only in retrospect do they harden into the Lives We Lived.

For instance, in my early 20s, I got a few stages into the interview process to write for Bioware in Austin. If I had gotten that job, I would have moved to Austin, likely never returning to nor finishing college. I wouldn’t have moved to New York and met my wife nor my co-writer Jeffrey. Night Vale would never have happened. But then, maybe other things would have happened. I’d have met a different romantic partner. I would have gained experience writing for games, maybe be still working in that industry today. Or maybe I would have burned out, ended up returning to college in my late 20s, trying to figure out what to do with my life next. Who knows?

The magic of fiction is being able to take a life and, in a way that is impossible in the real world, live it over and over again, seeing how it turns out under different conditions.

A few stray notes on this episode

-We hear from Melony, played by Molly Quinn. I recently got to hang out with Molly a bit again, and it was so wonderful to see where adulthood has taken her. When I first met her, she was not even twenty, a talented actor with a good career already started. And now she has really grown into that skin, talking confidently about her work, and spending her days on funding calls for the movies she herself is producing. The magic of years is that they allow you to see people fully become themselves.

-The community calendar is, I believe, the first time we’ve ever acknowledged that Intern Maureen is indeed Maureen Johnson. Well, she is, and she won’t be defined by her internship anymore.

-The community calendar also contains a reference to a podcast I very much enjoy Whatever Happened to Pizza at McDonald’s. It is an investigative journalism program (or IJP) looking into the question of why McDonald’s stopped selling pizza in the early to mid nineties. I highly recommend giving it a try.

Coming soon: I’m working on a very unusual episode for May 15th, one that is like no other Night Vale episode we’ve ever done. It’s exciting although experiments can always fail. I suppose that’s what makes them exciting. 

Also, we are cooking up something truly extraordinary for our 9th anniversary on June 15th. We have been slowly making this for over a year, and hearing the first recordings for it have been unbelievable. As in, I literally can’t believe we might pull of this episode. I can’t wait for you to hear it.

-Joseph