Demystifying Our Beloved Mystic Series

There is the expression, "if it ain't broke don't fix it" but I find in a lot of our favorite songs, films, and TV binge shows it's "because it's broke, there's nothing to fix." If your couch looks like our's on a Sunday night, you might be burrito'd deep in it, with your favorite cat and chocolate. Your significant other lays perpendicular to you, in a perfect 'L,' with the next episode of White Lotus queued up.

For those of you who don't know White Lotus (first of all, send me the coordinates to your bunker and blink twice if you need me to send help), it's essentially a social satire following privileged guests and employees in an exclusive resort chain called the White Lotus. The resort destination, staff, and most of the guests change every season. However, the staff and guest dynamic is always the same. The employees try to cater to every need and maintain harmony, while the guests' sense of entitlement, and the lengths they go to protect that, become destructive... or deadly.

This show is a fun one to dissect for so many reasons. First of all it's so sarcastic, relatable, and funny. You see wealthy guests talking a big woke game. All their progressive ideologies, feminism, and career aspirations, but in the end you see their actions betray all of this because it clashes with maintaining their lifestyle. They are totally lost. Now that we're in Season 3, we can also start to compare, find patterns, and argue over whether we like this season or not ... while still running to watch the next episode. Perfect for Monday's cooler talk, or in our case huddled around our studio coat rack after class.

One theory is that the show is an example of colonialism. Where rich tourists, Westerners, go into native lands only to exploit the natural resources and people. Every season starts the same way: the hotel guests arrive at the resort property and are greeted by the manager and staff. The guests initially come across as grateful, open, and receptive, but this inevitably fades. Instead of embracing their exotic surroundings, they try to impose their needs and force the environment to embrace them. Their materialistic and self-destructive ways take over their environment.

Like the three ladies on a girls' trip who keep wanting to impress each other with how much they’ve grown and want to embrace their unique surrounding. When in reality, they prefer to remain stuck in their childhood insecurities and clickiness. They claim to want to go out on the town to have an authentic experience, only to be appalled by Thailand's traditional water festival. They would rather recreate the same club outing and debauchery they know. Despite the facade of awe for their idyllic surroundings, their need to get laid, rebel against their parents, find drugs, find a place to spread their mom's ashes, kill their wife to inherit her wealth, then be on the run for killing said wife, avenge their father's death... this all now replaces their backdrop.

Another theory is that each season focus's on one of the deadly sins. Greed in Season 1; guests obsess over wealth and status. Lust in Season 2; lots of infidelity and exploration of sex. This current season so far feels like wrath. The struggle of anger and revenge and how that becomes a snake eating it's tail (snakes also have a starring role in one of the episodes). Some think it's about finding nirvana and how having money buffers all accountability or consequences. Other see the White Lotus in a literal way, symbolizing purity and enlightenment and the ironies around that. There's a ton more theories about karma and Buddhist principles, questioning existence. The amount of online discussions and podcasts that are out there about this show, it really makes people talk. What is it about this show that makes it so topical and seductive?

My husband and I, who love to deep dive into the making of a series—how and why something was developed—have a different theory. We think the show is successful because it was a really happy accident. There is an interesting podcast that goes over the timeline and origin story of the show, with EP Bill Simmons (it's amazing but long so start at the 1:36 mark). Basically Mike White, the creator of the show, came up with the idea in 2008 while traveling in Spain. When it was pitched HBO wasn't into it. They weren't ready for an anthology series. Then in 2016, Amazon hears about it and is interested but it was right around the time there was a big Amazon cut, so all the execs that were going to green light it were let go. Then White gets a call from HBO in 2020 because COVID hit. So many shows were canceled, and they were in a panic to fill dead air. They needed a show where the talent could stay quarantined in one destination, with no changing locations or outside characters coming in and out. They essentially needed a show that could be it's own COVID pod. The show idea Mike White was trying to push for 15 years was now put on the fast track, the NEXUS lane to getting produced. Mike White wrote the rest of the show in 14 days. He had 30 days to make the whole first series. So all obstacles, inspections, and big-headed execs with stupid opinions were waived.

Talk about writing for an audience of one. Going back to an earlier blog about "Knowing Your Audience So You Can Ignore Your Audience," about how a creative process produces better content when it's more intuitive. You stop trying to please a crowd or pander to the loudest opinion, and you can create something more authentic. There is less of a filtering process, not as many egos weighing in to weigh it down. In this case, there was really no time for it, which really benefited the vision.

So many decisions of the show was simply because that's the resources they had or Mike was like, “because." White Lotus is always in a warm beautiful location...because Mike doesn't do cold. He likes warm weather. They picked Hawaii because Four Seasons Maui was the only hotel that would take them during Covid. The decision to start every season with a murder, and working backwards to unpack that, was thrown in at the last minute. They had to take a break from shooting because so many Covid cases and quarantines slowed down their shooting schedule. At the time they were so upset to have to stop and not be done by the holidays. However it took that pause to rewatch the scenes for Mike to realize it needed that.

Cristobal Tapia de Veer composed the iconic score in the title sequence of White Lotus, as well as the general tone of the whole series. He has also composed scores for Black Mirror and Utopia. You can say his forte is building a seductive tension through sound. He is a composer but also a bit of a mad scientist. His sound tends to have an experimental quality. Similar to last week's theme about staying curious in a process, he composes the same way. He intentionally puts up boundaries so he can push them. He would purposely break and deconstruct expensive equipment just so he could reconstruct it in a different way, like turning speakers into a microphone. Cristobal believes you have to "get out of the way" otherwise you suck the life out of an idea. Many professionals feel like it's cheating if you're not overworking something. So by the time it gets to a viewer or listener, it's been over-noted, overworked, and wrestled with too much. Cristobal feels too much planning, too much production, or too much mathematics can steal the sincerity of a sound. That authentic quality that makes a listener trust it and get lost in it. Which is why it's common for the better version of something to be the raw cut. For White Lotus, just like Mike White's timeline, Cristobal only had four weeks to create the whole score. So in that way, "there wasn't much time for thinking." The only note from the producers was to create a "Hawaiian Hitchcock" sound. He said the lack of time and the lack of notes allowed him to create the score like a live musician, tapping into a subconscious. "Let it breathe without killing it."

We should all still honor life's metronome, the predictable beat we move to every day. We kind of depend on it, the autopilots and routines that we follow right after we wake up. However, if there is a blip in our predictable beat, how can we not only pivot but also see the gift in that new pause or beat? If we get injured, go through a breakup, get hit financially, face unreasonable time constraints, have to shoot a television series during a global pandemic, something we've always depended on is not an option—how can we see this as an opportunity?

In the studio let's see our weakness as a canvas to build on. Where feeling physically limited can actually force you to be creative and discover an even deeper muscle and new range. Just like how television writer Mike White, and composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer, turned an impossible schedule and production during Covid into a work of art. Sometimes limitations act as a perfect silo to create or become something incredible. When the walls are closed around you, it's easier to see the runway in front of you.

Excited to make your bodies sweat, smile, and when things are thrown off move to your own authentic script and a custom score.

XO,

Celeste

Armond: You have to treat these people like sensitive children.

Tanya : When my mother's ashes hit the water it just reminded me of sprinkling fish food in an aquarium

Harper: But it's just, like, are these the kind of people we're gonna be hanging out with now? Like, really? Like, people that can only talk about what five-star hotel they've stayed at.

Ethan: Okay, so you're a snob?

Harper: What? I'm a snob? They're snobs.

Ethan: I... I guess we're all snobs in different ways.