Beau Willimon
Beau Willimon
Pack Beauregard "Beau" Willimonis an American playwright and screenwriter. He is the creator of the Netflix original series House of Cards and served as showrunner for the first four seasons...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth1 August 1975
CountryUnited States of America
believe people creative
In politics, it's very theatrical. There's a lot of stage craft. The campaign is trying to tell a story that they want people to believe in, and candidates are playing the role, like actors, by a creative personae that people will be attracted to.
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I refuse to buy a PS3 or Xbox for my home for fear that it might ruin my life. I think I would cease to accomplish anything productive, would quickly dispense with all human contact, and would very well end up with a nasty case of arthritis in my over-used digits from constant gameplay.
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The checks and balances is a way to prevent government from either devolving into an autocratic tyranny or an autocratic mob mentality.
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The fact that slavery is written into the Constitution is about as entrenched a form of classism as you could possibly imagine.
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Film is much more visual, a scene is typically a lot shorter, you're dealing with a lot more characters, a lot more locations, and you're able to rely on things that you just can never do on the stage.
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A lot of people have asked me whether I am a cynic or take a cynical view of politics and are often surprised when I say that I consider myself an optimist, but an optimist dressed in the robes of a realist.
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I think, people who remain in the political sphere as opposed to going into the private sector, really what they're looking at is how in some ways the compensation is power. How do you place a price tag on the ability to affect millions of people's lives? How do you place a price tag on the ability to determine the rules by which all of us play?
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Richard III is not likeable. Macbeth is not likeable. Hamlet is not likeable. And yet you can't take your eyes off them. I'm far more interested in that than I am in any sort of likeability.
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Like any young person who gets into a political campaign, I joined out of a highfalutin' desire to change the world. But you start to see the sort of tactics people use. You start to see politics not only in the macro but in the micro of the campaign itself. Some people get turned off by this side of it. Other people are drawn to it.
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Real leaders have to live a paradoxical life, where they must break the rules in order to maintain them. If your expectations are high, you're setting yourself up for disillusionment. The land of governance is paved with gray streets, not black or white ones.
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The political world is a dark place. If you want to portray it accurately, authentically, you've got to turn out the lights from time to time.
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I was always a writer - working on campaigns was never a profession for me. It was something I did on the side, really, so the trajectory hasn't been a political operative who likes to dabble in writing and finds himself into stumbling on film and TV - that was always my goal.
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Writing plays supplied for me everything that painting didn't, which is the ability to tell stories in real time, in a real space, in three dimensions, in flesh and blood. I realized I had been trying to cram all this narrative into my paintings, but ultimately painting was a static medium. So it just opened up this whole new door.
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I certainly keep my eye on Washington all the time because often life is stranger than fiction.