Horror Master Mike Flanagan Shares The Stupidest Note He Ever Received From Netflix

One of the main characters of Mike Flanagan's 2021 Netflix miniseries "Midnight Mass" was Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford), a once-wealthy venture capitalist who lost everything when he accidentally killed someone in a drunk driving accident. The series was about Riley's return to his remote ultra-religious hometown to pick up the pieces and wrestle with his newfound atheism. At the same time, however, a fire-and-brimstone priest (Hamish Linklater) arrived in Riley's town to whip the citizens into a strange, judgmental religious frenzy. Cats are found dead on the beach. Ghosts are spotted. A wheelchair-bound character walks again. Supernatural dealings may be afoot.

The thematic bedrock of the show's premise is that Riley is destitute. He has no prospects, no faith, no ambition, no hope. He is in no position to stand up to something supernatural, nor the guilt he feels. Riley must be in a low place for the show's religious hysteria to function. Flanagan wrote the character very deliberately. 

The producers at Netflix, however, didn't much care about Flanagan's deliberate writing and sent the showrunner a very specific note — over and over and over again — about Riley's agency. Studio notes are, of course, nothing new, nor are strange and unreasonable demands from clueless studio heads. Read the 2000 book "A Martian Wouldn't Say That" sometime for more golden examples of executive cluelessness. 

In a recent thread on Bluesky, Flanagan revealed the silliest note he received about "Midnight Mass," and how he dealt with the strange, frustrating demand from Netflix. 

Flanagan revealed that one of the Netflix executives, tactfully left unnamed, couldn't understand how Riley didn't have a job lined up when he returned to his small town. Recall that Riley was not only destitute but had just been released from prison. Not only was he depressed, but ex-cons don't often have a lot of upward mobility upon their release. The executive couldn't abide by that notion and told Flanagan exactly how the character should be improved. Flanagan's thread is condensed here:

"Wish I'd kept a record of some of the gems from my time at Netflix. Bad notes are bad notes, but that place was special. There were times I seriously wondered if my execs had been drugged. Just a tiny example – there was one exec on Midnight Mass who just couldn't accept that Riley — who had just been released from prison — didn't have a job. I pointed out that Riley trying to find purpose, and having absolutely nothing, was important for how we meet the character, but they wouldn't be dissuaded. 'We at least need [...] him filling out job applications.'"

It seems that the higher-ups at "Midnight Mass" wanted a montage at the start of the miniseries wherein Riley had a bunch of doors slammed in his face. The exec couldn't accept that Riley wasn't in a head space to look for a job and that his employment status wasn't relevant to the story at large. Something in the heart of the Netflix exec insisted, however, that Riley not "just sit around." To my ear, it sounds like the executive might have a teenager at home — one who refused to get a summer job — and ached to give their kid a positive role model in "Midnight Mass."

Flanagan continued, presenting Netflix's ultimatum:

"I pushed back again, and said that Riley specifically talks about life after prison and how he has been reduced to simply existing, without any direction or purpose ... 'What about a montage where he fills out a lot of applications on the mainland, but no one calls him back?' I asked if a single shot of him having to check the box saying he had been convicted of a crime would do it, but the directive came in — it had to be a montage. We really needed to see that he was TRYING to get a job. If he didn't TRY to get a job, we would never understand the character."

Okay, so it had to be a montage. The thing about montages is that they require a lot of work. They need to be filmed in multiple locations, and each location requires a new set of actors. A three-second clip in a montage doesn't take three seconds to film. When Netflix realized that, they changed their tune a little. Flanagan continued: 

"'He's just some passive guy if he's not trying to fill out job applications.' So we added a few scenes to the pilot script. Each one meant we had to find a new location, just for one shot of Riley asking for — and filling out — a job application. Over and over again. And finally, when they realized the impact it had on the budget to create this thrilling, massive 'job application' sequence, they let it go. 'Can you just at least add some dialog about him acknowledging that he should be filling out job applications?' We added several lines. I cut them in post."

Now that the "job hunt" was taken care of, though, Netflix insisted that "Midnight Mass" be scarier. It was a horror show, and to Netflix, that meant more monsters and jumpscares; it seems religious and existential dread aren't great selling points. Notably, Netflix wanted to have footage of a monster killing the cats at the beginning. It shouldn't be a mystery what happened to the cats, they felt. It should be an evil supernatural angel, on camera, killing them. Yes, that would be a wicked, fun image. No, it wouldn't be appropriate for the pilot of "Midnight Mass." Flanagan said: 

"[T]they put enormous pressure on us to 'add scares' to the pilot of 'Midnight Mass.' One scene they insisted on doing as additional photography was to help 'explain what happened to the cats.' They pitched a scene where we see the "angel" stalking and killing a stray cat. I HATED it. They dug in, though: 'if we don't see this, no one will understand what happened to the cats, and this will add a huge scare to the pilot.'"

This time, Flanagan capitulated. He filmed a "stalk and kill" scene with a cat that he hated and felt was out of place. He likened the scene to a low-rent slasher he most certainly didn't want "Midnight Mass" to resemble: 

"I protested and protested and protested but ultimately we lost the battle. So there is this scene in the first episode where we follow a cat, who just walks around, and then there's a POV shot through the bushes, and then it gets grabbed out of frame. It's like a feline 'Friday the 13th' scene. It remains the stupidest scene I've ever filmed."

Notable: Flanagan recently left Netflix to make shows for Amazon.