Emmy-winning writer Brad Falchuk catapulted into prominence in the late 2000s by co-creating the highly successful television series Glee. In further collaboration with Glee co-creator Ryan Murphy, Falchuk has been pivotal to the success of groundbreaking shows like American Horror Story and Scream Queens. His work on the limited series The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story earned him his first Emmy. Falchuk’s latest endeavor, as co-creator of the Netflix series The Brothers Sun, marks a departure from his partnership with Murphy. The show revolves around a family with ties to organized crime in Taiwan and stars Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh.
More: Brad Falchuk on The Brothers Sun and working with Michelle Yeoh (The Treatment, 2024)
For his Treat, Falchuk shares that his life and writing have been deeply influenced by Joseph Campbell's 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. This book, alongside the Cambell interview series The Power of Myth (both of which Falchuk encountered in his mid-teens) were "lightning bolt[s],” where the concepts of storytelling and its connection to the historical lineage of myth resonated with him on a profound level. This connection laid the foundation for his understanding of narrative structure and the importance of a “hero's journey” in characters both ordinary and extraordinary.
This segment has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I'm very dyslexic so I don't read a lot, but the one book that has absolutely shaped my life — as a writer and as a human — is Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
I was probably [in my] mid-teens. I heard the interview[s] between Bill Moyer and Joe Campbell, The Power of Myth interviews, and I was just… So few things hit you like a lightning bolt. They were speaking about things that made so much sense to me. They were so clear to me about storytelling and about myth, I connected in a really deep way.
Then I discovered the book, and I think a friend of mine was telling me about how Star Wars was [inspired in part by The Hero With a Thousand Faces] George Lucas had read the book — I [eventually] talked to George Lucas, and he was a little less… I was a little less sure about that myth, how much he was depending on it… but I know he was very drawn to it.
As I approach any [of my] writing, I'm looking at the blank page and okay, ‘there's a structure here, there's safety here, there's something here…’ I know what I'm trying to do. The trick is, or the magic trick is, that by writing something, you are dying. You have to put your ego aside and just embrace this sort of transcendence. And so you have to actually be a hero in order to start writing. And then you write stories of heroes who die, [then] resurrect/come back, and you hope that the audience can have that same experience, or have the bravery to do that.
I don't know if I have anything where I've written about some hero, you know, riding on a horse. It's always just a person and that's the point of the myth. The hero's journey of a regular person is much more compelling and much more relatable than the hero's journey of [larger than life characters]. Obviously, guys with lightsabers, swords, six-shooters, and all that are awesome — those are all of my favorite movies. But as a writer, I'm much more interested in this average guy who ends up suddenly being forced to ‘die’ [or at least] leave the comfort of home.
The idea as a writer, that you are not alone looking at the blank page, that you are part of this larger community of storytellers that goes back [to] the beginning of human beings who have all been doing the same thing — trying to make sense of things. Which is trying to help everyone understand that their death is their only salvation. We're all going to tell a story for you to see. Don't be afraid of dying. If you don't die, you won't be a hero. You can't be resurrected. You can't move forward. You can't evolve.
The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. Photo credit: Yogi Impressions