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Melissa Bendixen: Hello, listeners, this is Audible Editor Melissa Bendixen and I have the pleasure of opening this conversation with writer and producer Michael Dante DiMartino, who you might know as the co-creator of legendary animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender and the sequel, The Legend of Korra. Michael has been working in animation for over 20 years, with stints on multiple shows, including King of the Hill and Family Guy. Now, Michael is turning his attention to the audio medium with his Audible Original podcast, Sundown: A Time Capsule Society Mystery. Welcome, Michael.
Michael Dante DiMartino: Hello. Thanks for having me.
MB: So, it sounds like this is the first time you've worked with the audio-only format. Is that right?
MDM: Yeah, that's right. I got this opportunity with Audible and sort of jumped at it. I've done a bunch of different types of writing over the years on TV. And then I wrote a couple of middle-grade fantasy novels, and I wrote some graphic novels for the Avatar universe. I always like trying different media for storytelling and seeing the different limitations, the different styles that you use, and the different formats. So, when this opportunity came up, I was excited to try it out. And I'm a big podcast listener, so it wasn't totally foreign to me.
MB: Wow, that's really cool. What appealed to you about the audio format specifically?
MDM: Part of it is, that it is, in a lot of ways, similar to the television episodic format that I was used to writing in. I very much wrote Sundown as a season, with a beginning, middle, and end, and each episode has its own self-contained story line that adds to the broader narrative. One of the big things that's appealing about the audio format is that it obviously costs money to make these things and takes people to help produce it, but [not] compared to television, which I'm used to, where you need big budgets, you need these huge crews, you need so much time to get it done. It's very appealing when you have a story that works well in this kind of genre as a way of telling stories in different ways and kind of testing out stories and seeing what possibilities the story could have down the line.
MB: I've heard it said before that it can be really refreshing to be working in audio for the first time if you're coming from television. Audio is so fast-moving, where something happens and you want to change it, and you can just change it easily because everyone's right there.
MDM: Yeah. And my work in animation, a lot of it was working with actors, being with the dialogue editor, editing all the voices together into the track that the artist would use to create the storyboards and the animation from. So again, that part was familiar to me, and I always enjoyed that part of the process of like “Oh, we could use that part of that line and combine it with this take.”
MB: Well, we have a very multilayered story here. I don't want to give anything away, but we start with a scene of a man on a spaceship. It is a spaceship, right? I assumed it was.
MDM: It could be, I suppose. It's definitely in the future. Here's one thing about audio: It's open to interpretation. But it's not said specifically exactly where he is in space and time. You get the vibe that it's somewhere in the future.
"Here's one thing about audio: It's open to interpretation."
MB: We start with a scene of a man in the future, and then we jump to high school in the year 2020. And then we hear our two main characters, Darius and Sanaa, narrating to us in an investigative podcast format. So, it feels like with each scene we're going deeper—we get a new layer. And the full story is almost like a collection of puzzle pieces that the listener must assemble as they go. How did you arrive at each of these storytelling styles when you were writing Sundown? And did you always know you wanted to tell the story this way?
MDM: Initially, I wanted to do a mystery story because it's not something we typically did in the Avatar universe. So, I thought this was an opportunity to do something different that I've been playing around with for a while. And I'm a big fan of the old Agatha Christie mysteries and shows like Westworld or Lost, back in the day. Those immersive mystery shows that keep you guessing ... "What's next?" and "What's really going on?" and "Who are these people?" All that kind of stuff, I love.
So, I began with the mystery genre and then, because it was the audio format, I brought in the podcast idea. Partly because I'm a fan of a lot of them, and people are used to that sort of medium nowadays. It was also a good way to set up each episode—they're kind of like a framing device. So, each episode begins with this fictional podcast that Darius and Sanaa are doing in the story; it's part of their school project that they're working on. So, it all comes full circle. I wanted to use those as a way to orient the listener when an episode begins, kind of like a “previously on...” Because they are, in a way, recapping a bit [of] what happened in the previous episode, but they're also adding new information and more context. Because while the mystery is fictional and the town is fictional, a lot of the historical, societal things that I drew on were real, obviously.
MB: For listeners who haven't listened yet, Sundown is the story of 17-year-old Darius Hightower and his friends, who are living in the small New England town of Norhaven in 2020, an inexplicably predominantly white town. They come across a scandal when important members of the town, including the Hightower patriarch himself, cover up the contents of a time capsule that was buried by the town in 1920. The gang finds a gramophone in the Hightower attic that sends them back in time to that year, just before the most infamous murder of Norhaven takes place. And they try to solve the mystery as it's happening. So, it's very mystery-forward. Your previous works lean toward escapist fantasy with real-world themes. But with Sundown, our main characters are experiencing anything but an escapist story. What made you want to dive into this very real and very dark part of US history?
MDM: I started writing this in 2019; the original idea was a little bit before that. I've always been interested in history and how the US got where it got to, and just questioning our historical narratives... I've always been interested in all that stuff. So, that's where it initially came from. And then, as I'm writing, everything that happened in the world happened. The pandemic hit, George Floyd's murder, the protests, Black Lives Matter.
And even now, every day, there's new stuff, and I'm like, "This just feels too relevant." You know, fights over what you can teach in the classroom and what you shouldn't teach in the classroom. That's all kind of embedded in this story, in a way that, hopefully, gives people something to think about without being too preachy about it. It is really a story about these kids who have to literally come face to face with the past. And I think that's what, in the end, was very exciting about it to me. It tells this story of stuff we're dealing with now but in this kind of fantasy context. It is really a metaphor about us as a country and these kids facing the past and trying to make sense of it so that, hopefully, we can move on to a better place.
MB: There was that horrible déjà vu moment when I think it was Nora talking to the teens about, you know, “Things are bad where we are. I'm not sure what it's like where you're from.”
MDM: I was definitely trying to draw parallels between that time and our time. There's a little mention of scarlet fever in there. I didn't know there was a flu pandemic in 1919 that was so similar [to the COVID pandemic]. When you read the history of it, the reactions, the way it was dealt with, [there are] so many similarities between that, 100 years ago, and now. It's always remarkable when you find out these little hidden parts of history.
MB: Yeah, history repeats itself. This is first and foremost Darius's story. He's an adopted member of the white Hightower family, but he's never really felt equal. He's a young Black man, and his great-grandfather even says to him at one point, "Your kind are all the same." In 2020. What did you want to explore with this very specific juxtaposition of Darius being a member of, but feeling discriminated by, his own family, the most powerful family in Norhaven?
MDM: I guess for me, Darius's story is a metaphor. For people who can't see this, I'm obviously not a Black man. I can't personally speak to the experience of the Black experience in this country. I grew up in New England, in Vermont. I went to school in Rhode Island. I feel like I came out pretty open-minded. I'm never gonna say I'm perfect, but I didn't grow up in what I perceived to be a racist environment. I'm sure there was stuff going on that I was not attuned to at the time, but I also didn't grow up in a town that was very diverse. It was predominantly white. So, I feel like that's part of why I was drawn to tell this story. My perspective is growing up in a town that isn't diverse, and why is that?
And now I, in my research, discovered this thing of “sundown towns,” which was a very real thing in the North, where towns just passed laws to keep Black and Brown people out of their towns. Usually, they could come in during the day, but by sundown they had to be out of town. And if they weren't, there was often violent repercussions. So, I don't think the town I grew up in was a sundown town, as far as I know, but there were a bunch in and around New England. So, that was part of the inspiration for this.
Darius's story, I see it as a metaphor for Black people in America, where it's like, we're all part of this family together, yet this certain member is not being treated equally to the white part of our family. We'll see what listeners think, but I tried to play it as realistically as I could. The great-grandfather ends up being very overt in the end. He was born almost 100 years ago, so he came from a very different time. Whereas, [Darius’s] dad also sort of treats him unfairly, but he doesn't say those parts out loud, you know? Like, he'll take things from Darius and Darius thinks he's being treated unfairly, or the father treats his white son differently than he treats his Black adopted son. And then a lot of the story, too, is about the brothers' different perceptions of how they were raised and dealing with the family, and Cameron, the white son, kind of getting a little more perspective on the world, that maybe Darius has a point about how he's being treated.
"A lot of the story, too, is about the brothers' different perceptions of how they were raised and dealing with the family."
MB: Yeah, maybe when Darius gets gifted a Honda and Cameron gets gifted a BMW, like, gonna notice a difference there.
MDM: And in Cameron's mind he's like, “Dude, what are you complaining for, you got a nice car?” Like, that's not the point. [laughs]
MB: I also thought it was interesting how you can observe, even in the past, every generation has a different relationship with racism and how they feel about it. The original Hightower patriarch had a vision and then his younger generation became more close-minded. But then you have the current youth of 1920—Margaret and Maximilian are more open-minded again. So, there's this going back and forth and back and forth, and you can see that through the story.
MDM: That, to me, is the story of our country. It's like, you take a couple steps forward and a few steps back, and some people are allies one minute and not the next minute. Even in a small family, you can have people who are very bigoted and some that are more open-minded. It's a paradox, I guess.
MB: Darius is played by Asante Blackk, who listeners might know from his film and television roles in When They See Us and This Is Us. He's starring opposite Storm Reid, who plays Sanaa Starr, of Euphoria fame. And that's not all, they are supported by a full cast, including Devery Jacobs, Inés de Castillo, Robbie Daymond, and more. So, what was the casting process like for Sundown, and what was it like working with these young actors?
MDM: I was involved, giving my ideas of the kind of actors or characters that these would be. And then the casting department took that and gave me a bunch of different options and samples and stuff. That was sort of familiar to me from my work on Avatar, where you'd get auditions or samples of people's voices and sort of like “Oh, does that sound like the character?” Or, “Oh, I was imagining a little older or a little younger.”
That's always fun, to match the actors with the characters in the show. Some I had in mind, like Asante, because I'd seen him in When They See Us and This Is Us and was a big fan of his. I think I had suggested, could we maybe get him? You know, it's a pretty big cast, so a lot of the other players were new to me. And [there were] a lot of great performances by everybody.
MB: Were there any good anecdotes that you can share with us about the production process?
MDM: Everyone was remote, obviously. I felt slightly removed from the process, even though I was very much involved in giving notes and feedback and stuff like that. The one thing worth mentioning is I talked to Jeremy Zuckerman, who's the composer from Avatar and Legend of Korra. And when I got this project, I was like, “I want you to do the music.” And, luckily, he was available. So, [during] that part of the process, I worked more closely with him on the music and giving him direction for what kind of cues we wanted. And then he went to work and did his magic, as he always does.
MB: Yeah, for sure. I have a very specific moment—I think it was Episode 5—when there was this deep pulsing under this big reveal that was happening. And the music, you almost didn't notice it, because it was like the feeling of emotion. That's always great when music can achieve that, controlling how you feel.
MDM: It was the idea of the music cues. It was different than TV, where we'd finish an episode and then give it to Jeremy and he'd score specifically to the picture. Sometimes, he'd reuse cues. But in this, he wasn't scoring directly to the finished episode—he was just creating these themes and these beds of music that then the editors would drop in. So, that was also a fun part of the notes process, deciding which cue went where, and which would support the narrative the best. I think it really works in the audio format. That was another thing I remember really liking about Lost. They take a main theme and then do a lot of variations on it, so it feels familiar but it's always a little bit different. That's what Jeremy did in some cases: take that main Sundown theme and then do different versions of it.
MB: I also think the main theme is worth mentioning, because it does really set up that whole feeling of mystery. And I will say, you have approached mystery elements in Avatar before. What was it like for you to just be like, “I'm gonna write a mystery story from page one”?
MDM: One of my favorite story lines in Avatar was when the kids go to Ba Sing Se in Season 2 and Long Feng's in charge. It's a big conspiracy kind of story where the kids are unraveling what the hell's going on in this place. But yeah, writing a mystery story from scratch was hard [laughs], and I'd written little things that had mystery elements to them. Part of my research was reading old Agatha Christie books, listening to BBC audio dramas from when they made those, and just understanding how mysteries work, how you weave in red herrings and misleads and all that stuff. I feel like I figured out a way to do it, and my spin on it. Hopefully, the reveal is satisfying, but we won't give that one away.
MB: We'll let that satisfaction lie with the listener for now. This also isn't the first time that you've written about teens, and about a group of friends, in particular. What is it that draws you to writing YA and writing about a group of friends, do you think?
MDM: I keep trying to write one character, one hero, but inevitably I'm like, “But what about their friends?” In high school, I did have a pretty tight-knit group of friends, who I feel like we would've been the ones trying to figure out what was in that time capsule [laughs]. If that happened in our town, we would've been the ones trying to figure stuff out.
I don't have a ton of friends, but the ones I do are very, very close. Perhaps it comes from that. But that's the fun thing about [writing] stories: it reveals stuff about yourself that maybe you weren't even thinking about. To me, it's just natural to have a group of friends who go on an adventure together; I don't question it too much because it just feels like a natural thing to do.
MB: When you're consuming your own entertainment, do you find yourself drawn to groups-of-friends stories?
MDM: I would say I'm more drawn toward mystery stories. I do like the stories where there's partners teaming up to solve the crime and that sort of stuff.
MB: Yeah.
MDM: Like The Avengers or something, where the heroes all come together.
MB: Well, the title is Sundown: A Time Capsule Society Mystery. I want us to think about that for a minute. A Time Capsule Society mystery. Does that mean we are going to get more of the Time Capsule Society?
MDM: Maybe. I wrote it kind of like a TV show, where it's like: this is the first season. It definitely has a satisfying ending to the first season. But it's certainly open, with these characters and the concept, that there could be another mystery that happens that these kids have to unravel. So, if people want more mysteries, maybe we'll make more.
MB: Well, I think we all really enjoy your mysteries because you've given us a few and everyone really likes it. Now, what's happening next in your life? Obviously, I want to know more about Avatar-verse, but it's okay if you can't talk about it. In general, what's going on over there?
MDM: Well, we are deep in creating new stories for the Avatar-verse. We're working on three feature films, so a lot of the last year and a half has been a lot of development and building teams and getting everything in place so that we can get into production on this movie, which is another new thing for me. So, that's gonna be exciting. And I've been writing my own novel on the side. I don't know what I'll do with that, but it's a realistic story. It has no fantasy or magic in it, but it does have a mystery element, I guess, to it. But Avatar keeps me busy. We'll see where we go from there.
MB: Can I ask about your creative process? This sometimes is an annoying question to people, but sometimes it's really interesting. Where do you feel like you get your ideas from?
MDM: I've had that question a lot and it always used to annoy me. I don't know where they come. I sit down and think up some ideas. But I recently came across a quote from Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club. And he had this great quote, which is that writing—and I feel like any kind of art form—it's about exploring an unresolved aspect of yourself. And suddenly that hit me, I was like, “That's where ideas come from.” You have all this stuff inside you that you maybe haven't explored, and through writing or art, that stuff will come out, maybe not consciously but subconsciously.
In the case of this project, there's maybe your family's unresolved aspects and then society's unresolved aspects of itself. And I feel like a lot of Sundown came out of that, just a lot of unresolved parts of our society and history. And some people think we should just move on and not talk about it or not address it. I feel like there's a danger in not acknowledging what happened. I think that happens in our lives too. When people start telling secrets or keeping secrets, that just can be very corrosive to a family, to a society.
One of the most inspiring things over the years with Avatar and Korra has been the fans who have not just enjoyed the show but had it really make a big impact on their lives and help them deal with family trauma or other things in their lives. That part, to me, is always the most magical part about stories. That somebody can write a story, create this thing, and I can never have met this person and it made an impact on their lives. Maybe this story will help some people start to question the world around them.
MB: It's such a powerful truth about stories. It sounds like you're digging up parts of yourself. You're sharing that knowledge with other people. The idea of the sundown town, I don't think is very well known. And I think that's an important example of one of those things that's been intentionally forgotten.
MDM: Yeah. And it's worth mentioning this one book by this guy named James Loewen, called Sundown Towns. He lays out the research and history of it all, if people are interested in the real-life story behind it.
MB: Good to know. Last question: If you could travel anywhere in the past, where would it be and what time?
MDM: I'm fascinated with history in general. I'd love to go to Renaissance Italy, because just the art and the culture and seeing what it was really like back then. But then you think of all the horrible things in the past [laughs], and I don't know, Would I really want to go there? My heritage is Italian, so I've always had a sort of affinity for Italy and Renaissance and art history.
MB: If you only go for a day, then you don't have to deal with all the negatives of going into the past [laughs].
Well, Michael, thank you so much for your time today and thank you for chatting with us about Sundown.
MDM: Great questions. Thank you.
MB: And listeners, you can get Sundown: A Time Capsule Society Mystery on Audible now.
