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How ‘Dark Winds’ Channeled David Lynch to Create a Fever Dream Explaining Joe Leaphorn’s Generational Trauma

"Dark Winds" director Erica Tremblay was inspired by David Lynch and anime to depict Joe Leaphorn's hallucinations and generational trauma.

Director Erica Tremblay worked with the writers to figure out how to tell this fever-like dream scenario Joe finds himself in – he’s back in his childhood home, with his parents and his younger self. Tremblay discussed the writer’s room process of addressing Native historical trauma, working with McClarnon and why she held his hand during the episode’s pivotal scene, and how David Lynch’s visuals helped her with transitioning between the worlds. We searched high and low to find the space to have this place, and it’s a Shriners building, and they have this stage with hand-painted backdrops from the 1920s, and it just grounded the episode in the mythology that is fueling Leaphorn’s fever dream.

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