Warning: This article contains spoilers for season 6 of “Game of Thrones.” Read at your own risk.  Jack Bender has one of the most prolific, diverse and prestigious rÃ©sumÃ©s in all of television, having directed and produced series such as “The Sopranos,” “Alias,” “Falcon Crest” and “Beverly Hills, 90210.” He can add another big notch to his belt after directing the past two episodes of “Game of Thrones” — “The Door” and “Blood of My Blood” — which rank among the most pivotal installments of the monster HBO hit.  It might seem odd that it took so long for one of TV’s biggest shows to enlist one of the medium’s biggest directors, but Bender says he was offered a job on “Game of Thrones” early on. “I was doing other things, so I foolishly said no,” he says. Showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff kept him in mind, though, and brought him in to directÂ two episodes in season 6. It’s no coincidence that the episodes dealt with time travel, a trope Bender had handled on the ABC science-fiction-mystery series “Lost,” on which he also served as an executive producer.  “I know the guys were interested in me doing this particular episode, the Hodor episode, ‘The Door,’ because it began to explore different times in their show and that time was beginning to merge through Bran,” Bender says.  These days, Bender’s time is full, whether he’s painting, directing episodes of other TV series such as “The Last Ship” or the upcoming Stephen King adaptation “Mr. Mercedes,” or discussingÂ his new book. “The Elephant in the Room,” published in April, is a “children’s book for adults” that blends Bender’s paintings with minimal words to tellÂ brief, often-funny stories.Â “It was a way to get my art to do something besides hanging on people’s walls,” he says.  Below are edited excerpts from an interview with Bender, in which he describes how he created the funny theater scenes in his “Game of Thrones” episodes, whether a key moment in “The Door” was indeed an homage to “Aliens,” and how he crafted the heartbreaking climactic sequence with Hodor and his younger self.  On how he finds time for painting:  “I’m always painting, and if I’m directing, there’s less time to paint, obviously. And when I’m not directing, when I’m in between things, then I just paint every day. It’s part of my life. Usually early in the morning when I get up. It’s just something I do. When I’m exec-producing a show, like when I’m doing ‘Under the Dome‘ or during the ‘Lost’ years, I have a studio set up at the studio where I could either pound wood and carve it, which I did a lot of in Hawaii, or paint when I wasn’t otherwise occupied with what I was doing.”  On filming theÂ theater troupe in Braavos featured in both episodes:  “I was thrilled to also inherit the theater troupe, the semi-goofy troupe, that was playing back the iconic moments in the show, which was really interesting to do. In my 20s I directed theater, and I did a lot of ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern [Are Dead],’Â all sorts of plays, Shakespeare … between the tragedians in ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,’ and what I called the ‘Game of Thrones’ players, it was really fun to explore the theatrical, semi-tongue-in-cheek look back on the show, which is what the guys wanted, what they wrote. …  “I staged the whole play, we did it, and the producers came in to watch the rehearsal, [including] all the fart jokes, all that stuff, some of which was written. So, after we watched the rehearsal, and the guys laughed a lot, I said, ‘My only concern is, am I mocking your brilliant show too much?’ And they said, ‘No, do it more!’ They’re completely unpretentious, David and Dan, and they loved it. … There’s more than what ended up being in the show, which we always suspected would be the case. There are extra scenes that undoubtedly will be on the DVDs at the end of the season.”  On whether the climax of “The Door” included an homage to “Aliens”:  “Certainly it wasn’t in my head to be an homage to ‘Aliens.’ I really can’t answer for David and Dan. … The artists who work on the show, from the designers to the stunt coordinators to visual effects, just so many people are so brilliant and have done the show and really know what the show needs. They understand how to do it visually, how to make it look like an army of 10,000 dead guys. … I looked to them a lot and said, ‘OK, let’s read this sequence, let’s see what it is. Then let’s start to bring it to life.’ Dan and David are very involved, every step of the way. We have a team of computer artists who do pre-vizing with you, so you get the luxury of making the movie before you make the movie. Basically, those are animated storyboards, so you get a sense of how long the shots are going to last, what the angles are going to be.”  On the scene between Sansa and Littlefinger in “The Door”:  “That is a scene that has hardly any movement in it. It’s one of the stiller scenes I’ve ever directed. But their performances were so riveting that I didn’t have to jazz it up. And my plan was to do it kind of like that, very simply. The DP and I talked about it, and that was my first day of shooting on the show. … Their acting was so subtle and so brilliant, it just allows you to say, ‘Thank you,’ and not have to jazz it up.”  On Maisie Williams’ pivotal Arya scenes:  “I actually told her she’ll be a director someday. I won’t be at all surprised. Her instincts are phenomenal. I don’t know what she did before ‘Game of Thrones,’ but she grew up on that show. She’s been surrounded by brilliant people and brilliant material … she’s gone to school in the best university. You don’t have to say that much to her. … InÂ that fight scene she has in the beginning, when she’s down on the ground, and most people would give up; she’s got that grit and determination, and springs back up … I might have said to her, ‘Get a little angrier.’ That’s probably all I had to say because she understands that moment is all about: ‘You are not going to beat me. I’m going to beat me. I’m going to hang in here.’ Certain moments, like when she was seeing the play and watching her father’s papier-mÃ¢chÃ©Â head get cut off, she just understands where it hits and where it needs to be for the show.  On developing the sequence with Hodor and Wylis:  “My design was to do parallel moves both from above into young Hodor and to present-day, older Hodor, moving in on him holding the door until he’s engulfed and surrounded by all of those dead arms and hands. My idea was just to smother him with all of that, and have the camera get closer and closer. …Â David and Dan really liked that approach because there were so many different ways to tell that story. I think the shooting of young Wylis was my second day of shooting. I knew that most of it was going to play in that one high shot that moves closer and closer from above. I really focused all of that “Hold the door, hold the door, hold the door” into “Hodor” in those shots.  “I knew I wanted it to feel real, like he was still seizing. And yet I didn’t want it to be a documentary on epilepsy. I wanted it to be: He was overcome, he was having the seizure, and this is the price of what Bran got him to do. Of course, it plays wonderfully on [Isaac Hempstead Wright‘s] face, the cost of that, and the emotion when he realizes what is happening and what he has made happen. But Dan and David were on the set, and there was a lot of discussion we had about the rhythm of it, and the speed, and that he would go faster and faster and faster, and knowing that would end the [episode]. I did many different takes with different rhythms, having him say ‘Hold the door’ longer, and get to ‘Hodor’ sooner. …  “So, we just did many versions, and I’ve gotta say, that kid [Sam Coleman], he was terrific. He just did it over and over again, which allowed us to get various rhythms to play with in editing, depending on how fast we wanted to build the sequence. We knew we needed different options, which he did beautifully.”
The veteran filmmaker, television producer and painter also has a new book out called "The Elephant in the Room."