IR Interview: Patrick McManus & Michael Chernus For "Devil In Disguise - John Wayne Gacy" (Awards Track) [Peacock] - Part II - video Dailymotion

The Inside Reel

Showrunner/Director/Writer Patrick McManus & Actor Michael Chernus talk to Awards Track about tone, perspective and movement in regards to their true crime drama series: "Devil In Disguise: John Wayne Gacy" on Peacock

Transcript

00:00but it takes a certain amount of i would say you know just letting you have to be open to

00:25the experience of it because like asking patrick this i'll go to you patrick tonally you have to

00:30let the scenes breathe obviously with luna with tovar letting him sit with his men underneath

00:35the house you there's a great tracking shot in uh i forget what episode it was too yeah yeah it's

00:43either two or it's episode four it's one of those two really brilliant ones but it's just you're

00:47you're just it both it's just you're showing the passage of time and yet how time stands still

00:53could you talk about the use of pace and structure because that's just not that's editing that's

00:59writing but that's just letting the performances sort of just breathe can you speak to that because

01:04that's a really powerful thing about this show in particular too so that is episode four that is a

01:10brilliant shot that's no no no that's okay i i led you it's one of many but uh but no i love that

01:16that's the shot uh that maggie kiley designed um that with our director which was transferring

01:22between the men in the pit and uh are the young woman who was waiting for her boyfriend who was

01:26never going to come home it's a brilliant sequence and maggie and i've worked together for for a while

01:32now and and i've i've come to expect nothing but brilliant sequences from her um so yeah um look i

01:38you know so much of it begins just with and this is going to sound self-indulgent in many ways but so

01:44much of it just sort of comes from my personal taste right like it begins like before i get a show

01:49going i have to talk to the studio the network about every aspect of what i think the show is

01:53going to be and and i'm a very big proponent of letting things breathe it's my it's what i like

02:00to watch right and so if that's the thing i like to watch then that's the thing that i want to also

02:04make but i think that it was also it's not just about what do i want to watch it also goes into

02:11what is the tone that you're setting for the show right and what i mean by that is is that you have

02:16multiple choices as it comes to doing true crime i've done several shows myself and in the case of

02:22this one specifically because we were focusing it on the victims because we were focusing it on the

02:28victims families because we were focusing on the effect that it had on the police and on the lawyers

02:33it was incumbent on us not to create a tone within the show that could be perceived as gratuitous

02:41or as salacious it was incumbent on us to ensure that in every aspect of the show we were presenting

02:48these people's lives across all of the boards right and the second that you become um heightened

02:57in some way is the second that it begins to tiptoe into the waters of of gratuitousness right and so

03:05very early on starting with uh the writers obviously and then our partnership with with

03:11with churnis and then talking to larissa kondrocki who was our director of our pilot and cat westergaard

03:16who was our dp cat i've worked with numerous times and adore the thing that i said was i just wanted to

03:24feel real i want all of it to be grounded as grounded as it can possibly be and in a weird way i hate to put it

03:34this way like that in and of itself is sort of like a swing right because so often and again i've

03:40i've done it too right right i think girl from plainville very purposefully had a heightened feel

03:45to it because we were dealing with teams and and and uh phones and social media and and so it had a

03:52different feel but this one in particular had to feel like you were watching real people going through

03:57real experiences at every single point and so that really is the answer out to the fact that i'm the

04:02only person i think in the history of game of thrones who went to the bathroom during the dragons

04:06and sat down when two people were always talking over a cup of wine those are my favorite scenes so

04:12anyways

04:12i'll give them the old gacy special huh

04:18top of the morning uh alan and uh mike right good morning you know i've got some uh spare hammers if

04:33you care to swing with me huh yeah not today no what are you guys doing here looking for rob piste

04:40no but you were in my house there was nothing there right you cleared me

04:45call it uh diligence diligence look at you

04:51how long are you guys doing this for don't we get bored i guess or you could just tell us where he is

04:58i don't know where he is

05:05i wish i did

05:08guess i'll be seeing you around huh everywhere you look

05:13and and my last question if i have one for michael thank you the uh well it's the thing is that human

05:19behavior playing gacy at certain points is just the how he sees as normality and that element you know

05:27basically well i read these books and i did these things he's it's the logic the the sort of far

05:33fund logic that balances with the emotion he's showing at various points the psychopathic emotion

05:40is a really interesting thing about understanding or looking at what human behavior can be but as a

05:46reflexive point what the humanity of these boys that he took from this earth could you talk about

05:54looking at that irony um within it and then i'll let you go yeah i mean i i think you hit the nail

06:01on the head right there i think he had his own logic for everything and so things that felt that feel

06:09just absurd to us when we hear him talk about them um made total sense to him and he was the expert

06:16on everything you know when he tells the the psychiatrist in episode four that he could teach her a thing or two

06:22about the oedipal complex you know and uh um so he was always the expert he was always right

06:29in his opinion and he was always the victim is you know it doesn't make sense to us normal people but

06:35he had an excuse for why every one of the 33 boys that he killed it was their fault you know either it

06:42was self-defense or they were trying to rob him or they were blackmailing him or they raised the price

06:46or they're going to tell his neighbors and so he was always under threat he was always under attack

06:51and um to just piggyback on what patrick was saying i think the thing that we discovered was

06:56trying to ground not only all the other characters but ground gacy as much as possible and make him

07:02as pedestrian as he really was you know and that these things that he did were horrific but they

07:09actually weren't larger than life the thing that was scary about them is that they were

07:13in his regular life these were almost normal things to him to handcuff a boy to chloroform a young man

07:24these were as as every day as making a bowl of macaroni and cheese for himself like it it wasn't um

07:31some big mustache twirly i'm a villain he just that was what he did and it was pedestrian and i think

07:38that's much more chilling that he was just this schlubby contractor in the suburbs who got away

07:43with this for way too long and the last thing i'll say is the killer clown thing unfortunately i think

07:49made him into this larger than life comic book figure for way too long he became like a super

07:55villain um and he wasn't that he was just a really warped mentally ill psychopathic man who

08:04you know got away with it because of these institutional failures

08:08you

IR Interview: Patrick McManus & Michael Chernus For "Devil In Disguise - John Wayne Gacy" (Awards Track) [Peacock] - Part II

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended