- 16 hours ago
Connect with Deadline online!
https://www.facebook.com/deadline/
https://twitter.com/DEADLINE
https://www.instagram.com/deadline/
https://www.youtube.com/Deadline
https://www.facebook.com/deadline/
https://twitter.com/DEADLINE
https://www.instagram.com/deadline/
https://www.youtube.com/Deadline
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:04My name is Katie Campio and a senior TV reporter at Deadline. Thank you for joining us for Netflix
00:09and Deadline present The Visionaries. This afternoon we'll be exploring the storytelling
00:13behind some of television's most compelling scripted and unscripted programs from deeply
00:18personal real-life revelations and authentic human experiences to carefully crafted stories
00:23and characters that keep audiences on the edge of their seats. Our first conversation is about
00:28the visions behind The Beast and Me, Monster, The Ed Gein Story, Death by Lightning, and Black Rabbit.
00:35So I'm pleased to welcome to the stage Zag Balin, creator and writer Black Rabbit, Kate Sussman,
00:41creator and writer Black Rabbit, Mike Makowski, creator and writer Death by Lightning, Ian Brennan,
00:48creator, director, and writer for Monster, The Ed Gein Story, and Howard Gordon, showrunner The Beast
00:53and Me.
00:58Thank you all for joining us.
01:01Howard, I wanted to start with you. You know, The Beast and Me really explores a lot of different
01:06themes around grief and loss and just the way that your own guilt can kind of distort your perception.
01:12I'm curious what intrigued you about those themes to begin with and how they guided this story out of you.
01:19Well, you know, loss was absolutely on the Post-it on my computer.
01:26I mean, it really was, and I think one of the great things about writing is sort of getting to
01:30work through
01:31your, these very, you know, universal questions.
01:34What is it like to lose a child?
01:35Which is, I unfortunately have, you know, I'm adjacent to that, that question.
01:41And, and, and so both, you know, as a writer and the, and the sort of the confluence of the,
01:47of that loss and the writing process and how, what we do with it, how we, and how as a
01:54society,
01:54also it sort of collided with this societal kind of finger pointing that we seem to be in,
01:59in this moment of not accepting squarely our own stories.
02:07Ian, you with Monster are writing about a subject that carries a lot of darkness and a lot of
02:13cultural fascination.
02:14And I'm curious how you approach the responsibility of exploring that level of darkness without
02:19losing sight of the larger questions it's raising about mental health.
02:23Yeah.
02:24I mean, mental health was on our, our Post-it and, and specifically schizophrenia, which is like,
02:28um, something I, I'd done a play about in my acting days ages ago.
02:32So I felt a little bit across it.
02:33Um, but it's also just something you see everywhere.
02:35It is like very much around us, like particularly a place like Los Angeles.
02:39Most people who are on, if you see someone who's unhoused and shouting at nobody, they're
02:44schizophrenic or schizoaffective.
02:46Um, so it's actually something that felt actually quite pressing, um, but thrown into this
02:51mid-century sort of Capote landscape of complete isolation, um, and, and a changing
02:5820th century where sort of before, really before Ed Gein, before the horrors of the Holocaust
03:05came out with the, what, what we thought were monsters were, was literally like the Phantom
03:11of the Opera, uh, Dracula and the Wolfman.
03:15And after Auschwitz, uh, that all changed, like the monster became us.
03:22And, and Ed Gein was stuck squarely in the middle of that, of really, uh, couldn't, saw those images,
03:30became obsessed by them, and then sort of had to start acting them out of literally like skinning,
03:36skinning bodies he dug up.
03:37Like a very strange thing, so it was this, um, so it was this confluence, confluence of those
03:41two things, this sort of like darkness of the 20th century, um, but also a sort of, I
03:48think a sort of like prescient look at how bad mental illness was going to get, um, in this
03:54country, and that was sort of like the, he's right at the center of that crossroads.
03:58I want to dig a little deeper there and ask you about writing the scene with Ed's diagnosis
04:04and just your goal with that scene and how you wanted to handle it.
04:08Just wanted to get it across in like the, the plainest terms in a way that I, that it
04:13was explained to me that schizophrenia is basically the two sides of your brain, not really knowing
04:19how to talk to one another.
04:20So, so things that I might think to myself right now, like you're talking too long and
04:25like, that's what your voice sounds like would be like shouted.
04:30They would seem like you were, that was being shouted at by an actual external voice and
04:35is really intrusive and disruptive and very hard to, um, really hard to live a life around.
04:42The sad thing is like quite, it's quite treatable.
04:45Um, but one of the symptoms of the medications that they have is that you think you don't need
04:49it.
04:49So a lot of people with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorders will sort of like, um, will kind
04:54of come out of it and live quite normal lives.
04:57And they're not perfect medications, but they're, um, they're accessible and then people just
05:03go off of them.
05:04Um, there's a great, I wish I knew the name.
05:07So this is a dumb story, but there's a guy who wrote, who was a painter who had schizophrenia
05:12and he painted, he went off medication.
05:15Yeah.
05:16It's just not like everybody should look at this.
05:18It's just, it's a completely great, uh, encapsulation of the, his self image, how it darkens.
05:25And the last image is a sort of scribbled out face and wires going up to the sky with
05:32ears in them.
05:33There's a lot of this, like, oh, all this stuff that is basically internal to our psyche
05:38becomes external.
05:39Um, and there was a moment at which he would, he would have, that scene probably would have
05:44happened.
05:45Um, he was in a place that finally did diagnose him.
05:48So we really had an opportunity there to, uh, to shine a light and then the show makes
05:53sense.
05:53Then without that, it's sort of just like, well, this guy's did some insane stuff, but,
05:59um, it, it really grounded it emotionally for us and made it make some sense.
06:03I think all of you to a certain degree are inspired by, you know, like real people, real
06:07fears, recognizable cultural anxieties in your shows.
06:11And I'm curious what responsibility you feel as writers when turning to that type of material
06:16as entertainment, um, and, and handling that responsibly.
06:21And where do you kind of personally draw the line for anyone who has an answer first?
06:27That seemed directed at you, Mike.
06:28I don't know.
06:29Oh, okay.
06:29Sure.
06:30Um, uh, yeah.
06:31So, so, uh, our show death by lightning is, uh, about the, uh, sort of strange but true
06:37assassination of our 20th president, James Garfield, who, um, I guarantee probably most
06:42of you in this room didn't even know he'd been assassinated until this second.
06:45Um, but, uh, you know, I mean, it, it, it was, it's a tremendous responsibility to sort
06:52of take this sort of like long buried forgotten, um, um, you know, sort of morsel of American history,
06:59this footnote and, um, and, and, and, and sort of really ask yourself, I mean, like when
07:04I first read the book, which I found at the buy two, get one free table at the Grove Barnes
07:08and Noble seven years ago, uh, not a joke.
07:11Um, uh, uh, you know, I, I was like, I don't care about, who cares about James Garfield?
07:17And then like, I couldn't put the book down and I was just completely blown away by it.
07:22And, and, and it felt like a real mandate to go and try to tell the story because there
07:26is just so much modern resonance to, you know, the seemingly, uh, antiquarian era and our own.
07:34Um, but in terms of like liberties, you know, I think, you know, I personally sort of had the
07:40freedom of most people not really knowing anything about any of these, uh, uh, subjects.
07:47Uh, but, you know, you really want to stay true, even if you take maybe a couple of tonal
07:51liberties and you kind of make it a little bit more fun than your average period drama.
07:55Um, you know, you, you want to stay true to the spirit of who these people were in the
08:01era in which they were lived.
08:02And, um, you know, you don't want it to feel false at the end of the journey and you want
08:06to honor the, you know, these, these, these people.
08:09And in this case, this genuinely really, really remarkable man who had the potential to be a,
08:14a, a generational leader had he not been shot in the back a hundred days into his term.
08:19Um, so yeah, you feel a tremendous responsibility and, and such a privilege to be able to tell
08:25that story.
08:27I'm curious, you called, you know, that story a footnote in history.
08:32What intrigued you about the story?
08:35And then how do you make other people see this mandate that you see to tell this story?
08:41Yeah, I mean, just on the face of it, uh, uh, the book that was called Destiny of the
08:46Republic by Candace Millard had this incredible parallel structure between the president and
08:50the assassin.
08:51And I think it, it, it had so much, it revealed so much about just sort of like the American
08:55dream in the 1880s and like who could hope to achieve it because these were two men, James
09:00Garfield and his eventual assassin, Charles Coteau, played by Matthew McFadden, who like, you
09:06know, couldn't have been more different on the face of it, but both like grew up in abject poverty,
09:10both had positive intentions and one literally fell upward to the presidency against his will.
09:16He, uh, did not want to be president.
09:18He was accidentally nominated for president, uh, which is crazy.
09:22Uh, and the other man who was like so obsessed with like being known and being famous and,
09:27and, and, and making his mark and ensuring his place in history, uh, just bangs his head
09:32against the wall over and over again, trying to, to, you know, make himself known and, and
09:37just keeps getting rejected over and over again.
09:39And then eventually just snaps and decides he has to kill the president.
09:42So just that parallel journey, um, felt so resonant to our time, you know, and, and, and
09:48just had so much to say both about like mental illness, but also about political violence
09:51and sort of like the perils of hero worship and chasing fame.
09:54And it just, you know, the book felt utterly contemporary to me, despite the fact that,
09:58you know, it's, it's, it's a place 150 years ago.
10:01So I hope to bring that same kind of modern verve to the story, uh, in telling it, uh,
10:08Kate and Zach, you have such a relentless level of tension and anxiety and black rabbit.
10:14And I'm curious if you can talk about the pacing and just the relentlessness of that and not
10:19letting up throughout those episodes.
10:23Yeah.
10:23I'm, I mean, I think what we, I think it can be a little grading at times for people.
10:29Um, but I, I, part of it, it was, um, we'd never worked in TV before, um, you know, our
10:34experience had been in film.
10:36And so I think that we were, didn't really know what we didn't know about the, we'd never
10:41been in a room before.
10:42And, and, uh, our instinct was to try and, you know, sort of try to capture a bit of that
10:49anxiety of what it feels like to be in, you know, in New York, just at any time of trying
10:54to run, to make the subway, to get to your work, to see if the delivery at the restaurant
10:59was there to, you know, then to realize that you're, you know, you're in debt and your secrets
11:04are starting to spill out.
11:05And just kind of to try to see how far you could actually keep your foot on the gas through
11:10the course of eight hours and whether or not, you know, whether that was sustainable.
11:14And I mean, I don't know, I don't know that it was like, to be honest, but that I think
11:19that we, we just didn't want there to be a moment where there was much breathing room.
11:25And that was sort of, that was an idea that we went in with from the, from the beginning.
11:30Yeah.
11:30I think part of it, again, like not knowing what we didn't know is obviously the, the
11:35story of the brothers is, is the backbone of the show, um, and those characters, but we
11:41like to watch stuff and are just very interested in like a lot of story and kind of like the
11:46chase and what, you know, what's happening and kind of scene to scene to scene.
11:50So I think we just out of enjoyment and, and what we like to see wanted there to feel
11:55like real momentum and, and feeling like we wanted to keep, you know, viewers along for
12:00the ride and something impactful, but we definitely made a decision.
12:03Like you, you couldn't watch uncut gems for eight hours because you'd like tear your hair
12:08out.
12:08Right.
12:08It's like, so though that, that movie was like very inspirational to us, we kind of knew
12:13in the beginning, like, okay, you know, everyone will throw up if you have to watch that for
12:16eight hours.
12:16So like, let's, where can we start to, to tell the story that this is, you know, this
12:20is the, the life that these, you know, Jake in particular and Vince kind of live in and
12:26then maybe slow it down a little bit and then sort of ramp back up to the end where it's
12:30sort of relentless.
12:31And I, and I think just that, that, you know, we had, we lived in New York for a very
12:35long
12:35time and we lived across the street from this restaurant called the Spotted Pig, which,
12:40uh, you know, is no longer around in part because they, they went through a lot of what
12:46happens in our show.
12:48And, um, but you know, just having, you know, we both worked in restaurants.
12:52We both, uh, when you, when you live in a city like New York or any sort of, you know,
12:59really densely populated urban city where you, where you live in a tiny little shithole and
13:03your life tends to like, you know, take place outside of your house in restaurants and bars
13:10in other places.
13:11And, and that lifestyle is just, you know, it's, it's so relentless.
13:15And I think that, you know, we wanted the audience to sort of feel that from both the
13:20customer's aspect or perspective, but then also from the people, you know, who are running it.
13:24So that it was, if that felt, that pace felt like it was part of the DNA of the show,
13:28I think.
13:30I wanted to kind of extend that question to the rest of the group about balancing the narrative
13:35engine of your plot with the emotional foundation of the characters, especially when you're
13:40working with 10 episodes or less.
13:46Um, sorry.
13:47Say the question again.
13:48Sorry.
13:48Yeah.
13:48I'm curious about balancing the narrative engine of the plot with the emotional foundation of
13:54the characters.
13:55I mean, hopefully, you know, I, I would say for us, like it all began with Jake and Vince.
13:59Like that was who we, who we were like creating the show around and creating them with Jude
14:06and Jason.
14:07And, and so we, we knew where we've felt like they were coming from and where we, we knew
14:13where they were going to end ultimately, um, both like, you know, how that relationship
14:19was going to, um, disintegrate and then come back.
14:22Um, and then I, you know, like in a very nerdy way, I mean, we looked at it like a
14:28movie,
14:28you know, and we said that, that we were going to think of it in three acts and, and where
14:33we wanted those, the arcs of those characters specifically to be at those times.
14:38And then you begin to just like open up the aperture and see where, where else, you know,
14:43other stories were coming alive of, of Roxy, the chef or, um, uh, junior who is Troy, make
14:50us, or Troy cuts her son in the movie.
14:53And, and that, those, those stories seem to, you start revealing themselves to kind
14:57of be speaking in the same language, the same themes of like family and bonds and things.
15:03And so, you know, we were, again, we, like we, we didn't really know the whole story mapping
15:10process of cards and all that stuff.
15:12And so it was, it was a long process for us of just sort of trying to hang things on
15:18what
15:18we knew was the heart of the story, which was that relationship between the two brothers.
15:22Yeah.
15:22I mean, our show was only four episodes just by virtue of like, it was the only way that
15:27we could physically get this weird, obscure show, you know, story made to begin with.
15:31It's up being a massive blessing in disguise because again, the buy-in for people to be
15:35like, do I care about James Garfield?
15:38It's like, well, actually like we can tell a pretty succinct story in four hours and you
15:43end up having, cause I originally wrote script, six scripts and just in order to make it make
15:47sense to get it made, I needed to whittle it down.
15:50It ended up being the best thing that ever happened to the show because it didn't like
15:54when you talk about pace, it's like we, we had no room to breathe.
15:57Like, like, like, you know, like we were barreling toward this assassination in the course of four
16:02hours.
16:03And I, I, I, now I'm like, I wish every show were only four episodes except for all your guys's,
16:09which were so good.
16:11Yeah, each show that I've worked on is different structurally and it seems like it's, you actually
16:15come with kind of beginner's mind to each one.
16:17They, it seems completely inscrutable and impossible every time to start with.
16:22I've actually found working in like the true crime space is a huge help because you have
16:28a story that you really can't, you just have guardrails.
16:31There's, there's a limit to how much you can deviate.
16:35So you're, um, you're actually, because of what actually happened.
16:38Yeah.
16:38You can't just be like, what if he didn't, which is just so, you know, and it's been
16:41three weeks thinking like, what if he didn't have sex with a corpse?
16:46Like what if he, what if he, so many dream sequences, right?
16:48Right, right.
16:48Just like, yeah.
16:49Or just, you never have to, you, you're never questioning the first principles because the
16:53first principles are right there.
16:54And that just makes the writing process.
16:57Um, for us, it's been really fast.
16:59It's tricky.
17:00The art, this show is hard to figure out who you're doing.
17:02We always throw out two or three attempts at a season, a pilot, and then maybe an attempt
17:10again before anybody even knows what we're doing.
17:12And then, uh, and then you, they're just hard and you're like, all right, not going to be
17:16that.
17:16Let's try somebody else.
17:17And then once we like land on that, um, you just take those facts of the life, the things
17:23that really jump out as like, okay, that happened.
17:26And then with this show, it was trying to look at, yeah, theme helps.
17:30It's them like, okay, that seems to point you towards a theme.
17:32So let's let this episode kind of be, live in that emotional space.
17:36And then with Gein, he was so bizarrely influential to everybody who was, has a macabre bone in their
17:44body that it was, it had this, these, uh, routine feet, thematic feedback loops to the,
17:50the, the, the actual content, the movies and TV shows that he inspired.
17:56So the first stuff feels a lot more Hitchcockian, the sort of middle few episodes feel much more,
18:04you know, sort of run and gun, um, seventies grindhouse, uh, Texas chainsaw massacre.
18:11Then it moves into a much, uh, a much more stayed to kind of Jonathan Demme, um, sounds
18:17a lamb's world ends in a sort of like a very strange, like mine, mine hunters send up that
18:23we did.
18:23And all of those people were like, I mean, they say they were like those, those artists
18:28and creators were like very influenced by this strange man in the middle of the woods.
18:33Crazy.
18:34Yeah.
18:34You know, it's funny because ours was the arguably the most static possible conceit.
18:39I mean, you really have a writer, which is living alone with another very lonely character
18:44who was isolated himself.
18:45So it really, it couldn't have been on the surface of this, you know, but, but I think
18:50once what's interesting about all of the, all of, I think all of our shows, the dramatic,
18:54once the dramatic proposition is sort of set up, whether it's Jude and, um, and, um, and,
18:59and Jason, or whether it's Garfield is assassin or in this, in our case, care, um, Aggie
19:04and, um, and Matthew Reese's character, um, once you sort of know what you can, you know,
19:10pacing is such an interesting thing and rhythm.
19:12It really is like music and you kind of don't know it till, but you know, you have to slow
19:16down to speed up.
19:17And so it's a hard thing.
19:18Sometimes it's like pace in and of itself and action, uncut gems, the pedal to the metal
19:23stuff is and a tone.
19:26And I've worked on shows in the 24 was, was sort of relentless, but people also conflated
19:31it or mistook it for just pace or just action.
19:34And it really relied, it was a lot slower than people remember when it was best.
19:39And I think sometimes you have to, you know,
19:42Can I just say that it's deeply surreal to be on a panel with, I love you guys all, but
19:46like I grew up writing 24 fan fiction.
19:49Like I am a writer because I was a 12 years old, lonely child with divorced parents, only
19:55like in our shared hometown, which I, we learned later, which is awesome.
19:59I'm writing like reams and reams of 24 fan fiction.
20:03And that's why I'm here.
20:04So I'm very grateful to be sitting here with you.
20:06That's depressing me, but it's exhilarating to him.
20:09It's exhilarating.
20:11I think that is a perfect note to end on.
20:14Thank you so much for being here for such a thoughtful conversation.
20:18The Beast to Me, Monster, The Ed Gaines Story, Death by Lightning, and The Black Rabbit are
20:22all available to stream on Netflix.
Comments