I kept trying to think like a normal person who was short-circuiting. There’s a logic about her actions, but it’s a different kind of logic. Like putting the laundry away when it’s still wet. She thinks she’s doing the right thing. She doesn’t realize she’s left out a step. And then there was the pure cinema aspect of it — presenting a shattered mind by using shattered images. The editing was staccato. No dissolves. No fades. It was all just CUT CUT CUT because that’s what was going on in her mind.
When people ask what movie I’m most proud of, I often say Murder of Innocence. It guess in a way it’s my female version of Taxi Driver. It is a realistic descent into madness. She’s just trying to figure out who she is and where she belongs in life, and unfortunately she’s the victim of schizophrenia and manic depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.
When I sat down with Laurie Dann’s actual husband Russell, I was surprised to find that he was such a normal guy. He got into a relationship with Laurie because he thought she was genuinely attractive. In the beginning, he noticed little things about her that made him think, Well, she’s a little screwy, but he kept getting pulled back into the relationship because she was really passionate and sexual too. As she got darker and darker, he tried to get explanations from her parents, but they at first said, “You’re just imagining things.” Then he slowly started to learn about some of the things that happened in her childhood.
I created some of the details of her psychotic behavior as we went along, but most of it was in the book [Murder of Innocence: The Tragic Life and Final Rampage of Laurie Dann by Joel Kaplan, George Papajohn, and Eric Zorn] and in the script [by Philip Rosenberg]. It was a great script, but a difficult one to say yes to because of the shooting of the children at the end.
I like the way you stylized that shooting — it all happens inside Laurie’s head. As much as we dread seeing those kids get shot, somehow it’s even worse being inside her head in that moment…
I had to come up with a way to do that scene before I could say yes to the project. Only when I said yes would Valerie say yes. CBS wanted us to do another movie together, and they felt like this one would be really intriguing. But every time I read the script, I got to that scene and said, “I can’t do it.” Then I finally figured out what that scene was really about…I had been trying to figure out how anybody could shoot children like that if they really loved children. At that point, children were the only people that Laurie Dann could connect to, so why would she do that? Then I realized that she could do that if there was something in her childhood consciousness that made these children frightening to her. I came up with that visual device of her clenching her hand as she’s pulling the trigger. She’s not even aware of what she’s doing in those moments. It’s like a reflex. Once I came up with that, I said, “Okay, I can do this thing.” Then I had to talk Valerie into it. I explained to her, “You’re never going to see the kids and the gun in the same shot. It’s all going to be fast, panicked cuts juxtaposed with what’s going on in your head.”
There also seem to be some horror influences here. The flashbacks have a Bad Seed quality to them, and I noticed that the kids in Laurie’s car (the ones she’s babysitting on the day of the shooting) had very distinct blond haircuts, sort of like the alien kids in Village of the Damned…
That was a happy accident. When you’re casting, your subconscious picks up on those things. I just thought there was something a little odd about those two. There was also a little boy in the film with red hair and braces. He appears at the bottom of the slide and he had this menacing grin. I didn’t ask him to grin like that. He just put on this cold-looking grin, and Laurie interprets it in the film as malicious. In her fragile mind, that grin became the most terrifying thing in the world.
It’s also a sad story on another level because Laurie Dann really was a very attractive girl — and many people sort of dismissed her strange behavior because she was attractive. They said, “Oh, she’s just going through a phase or something.” Roman Polanski’s Repulsion had that same quality. With Catherine Deneuve as the disturbed woman, the audience is conflicted: I’m attracted to her but I’m also afraid of her and repulsed by what she’s doing.
How did you know that Valerie would be able to inhabit that mindset in Murder of Innocence?
I didn’t, to be honest with you. What I knew about Valerie was that she comes in with an open mind, and she totally commits to every moment. If you ask her to bring a particular emotion to a scene, she does it. When we were doing In a Child’s Name, she’d put on headphones and listen to music — something that meant something to her — to get into the right place in her mind. But I don’t recall her doing that on Murder of Innocence.
I suspected that there had to be something in her past that she was drawing from for her performance. She was always pretty secretive about what her process was and where she had to go to get these feelings. We had a few conversations about it, particularly for a scene where I was shooting incredibly tight on her eyes. When you get that close, the eyeball itself doesn’t convey emotion but the area around the eye does…and I could see her pulling in feelings and then letting them go. I have no idea what she was drawing from, but I certainly know it was scary. She would go from dark to light to confused. Once we did those close-ups, I realized there’s some stuff inside her that I don’t think anybody knew she had…and she could tap into it.
She could turn it on and off?
She could turn it on and off — and that was great, because there are a lot of actors who have to bury themselves in their characters and alienate everybody else during the process. To this day, I still say she was one of the greatest actresses I’ve ever worked with. In our working relationship, we had an intimacy that was so important. She became like my sister. We would talk about things that are usually taboo topics with anyone that you haven’t known for a long time, and that intimacy allowed her to be vulnerable onscreen. When she came onto the set, she’d say, “Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll try to get there.” She never said, “Well here’s how I see the character…” She would never do that. Valerie was always ready to go for it. The trust and love was very strong.
In her book, she talks about how absolutely terrified she was of playing Laurie Dann — because of what might come out of her. One incident symbolized the whole experience. We were doing a scene where she’s walking down the street, collecting leaves. I was talking to her and these two black crows were squawking at each other real loud. We looked up and these two birds just collided, and one of them came straight down and landed on its back in front of Valerie. Its beak opened and blood poured out. And she went, “Oh my God.” To her, this was an omen. [18]
Were you rolling on that?
No, we were still rehearsing. I promptly blocked it out of my mind because my initial thought was: Oh God, don’t let her have any reservations about committing to this part. For the entire show, we both knew that we were treading on really emotionally dangerous turf. Despite that, she still went head-on into the role. When she’s supposed to be sweet in the movie, she was so warm and childlike…because that’s Valerie. So when you see her go dark, it’s all the more unsettling. In certain scenes, she exerted a kind of power that seemed almost demonic.
Tell me about casting the other roles.
Stephen Caffrey, the actor who played her husband, came in to read for the part and he was terrific. Since I had met the real-life husband of Laurie Dann, I had a sense of what I was looking for. The actor didn’t meet the real husband. Sometimes that’s safer, because then they won’t try to imitate. But I could suggest nuances based on my sense of the real guy. The rest of it was just about finding the best actors here in Los Angeles. It’s always great when you’re casting here, because you get to see so many talented people. If you’ve got the right casting person and they’re really tuned in, the casting sessions can be one of the most exhilarating parts of making the film.
I was really excited to work with Millie Perk
ins. She is still as lovely as she was as a young girl when she starred in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). And I remember she was so attached to her character [Laurie’s mother] in my film. She’s such a sensitive actress that she really struggled with one particular line. When her daughter is surrounded by the SWAT team, she says — and this is an actual quote — “Maybe it’s best if Laurie doesn’t get out of this alive.” As a mother, Millie kept saying, “I can’t believe I’m saying these words.” I said to her, “Whatever this does to you, you have to get there — because this is what Laurie Dann’s mother really said.” I completely understood what Millie was having trouble with. This was such a hard thing to say, but she had to say it.
I also cast my wife and son in the scene at the end, where Laurie goes berserk in the classroom. Nancy plays the teacher and Shane is the boy who gets shot. That film, for me, visualized my greatest fear as a father. It became almost like Michelangelo’s Pieta, with a mother holding her son in her arms. Nancy hated that I asked her to do that. For me, it released some kind of deep fear. For Shane, it was just a fun thing to do.
Soon after Murder of Innocence, you did another story about a mentally-challenged mother and her children. In The Yarn Princess, the main character played by Jean Smart (Margaret) seems like Laurie Dann’s antithesis.
All Margaret wanted to do was love her babies and take care of them and never lose them. Laurie wanted to be close to children, but she eventually felt threatened by them so maybe that’s why she attacked them. Doing those two movies back to back was amazing, because they were truly like flip sides of the same coin. One was cold, dark and shattered. The other was warm, loving and poetic.
With The Yarn Princess, I was working from was my personal belief that there are many adults in this world who are childlike, with hearts that are pure. They are truly God’s children, because God is the only one that truly protects them. The rest of the world has a hard time dealing with them, and the legal system in particular. The legal system is not going to let somebody like Margaret raise her own children…even though nobody could ever be a better mother than this woman was.
You’ve mentioned that the Jean Smart character reminds you of some of the best qualities of your own mother. She’s not “normal” by society’s standards, but that’s part of what makes her such a good mother. In this case, her mental illness makes her more supportive of her children’s creativity…
In the scene where Margaret and her kids are talking to the social worker, the social worker says, “Your mom lets you draw on the wall?” And Margaret says, “Oh yeah, look what he made over on this wall.” She was like a little child and a proud mom at the same time. To her, the walls were the same as a piece of paper. She didn’t care about walls — she just wanted her kids to have a space where they could create. Then there’s the scene where she talks about finding a rat in the underwear drawer: “He’s got a little home in there.” And she names him Mr. Rat. I think part of me would love to be like that, to be able to cruise through life focusing on the simple things. And Jean was amazing in her ability to embrace that character and convey her excitement over those simple things, and to be 100% there in everything she said and did. She was stellar.
The same thing was true with Robert Pastorelli [who played Margaret’s husband Jake]. When he did the mental breakdown scene, it was frightening to be in that room with him. He was supposed to get close to the mirror with his fist and let the breakaway rig break the glass…but he smashed that mirror and cut his hand. He went to that dark place and he couldn’t hold back. He was that kind of actor. You clearly see it in the work, the way he committed to every moment. He could smile and it would make you smile. He could go crazy and you would step back…even though you knew he was just acting. He had that unique gift. So seeing Jean and Robert work together was just dynamite.
I loved throwing myself totally into The Yarn Princess, which was so different from Murder. I shot-listed the whole thing before I started and I knew everything I was going do, so I had more time to spend with the actors because of all that prep work. My A.D. Bob Wilson was on top of everything. Every day was so well planned — because we really had to work around the kids’ hours. Young actors have very short days, so you have to get the shots with them right at the beginning of the day. All these boys were a blessing. They all worked together so well, and they were so believable.
The Yarn Princess — like In a Child’s Name, Something to Live For, and Murder of Innocence — is based on a true story. Do you usually get into reality-based movies assuming that people know the story or do you assume that people are coming to it without knowing anything about the story? Ideally, do you want the viewer to interact with the films more as fiction or nonfiction?
I’d prefer for people not to come in to the movie having read the book and expecting it to be exactly as written. A movie can’t do justice to all the details in a book. A movie has to stand on its own, in a ninety-minute adaptation of the story. Hopefully it will have an interesting point of view. That’s sometimes hard to do in television because there are many network people who want the story to be overly clear and so you have to tell the story from an omniscient perspective. I really like a sense of ambiguity, but anytime I try to go for ambiguity, it’s a battle. Not that I haven’t gotten away with it a few times…like on Leave of Absence.
Leave of Absence was based on a true story, but that wasn’t advertised. It was based on Rex Harrison, and Polly Bergin carried that story around for years before it was scripted and made into a movie. In this case, there was quite a bit of artistic license, but the premise was simple: A man leaves his wife for another woman when he learns the other woman is dying. After she dies, he wants to come back to his wife.
Leave of Absence ended on an ambiguous close-up of Brian Dennehy. He’s just totally fucked up his life. He loved Jacqueline Bissett [who plays his mistress] and he also loved Blythe Danner [who plays his wife]. At the end of the day, he loses both of them. And there he sits in a friggin’ sushi bar, drinking his sake, and thinking, Now what? I liked the ambiguity of that “Now what?” He didn’t seem sad. Instead, he seemed like he was even slightly by the irony of his fate. I loved that. And I somehow got away with that. Brian was brilliant.
Did you tell Brian Dennehy what to think at that moment?
No. I was aware that Brian was making the transition from actor to director. It seemed to me like he was a little bored with acting. He’d ask me, “What do you have in mind for this scene?” And I would tell him and he’d say, “Alright, fine” or “I don’t see it like that. I think it’s…” When we got to this final scene, he said, “What do you want me to be emoting here?” And I said, “Nothing. I just want to bring the camera in close. And whatever happens happens.” So he just sat there. As the camera moved in on his seemingly emotionless face, he made this little smirk…It was subtle and very right.
My interpretation of Dennehy’s expression in that final moment is that he was amazed that life could still surprise him. It’s true that he’s caused himself and his wife a lot of pain, but it’s also true that he’s more alive at the end of the movie than he was at the beginning.
I like that. I think there’s still the possibility that he could get back together with his wife one day, because he really is not a womanizer. He had to pay such a high price — his wife and his daughter both felt betrayed by what he did — but I think it’s true that he was doing more than just having an affair. It was something, like you’re saying, that made him feel alive again. That happens to a lot of men and women. The routine just becomes unbearable. “I’ve got to do something to break this.” And as damaging as an affair can be, it’s worth it at that moment because they just can’t live with themselves if they don’t do something.
And then it’s a question of whether the other person can accept that. And whether or not they should accept it. That’s a pretty complicated question — not the kind of thing you usually get in a movie of the week.
It got re
ally good ratings and did incredibly well in the reviews, so I was happy. Most people saw the finished film as a very clean piece of storytelling, and they empathized with Brian’s character.
This was the first in a group of films where you directed some of cinema’s top leading men. Next up was The Lies Boys Tell, which featured Kirk Douglas. What was it like working with him?
He scared me. I mean, forget that he’s Kirk Douglas, The Actor. He’s just intimidating as a person. He’d say [does a Kirk Douglas impression with gritted teeth], “If you make me go down these fucking stairs one more time…” I’d say, “I’m sorry, the camera jammed.” Then he’d say, “That’s not my fault.” There were times when I could see his fist clenching up and I thought, He’s going to cold-cock me. He’s going to knock me from here to Mississippi…Then I will have this great story about the time Kirk Douglas knocked me out on set. He was a no-nonsense guy. He knew his job and he did it. He is a star.
Kirk came ready. He would go over his lines again and again, and he would do the exact same nuances and the exact same gestures every single time. I tried to suggest changes, but whenever I did that, it turned into a war. That was just the way he acted. That was his style, and he didn’t have enough faith in me to break from that. He’d spent too many years doing it the way he did it, and he didn’t want to give the director too much control. He came from the “star system” in Hollywood and he’d produced so many of his own movies. He figured nobody knew Kirk better than Kirk. When you’re dealing with that kind of legendary talent, you’re just along for the ride. He had already made his creative choices.
A Strange Idea of Entertainment: Conversations with Tom McLoughlin Page 14