It was series co-creator Ryan Murphy’s choice to show just how graphic the shotgun murders were at the beginning of “Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story,” director Carl Franklin told TheWrap.
“Ryan had a lot of specific ideas about how he wanted to do this,” said Franklin, who helmed the first two episodes of the Netflix series, as well as that of Murphy’s “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez” on FX.
“Ryan wanted to make sure that people understood the brutality of the crimes, and to establish that early on. Because it is a dialectic in a lot of ways, it’s a ‘Rashomon’ kind of a thing, where the young men have their version of what happened. And then later, we see what Kitty and Jose felt about the situation, or based on the information that was available to Ryan and [co-creator] Ian Brennan.”
Franklin continued, “The violence, in some ways, was necessary because even when you get into all of the specifics of the relationships of growing up, the alleged abuse, you don’t want to forget the gravity of what took place in that room, you have to weigh that against that still. Certainly that was a justification that I felt, in shooting it. But the desire to have it as graphic as it was came from the top.”
When asked about controversial plot points, such as the kiss between Lyle and Erik in Episode 2, Franklin explained that was based on the research conducted by Ian and Ryan.
Murphy himself has said the implied incestuous relationship between the brothers — which the real brothers have denied — was inspired by a theory of Vanity Fair writer Dominick Dunne, who wrote extensively about the case at the time.
And in the series, as well as real life, Lyle (played by Nicholas Chavez) admitted to molesting his brother at least once, which journalist Robert Rand, who wrote the 2018 book “The Menendez Murders,” told The Hollywood Reporter was “a response to trauma.”
Here’s more of TheWrap’s chat with Franklin, in which he also discusses “American Sports Story” about case of closeted football star Aaron Hernandez, who may have committed murder to keep his secret.
TheWrap: I imagine it’s tricky filming [an intimate scene like the kiss]. And obviously it’s also the case in Aaron Hernandez, where you’re dealing with sexuality at a time when people weren’t allowed to be as open about that, and there’s a lot of guilt and shame. Can you talk about bringing that to the screen in both cases?
Franklin: It was something that was fairly central to both stories. That’s the whole thing between film and radio, you get to show things in film, as opposed to hearing about them. If you know there was this going on, then we should see some evidence of it.
In the Aaron Hernandez case, these were consensual situations where he had something going on underneath, and could not express it publicly, especially in the environment that he was raised in. [And when he went to the] University of Florida, and then later, when he was with The New England Patriots: In the whole football world, it’s not really a popular subject.
Can you talk about where fiction meets nonfiction, because these are based on true stories. But then there’s maybe some narrative license that gets used in retelling some of this or crafting it for TV. Although, maybe, that’s more of a writer’s question than a director question.
It kind of is because, anytime you distill anyone’s life down to two hours, or in this case, nine hours, then every line is going to have a lot more impact. The selection of what is said becomes more important because you are charting a course that you are leading an audience on. By selecting what information you’re going to include, those pieces of information somehow have more impact because they occupy so much a bigger proportion of someone’s life [in the series] than they would in real life. When you make that choice, you make that statement. So that’s the reason, anytime you do that with film, you’re always selecting those moments that you feel are worthy of being represented on film.
So you’re saying even though it’s a true story, there are always creative choices being made.
Yeah, within what is true, basically is what I believe, what I suspect, and what I’ve been told, is that pretty much everything is pretty much true. [The series creators] selected these things, and the narrative that that creates, which can have its own effect.
Can you talk about coming in for both series and setting the town by directing the first two episodes?
That’s kind of what I’ve been doing the past few years. I like being involved in the creative stages of it, as opposed to coming in [later] just as a set of hands. That’s enjoyable. That’s closer to the film experience. It’s not the film experience, because it still, ultimately, is the writer and the creators of the show whose vision you’re realizing, but it’s a little more involved. You’re making decisions about locations, things like that.
With Ryan, pretty much all of the casting decisions have been made. He does a lot of that, and he’s chosen great people. That’s really the crux of it, in my opinion, I think people turn on the TV to see other people.
“Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” is now streaming on Netflix.
