‘Monsters’ Director Carl Franklin Explains Why Menendez Murder Scene Was So Graphic

The “One False Move” filmmaker directed the first two episodes of the Netflix series, as well as Ryan Murphy’s “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez”

Nicolas Chavez and Cooper Koch reenact the Menendez brothers' shotgun murder of their parents
Nicolas Chavez and Cooper Koch reenact the Menendez brothers' shotgun murder of their parents in "Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story" (CREDIT: Miles Crist/Netflix)

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.

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