Steven Prusakowski
The of the most surprising things I learned during my conversation with Carl Franklin came when the director admitted, “I don’t have a sense of humor, When directing the subject matter covered in a series like Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story that probably works in his favor.
Franklin has fifty years in the business, starting with twenty years as an actor followed by thirty years as a director. Many of the projects he directed including the 1992 neo-noir One False Move and 1995’s Devil in a Blue Dress tend to have a darker and grittier edge to them.
While he was exaggerating with his sense of humor comment the charming director does carry a certain level of intensity about his work. He does not approach his work lightly, a requirement when directing the pilot of Dahmer, a series which looks the situation surrounding the infamous serial killer from the perspective of those whose lives he destroyed, but also the system that failed them.
Franklin spoke with Awards Radar about his Emmy nominated work on the series in episode for the pilot, “Bad Meat,” where he established the unsettling tone while also skillfully and purposely keeping the focus on the victims. He avoided any glorification of the killer, placing his viewers into the disturbing and terrifying spaces while holding off showing Dahmer’s face as long as possible. You can read the fascinating conversation about the director’s craft, working with his cast, and more in its entirety below.
Steven Prusakowski:
Let’s get into the series and your work. I am curious, why did you get involved in the project? What was it that initially drew you to it?
Carl Franklin:
When my agent talked to me about it, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to do anything or Jeffrey Dahmer, man,’ because sometimes when they do these things on the serial killers, they get so immersed in the in the curiosity about these guys, and in a left handed way, they start to glorify them and apologize for them. I didn’t want to do that. Then I got the script. Before that, actually, I talked to Ryan (creator and showrunner Ryan Murphy) and he explained to me that, really, the point of view was not going to be from his point of view. That was not the thrust of the show, that really. They wanted to kind of deal with what were the kind of far reaching – I don’t know if global is the right word, but why was he allowed to get away with it.
Steven Prusakowski:
I found it very interesting that you opened with Glenda. The first episode opens with her, it doesn’t open with Dahmer. And actually, it takes a little while before we even see his face. You’re setting that perspective, from the get go.
Carl Franklin:
What were the elements was the homophobia, the racism, the department, et cetera, that allowed him to just kind of go on this killing spree that lasted as long as it did. In some instances to to have a beat on the guy and let him go. So I read the script and the script was very spare. I saw that the last of the victims actually escaped. That was cool because I didn’t really want to go through a thing and kill somebody on screen. So that was one thing. The other thing was because it was so spare the opportunity for some really interesting cinematic work was very possible. You know, it was only about a 37 page script.
In the beginning which allowed us to kind of simulate real time. So the challenge of that was interesting; at the same time introducing this character, but not playing it, from his point of view, offered some interesting cinematic challenges and some interesting cinematic things that you could do. So that was what kind of drew me. I felt like ‘Okay, this is the first episode.’ Meaning that it’s like the first act of this story about this occurrence and this guy who was at the center of it. The business of it is to set up, what’s going to follow – to tee it up. That meant to get really visceral, not necessarily graphic, but to play the subtext, to play underneath the action, to go into the fear to go into the silences, to deal with a way of communicating what that experience must be like for someone who is trapped unbeknownst to them with a murderer. That was interesting to me. It was long as we weren’t going to glorify Him. That was an interesting assignment.
That was in the script in terms of seeing her first but I wanted to make holding him off as long as possible. In fact, the idea was to experience the sound, the smell, the whatever that she’s dealing with. Then when you’re in the apartment with him not to discover to keep it cryptic. Even when you first saw him down the hall, you didn’t get a good look at him until he came up close to her and he was a threat. So again, the next time we see him he’s in the club and he’s a predator. That was important in terms of how we’re going to handle this guy, because later they were going to get inside of his family history and what the inner workings were with his mom and dad. the, I guess you could say neglect, in some ways – certainly on his mom when he she left town and left him and the father too actually. The choice that she made when she took the one brother, but she didn’t take him, that it was always interesting. We didn’t even discover his his environment, really, until the victim came and we saw it from Tracy Edwards point of view.
Steven Prusakowski:
I noticed used a lot of close ups, and positioned the camera below neckline and from behind, avoiding showing his face. You really set the stage, there’s a fish tank where we see a dead fish floating and all these different elements of his of the room. Not enough for you to really get who this character is, but it does set a tone, it’s uncomfortable and anxious.
Carl Franklin:
Which was our intent. In fact, it kind of that sickly kind of yellowish green that we did for the for apartment, and the dead fish should evoke a smell. I was trying to get inside the sensory system. I even had more shots from inside there, but in the cut, they lost, which was fine, because it was it was made much more economical.
Steven Prusakowski:
You nailed it, because like I said, it was uncomfortable from the get go. It puts you in the shoes of his neighbors and the victims. When his potential victim mentions it stinks in there, it is like you can almost sense it, shifting the perspective. On the news you always hear the biggest details, he’s a murderer, he eats people and all that, but you take viewers deeper into it. It becomes visceral.
Carl Franklin:
That was the intent. Definitely.
Steven Prusakowski:
I was just curious how much you learned about the whole case and the and everything surrounding it. I did not watch it at first because I didn’t want to watch something glorifying a murder, I don’t want to see something that is disrespectful to the victims. But as you get deeper and deeper into it, you realize that this isn’t about him. This is about everybody who was affected. How much you knew about the case and how much you learned about it throughout this process.
Carl Franklin:
The only thing that I knew was what you were just saying initially was, because I remember when it was all happening, that they had arrested this guy who had been murdering people, and he had been eating them. I did not know that he was gay and that the victims were gay. I didn’t know the victims were minorities. I didn’t know anything about the police neglect in the case, or anything about his background. It’s not a subject matter that I wanted to delve into – the headlines were off putting enough that I didn’t want to delve deep enough into it and find out any of the gory details about what happened. But to me, once I started working on it, then I watched some documentaries, and then learning from Evan (star Evan Peters), of course, he had interesting stuff, because he had done a lot of research. The script was also pretty informative. My education process was during pre production and during the actual shooting about Jeffrey Dahmer, I didn’t really know much about him.
Steven Prusakowski:
Did you have goals in mind for what you want to say with this episode?
Carl Franklin:
Well, for this particular episode, what was important is, because of the amount of time that they were going to spend getting inside of him. It was important to basically give a sensory rendition of the experience to, in other words, to present the monster so that people would see what it was they were dealing with before we got in to the dissection of the world in which he lived in – the world that he was bringing people into – the world that he was disrupting, and the world he was brought up in – all of that. It was important that we understand, first off to make the statement, this is what this this is why we’re here, because this guy did this. Even though we didn’t actually go graphic with anything – the crime wasn’t committed, because the kid got away.
One of the components that almost is, I won’t say is as horrible as the physical destruction of a human being, is the fear that they go through. That’s one of the things that a serial killer plays with his fear. Basically, that’s what gives them their sense of power. They’re not really powerful because they actually are subject to their own inescapable desires. They’re really cursed in a lot of ways because their preoccupation is not human. I don’t think that the average person, that their desire or urge is to go out and destroy another human being. We know that that’s not the case. People live in all the time. There’s only a small number of these people who do this. And so it was important for us to set the stage and set the table of why we were here, what was this guy capable of, and then to get into what he actually did and why, et cetera.
Steven Prusakowski:
And when you you touched upon some of the colors used, the lighting, and definitely in the cinematography, all create this feeling of – especially once he has a potential victim in his place- of being trapped. Throughout this series, there’s these very tense moments that you just kind of want to back away from the TV because it doesn’t feel right. How did you create that feel? What was like your approach to that?
Carl Franklin:
Well, for the lighting Jason McCormick was my cinematographer. We talked about that, but he basically had some strong ideas about what that environment could look like, to get that sense of that sick kind of feeling that you want it to be palpable. That was one of the assignments, basically to create to get the audience drawn in a visceral way, in a sensory way, so that they are experiencing it, as opposed to just looking at it intellectually from a distance. That along with the production design, along with that little claustrophobic little room and the junk that was everywhere, and the various things that were that were in his apartment.
The fact that he had a dead fish in there was already kind of evoking that kind of cadaver rich, cadaver filled environment that his mind must have conjured up somehow. But the angles, we wanted to shift the perspective. The story kind of dictated the angles in the beginning. We didn’t want to adopt his point of view, we wanted to be cryptic. So we avoided showing who he was, showing his face, and giving in and humanizing him in the beginning. Then as the victim came in, as Tracy, the potential victim came in, then we began to see everything from his point of view. We kept it very subjective.
There’s a way you can shoot things, so that so that the subjects inside of the frame are of equal value. We tried to always make sure there was a dominance of one person of one over the other, or to see it from the point of view of the person who is in fear. All of that really was the story itself, the heightened jeopardy, as things got more intense as Dahmer was preparing to actually kill him, et cetera all of those things, actually informed how we were going to shoot it. What was the maximum emotional quotient that we could somehow relate to the audience of somehow get them to feel, you know, was was what we were looking for.
Steven Prusakowski:
And you have a long career in film and television, not only as an actor but also as a director and writer. On this project, you have this great ensemble to work with, but the tone is relentlessly dour. How does your experience in the industry prepare you at your role as a director? The series leaves very little room for any kind of levity to keep your cast focused. I would assume at times, it’s got to weigh in on some people, not everybody’s going to be affected. But I’m sure some people get hit by the gravity of what you’re presenting on screen. So how did you work your cast through that?
Carl Franklin:
The actors were strong in terms of they had their processes, how they worked. Evan, in particular, because his assignment was the strongest was, you know, he had the most heavy lifting to do and he also took the biggest risks in terms of emotionally where he had to go. Some of that was on him, and basically was just simply to try to be an ally, as we kind of plumb through that subtextual world. We had rehearsals before we started shooting, but the rehearsals really weren’t me getting up and setting up shots or blocking or any of that, in so much as it was a sitting at a table and discussing what those scenes were about, and where emotionally everything lived; so that we understood, so that we knew why we were doing a scene what was the value of that scene, and what were the workings what was the mechanism underneath? Especially having been an actor, you kind of know that you have to kind of live in that invisible world with them which they are going to manifest on screen.
But somehow to get into that underworld and have those discussions with them for them to feel like you’re speaking the same language with them. One of the things I think about a for an actor, the biggest obstacle is fear. You’re in front of a crew of 50, people, potentially, your work is going to be seen by millions, and you’re doing things that everybody else does in real life. And yet, you’re being trying to be convincing that you’re doing those things authentically. That creates a certain amount of tension, and you want actors to feel free enough to go with that first choice, that first one, that’s a little scary, that’s a little more risky, as opposed to them censoring themselves, and being afraid, that somehow what they’re thinking is not right.
You want them to go for it. You just want to create that environment where they feel comfortable enough and actually feel excited to do that. That’s the point. I mean, the I don’t try to get in infuse any humor in here – that would be inappropriate for this particular thing. If there wasn’t something already built into the script, then it wasn’t anything that we were going to try to infuse in it. We just simply wanted to try to understand moment by moment, what was going what should be going on in the scene, and to represent that somehow.
Steven Prusakowski:
It seems like that would weigh on you even just getting to the mindset and and creating this on the set this mood, and just everything about it is so heavy.
Carl Franklin:
Actually, Evan, who is a really gentle, very smart, very cool guy, he had to go through some emotional ups and downs with this thing, because he had to live with that for a few months. It was so not him, this character so he had to dig inside. You don’t ever want to get caught acting on camera where people can see the mechanism. That means to try to find whatever that seed of that character is in yourself, somehow. That’s a dangerous job. So the actors who have the courage to go there, we reap the benefits from it, but they take a chance.
Steven Prusakowski:
Every time Evan’s on screen, there’s an uneasy lingering feeling to it. Did he ever creep you out while you worked with him and he gets into that mode? Do you ever get those bad chills up your spine?
Carl Franklin:
No, because I knew who he was. you know. I spent time with him. And I knew what he was working toward. I was kind of in that space with him, so I understood what he was going through and recognized that he was delving into something. On camera I saw it, when I would watch it, when we were cutting, I thought ‘Wow, that’s so great.’ I mean, especially when he’s on the bed with the guy, and when they’re playing The Exorcist 3, and when things are starting to ramp up emotionally in his head, psychologically and emotionally. That’s when I really thought he was pretty creepy. But, I didn’t feel it when I was on the set I kind of knew that that’s what was happening.
Steven Prusakowski:
You have the advantage because you get to see the real person while you’re watching this come together. He disappears in this role, as cliche as it sounds. They all do, Richard Jenkins, Niecy Nash-Betts. Evan doesn’t pull back. Like I said, it was relentless. It’s just sets this unnatural and uninviting tone, but yet you’re captivated. So bravo to you, the actors, and the directors who were able to get that performance out there and deliver it on screen.
Carl Franklin:
Oh, thank you, thank you.
Steven Prusakowski:
Were there any unique challenges that came with this project?
Carl Franklin:
Um, unique challenges… Mainly because in television, and you know, that’s the thing about Netflix, which is great is that, it’s not really television, it’s kind of a hybrid of film and television. But oftentimes, the scripts have a tendency to be a little glib, on TV they’re more dialogue heavy. There’s a certain rhythm of dialogue that you think an audience might have grown accustomed to, at least from watching TV. Because this was so spare in dialogue, and the opportunity, it was really seducing me to play those silences, to stretch them, because that in the silences was where the tension lied, and where the where the danger was.
That was something that I hadn’t done in a while. I’ve done it in a film, but because it was television you kind of always looking over your shoulder, they’re going to cut this trim this down. I shot a lot of things and oners, you know where it was just one shot, with multi coverage inside of it. They didn’t have in some instances, the opportunity to cut certain things so I was concerned as to whether – you know, because we took a chance. Basically, we decided to go ahead with a rhythm that felt right, that felt scary, that felt appropriate, without necessarily feeling. ‘Oh, wow, but the audience is probably going to want this.’ We decided we’re going for what we feel it needs to be, and hopefully the audience will be into it. And fortunately, they were.
Carl Franklin:
You pulled it off. Do you gravitate toward these heavier, kind of grittier subject matters in your projects or do they gravitate to you?
Carl Franklin:
I don’t know, man, I always say I don’t have a sense of humor, you know? I think maybe it’s a combination. You kind of seek your own level, in some ways. Water seeks its own level, they always say. Maybe that’s me, because I was a history major in college. So I have a tendency when I work, even if it’s something that’s light, I’m still kind of deconstructing it sociologically; How much money does this character have? What can they afford? What is their lifestyle? What are they thinking? What are the things in their life that have brought them to this moment? Why would they behave this way, as opposed to another way? So, usually like the humor that is in any of the films or television that I’ve done, it’s kind of left handed humor, it’s kind of dark humor. I haven’t really done any of that presentational work in comedy. It doesn’t really call me.
Steven Prusakowski:
Let’s wrap up with an easy one. Three words to describe the episode you directed, ‘Bad Meat.’
Carl Franklin:
It. Is. Intense.
Steven Prusakowski:
That’s perfect. I love it. Thank you so much for taking time to speak to me today. I really appreciate it. Best of luck going forward.
Carl Franklin:
Thank you, man. Be cool.
Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is streaming exclusively on Netflix.
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