David Fincher's serial killer chat 'em up MINDHUNTER

basically I want to watch this (loved Zodiac) but my partner is an automatic no on serial killer shit, and I'm squeamish enough myself these days to not necessarily want to spend 10 hours marinating in murder naturalism.

99% of “gore” is crime scene photographs. there’s no dramatization of the murders themselves vis flashbacks or anything - the horrors are mostly communicated through conversation

there is one v shocking moment in ep1 that is quite gory but passes by v quickly

It’s not very gory overall. There is a scene in the first episode with some brief gore but it’s not serial killer-related.

Apart from that it’s mostly just crime scene photos and graphic verbal descriptions of crimes.

*LOTS* of ookiness and creepy shit though.

X-post

yeah, and the crime scene photos are not lingered upon & are faintly colored or black & white
often by the time you realize what you are seeing it’s already off camera

def not for the faint hearted but nowhere near the gorefest you might expect

fincher himself has described the show as mainly being about conversations & that def bears out

perfect, thanks!

One of my favorite bits was the looks Anna Torv kept shooting at Groff during their first meeting when he'd interject. Close up as he writes in notebook: "BOOK?"

enjoying this so far but Brandy is otm here

Fincher: this is Debbie, she's a real human woman
Me: lmaoooo oh for sure man

— BranDIE Jensen (@BrandyLJensen) October 15, 2017

on put more simply Debbie is basically the Cool Girl from the Gone Girl rant

Otherwise this has been v enjoyable

*quickly crosses off “looking for my Debbie (watch Mindhunter!!)” from my dating profile*

great we've established that this drama contains fictional characters

idk man some characters resemble types of people you find out there in the world, some are more like narrative devices with legs

Debbie’s introductory scenes are silly maybe but she didn’t strike me as unrealistic past that?

I've been re-watching Fringe so it's mildly amusing to see Anna Torv play a Boston-based FBI consultant. Am glad she's getting regular work again too.

I'm about two-thirds in and this is pretty good! And despite the dour subject matter, it's genuinely funny at points - that one killer who couldn't stop crying, the seat-switching scene in the airplane, Holt McCallany in general.

yeah the quippy dialogue is good and I'm glad that they weren't afraid to allow some humor in -- for a show that's pretty tense it's also got a nice contrasting relaxed vibe about it

oh and the music cues are great. the Exile 'I Wanna Kiss You All Over' cue at the end of the shoe fetish episode was so good

I wanted to single out a really excellent shot, when Monte Rissell is talking about how it all could have been different for him if he'd stayed where he wanted to, and the camera tracks in on the back of his head. The combination of his words and the shot was inexplicably moving.

The episode, I think it’s the sixth or seventh, where it’s about the characters coming to terms with their new roles and we see a glimpse of their lives and the toll this is all taking and the ways they’re dealing with the work, was really well timed

i love how flat & deadeyed & sarcastic Ford is in the final episode, compared to his wide-eyed enthusiam in ep 1

oh and the music cues are great.

Eh I don't know... some of them are little too on-the-nose. "Psycho Killer" and "I Don't Like Mondays" come to mind.

"Psycho Killer" seemed pretty bad tbh

this show still rules

i like on the nose

*makes note on little pad*

POST

is this all fincher or is it one of those 'he sets the parameters in e01' deals where they bring in working tv directors for the remainder to ape his style

he directed 4 of the 10 eps

Asif Kapadia, at least, was an inspired choice.

idk man some characters resemble types of people you find out there in the world, some are more like narrative devices with legs

yeah i get that, i guess i didn't think that character is badly written so much as dormant. i'm only three episodes in and her scenes have been p well done and indicative of character imo but she doesn't do anything and hasn't got much purpose, so far. that feels different from a character who is a cipher or a plot device.

i watched one ep and her role seemed to be mainly to ensure that the show isn't literally all men which is.. laudable i guess as a gesture but hardly enough really

one of the leads is also a woman

she doesn't turn up til later though

fair enough.

this is a photo of fbi agents in 1977. note the shaggy hairstyles, the sideburns, the mustache. NOT NEARLY ENOUGH MUSTACHES IN THIS SHOW

https://mikemcclaughry.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/fbi_agents_raiding_cedars_complex_-_scientology.png

it is p amazing who the alarm systems dude with the moustache was. promises an interesting storyline.

not one with a conclusion anytime soon though...

"I've been re-watching Fringe so it's mildly amusing to see Anna Torv play a Boston-based FBI consultant. Am glad she's getting regular work again too."

I just got to ep 3 and was thinking I haven't seen in her anything since Fringe + she's ace!

period detail is definitely pretty half-hearted

in contrast The Deuce has impeccable period detail, but is unwatchable imo.

not one with a conclusion anytime soon though...

yeah am intrigued to see what they do with it.

i agree btw with people saying the rock hits are a bit on the nose, but i think the original score is great at times. some really interesting electronic type stuff, eg in the opening scene of ep 1.

still not totally sold on The Deuce but at the very least Maggie Gyllenhall is incredible in it

from what I saw in the first ep she is great in it, yeah.

but double fucking James Franco is not something I was looking forward to.

I think the lack of really accurate period details balanced with what seems (to us) to be really obvious musical cues are pretty indicative of where they wanted to spend money and how wide they're trying to cast the net to reel in audiences. Zodiac had the deep moviemaking budget and was strenuously period-appropriate, but it sure didn't pull in the audience.

I am enjoying @MINDHUNTER_ but their costumer should know that any self respecting male federal employee circa 1977 would wear a tie clip.

— Mary (@maryfduffy) October 14, 2017

otm

A lot of Kemper's dialogue is taken straight from this interview (or appears to be, assuming he didn't repeat himself a lot).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFfc151Zkg4

I pay so little attention to serial killer stuff that I was under the misapprehension that Kemper was a fictional killer, based on Ed Gein or a composite of other real killers or something. Holy shit, he was was for real.

Kemper is responsible for this quote (misattributed to Ed Gein in American Psycho)

“What do you think, now, when you see a pretty girl walking down the street? One side of me says, ‘Wow, what an attractive chick. I’d like to talk to her, date her.'The other side of me says, “I wonder how her head would look on a stick?’”

The two male leads (and maybe others) of the series seem to be a fictionalized split of FBI agent John Douglas's professional experience into multiple characters with personal details created to flesh out the cast. The actual interviews and most case details are pretty true to life.

it is p amazing who the alarm systems dude with the moustache was. promises an interesting storyline.

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Monday, October 16, 2017 12:58 PM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not one with a conclusion anytime soon though...

― Number None, Monday, October 16, 2017 1:03 PM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the manner in which they deploy this character, using him to open the show, is simple but truly stellar.

this hits the same right notes as Zodiac in that i think the most chilling thing about these types of crimes is the unknown, both in terms of who did and the fact they they're still in the wind and could be anywhere, but even after capture, after the fact, just trying to pin down an explicable reason as to why someone would do such a thing.

enjoying the fact that every time they cut to a Quantico establishing shot of some kind, there's automatic gunfire. foreshadowing the future of violence in america vs what occurs in the '70s and '80s? just a neat device?? idk, i like it.

I used to often work with lots of ADT employees on commercial installations, and still have ADT cups and pens in the house from my old days in the electrical industry. Doing fault-finding on massive alarm systems is enough to drive anyone to murder tbh! I'm only up to ep 3, but the pedantic + slightly off ADT guy cuts a really sinister figure alright.

Yeah Kemper is all too real and there are hours upon hours, possibly days/months of interview audio out there.

Brudos the shoe guy was a piece of work irl - maintained his innocence right to the end, just clogged the system with endless appeals & bullshit & never admitted to a single thing.

Speck was perfectly cast - from everything i’ve read, in person he was like a walking middle finger

I skipped a couple words but you get it

Started another re-watch for a future Zoom. Debbie, first episode: "Didn't I see you on Soul Train?"

I'm always kind of astonished at how much gets accomplished narratively in that first episode. It's a really deep and masterfully constructed hour.

Including how they get Tench in there sideways, standing in the wings listening to that one guy lecture.

The BTK story didn't seem so unresolved to me this time. I think somewhere on this thread I misremembered how it finished: BTK burning stuff ended S1, not S2. It's still odd how S2 starts like they're going full tilt on BTK and then (with a couple of quick, high-profile detours) switch over to Atlanta midway. I've never read an account of what exactly happened, but it does feel like Fincher got pulled away by Mank or whatever and handed everything over to Carl Franklin. He does an excellent job on Atlanta (returning the show to some striking musical cues, too), so they caught a break there. Anyway, this time it felt more like bringing BTK to a close would have been too pat; it ends like it probably should, with the unsettling reality that these people will always be out there, somewhere.

The one thing I think they inarguably let slip away is Carr.

My friend and I are down to nine more of these: a Zoomcast on the music in Mindhunter (mostly) and My Friend Dahmer (a little bit).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9H-lQe-8sk

Damn, this is great.

Watching S1E2, and, above all else, I’m just so happy that Holt McCallany got to play a role like this.

Sorry, I meant S1E5

I had no idea he'd been around for so long till I looked at his IMDB page. He's in one of my favourite movies, Casualties of War; must be a small part, not listed on the main cast page.

i got a little bit of my Mindhunter jones from the Apple series Black Bird, which is another true crime serial killer profiling-type story. Similarly not exploitative, the only violence onscreen is during a prison riot when it's visited upon some prisoners and a couple of vv unlucky guards. It's a bit more pulpy but I thought it was very good. It features one of Ray Liotta's final performances and he's tough to watch, knowing what happens IRL soon and how his character's body is also failing him. Taron Egerton is pretty exceptional in the lead role, Paul Walter Hauser even better as real-life killer Larry Hall.

yeah Black Bird was a+
Hauser was so good! i only knew him from comedy roles before that

Greg Kinnear, also good! His early scenes, interrogating Hall and faced with the inept local cops, were vv Mindhuntery.

yeah definitely!