SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses plot developments from “Monster: The Ed Gein Story,” currently streaming on Netflix.
After seasons profiling Jeffrey Dahmer and Lyle and Erik Menendez, fans of Netflix’s anthology series “Monster” are now binge-watching the just-released third season profiling serial killer Ed Gein. Played by Charlie Hunnam, Gein is haunted by his mother Augusta (Laurie Metcalf), egged on by a dark love interest, Adeline (Suzanna Son) and interacts with victims like Bernice (Lesley Manville) and Evelyn (Addison Rae). Meanwhile, he daydreams about the work of Nazi Ilse Koch (Vicky Krieps), who was rumored to flay Jewish victims and turn their skin into objects like lampshades. Interspersed with these stories is the development of horror hits like “Psycho” and “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” which were inspired by Gein.
All of this could fall apart in less capable hands, but Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan were showrunners on the season, which was entirely written by Brennan. Max Winkler is an executive producer this season and directed six of the eight episodes. A veteran of the Murphy-verse, Winkler also worked on “The Watcher,” “American Horror Story,” “American Horror Stories,” “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans” and more. In fact, 48 hours after he spoke to Variety, he was headed off to work on the next season of “Monster,” starring Ella Beatty as Lizzie Borden.
Winkler broke down many burning questions about “Monster: The Ed Gein Story,” including going in-depth about that fourth-wall-breaking moment, nailing the emotional final scene and, of course, the “All That Jazz”-inspired musical number.
There are so many storylines in this series, between Ed’s murders, Hollywood’s interpretations of him, Ed’s fantasies and more. How did you work with your DP and team to make sure that everything looked appropriate but also blended together as a cohesive whole?
The whole thing started with Ryan taking Charlie and me through the entire vision of what he wanted the show to be and feel like, and really asking the question, “Who is the monster?” Is it the American healthcare system? Is it his mother, Augusta Gein? Is it Ed Gein? Is it Ilse Koch? Is it the filmmakers who then got inspired by this? Is it the artists who made the comic books fetishizing Ilse Koch? Is it the filmmakers who then took what Ed Gein did, and then Hitchcock who put it into pop culture and changed movies and entertainment forever? We’re still trying to put it back in the box now, as you see people online sharing videos of Charlie Kirk getting shot, just that being sent to you on Twitter without any warning. It’s so big and heady, but it was all in Ryan and Ian’s heads from the very get-go.
So [cinematographer] Michael Bauman and I were able to really chart out the murders exactly, especially the murders that are pop-culture inspired; they were always supposed to feel larger than life and always fetishized and real. When we redid the “Psycho” shower scene, it was always supposed to be Hollywood’s version of what it actually is. Seeing Janet Leigh get killed is one thing, but actually what it felt like to put a brutally murdered woman on film screens and how people reacted to that, and how deeply upsetting it was, and how shocking it was then, and how desensitized we are now … we tried to give everything a visual language.
[Cinematographer] Carolina Costa, with whom I’d done my movie “Flower,” and Ian did the “Texas Chain Saw” stuff. They had a very specific independent 16 mm film inspiration for all the Texas stuff. And Bauman and I were really inspired by, weirdly, “Capote,” the movie. In that, the isolation is a monster. This poor man, who had undiagnosed schizophrenia in these giant sweeping landscapes with just the wind and frozen corn, and no one to talk to, an abusive mother, a brother who’s out on the lam. Those landscapes from “Days of Heaven” and “Capote” were really important to us, just feeling the vastness of how small he is, and yet when you’re in his head, how loud his brain is.
There are so many just dark moments for the actors. What is the best way you, as a director, are able to help them on the days when they have their most intense scenes?
For example, with Charlie’s scene where he finally gets his diagnosis in Episode 7, he was really worried about that scene. We were coming towards the end of our production, and Charlie lost maybe 40 pounds for this part, and he wasn’t eating. He was really in his head, and he was starting to not sleep a lot. I think we were all having a lump in our throat, feeling like this was going to be over, and wondering if we got it. When that part came, my instinct was to start on Charlie’s coverage, and that we would never need a wide — let’s just play it all on Charlie’s face. I asked him if he was ready for that, and he said, “Yes.” He did the take that’s in the show, and I said, “I saw what he went through to get there right before we started shooting, and while it happened, I was in the room there just watching, holding my knees with a tiny monitor, and I had chills.” And I said, “Cut,” and he was still really feeling emotional. And I came over and I just pat him on the back and said, “We don’t need to go again if it’s okay with you.” And he said, “Okay.” So that was it. Anyone would know that you had gotten it in that moment, no matter who you are, and not having to say, “We have to go again,” just because in my head, “We have to go again” is the best thing I could have done, and just trust the actor.
Are there any certain scenes or parts of the show that struck you as especially difficult to shoot?
Everything that happened in the snow in Chicago in the coldest few days of the year. I cannot believe the actors’ faces even moved. It was -16 degrees. We needed snow. It didn’t look like it was going to snow, and we couldn’t afford to cover everything in snow with visual effects or with a snow machine. That Sunday it snowed, and we started shooting that Monday at 6:30 in the morning, and it gave us everything we needed.
I was really happy with what we got to with the emotions in the finale, the sort of “All That Jazz” moment where he’s confronted with what he’s wrought. All Ed Gein ever wanted was for his mother to be proud of him, and to get there was difficult. We shot that all in one day. That was like a 17- or an 18-hour day. By the end of it, when we said cut, everyone just broke because it was our second-to-last day of shooting in Chicago.
Do you think about empathy differently after working on this project?
I think about a guy like Ed Gein, who has just always been a weirdo, a monster, a freak. And what Ryan is interested in, which is fascinating, is, “Well, how did they get to be that way? Are people born evil?” Since the beginning of time, humans have killed people, and humans have done evil shit. We’re looking at it today in the news all the time. We look at the images of bodies in the newspaper, in the pilot — just bodies stacked upon bodies stacked upon bodies. He says, “They look like wood.”
The dehumanization of human beings is where we get into real trouble, and we stop forgetting that every single life is important. Now, I have a harder time having empathy for Vicky’s character. I have a harder time having empathy for Laurie Metcalf’s character. But I did have empathy for Ed Gein when I did research and understood the kind of abuse he had endured, the generational trauma he had endured, and how lonely it must feel to have these voices in your head and not know where they’re coming from or who to talk to about it.
What was it like reimagining some of Hollywood’s most iconic moments, like the shower scene from “Psycho”?
We never tried to paint them by numbers. We tried to put our own spin on it. The shower scene is significantly more brutal because our perspective of it is via Hitchcock, the monster for bringing this into movies that were not like that before. So I loved those sets. I loved the young actor playing Anthony Perkins, Joey Pollari, who I think is incredible. He himself felt like a monster because he had these feelings of being a homosexual and didn’t know who to talk to about it, and his own therapist told him that he should get a lobotomy. I have a very big affinity for old backlot movies, so getting to shoot those … anytime you get to shoot a bunch of guys in gladiator costumes, with them walking around taking a lunch break and smoking a cigarette, is a great day of work.
Could you break down Ed’s breaking the fourth wall moment when he talks to the audience?
With the invention of the television, it’s when Charlie looks in the camera at the Anthony Perkins scene and says, “You’re the one who can’t look away.” He’s turning it on the viewer and saying, “Are we the monsters because we’re watching this?” I know we are because we’re making it. But our point of view is it’s the monetization and fetishization of these really fucked up people, and it’s really heady.
How did you develop the very end of the series?
The very last shot of the whole show, with them on the porch, was the very last thing we shot, and I had no idea we were going to do it. We were doing little bits and bobs back in L.A. because we missed some things when we went off to Chicago. I don’t know where it came from, but I just said, “Let’s go onto the porch.” And I just knew that “Only a mother could love you” should be the last line of the series, because it’s just a whole “Rosebud” for why Ed did what he did in our version. And we didn’t know we were going to do it. Michael Bauman, who’s a literal genius and the DP who just shot “One Battle After Another,” made that morning light that was all on a stage. I just said, “I want that line and I’ll tell you when to say it, Laurie.” Props weren’t prepared, but we made them some lemonade, gave her something to knit — I think that was actually something she knitted that she had brought from home.
As far as our “All That Jazz” moment, it’s one of my favorite movies of all time. What the finale asks is, “All right, so maybe Ed was troubled, and he’s not purely evil. But here’s what it brought.” By introducing Ted Bundy, he was somebody that all killers could agree was pure evil: No motive, no dark backstory, literally horrible. We really wanted to show what pure evil looked like. We shot that in a totally different way with no music, really dark. I just always laughed when he’s having that dream sequence and he’s seeing all those people and Charles Manson’s like, “We got Bundy, fucker!” These guys are so fucked up, but Ted Bundy is so fucked up that he’s not chill with them.
The end was that we had one choreographer from Chicago. We knew what the song was going to be, and everyone was very tired. It was the very end of our shoot. It was Charlie’s birthday, just by circumstance. It was just a wild, wild day that was probably the longest day of shooting I’ve ever had. And credit to our line producer, Louise Shore, whose head looked like it was about to explode, but she knew that we needed to get it right. We just kept going and made sure we got hotels for everybody next to the set so people could just sleep there, and we just kept shooting until we got it right.
This interview has been edited and condensed.