other in the eighties in lush, green Californiathe more I liked the idea of comparing them. There were also interesting similarities in how the communities reacted. Also, each murderer had an ''out of body' experience when the murder occurred, and neither remembered what had happened.
Your way of meditating on the two murders seems unusual, given the way murder is usually sensationalized in the media.
My idea wasn't to dwell on violent acts, but to focus on how people look at themselves when they commit violent acts, and how they perceive what happened later. That's more interesting to me.
Is the Gein case one you've followed?
and other films have kept that case alive.
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No, not really. I remember the jokes people told about Gein when I was fourteen. When something as sensational as cannibalism happens in your own backyard, the only way kids have to deal with itand adults too, I supposeis with humor. There were lots of Gein jokes.
I can relate to Protti. There have been moments in my life when I could do something like she did. And maybe I can enter Gein sometimes, too. That's frightening, but true. Our minds are capable of strange things.
One of the things that's interesting about Hitchcock is his awareness that both he and the viewer aren't so different from his murderers. In
we look through the peephole at Marian with Norman. And Hitchcock 'kills her' in the shower as much as 'mother' does. In both
and
you define yourself closely with criminals. In
you handwrite Bremer's diary. People who don't know that diary (and that's most people who see the film) probably assume it's your diary. In fact, about halfway through the film, when Bremer begins to focus on killing Nixon, the viewer wonders, 'Did Jim Benning spend some time following Nixon?'
Yes, especially since Bremer's from Milwaukee. He lived on the Southside; I lived on the Northside. But we both grew up in similar working-class neighborhoods.
In
there's a similar and maybe unconscious identification with Gein. One of the things we learn about Gein is that in the instances when he butchered people, he seems to have tried to become his mother, although he doesn't remember it (which is the element Hitchcock focused on in
of course). You use a woman to narrate the film. She becomes your alter ego, the way Gein's mother was his.
I hadn't thought about that. I've used a woman's voice for my voice in a number of films. I think I began doing that just to question gender and to explore how you hear stories differently if they're told by a man's voice or a woman's voice. Also, I don't like the sound of my own voice. And I want to distance myself from the personal things that I put into my films.
also points to the economic distance between rural Wisconsin (as it's portrayed in the film, it's on the skids: buildings are dilapidated, everything looks old) and suburban Orinda County, where even the prison looks like a condominium.
There's a Porsche out front.
The shots of the power lines in the Orinda County section and the noise they make seems like a metaphor for power of all kinds.
When I went back to film in Wisconsin in 1985, I wanted
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what I shot to look like 1957, and there was no trouble doing that. If you bring in some old cars, it looks like 1957, 1940, 1930. The actual store where the murder took place had been redone, so I didn't film that. Orinda County feels brand new.
There's a certain woodenness in the way the lines are delivered by the Gein and Protti characters. After our screening last night, the people from our Criminal Justice Program said that delivery was absolutely in keeping with the way they've seen people confess. Did you research that aspect of the film?
No. But I had a feel for it. I knew I was going to be shooting these close-ups and I wanted the language to be delivered matter-of-factly. I knew any little emotion would really show on the screen. By playing it down, I could play it up. So that was my direction to both actors. I think they did a wonderful job, and Rhonda [Bell] had never acted before!
