WRITING MINDHUNTER

Mindhunter is the story of two guys. This takes place in the 1970’s; late
1970’s/early 1980’s, two guys who are FBI agents, and who develop the
PSU/BAU, so they are at the very beginning of using psychology as a way of
figuring out how the criminal mind works. So this is really not number one area
of expertise. I just never woke up in early morning and went, “I want to write
about serial killers.” I am not interested in knowing how somebody cuts up
somebody and puts them in a garbage can. And also—the idea of writing police
people when I have never been a police person, was a thing. So, it was about
finding what would make me be the best writer I could be so that I was the best
tool for David. For me to be something that he can use to unlock doors. It was,
“Okay I have got Holden and he is like ‘all about Holden.’ And I have got Tench
and he is an older guy who is married. So what do I relate to?” I can relate to
Holden because he is just curious. Holden is curious, he will do anything to fill
“what if?” And, Tench is all about, “Look, let’s do it this way.” And I know that
for me== I know both of those things. I know all about, “Oh God, how exciting
‘what if?’” and I know all about, “No let’s do that,” so I found those pieces with
them. And then with the serial killers that I wrote, it was about finding the
humanity in them. Not going into all the–“Oh when they were a child they were
beaten up, and therefore they cut their mother’s head off.” But, the thing of
being neglected, or being lonely, or having a way of seeing the world that
nobody else sees, “I see a mosaic when I look at the table, I like to kill animals,”
it is the same thing, I mean kind of sort of. And then also finding those things of;
where does somebody want to control? For me, it was about finding that
common ground. I am reminded of the line from Tropic Thunder, “Never go full
retard,” and in a way you never want to go full psycho either, right? It is always
about finding the piece of character in you. And I think this relates to an idea
that is misused a lot in screenwriting, which is this idea of archetypes– the idea
of archetypes being labels. If you read any of the Hero’s Journey stuff or any of
the disciples of the Hero’s Journey stuff, you know everyone has got a different
name for the “Threshold Guardian,” and everybody has a different name for the
“Terrible Father” or the “Emotional Mother,” everyone has got a different name
for that. But the idea of archetypes actually come from Jung, and it comes from
the idea that we can all tap into the collective unconscious. That we, as Walt
Whitman says, “contain multitudes.” And the idea is that you can actually step
into a serial killer, not by asking “what part of me is a serial killer?” but “What
part of me is the pain in them? Or what part of me is the beauty in them?” And
you don’t need a name for that. You just have to ask yourself “How do I pull this
little piece out of me and find a way to that character? I think it is a great place
to begin a discussion about one of things you were telling us about Fincher,
“Send me 120 pages, I don’t care for a 40-minute episode, or an hour long
episode.” You know, oftentimes as writers we don’t give ourselves that freedom.
A lot of screenwriting classes aren’t taught by screenwriters, and so you get
taught about the final product, but not the path to get there. My writers will
come to my beginning class and be like, “Well you know, I have to hit my Inciting
Incident by page 10.” But, when you work with the real masters, people like
Fincher; they know that this is a process that needs to breathe. In a way, your
early draft is like a form of research. And I think that is kind of what you were
talking about– is that you do the research where you go to the roofs or look at
pictures of the roofs or talk to the roof runners. You do the research where you
are imagining it in your mind and imagining how it needs to feel– before you
have actually articulated each moment. You do the research of writing the bad
draft of the scene or the long draft of the scene and just kind of sitting in the
scene to find that one line that you need before you start typing it up perfectly.
And then, there is another side of it, which is the imaginative research, right?
And you came out of that onto the Mindhunter project and started writing really
fast. So, what was it like having to write these serial killers without getting that
full research period that most of people get? Because, a lot of these are based
on real people, right? They are all based on real people. So, the outline I was
given, and the assignment I was given, had scenes that were interviews with
serial killers—so it has these elements; it has elements of personal story about
each of the characters, it has elements of them prepping for interviews, them
doing the interviews, and post interviews. And, when I landed on the ground, I
knew that I was going to have to do research on the serial killers that I had been
assigned. Because, what David had said was, “We need based in reality, I don’t
want any pretend, so you better know your stuff, and you had better write from
truth about their true lives. And, I want to discover something that I didn’t know
about these serial killers.” Now, he has done a lot of research because it is his
show about serial killers, and he is the one who has chosen the serial killers. So,
it is like, “Wow how do I find something that David Fincher doesn’t know?” So,
based on that, I knew I was going to need time to do research. And, we had to–
within three weeks–turn in draft of this episode. So, what I said to him was,
“Look, I am going to do the personal stories first, because that way I can find out
about the characters, I will know about the characters and who they are by the
time I get to the interview. And that means that I can do the research while doing
the characters. And because we have such a short turn around, as opposed to
waiting till I have a full script, I am going to give you the scenes, the personal
scenes, ahead so that you can read them, and you can give me notes on them,
so that I can fix your notes while I am doing the interviews.” And then, I did the
research. The thing that was tricky for me in doing the interviews was that–
because this is a period piece, and my serial killer was an extremely well known
serial killer, I had to, in my head, learn everything there was to know about that
serial killer up to 1981. And I needed to make sure that in my head, I didn’t know
anything that happened after 1981. And, because it is about the psychology of
why these people do what they do, I needed to also know everything that they
knew about psychology up to 1981, but nothing about psychology or the science
of the mind after 1981. So that was part of the first step. And then, the second
step was watching video– any video that existed of that serial killer– because of
the mannerisms and the delivery. Because for me, the music of how the voice
sounds, and how they deliver a language, and how they physically act, is one of
the ways that I can get inside a character. And then, reading transcripts of trials,
looking at interviews, reading any other press. And then looking for the weird
piece of information that would be the one weird piece of information that
David Fincher didn’t find, and I was praying that I find it, I was like “Oh my G-d,
give me something, anything.” And luckily enough, I found it. And when I found
it and I told him about it he was like, “Oh my G-d that is great, send me the
article, let’s include it.” So, I finished the first pass on the interview. I wrote the
interview first, and then I went back and wrote the pre-interview because now
I knew what they were going to talk about. So, I knew what they wanted to know
from the interview, knew what the question they would ask, and then in the
post I knew what kind of answer they would give. And, one of the other things
that David said about what he wanted was, “I don’t want these people to come
to a resolution too early on in the process… this isn’t standard TV, I don’t want
TV writing, I want them to come away with, ‘okay, we’ve learned this next thing
and I think this is true, and maybe it is true, so let’s add it to the book because
we think it is true, let’s add it to our manual for how the FBI is going to track
down serial killers.’” And that to me was fascinating. The thing that he said to
me that was like my little click into David Fincher’s mind was, “I want to see all
the things that they tell you not to write about.” And that was like a whole,
“Wow now I get to spend the time finding,” which we are never given, we are
never given, not as directors, not as actors, not as writers. You know we are told,
here is the information– And it is like, mm, mm, no, not if you are working with
David Fincher. There is so much bad information out there about what you are
supposed to do. My students ask me all the time, “Does it always have to follow
the rules?” Any time somebody says “always” to you, you know they are lying to
you. Because at the end of the day, this is art. And at the end of the day the thing
that is going to distinguish you is the same thing that distinguishes Fincher, the
same thing that distinguishes Pamela, which is that they aren’t playing by the
same rules that everybody else is using. If you do that, then you are going to end
up writing the same crap everybody else is writing. It is about breaking those
rules. And even the concept of Mindhunter breaks those rules– writing interview
scenes, that is the “no, no” of all “no, no’s,” right? Like there is nothing harder
to do than write an interview scene. Can you talk a little bit about how do you
find structure underneath an interview? How did you make those interviews
move, as opposed to just being informational? I treated them as their own little
movies. So there were acts, and then—I don’t want to say too much about this
one because it is specific—but, it depended. To me it is like building a car, I
guess– and I have never built a car. But, I have fantasized about somebody else
building a car. And you are building a car and you are using a wrench and
something comes up along the way and you put the wrench down and you pick
up the screwdriver and then put the screwdriver down and you pick the wrench
up again. And it is kind of to me the same thing in terms of the tools of writing.
So, I started by knowing that here is the central question I am going to use– they
are going to learn about who is responsible, how much responsibility somebody
is going to take about something. And that is what they are going to take away.
I don’t know what they are going to take away about responsibility yet. But that
gave me a field of play, and then I went back and I looked at all the research on
the serial killer and I was like, “Okay, write the scene from the point of view of
the serial killer.” So, I wrote it from– he walks in, he tries to take control of the
room, this is the stuff he wants to say, this is the way he wants to act– and I
finished the scene from his point of view. And then I went back and I rewrote it
from each of the other characters: Holden’s character and then from Tench’s
character. And to me, by writing it those three ways– that is how I found the
want of it. Because, I think if I had tried to do it just cohesively as a whole thing–
serial killers play a freaking game. Like I am so sad that I am kind of an expert on
serial killers at this point, it is really not anything I thought I would ever be a
semi-pretender expert on. So they are playing their own game, and their game
isn’t necessarily a chess game, and the guys who are with the FBI maybe are
playing a chess game. So you’ve got people playing different games in the room.
Yeah, I love that answer, because it connects it back to that idea of want, right?
And back to that idea of structure. That it isn’t about the information that comes
out, it is about the games that the characters are playing with each other. It isn’t
about the informational transaction in the interview; it is about the emotional
transaction between the characters. And the idea that every character actually
thinks that they are your main character, which is why you have to really be able
to step into each of those points of view. And I think that is one of the things
that gives your work sort of feeling of richness, is just that incredible amount of
empathy.