I am highlighting this entry, originally published on Wonders in the Dark in December 2011, for the Anniversary Archive series. Comments, sharing, bookmarks, and recommendations are welcome on the original piece, also linked after the intro.
In case you missed it, yesterday's entry was a review of "The Godfather" and "The Godfather Part II".
What does a serial killer do when he's not killing? In M.O., first-time feature director Mitch Rouse hopes to answer that question, taking a neorealist/documentary approach to the daily life of a killer. His influences include the work of the Dardennes, traditional neorealism, and the new crop of young filmmakers shooting in the neorealist tradition. His subject, however, will be quite different from theirs. The following conversation (as you'll see, not all of my questions were short!) focuses on the themes Mitch hopes to explore and the stylistic approaches he plans to employ; it also addresses some of the practical aspects of this venture. M.O. will be financed via a Kickstarter campaign, which is going on right now (Kickstarter is a website set up to promote funding through multiple donors).
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Hi Mitch, hope all is well. I know you were out this afternoon - were you working on anything related to M.O.? How much time does this project take up for you these days?I was actually working at my full-time job today. I edit for a living, so all of the work I do for M.O. is done in my free time. I usually spend a least two or three hours a night working on the film, whether I'm revising the script, coordinating schedules with actors, or otherwise getting things ready for production. We're scheduled to start principal photography in six weeks, so we're right in the middle of pre-production and we have a lot to do before that can happen.
In a few words, how would you introduce people to this film, your intent behind, and the process for creating it?
It's tough to be concise! But I'll give it a try:
M.O. is a realistic look at the life of a serial killer. The main character in the film is a seemingly average, ordinary guy. He's married, he has a daughter, and he has a job and a house like any middle-class family. But in secret, he's a pathological killer. The intent behind this film is to treat this subject matter without sensation and to leave viewers asking more questions than they came into the film with. On my end, I wanted to make a film that addresses questions I've never seen answered in a film before. Questions such as: What does a serial killer do before and after a murder? How does he plan a murder and then live as if everything is normal, and that he hasn't committed a terrible crime? How does the family of a serial killer not know what he's up to?
The process for creating this film so far has been for me to put myself into this character's shoes. So I've had to imagine what I would do if I had just committed a murder, and then driven home and had dinner with my family as if it were just a regular day. Rather than simply studying the psychology of serial killers, I asked myself what they do when they aren't killing and what their everyday habits are. Do they watch TV like everyone else? Do they spend time with their families? In the main character of M.O.'s case, what is his relationship with his wife like? How does he treat his daughter? So I wanted to know how this character attempts to live like a regular person, and not simply what he does when he's in the process of committing a murder.