Max Winkler made his mark on the indie film festival scene with movies such as Ceremony and Flower, but he’s been bringing his cinematic sensibilities to long-form in the Ryan Murphy produced series Monster: Ed Gein on Netflix and Love Story on FX/Hulu about the JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette romance and tragedy.
On today’s Crew Call, Winkler shares with us how he broke into the Murphy-verse (they both shared an agent at CAA). Initially, Winkler directed on Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, however, he was looking to reteam with his Jungleland feature film lead Charlie Hunnam. Murphy knew the duo were hungering for a project and surprised them at dinner one night, pitching them Monster: Ed Gein.
Winkler bills Ed Geins as another type of love story, one between “a son and his mother.” Hunnam went full on method, finding a warbling accent for the isolated killer in the countryside (an inspiration for the killer antagonists in Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and losing a great deal of weight.
“We have a tremendous amount of trust for each other as two people who don’t trust a lot of people for whatever reason,” says Winkler.
“He worked so hard. He lost, I think, 40 pounds. And my job was just to give him the space to figure it out and to protect him, which was very easy because I loved what he was doing, and I was so moved by it, and I know what it costs him.”
“He’s really hard on himself, and his body and puts himself through tremendous cost when it comes time for him to take a job like that. So, by the end of it, he was withering away, and we were in Chicago. So f**king cold. He had no fat on him to keep him warm whatsoever, and not a lot of clothes.”
When it came to directing the first episode of Love Story, Murphy had to exit at the last minute and handed the New York City 1992 set pilot over to Winkler. When he arrived, Sarah Pidgeon had already landed the role of Bessette. However, Winkler was part of the search for JFK Jr. with Murphy, and producers Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson.
“When casting JFK Jr, it’s like you’re casting a movie star, basically, because they’re somebody who people want to sleep with and people want to have a beer with. And they can’t be too pretty and they can’t be too polished, and they can’t be too rough,” he explains.
“Paul (Anthony Kelly) came in and something made Ryan and Brad and Nina and I kind of just sit up in our chairs. He brought in this really shaggy service dog named Malcolm who travels with him everywhere.
“He had worked as a model, so he’s incredibly handsome in clothes. They just fall on his body in a very different way than they do on mine. And he just was unpretentious and real and just said the words without trying to be this thing,” he adds.
Winkler also chats about the next iteration of Monster: Lizzie Borden, and why he swapped indie filmmaking for episodic directing.
Listen below:
