This month, we bring you a narrative feature. We're getting into Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. Aaron Lammer of the Longform podcasts sits down with the film's director Joe Berlinger. Fun fact: Joe also directed the Ted Bundy documentary, Conversations With A Killer, which we discussed in a previous episode. Aaron and Joe dive into both the doc and the film, and how both jobs came to land on Joe.
This month, we bring you a narrative feature. We're getting into Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. Aaron Lammer of the Longform podcasts sits down with the film's director Joe Berlinger. Fun fact: Joe also directed the Ted Bundy documentary, Conversations With A Killer, which we discussed in a previous episode. Aaron and Joe dive into both the doc and the film, and how both jobs came to land on Joe.
Female: Welcome to You Can’t Make This Up, a companion podcast from Netflix.
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Rae: I’m Rae Votta and I’m hosting this week’s episode. Here on You Can’t Make This Up, we go behind the scenes of Netflix original true-crime stores with special guests. This week, we’re bringing you Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. This much anticipated film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and it stars Zac Efron as the serial killer, Ted Bundy. Today, we’re speaking with the film’s director, Joe Berlinger. Not only did Joe direct this feature film about Ted Bundy, he also directed the Netflix original four-part docu-series, Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. Back in February, we interviewed the author of the book that series is based on—but don’t worry, Joe gets into both the series and the film in this month’s episode. And here to chat with Joe is Aaron Lammer, one of the hosts of the podcast, Longform. And now, here’s Aaron and Joe.
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Aaron: Do you remember the events of this Bundy case? Like, do you remember reading about it in real-time, in newspapers and that kind of stuff?
Joe: I remember being captivated by the trial itself. And in fact, you know, one of the reasons that I wanted to do both of these projects, you know, Conversations With a Killer and then the scripted movie, Extremely Wicked, is that trial really made an impression on me, because it was the first time that cameras were allowed in a courtroom. And I remember back then being fascinated by the coverage. And 25 years into my filmmaking career, as someone who has spent a lot of time doing crime, I kind of look at the Bundy trial as the big bang of our current obsession, our current fascination with true crime, because that was the first time cameras were ever let in the courtroom. And to me, that’s a very watershed event in the history of the American legal system, as well as a very important moment in the history of true crime, because for the first time ever, Americans could sit in their living room, like me when I was a teenager, and watch serial murder and serial rape as live entertainment. And I think that was the—it’s not the only event—I mean, Truman Capote writing In Cold Blood was, you know, obviously a big event in the history of true crime—but I think our current obsession with true crime really can be traced back to a few key moments. And I think Bundy was one of them, that Bundy trial.
Aaron: Is there, like, a conflicted feeling you have as a documentarian where you’re, like, this is kind of horrific, there’s cameras on the courtroom, but wow, this footage is going to be great when someone makes a movie about this in 20 years?
Joe: I do have very conflicted feelings about the whole—and I don’t think there’s an easy answer to the whole issue of cameras in the courtroom. For example, you know, I think I’m best known for the Paradise Lost trilogy that Bruce Sinofsky and I made, and, I mean, I don’t want this to sound boastful, I don’t—but you asked me the question, I mean, but clearly, Damien Echols would be dead if cameras weren’t allowed in the courtroom and if we hadn’t made Paradise Lost. I think that was a good use of cameras in the courtroom, a good use of filmmakers covering a story. I mean, that’s the thing, you know, I’ve been called a true crime pioneer, whatever that means. I like the pioneer part. The true crime part kind of makes me wince a little bit, because true crime, that phrase true crime, has, you know, I think—for many people, it conjures up the image that we’re all wallowing in the misery of others for purely entertainment purposes and we’re exploiting victims in the worst moment of their life for pure entertainment purposes—and some of that stuff does. There’s some shows—some stuff out there that’s just pure, you know, exercise in exploitation. I would like to think the word I do, you know, it has some element of social justice to it, whether it’s shining a light on wrongful convictions, advocating for criminal justice reform, which a number of my television shows have done and what I do personally when I’m not making films—I’m involved in these issues. You know, I think that I choose subjects that allow me to make some kind of social commentary and even with this, you know, my focus on Bundy, you know, I made this movie and the docu-series, really for a younger generation who does not know Bundy, and for whom the lessons of Bundy can’t be overstated—which is just because somebody looks and acts a certain way, it doesn’t mean you should trust them. And I think that’s an important message for people. So for me, the attraction of Bundy was to provide some kind of social commentary about our obsession with true crime, social commentary about, you know, the nature of evil, those kinds of things. You know, the first thing I did before I did either of these projects, I called my daughters up—I have two college-aged daughters, very bright young women, and I asked them, “Do you know who Ted Bundy is?” And they did not. And they asked some friends and they came back to me and said, “You know, well, a few people knew he was a killer or serial killer, but none of us really know much about him.” And that to me, suggested that now is the time to tell the story again, for that demographic, for that audience, which is why casting Zac Efron for me was the perfect choice. I mean, he was my first choice and luckily he said yes. But for a certain demographic of mainly young women, but men and women, for a certain demographic, Zac is a guy who is just beloved because of his image, who can do no wrong, who people just blindly trust. And to take that teen heartthrob image and turn it on its head and have that be a vehicle for the audience to experience what goes on when you’re being seduced by somebody who is capable of evil—to me, it just gave a real physical way to allow that to happen. We’re portraying the experience of how Bundy was able to gaslight people. And who better than somebody who, A, is a terrific actor and can do the role, and B, somebody who means so much to a certain demographic, so that they can have the experience of liking the character throughout much of the movie? And then when the movie gets dark, and by the end of the movie when Liz, played by Lily Collins, confronts him at the end in that very dramatic final scene on death row—don’t want to give too much away—but when Liz confronts Ted and holds him accountable, which is important in this era of accountability—we had to have the character hold Ted responsible, admit to what he’s done—obviously Liz finally, emotionally realizes the horrible person she’s been living with, and she feels disgusted and betrayed. I want the audience to feel that same, you know, to have an empathetic experience of feeling that same level of disgust and betrayal. I literally want the audience to say to themselves, oh, man, I was liking this character. Even though intellectually I knew it was Ted Bundy, I was liking this character and rooting for their relationship, and now I’m disgusted with myself for even feeling that way, because this is a guy who does terrible evil. But now I understand how one can become seduced by a psychopath.
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Aaron: How did you think about all of the Bundy world that existed before your projects that other people had created this media, which had created some of these appearances that you are addressing in the film?
Joe: Yeah, well, I wanted to use real archival footage in the movie for a couple of reasons—one is, it is a self-reflexive comment on how Bundy, because he was a white male of—in the patriarchal 70’s and, you know, kind of white privileged guy, who was allowed to literally get away with murder—people thought that, you know, he could do no wrong because of how he looked and acted. He was given privileges in the courtroom that are unimaginable. The end of the movie, John Malkovich who plays Judge Edward Cowart, is quoting from actual court footage.
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Joe: This is a convicted serial rapist and murderer who’s getting the death sentence, and he’s taking time to make Bundy feel good about his life and to say, you know, I have no animosity towards you—if that was a person of color, he’d be in an orange jumpsuit, you know, wrapped in chains, and the judge would not be, I think, so kind. here has been a misperception that the movie is just the POV of Lily Collins or—the Liz character. The movie is intended to give the experience of what everybody, not just Elizabeth Kloepfer experienced, because Bundy held such—was so able to fool everyone around him, including the American media. The American media kind of made him into a folk hero. And we’re commenting on that. Bundy fooled the judicial system. I mean, he’s a guy who should have been—had much more strict security, and because of the lax security he, he escaped twice. I think he made a mockery out of that courtroom by how he conducted himself. And he was given tremendous latitude to make a mockery out of the proceedings by the judge. He represented himself, which is, I think, a questionable decision. He was allowed to cross-examine victims who survived, he was allowed to cross-examine eyewitnesses. Could you imagine being somebody who escaped the clutches, like, Kathy Kleiner, then having to suffer the indignity of being cross-examined by your murderer? I mean, again, if this was a person of color, this never would have happened that way. So the use of real footage was very important, to kind of make a self-reflexive comment about all of this—you know, pointing the finger at people like me as well, because I’m making a film about it. So it’s very—so I’m very aware that, you know, we are continuing to, you know, tell the story of somebody who did terrible things, but I hope that by doing it through this point-of-view, we understand how people who are psychopaths seduce us. Because I think, you know, you know, we want to think that serial killers are these social misfits, these weird-looking people who exist on the periphery of society. Because I think that somehow implies that we can easily identify them and therefore avoid the fate of becoming a victim of a psychopath. But that’s not how evil works. In my experience in covering crime for 25 years, it’s the people we least expect, and most often trust, who do the terrible things. It’s not the two-dimensional monster out there. So I wanted to create a three-dimensional portrait of a human being, not to give him a pass, just the opposite—to understand that these aren’t people that live on the edges of society, these are, you know, people who you, as Bundy himself says, you know, like, the killers don’t come out of the shadows with long fangs and saliva dripping off their chin. They’re your brother, your father, your—you know, somebody you worked with, somebody you admired. These are the people who do evil in the world. And, you know, that’s the focus of the film—is when the killer is integrating himself into society, as opposed to making a film about when the killer kills. We’ve seen a million movies, great ones, about when the killer kills with the escalating body count, you know, and the police procedural of them tracking down the killer. And by the end of the movie they’ve caught the killer. You know, that’s been done a ton. What hasn’t been done is seeing, seeing how somebody like Bundy can gaslight, not just his girlfriend of seven years who thought he was a terrific guy, not just her daughter from a previous relationship who looked at Bundy as a father figure, but the American media that just kind of made him into a perverse hero, and the judicial system who he basically conned.
Aaron: When you were adapting—I mean, as a primarily, documentarian, how did you treat truth in this narrative film? Like, how far were you willing to bend the actual Bundy story in terms of what’s coming out of peoples’ mouth and core and things that are documented—like, how did you, like, you know, there’s almost laws to it in non-fiction about, sort of, like, how it works. And then it’s a free-for-all. How did you treat that?
Joe: Yeah, well, obviously as a documentarian, you know, there’s certain aspects of truth you always want to adhere to. But, look, all filmmaking is inherently subjective. So for me, what’s most important is the emotional truth. And so the emotional truth of this story was something I, you know, constantly wanted to make sure we were staying on track for. You know, the beauty of documentary is that you can cover a lot of storytelling in a relatively short amount of time. You know, like, there’s a lot of storytelling you can do in a two-hour documentary, but narrative has to fall into certain rules of narrative structure and, you know, so you actually—as strange as this may sound, you have less storytelling time, I think, in a scripted movie than you do in an unscripted movie. There’s less information you can convey, so…
Aaron: I think you proved that, because it took four episodes to get through the story and documentary—and how long’s the movie, 110 minutes?
Joe: Right, right, exactly. So there’s certain, certain decisions you have to make. For example, Liz’s other love interest in the movie, Jerry, played by Haley Joel Osment, is a composite of certain characters in real life. But that was the personal life stuff. Joanna, her friend, is a composite of certain characters. But the trial stuff, really, I tried to adhere to the truth as much as possible. You know, you have to condense dialogue, but we were condensing dialogue that came from transcripts and keeping the meaning intact. You know, obviously if something goes on for a page-and-a-half in a courtroom, you want to condense it to, like, five sentences, you know, in a movie. But I think one of the reasons the adherence to the truth is so important in the scripted movie is that it’s such an unbelievable story that you want to remind people it’s truthful. That’s why I use archival footage a lot. I mean, the—I mean, I can’t think of, in the annals of American criminal history, another example where the basic beats of the story are just so wild. Here’s a guy who escaped from prison not once, but twice. There’s just so many aspects of the story that are so almost unbelievable, that I wanted to infuse it with archival footage and stick to the truth, because I want people to understand that this really happened.
Aaron: Given, you know, a significant period of years removed, you described this as a movie for people who might have only seen the Wikipedia page, if that. When you personally reopen the archive, when you started going through all this firsthand material, what was surprising to you about what you found inside this huge trove of court cases, video?
Joe: I think listening to the Bundy tapes that the docu-series is based on was just a window inside the mind of somebody who could appear, even in those interviews, to be charming and self-aware, and yet was capable of such horrific evil. So for me, it’s kind of an unanswerable question, why did he do what he did? It’s more about, you know, the fact that this kind of evil exists in a three-dimensional human being, which is so important for people to get, because Bundy shattered all of our expectations of what a serial killer is. We want to think a serial killer is somebody who just functions outside of society, but so often the people who do bad, as I said before, are people who fit right into society. And I think listening to those tapes and opening up the archives and just seeing, you know, the, the effect he had on people is chilling. Because, I think, this can happen today—we live in an era of internet catfish, in fact, I think it can happen even more. Bundy eluded capture for so long because of how law enforcement operated in those days. You know, there was a lack of sharing of information. So I don't know if a Bundy could exist exactly the way Bundy did today, because of DNA technology, etc, etc. But using different tools, I think the existence of a Bundy, the dangers are even greater, because we just live in an era where truth is much more elusive. We live in an era where there’s internet catfishing, we live in an era where people can walk into, you know, step into the wrong Uber and be with somebody who’s pretending to be an Uber driver when they’re a killer. So the dangers of a Bundy, I think, are greater than ever. I mean, look, the FBI thinks at any given time there’s 25 to 50 serial killers operating. That’s shocking. You know, we live in an era where there’s been 2700 documented serial killers since they started keeping records, and 67% of them have been in the United States. Why is it that we’re a country that produces so many mass shooters, so many serial killers? I think listening to Bundy and going into those archives and seeing how he held sway over so many people just made me feel like telling his story again through this perspective.
Aaron: This is your second narrative film.
Joe: Yes.
Aaron: First one was Blair Witch 2.
Joe: Yeah.
Aaron: I’ve actually—I’ve interviewed the director of Blair Witch 1, so I may be the only person who’s run the entire gamut of Blair Witch. There’s probably more than two, actually, but this is your first one that’s based on a factual story.
Joe: Yeah, yeah. It’s only recently—I mean, literally, I mean, it’s actually how this movie—it’s, like, I have not been pursuing a lot of scripted stuff. This movie just kind of came together in a very strange way, which suggests that the universe was tapping me on the shoulder saying, “You’re the guy who has to tell the Bundy stories in 2019.” It was not some grand plan. I mean, the fact that the Extremely Wicked came together so quickly and is out now is actually just so coincidental. Basically, you know, in January of 2017, the author of Conversations With a Killer, a guy named Stephen Michaud, who wrote this book a couple of decades ago based on hundreds of hours of audio recordings he made with Bundy on death row, he wrote a book, you know, a while ago. And he reached out to me because he had just found the tapes and wanted to know, did I think there was a TV show or a documentary to be made because of this growing interest in true crime. And I said, “Well, frankly, the bar for Bundy is pretty high because there’s been a lot done about him. But send me the tapes and let me take a listen.” And I listened to the tapes and I was immediately captivated, thought there was something terrific there. I thought the deep dive into the mind of a killer would be kind of a fascinating way to tell the story, you know? So I was actually kind of deep into the docu-series in April. I was having lunch with my agent in LA, just talking about the Bundy series, and that reminded him of a script that was kicking around Hollywood called Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, which was on the Hollywood blacklist. And the Hollywood blacklist is a list of scripts that executives in Hollywood really like, and for one reason or other, the movies have not been made—either people think they read well, but won’t translate well into a movie or…
Aaron: A lot of them have been made—I feel like the blacklist got so popular that, like, all the movies on the blacklist get made now.
Joe: And that’s true. I mean, some of them get made, not all of them. But, you know, in fact, Jodie Foster, at one point, was attached to direct Extremely Wicked and—a version of it, and that fell apart. And another director was attached. So, you know, when my agent suggested I read this, I had no reason to believe, great, you know, somebody who made a movie 20 years ago is now going to get a Hollywood blacklisted script made, but somehow it all came together very quickly. You know, within weeks of me reading it and giving my take to the guy who owned the rights, Michael Costigan, who’s a producer—I, you know, gave him my thoughts on how I would change the script and, you know, to get a job you have to give your take. So I gave him my thoughts on how I would change it, which basically involved, you know, the original script relied on you not knowing it was Ted Bundy until the very end of the movie.
Aaron: Interesting.
Joe: And I—that’s one of several things I changed. I felt like you can’t avoid that it’s Bundy, so lean into it and give the audience a much deeper kind of psychological experience. And that’s not anything discourteous to the script. I think Michael Werwie did an amazing job, and the basic bones of the script are very much the movie. I just wanted to push it into a darker, more realistic territory. The original script had more of a catch-me-if-you-can tone to it, and I didn’t think that tone, in this day and age, was appropriate for the movie. Even with the existing movie, which I think is dark and does not glamorize, some have criticized as having too light of a tone. I mean, there’s a tonal shift in the movie, because I’m taking the audience on the same journey that, you know, the people who believed in him had, but I certainly wouldn’t say that it’s light-hearted in tone. And even that—even the tone that I arrived at, some people are having a problem with. The original tone was much lighter, and I felt like you couldn’t make a movie about Ted Bundy that’s light. So, I mean, those were kind of—in a nutshell, that’s what I pitched to the producer, who thought I had a good handle on things and my experience as a true crime filmmaker certainly would bring some authenticity to the film. And I think there is a lot of very authentic moments in the film. So anyway, they all came together and it was just a big coincidence that I did both at the same time. But actually, it was an incredible experience as a filmmaker, to tackle the same subject in both scripted and unscripted forms.
Aaron: For people listening with Netflix accounts, how do you recommend digesting this dual project? Is there a specific order or anything?
Joe: You know, it’s interesting, I’ve heard…
Aaron: Breather between the two?
Joe: Yeah, certainly take a breather between the two. You know, there’s pros and cons to seeing the doc first or seeing the movie first. If you see the documentary first, I think it makes you appreciate the movie’s authenticity and you won’t sit there and say, “Oh, my God, did that really happen?” because you would have seen it in a documentary. But conversely, that robs you of a little bit of the drama. So I probably would see the movie first and then see the documentary.
Aaron: Do you go, like, sports bar style and, like, parallel TVs running at once?
Joe: Well, for the hardcore fans, perhaps.
Aaron: Well, thank you.
Joe: Hey, thanks, great interview, appreciate it.
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Rae: Don’t turn it off just yet. It’s time for ‘What you watching?’ It’s when we find out what the people on this episode are watching on Netflix. Who knows, maybe their current favorites are your favorites too.
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Aaron: Joe?
Joe: Yes?
Aaron: What have you been watching on Netflix?
Joe: Well, I just saw Fyre, about the Fyre festival. That was pretty unbelievable. I’ve been watching Fauda, which I love, but I can’t binge it because it’s a lot of reading of subtitles. But I’ve been, you know, digging that. Yeah, I think those are my two most recent. How about you?
Aaron: I watched this documentary, speaking of the true crime boom, it’s called Murder Mountain, about a mountain called Murder Mountain in the weed-growing regions of California. And basically someone disappeared there and they’re trying to sort that out and discover a few more homicides along the way.
Joe: Oh, yeah, I heard that was good. And I also recently re-watched The Staircase, you know, one of the docu-series.
Aaron: That was going to be my—that was going to be—The Staircase update, was probably actually literally the last thing I watched before, yeah.
Joe: That’s funny. I just recently watched that. I revere that series. And so watching the updated version was cool.
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Rae: And that’s it for this week’s episode. You can watch both, Conversations With a Killer and Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile on Netflix right now. We’ll be back next month with a new true crime series or film for you to add to your watch list. You can find this show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and wherever else you get your podcasts. Make sure to subscribe, rate and review this show. It helps other people find it and also makes us feel like you really like us. You Can’t Make This Up is a production of Pineapple Street Media and Netflix. Our music is by Hansdale Hsu. I’m Rae Votta and thank you so much for listening.
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