The Mortician Director Talks About The Ending To His HBO True-Crime Doc [Exclusive Interview]

So how did a project like this come to you? You are now this kind of storytelling style and the image of this world. Are people selling your ideas? Are you still doing the same research you did years ago and stumbling over something like this yourself? Is your producer bringing you ideas? How does it work?

It’s like all of the above. It definitely reached the point where people were selling things to me. I’m not…it’s actually not true. There are two great things we’re producing now, but before this – I said I wasn’t doing it – but in terms of my directing, I’m not doing anything that was completely offered. And that includes the streamer’s green illuminated documentary about the crypto story of the moment. Come on, that’s right. I don’t give you *** about it. These are very difficult to make. I have to fall in love with them like crazy. So we searched Stephen and me and one of our truly most trustworthy colleagues is the head of our research. His name is Lucas Cox. We look, look, see.

I happened to find this in a rabbit hole that was down in December 2020. I was editing “Sasquat” and “Bob Ross” at the time, but I knew it would end the following year. And I really love the stories of La Noir – “The Long Goodbye”, “Sunset Boulevard”, “Chinatown”, “Mulholland Drive” – ​​I love these things and I’ve always wanted to make them. And then I went to “La Noir in Documentary form.” And I was immediately hit by that, What a god, if I could make this, I feel this might be really, really special. But I knew it all depends on getting all the interviews because it all tells a story like this and if you really get deeper and think you deserve someone’s time, then you feel like you have to have a guy.

So we wrote him in prison and he answered the phone with my producer and he agreed to interview him when he left if we came to prison to film with him or at that point the parole was on the table. He didn’t know when, but it was on the table. And it was really peak covid so I wasn’t led to prison to film. Additionally, in California, you cannot make specific interview requests for prisoners.

So I knew we weren’t going to go in, so if this interview happened, I needed him. And he didn’t go out for another two and a half years. In effect, he began to write this by the end of 2021, but in the second half of 2022 he informed him that he would have a parole hearing, which was the election year. All governors will withdraw their parole hearing leading up to the election as they must show they are strict about crime. That’s how they run with some ability.

Certainly he was pulled and I really felt, Wow, I might have something I’m not going to just pan out, I’m going to be on HBO and hook, and these people just mean to hate me and never want to work with me again. About six months later, I was driving, I just dropped off a friend. We had lunch and Stephen called me, my producer partner, and he said, “He’s out in the next 48 hours. He’s been paroled.” Therefore, the crew must be mobilized immediately. In other words, my DP lives in New York. [David] I was trapped outside Sacramento. The next morning, Stephen and I went to Sacramento. People are on planes, people are driving. Equipment has been checked out from the rental property. By the next night, I was sitting in a hotel I had just prepared.

I don’t remember exactly what time I pulled into the prison parking lot that morning. I don’t think it was 4:30, but it was soon. It was probably around 5am. And we sit and sit, the sun rises and we wait for others to pull into the parking lot and pick up those they are waiting for. And we see corrections officers pulling in to go to work for the day, some checking out the people in the administrative building. And finally, about 7:45 people came and we were looking for him, and we thought, What a god, he’s there. And he looks at us, he has a big smile on his face, and he points to us, and we are rolling all the way through. And he got into the car and I don’t even know that we were down the road outside the prison parking lot for three minutes when he raised the morgue, cremation himself. And I just thought, Holy f ***, this will be a crazy few days.

Man, that’s incredible.