😍 2022-07-08 05:15:00 – Paris/France.
Dennis Lehane is the king of Boston's dark corners. Who has best portrayed the criminal side of the United States in recent years, past and present. His books, his scripts, the movies based on his novels go to the bottom of his soul, but when he was presented with the book that tells the true story of Jimmy Keene and Larry Hall, he in no way wanted it. to land. . “I was involved in many dark projects and I didn't want to. I have a young daughter and everything about serial killers makes me step back, not get started. But the producers kept telling me, “Read it, read it. So I did. And at the end of the story, I got to a point where there were two things that grabbed me. On the one hand, it is very mythological. The story of the man who comes out of the cave to protect society from monsters and returns from everything has changed. And on the other hand, in this society of toxic masculinity I thought to myself: is there anything more toxic and masculine than a serial killer?
Thus began the involvement of the author of any other day in black bird (locked up with the devil, in Spanish), a series that debuts this Friday on Apple TV + with two episodes and, from there, a weekly until the end of the six. Prestigious screenwriter (Thread, Boardwalk Empire) producer of major television projects (mr mercedes) here Lehane faces his biggest challenge in the industry since moving from Boston to hot California in 2013. The series adapts the true story of Jimmy Keene (Taron Egerton), son of a decorated police officer (Ray Liotta ) and successful college athlete turned drug dealer. When he is arrested, a window opens for him not to spend 10 years behind bars: going to a maximum security prison and gaining the trust of serial killer Larry Hall (a brilliant Paul Walter Hauser) so that tell him where the bodies of the young people he killed are. And here is the first problem. Because Hall, an even darker sleazy guy on the show, confessed and then recanted and his mind is as full of twists and shadows as his words.
Sepideh Moafi and Greg Kinnear, the couple of investigators who are the protagonists of the most procedural part.
To penetrate this evil spirit, Jimmy tries everything and tests his own limits. “Jimmy plays a complicated and tricky game. We don't know when he's telling the truth and when he's just trying to get Larry's complicity. It's a game of chess between the two, which is very interesting,” says Lehane, who talks about “my Jimmy,” not so different from reality, but a fictional character after all. He who saw how the adaptations of the mystical river (Clint Eastwood, 2003), Gone baby gone (Ben Affleck, 2007) or Sutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2010) sees no problem there: “As long as you respect the spirit of the book, I am comfortable. Changes must be made, of course. And in this case, with real people, the same rule applies: I have to be true to the essence of people as I understand them in the book. And if I succeed, I don't hesitate to fictionalise, to underline certain things, to change others, as long as it doesn't underestimate the reality of the work”.
The series plays with a rhythm typical of the best Thriller in French of Lehane, and includes two aspects to speed up the plot: on the one hand, Larry appealed and if he wins, he will be released, which also happened in the real case; on the other, Jimmy's father's days are numbered and if he doesn't get out of prison he won't be able to redirect his relationship with him. The tension of the countdown is noticeable in each chapter. And this is where another value of the Bostonian author's story comes in: the characters are strongly kneaded, full of nuances, nothing here is black or white, no one can be easily explained or justified, the spectator comfortable with anyone.
A small "find" allowed him to approach the other part of the plot, essentially rooted in the past, without major problems. It's the one in which two investigators dedicate their lives to going from place to place through locations in deep America to find these corpses, accumulate evidence against Larry, and lock him up for life. “The biggest challenge in this regard was telling what happened before Jimmy went to prison. And then it occurred to me that he was reading the dossier so that what you see is what you read," says Lehane, who acknowledges that it's "easier" to write screenplays than scripts. books. “As a screenwriter, you are way above the material. To write a book, I need to dive into it, to become the book, the characters. I could never have written this as a novel. It would have been too difficult, emotionally and psychologically. »
Ray Liotta reinvents himself in this powerful role as Jimmy's father.
What showrunnerLehane wanted to control everything, whether it was the foundry of the officer who handles the polygraph in the interrogations (very secondary) as well as the music of Mogwai, themes with which the Scottish band creates an incomparable atmosphere. " It was easy. I like. I don't know anything about classical music, but I spend my days listening to film music, so I knew them not only as a band but also for their work in Miami Vice Is ZeroZeroZero”. The production of the first three episodes is under the responsibility of Michaël R. Roskam, who has already adapted Deliverybased on a story by Lehane.
black bird It plays with multiple planes and it works in all of them. It is an investigation reminiscent of the classics of the police, a Thriller in French prison, a family drama. The psychopath's interrogations are up there with the best of Spirit hunters. “You can't do an interrogation scene today without thinking about what Fincher did. You can't,” he says, acknowledging the influence. “What I did was to be religiously faithful to the transcripts. These conversations are nearly exact word for word.
As writers of the stature of Michael Connelly have already done (Bosch) or George Pelecanos (Thread, trembles), Lehane is at home in Hollywood among a generation that has returned to the tradition of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler or William Faulkner in the forties and fifties of the last century. Only with better fortune and for television. While waiting for her next book, Lehane readers can find her imprint in every scene of black birdin its darkness, in its anti-hero's quest for redemption.
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