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 a figure in this world, in this type of narration mold, if you want. Do people throw you ideas? Do you always do the same research you did years ago and do you trip yourself? Does your producer bring you ideas? How does it work?
This is a bit of all that precedes. He has certainly reached the point where people throw things on me. I don’t … it is not true. There are two big ones that we are producing now, but before that – I had to say that I did not do it – but in terms of realization of me, I did nothing that was offered to me. And that includes a document lit in green in a streamer on cryptographic history of the moment. It’s like, come on. I do not also give *** on this subject. These things are so difficult to do. I must be madly in love with them. So we are looking for Steven and me, and one of our most reliable colleagues is the head of our research. His name is Lukas Cox. We look, and we look, and we look.
I happened to find this during a rabbit burrow that I was going down in December 2020. I edited “Sasquatch” and “Bob Ross” at the time and I knew they would be finished the following year. And I really like the stories of black – “The Long Goodbye”, “Sunset boulevard”, “Chinatown”, “Mulholland Drive” – I like these things and I always wanted to make one. And so I just made a “black in the form of a documentary” Hunt, if you want, and I found myself on these old articles in the Times on this story. And was immediately struck by this thing, Oh my god, if I could do that, I have the impression that it could be really, really special. But I knew that everything depended on obtaining an interview with David Sconce because I have the impression that if you are going to tell a story like this and have the impression that you went deep and that it was worthy of anyone who, you must have the guy.
So we wrote to him in prison and he made the phone with my producer and he agreed to do an interview, if and when we arrived at the prison to film with him or if he came out, because the Word was on the table at that time. He didn’t know when, but it was on the table. And as it was really a cocovated peak, no one was driven in the prisons to shoot. And California specifically does not allow you to make specific interview requests to detainees.
So I knew in a way that we were not going to enter, and I needed him, if this interview was going to happen, to go out. And he did not go out for two and a half years. We started doing this, in fact, by the end of 2021, and we informed that he was going to have a parole audience at the end of 2022, and it was an electoral year. Each governor will cancel the parole hearings that lead to the elections because they have to show that they are hard for crime. This is what they all work to some extent.
So of course, he got fucked and I really felt like, Wow, I may have something that just doesn’t go and I will hang with HBO and these people will just hate me and never want to work with me again. Then about six months later, I was driving, I had just placed a friend. We had lunch and Steven called me, my production partner, and he said: “He went out in the next 48 hours. He obtained parole.” We must therefore immediately mobilize the crew. I mean, my DP lives in New York. [David] was locked outside of Sacramento. The next morning, Steven and I went to Sacramento. People are on planes, people roll, equipment is checked for rental houses, and to date the next night, we were sitting in a just prepared hotel.
That morning, I don’t remember the exact hour that we fired in the prison parking lot. I don’t think it was 4:30 p.m., but it was shortly after. It was probably around 5 a.m. And we sat down and we sat down and the sun rises and other people arrive in the parking lot while waiting to pick up a person they are waiting for. And we see correctional agents stop to go to work for the day and some who consult people in the administrative building. And finally around 7:45 am, people come, and we are looking for it and we thought, Oh my God, he is there. And he sees us and he has a big smile on his face and he points to us, and we drive all the time. And he got into the car, and I don’t even know that we were three minutes on the road outside the prison parking lot when he just raised the morgue, the cremations, I don’t want to say everything, but not to have a question, he raised a lot. And I just thought, Holy F ***, it’s going to be crazy for a few days.
Dude is an incredible story.