Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story Director Would Go Home In Tears Multiple Times Throughout Filming
The infamous crimes of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer have been a source of fascination for true crime and film aficionados alike. So notorious were his acts of murder and cannibalism that almost every aspect of his life has been covered — even his early experiences in high school depicted in "My Friend Dahmer." It is safe to say that there has been no stone unturned, especially when Ryan Murphy decided to create a no-holds-barred miniseries starring Evan Peters in the title role.
"Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story" was so invasive that it caused significant backlash from Dahmer's survivors. The family of one of Dahmer's victims, Errol Lindsey, was among those who spoke out against the Netflix show for sensationalizing their trauma and grief. And despite how much the controversies of "Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story" have dominated headlines, it seems as if there is still no reprieve. Not only were the families of the victims impacted; Paris Barclay, who was among the directors who worked on the show, also felt emotional stress on the set, as he recently admitted.
Even those on set were overwhelmed by the dark subject material
When Paris Barclay signed on to direct two episodes of "Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story," he was mostly interested in the perspective of the victims. But even though he had altruistic aspirations, it still didn't soften the blow of the brutal subject matter.
"Some of the scenes that we depicted were pretty harrowing. When you're shooting them, you don't just get to watch them for two minutes," Barclay confessed to Variety. "You're living in them for a full day and you're repeating them. It definitely took its toll on you. There were times that I was at home crying just thinking about the emotional experience that the actors have gone through and what the real people went through." This type of empathy is not only admirable but in many ways, necessary for production. In recent years Netflix has been saturated with Dahmer content and the only way to justify even more is to make sure that the victims are being taken into account.
Hulu's fascinatingly accurate "Candy" also made a decided stab at valuing the perspective of the victim. Even after Candy (Jessica Biel) kills her neighbor Betty (Melanie Lynskey) in an ambiguous encounter, the victim remains in the picture. Betty speaks to the audience pointing out how ultimately there was very little justice for her real-life counterpart. True crime always balances on the edge of glamorizing or just depicting its subjects, and some projects in this genre, as it seems, are more successful than others.