Sundance Flashback 2010 - THE KILLER INSIDE ME
January 20th, 2014
by Harry Caul
There was a movie that premiered at Sundance back in 2010 called THE KILLER INSIDE ME starring a pretty good cast: Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, and Kate Hudson. Well that movie was kinda notorious that year as when it was over and the lights came on and as usual the director appears on stage to take questions. It didn't go well. The first comment was one woman blurting out “disgusting” as she marched out.
And she wasn’t alone, the director Michael Winterbottom ended up taking numerous questions having to defend his movie’s portrayal of violence. If you’ve been to these director Q & A’s they are almost always a love fest with stupid questions and so superficial I can barely stand them.
See the reason for all the hubbub, Affleck’s misogynist sociopathic character deputy sheriff Lou Ford liked to use women as punching bags and this totally upset a lot of people. I said lighten up -- it’s a movie and people like that do exist in the world. We’re just such a sensitive society now… all of us are victims. I mean the TV sitcom of the 70s, ALL IN THE FAMILY, with bigoted Archie … could not be done today. Even though the show made fun of him and exposed him for what he was: the comedy today would offend. Too many people wouldn’t understand the complexity of the comedy (one of the first shows to take on real life social issues such as racism) as they’d spend too much time being victims. Anyway, back to our misogynist sociopathic script.
The script was actually reviewed back in 2003 by former SU Script Report Editor Stax and he had nothing but positivity and love for what was then a draft by Andrew Dominik. But how close that script is to the one John Curran ultimately gets credit for is unknown. I do know that the script is blamed by a lot of people as being the source of the problem for this movie -- which is unfair. However, it is interesting to note that Curran hasn’t as a writer had a produced credit since! The script had been around the block and more than once (numerous writers). The story is based on the novel by Jim Thompson and was made into a movie back in 1973 and it was (from my understanding) a bad movie.
Anyway, THE KILLER INSIDE ME (2010), I thought it was decent and the acting was spot on. I enjoyed the movie. I agree the scene where Affleck’s character beats the holy crap out of Jessica Alba’s character was intense. As for the script, working on getting a copy and if I do I’ll talk about it later. Cheers!
About the Author
I am a professional screenwriter with some years of experience, but I'm gonna say some shit on here that might piss some people off so I am the Mystery Screenwriter.
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