Why ‘Love and Death’ director Lesli Linka Glatter embedded the brutal murder scene within Candy’s testimony [Exclusive Video Interview]
The truth is stranger than fiction, they say. And that’s exactly what “Love & Death” director and executive producer Lesli Linka Glatter thought when she read the “Texas Monthly” articles about Candy Montgomery, the small-town housewife who was accused of murdering her friend, Betty Gore, with an ax in June 1980, months after having an affair with her husband, Allan Gore.
“When I read the articles, I almost thought it was fiction. … It is what amazes me about real life: It is so often stranger than fiction or anything you could come up with,” Glatter tells Gold Derby (watch above). “It really goes from the beginning of you think you’re going to fill up the whole in your heart and psyche with having an affair. And then you pick the most unlikely person to have that affair with, someone who is not the hot guy. You pick someone who happens to be your friend’s husband that you stand next to in choir. And then they talk about it for months and and months. That just beginning, I was just like, how can that be true? But it was true. They put up the dos and don’ts of how you can have a successful affair on butcher paper as they ate lasagna in Candy’s kitchen. And it literally went from beginning to end to the horror of what the murder is. That tonal shift, I was really interested in as well. But I have to say I am always interested in complicated, layered characters, oftentimes women.”
The first three episodes of “Love & Death’s” seven-episode season covers the at times comically absurd way the affair was meticulously planned out by Candy (Elizabeth Olsen) and Allan (Jesse Plemons), two lonely souls in Wylie, Texas, who don’t feel seen by their spouses despite being told that they’ve achieved the white picket fence American dream. The brutal murder — Betty (Lily Rabe) is struck 41 times — occurs in the beginning of the fourth episode, but because we only have one side of the story, viewers don’t see the crime in full until the finale, when Candy testifies in court. What unfolds through a series of flashbacks is one of the most graphic scenes Glatter has ever filmed.
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“We only see it from Candy’s point of view, but we stayed very accurate to her testimony, like what was described in the room — the book of Mother Goose rhymes and the kids’ toys and the dog bowl — choreographed the scene as it was described,” Glatter shares. “One of the things that blew me away about Lizzie as an actor — first of all, she lets you into such a deep place in your psyche … is that even just hearing her testifying — I shot the crime before we shot the testimony — but watching the day she was on the stand in the courtroom, her way of describing it, it’s like you saw it.”
It was important for Glatter, who helmed the first four episodes and the finale, not to shy away from the gruesome murder, but even more important not to make the scene gratuitous or salacious. About eight or 10 ax swings are shown, matter-of-factly, including a big one that, per Candy’s testimony, split Betty’s head. “I felt as much as I loved Candy as a character and Betty as a character, the crime that was committed was a really horrible crime and I think to back away from that would not have done the story justice,” she says. “I don’t want to vilify or glorify in any way, but I felt there needed to be a reality to it. … It’s hard to understand the human condition. I mean, we’re such complicated beings, but this one is really inexplicable. And to try to find the why and the how of this is very complicated and layered. I hope we showed the characters in a real way.”
The mystifying nature of the crime and the circumstances surrounding it — including Candy taking a shower in the house, a contaminated crime scene and an police force ill-equipped to deal with murder — is one of the reasons Glatter believes the story continues to fascinate. “She did not ever murder anyone else. She did not become a serial killer. In fact, she became a family therapist. She was trying to help other people. This was not a serial murderer,” Glatter states. “This was something that cracked open in her. I don’t know if we’ll ever understand what that is. It is one of those inexplicable things.”
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