We spoke w/ 'Boston Strangler' director Matt Ruskin about how Keira Knightley was key to the story, and the challenges the crew faced.
In the early 1960s, a killer terrorized the city of Boston, taking the lives of 13 women. Nearly a decade before the term “serial killer” was coined, two investigative reporters, Loretta McLaughlin and Jean Cole, wrote a piece on the multiple murders, breaking the story even before the case was taken seriously by law enforcement.
RUSKIN: You know, those decisions are made far above my head, but I will say we originally brought the film to 20th Century Fox before the acquisition, or merger, with Disney. So my understanding is, this may at one point have been a theatrical film and then, with the new environment, became something that was intended to go to Hulu.
One of the things I really enjoyed about the way you shot it was the moving camera. There's a lot of moving, and it's deliberate with the moves. Obviously, you're making this on a budget and you have to make your shots every day. So how did you pull it all off in terms of working with your [director of photography] Ben [Kutchins] on the aesthetic?
When you watch this movie, because it's a newspaper film about a killer, obviously, people are going to talk a little bit about Zodiac because there are similarities. So when you knew you were going to make this were you like, “I cannot look at Zodiac again until after I'm done.”? Or did you look at it like, “[David] Fincher made an incredible movie, let me see what he did, and how can I use maybe some of the good things in my project.
RUSKIN: Yeah. So, I developed a personal relationship with Loretta and [Jean Cole’s] children. I got to know their families very well, and getting the story right was very important to me. So I wanted to convey the spirit of these women in the truest way that I could. That said, in terms of trying to tell a story that spanned several years in a feature film, you obviously have to take some liberties.
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