In a directing career spanning nearly 40 years, Lesli Linka Glatter has tackled virtually every direction from comedy (“Freaks and Geeks”) to police procedural (“NYPD Blue,” “Law & Order: Special Victims” Unit ”) to sci-fi/fantasy (“Heroes”), political thrillers (“Homeland”) and the uncategorizable (“Twin Peaks”). In Max’s “Love and Death” — created by David E. Kelly — she was faced with a new challenge: how to tell a true story and maintain suspense without trivializing or glorifying the real people involved. “I didn’t want to disparage or glorify anything,” Glatter told IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, adding that the story of a well-liked housewife driven to murder her immediately appealed to her despite her pitfalls. “Speaks well of the themes I love: things are not what they seem, and you have to look deeper to see what is really going on under the surface.”
Glatter was intent on acknowledging the humor inherent in the piece without detracting or diluting the real-life tragedy at the heart of the story, which meant working closely with her actors to adhere to the emotional truth of the situation. “I never want to laugh at characters,” Glatter said. “The actors themselves never felt like they were making fun of the characters, and that was essential for all of us. You know, this group of people did everything right. They got married, they had kids, they had a good life. They moved to the suburbs, went to church and sang in the choir. So why is there a hole in their heart and soul that is a mile wide and can’t be filled? This is the stuff I think we were all interested in. Glatter added that a very specific working environment is required for actors to plumb those depths. “You need to make sure they feel safe in the world you’ve created. This is absolutely essential.
“Love & Death” climaxes with Candy Montgomery (Elizabeth Olsen) on trial for the murder of her former lover’s wife, and while Glatter continued to keep in mind the true story and its ramifications, he also had to find a way to avoid lengthy courtroom scenes from becoming visually static. “It’s all about point of view,” she said. “Who is guiding me through the scene? Because it could be very generic if you don’t know whose story you’re telling. This is really important, and I felt that there were very clear moments where we are from Candy’s point of view, to the point where we are focused on her glasses and the (reflection of) the person who is speaking is blurry because I m inside his brain. And so for me, the point of view helps make it specific rather than general.
Glatter also felt that keeping the audience aware of how the testimony was reaching observers would keep the energy in the courtroom. “Even though it’s a true story, I didn’t want it to feel like you know the ending,” she said. “I wanted both the defense and the prosecution to be equally adept at their final recap, where you might think, ‘Oh my God, who’s going to win this?’ I wanted you to feel that there was a possibility that the verdict could be different. The focal point for Glatter was Candy’s testimony, which she shot first so everything else could be a reaction. “I think it was 15 or 16 pages, which is incredible. I did two takes on her and then flipped back, because you needed to see how it landed on people.[Olsen]telling the story was chilling, and I think she speaks to her about her depth as an actress, and also about what was important to all of us about the humanity of the story.
