“It was all sort of conceived after the Parkland shooting in Florida in February of 2018,” said screenwriter Fran Kranz. “I have drafts from that April, so that very day I went on Amazon and bought Dave Cullen’s book Columbine and another book about a shooting in Colorado.” This became the touchstone for his film Mass which centered on a mediation between the perpetrator’s and victim’s parents following a school shooting.
Kranz was particularly engulfed in the shooting at Parkland as he had just become a parent. While watching news coverage, he would learn about a shooter killing 17 people and injuring 17 others. “I had a one-year-old daughter and it just hit me differently. I was angry, frustrated, confused, horrified.”
At the time Kranz was best known for his work as an actor at the time, having just landed roles on the Julia Roberts’ series Homecoming and the Russell Crowe mini-series The Loudest Voice. “I always wanted to be a writer/director, but I hadn’t done anything. Nothing I had attempted to produce made it to [the big screen].”
The screenwriter didn’t necessarily set out to make a movie, but more drawn to the material as a parent. “I was desperately fascinated as a parent to learn how you heal and how you live with unimaginable tragedy.” Eventually, this led to Kranz writing and directing the new film Mass. The four-hander dives into the aftermath of a violent tragedy that affects two couples in very different ways. The film stars Jason Isaacs (Jay), Martha Plimpton (Gail), Ann Dowd (Linda), and Reed Birney (Richard). Jay and Gail’s son was killed by Linda and Richard’s son, Hayden.
Unforgivable Forgiveness
As a parent, Kranz was unable to see how anyone could possibly forgive someone like a mass shooter, especially the parents of a murdered son, and this uncontrollable anger scared him more than anything else. “This hypothetical stuck with me.”
Focusing on his own curiosity, he now sees his views as somewhat narrow in those early days of research. “Initially, friends would say every parent needs to see this, but it’s really about listening, living with pain, and reconciliation. I think that’s universal.” Mass could have easily degenerated into a film about revenge.
Fran Kranz
“We live in this incredibly divided world. I think there’s universal appeal in trying to find a shared humanity, in this case, through shared suffering. That’s valuable. That’s critical right now, regardless of whether or not you have children. That’s separate from the plot of a school shooting.”
To find an entry point into this multifaceted story, Kranz went down a more subdued route. “A big influence on me was [playwright] Richard Nelson. I sent him the script a few times for notes and ideas. In an early draft, he was concerned they [parents] were too polite.”
At the time, Kranz was reading about The Forgiveness Project, which is an online platform built to share stories of transformation and forgiveness. “It was polite,” he said of an early draft, “but I wanted to push back and say that’s what was so shocking about these meetings.” He didn’t want any screaming in the room.
Ultimately, Kranz followed the note and started to dig into the four perspectives of the main characters. “I wanted these characters to have different perspectives, but also show that that love was real.” This applies to the parents of the shooter and the victim.
“I’m an actor, so I approached the writing as an actor. I tried to play these parts and let these perspectives battle it out. The deeper I got into it and the further I got into the writing process, the more conflict arose out of it. I didn’t make them yell or be cruel, but I wanted to make them all believe with total conviction they were right. That would bring the drama and the conflict while making the scenes more emotional.” The internal depiction of sadness, grief and rage worked well for Mass.
Kranz was deliberated in gradually introducing the audience to the mediation room. The screenwriter wanted to introduce secondary, quirky characters first. There was even a dash of “Episcopalian humor” tossed in to lighten the mood and prepare the audience for the intensity of action.
“I really believe that showing people who hadn’t experienced extreme tragedy first, people like most of us, will set the audience up for when they meet the parents. If the movie was just the four parents, it would have been purely fiction.”
Four Main Characters
Most stories with four main characters would play with excessive amounts of dialogue, somewhat like a play. For this story, Kranz used the North Star of movies like 12 Angry Men or My Dinner with Andre to help make the story cinematic. They were mainly set in one room and were dialogue heavy.
“I had faith that I could make it work and as a first time director, I don’t think I could make it flashy, even if I wanted it to be. The first few drafts were a stage play, but in my heart, I was always set on it [being a movie]. I thought the close-ups helped make it cinematic.”
As different colleagues read the script, he began to further trust the screenplay. “We talked a lot about this in the edit, but there’s a public space and private space for each individual character. There’s so many different dynamics going on that it wouldn’t just be talking heads on screen.”
Jay (Jason Isaacs) & Gail (Martha Plimpton). Photo courtesy Bleeker Street
To further push this analogy, Kranz described the private life of the individual, the private life of the couple, and then the public life of the couple and public life of the individuals. “We’ll find moments of Gail looking for Jay or Gail being alone. I felt that it could be deeply cinematic. You can’t capture those close up facial expressions on stage.”
“The only way to honor this story is on film. I firmly believe that we have to stay in the room because I want to honor what these meetings are like in real life. It’s hard. It’s emotional. To use flashbacks or inserts would be an easy way out and not faithful to the connection.” This individual point-of-view versus the group point-of-view is what made the story work best as a film.
Villains and Victims
In the film, an obvious attempt to tell the story would cast Linda and Richard as the villains, as they’re the parents of the shooter, and Jay and Gail as the victims, but Kranz didn’t want the story to be so black-and-white. The details of the actual shooting were revealed slowly in the film.
“It all started with the genuine desire or need to know what is happening. There was never a movie or characters in mind. I just read about real people, which is a credit to the journalists who covered these stories. I never came across a villain or a monster, at least when it came to the parents.”
Kranz continued, “It’s rare to find a real sociopath. Even Eric Harris, the Columbine shooter, who was considered a sociopath intent on killing thousands of people. For him, Columbine was a failure. The other shooter, Dylan Klebold, seemed like a suicidal depressant who was scripted by Harris.”
The writer said most shooters are essentially “unable to transfer their pain in a healthy way” (paraphrasing Priest Richard Rohr: “Pain that is not transformed gets transmitted”). In short, these people are unable to deal with pain and their environment, so they lash out and become dangerous.
“In my mind, I still see a human being,” said Kranz. “Even with the fictional shooter in the film, I had very little evidence to see him as a monster. I always saw him as a person who had many, many things go wrong and he just became a dangerous person.”
Real Life Stories
As for the actual meeting of the parents, the best outcome is still somewhat of a question. There are articles about Sandy Hook parents meeting, but there’s no real goal as opposed to an attempt of people seeing how to live with what has happened.
“The most important thing is finding humanity in the tragedy, which is kind of beautiful. Meeting was a last effort attempt, but I think finding humanity was the most valuable thing. I look around the world and see empathy diminishing. It’s us and them, and I have panic for the lack of empathy in the world. It seems to be getting worse.”
“Having people stuck in a room, the human connection gained from that leads to empathy. They don’t have to walk away feeling the other parents are innocent. They need to walk away not villainizing a person or living with hate.”
As for the audience’s perspective, the goal was simply to show real characters on screen. “Everyone who read the script wanted me to have flashbacks, but I wanted it to be in real time. We don’t see enough of that in the world. Listen to one another and find a common ground. I found that was rare and should be looked at with respect. We can’t survive without this kind of behavior.”
“This story is fiction, but it only exists because these things happen as non-fiction. Someone who has survived one of these terrible events might place value on different things. I would love to spread the word of forgiveness and empathy, but I also recognize that that is not always something people are ready for.”
