Monsters is a biographical high-profile crime anthology series developed by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan. The first season explored serial killer/ cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer and the current season tracks the infamous Menendez brothers who gunned down their parents in cold blood. The third season follows notorious serial killer Ed Gein.
Audiences’ fascination with the darkest caverns of the human psyche has often been fertile ground for dramatic storytelling. Brennan is interested in drilling down to explore those dark impulses to their fullest.
Monsters coincides with the astronomical rise of true-crime. We asked Brennan why the genre is so popular.“I think it’s a way to approach things in a safe and controlled way that is scary.” It also highlights the violent society in which we’re currently living.
The victims in Monsters are everyday people. Audiences can postulate that they might be the next victim, so the violence is much closer to home than they imagine. Furthermore, the killers might be more like them than they’d like to admit.
The key tenet in writing Monsters is to humanize the killers, their mannerism, and their motivations. The series gives them a sense of familiarity. Your own neighbour or colleague might be a monster. Violent criminals are still humans, so Monsters mines “being human can incorporate many scary pathologies.”
Ian Brennan. Photo by Charley Gallay /Getty Images for Netflix
Monsters, not only looks at perpetrators and their victims, but also the people that surround both of them, especially friends and families. Brennan contends that writing such gruesome material, is “very cathartic” to the soul as we search for the light.
The Birth Of An Anthology Series
When Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan originally conceived Monsters, they considered an historical series about The Elephant Man for the first season. They conceded that a Victoria period piece was a tough financial sell so they decided to focus on modern day monsters. The Jeffrey Dahmer story was going to be the second season, but it kicked off the anthology. “I’m glad we landed on Jeff Dahmer because he’s so strange, so dark, so scary, but so interesting,” shares Brennan.
Monsters isn’t only about serial killers. “Monsters isn’t even necessarily about killers per se. We were interested in what the word ‘monster’ means. What does that subject entail? What are these people fascinated or scared by? We wanted to do something that looked beyond what any one season says or what that violent act meant.”
“The third season about Ed Gein has a meta element to it where we’re actually investigating our own fascination with this subject matter along with everyone else’s.”
Monsters isn’t planned as either a documentary or a dramatization of actual events. It’s really a series of character studies centered on true stories. “That gives you guardrails because you have to tell that story. The plot is given to you. The story arc is there. You know where it starts, you know where it goes, and you know where it ends. Rather than being a constraint it’s actually really liberating.”
You always know what story you’re telling in true crime. The question is how do you tell it?
Each episode moves the story forward, but “theme is investigated backwards.” Occasionally, “a major story points demarcates an episode during discovery. The writers ask why something happened? Oftentimes that means going back in time to childhood or an earlier part of the story. The arrow of time goes in both directions.”
Working With Ryan Murphy
Each season of Monsters comprises of eight episodes. Brennan states that “pilots usually take five times longer than any individual episode to really land on writer’s draft.”
He is fortunate to have been mentored by Ryan Murphy since Glee. He describes Murphy as “ having a sense of smell of what a good episode of television is. He’s completely instinctual. It’s based on feeling. He’s also very incisive.”
Brennan enjoys their complementary working relationship. “I will look at something very simple and see a lot of complexity. He looks at something very complex and sees its simplicity,” he adds.
In writing the Kyle and Erik Menendez story, Murphy instinctively knew it was a Rashomon story where an event is told through multiple, and sometimes contradictory, points of view. Having such clear guidelines, it’s easier to know where to start and finish an episode. In the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, it was a matter of deciding the season was about the “murderer that got away with it.” Then they returned to the pilot and realized, he’d do it again across different timelines… until he got caught.
Evan Peters in Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Photo courtesy of Netflix
In the case of the Menendez brothers, the core of the season was about their physical and emotional abuse. Deciding on what each season is truly about with such a high degree of precision, makes writing each episode easier.
Murphy and Brennan don’t typically write show bibles. They use cork boards and index cards to document key story points in a fluid and organic manner. Their track record also allows them significant creative freedom without having to get every decision approved by management. “Netflix has been very good at just giving us enough rope to hang ourselves,” jokes Brennan.
Layering Characters
Once scripts are written, team Brennan and Murphy accept feedback from the actors to deepen and clarify their characters. Not all scripts are completed before actors are hired, and not all roles are cast before scripts are completed.
When the two reach synchronicity, scripts are tailored to each actor’s voice. This was especially true for Chloë Sevigny as Kitty Menendez. Knowing who was playing that role made the writing tighter because Brennan could hear her voice in his dialogue.
When Brennan handed Javier Bardem (who plays José Menendez) the script, it was only two-thirds completed. Javier enhanced the notion that “while a flawed man, José was himself a victim of abuse and a very violent death. Javier really wanted to understand where José was coming from.”
José Menendez was born in Batista’s Cuba. He came to America alone as a refugee when he was thirteen in search of the great American dream. That dream became a nightmare in his shady business dealings.
“That really made the audience understand where this guy started. He just didn’t emerge full-formed as some crazy monster.”
Ian Brennan Describes His Writing Process
Ian Brennan has a superpower – an ear for characters. “I can hear a voice and I can hear characters talking.” He partially attributes this skill to his actor training.
“I have a sharp, biting sense of humor. I write characters who say mean and incisive things. I have that comedy writers instinct.” He also notes that Netflix executives recognizes his writing without seeing who wrote a script.
Brennan tried his hand at writing theater when he was younger, but he found it a struggle because he felt they were “important” to be good. “Movies and TV have to be entertaining to be good.”
He also felt he was more visual than playwrights, so he was naturally more suited to film and television. “I see things in shots a bit. And I think the process of screenwriting is sort directing the first draft in your mind. When I finally sat down to write a screenplay, it was very easy compared to the process of writing a play.” That screenplay was Glee.
It took him a decade before he’s revisit that script. “I was actually stunned at it. There was a subtlety and a delicacy to my earlier writing style that I think I’ve sharpened out.”
In searching for a creative spark, Brennan follows his intuition. “You just like feel it. It’s like a little tingle. It tickles at your brain a little bit. You can’t stop thinking about it.” He might write the instinctual script nobody was asking for that might not be particularly marketable. Other times, ideas that come to him are based on his perceived gap in the marketplace.
