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A Conversation with Charlie Shackleton (ZODIAC KILLER PROJECT)

Charlie Shackleton wasn’t a true crime documentary maker, but he figured it was time to visit the genre. Everyone else making documentaries seem to be dipping into the true crime well, in fact I wonder how many crimes there are left out there whose stories have not been told. Charlie had two things to his advantage: 1) he was an avid connoisseur of the true crime genre, able to break them down into the nuts and bolts of structure and expectations. 2) he had the rights to a very interesting book about the Zodiac killer case, one written from the perspective of a beat cop who went on to know his own personal vigilante campaign to track down the most infamous serial killer to haunt the Bay Area.

At least thought he had the rights to that book. Deep in preproduction, scouting locations and drawing up schedules, Charlie’s plans hit the brick wall of a family deciding they didn’t want to sell him the rights to the book after all. He never really got a reason. Maybe they had another offer, or maybe they were just maneuvering to try to get more money, but true crime documentaries succeed because the bottom line is not super expensive. People want to tell these stories, so there are no actors to pay. Even reenactments can be done simply and cheaply. Most the footage already exists in the archives of someone or some governmental or news agency. The biggest cost is usually hiring a voice to present it to the audience, and that’s done long after everything else is filmed and you have something to show to your investors.

At this point Charlie has a couple options. He can pursue getting the rights to the book no matter what it takes, he could re envision his entire plan for the movie, except that would mean setting aside everything that had gotten him excited about telling the story, or he could walk away. Most film makers have projects in their past that they weren’t able to see through to completion, but when something gets so close to lenses up, it can be really hard to abandon the story.

Charlie Shackleton chose a different option. He made a film about not getting to make a film. In doing so, he may not have excised the creative ghosts of the project that will haunt him in the future, but he did basically get to make the movie, without of course, actually making the movie. The Zodiac Killer Project, making its world premiere at Sundance, follows somewhat passive aggressive filmmaker, one scene by scene, as he takes us to all the locations that he would have filmed that and tells us what that film might have looked like had he been able to finish it. Because he knows the true crime documentary genre so well, he is able to create the bare bones of a totally imaginable film, without giving us any details that his lack of rights prevent him from offering. In the end the film is less about the Zodiac killer, and more about society’s obsession with true crime, and the simplistic ways in which film makers have attempted to fill that desire, often creating paint by number portraits that a smart filmmaker like Shackleton can reduce to their original outlines.

I had a chance to sit down with the director a few days before the film’s premiere and I must admit the experience offered a bit of catharsis for me.

Hammer to Nail: I have to tell you that I’m particularly the right audience for your film because I was most of the way through a documentary feature that I was already filming when the documentary subject decided that she wanted to have complete control over the film. And I walked away from it.

Charlie Shackleton: I feel for you. You got even further than I did.

HtN: And I had the pit in my soul of having a project that’ll never be done. And my therapist actually suggested to me, honestly, “Why don’t you make a film about how you weren’t able to make a film?”

Charlie Shackleton: I can recommend it. Alternatively, a friend of mine who’s a radio producer used to put on an event called The Radio Wake, where different producers would bring snippets of audio that they’d recorded for projects that never came to be. And they would play them and then ceremonially delete them, accepting that it was never going to happen. That’s the other option available to you.

HtN: I love that. So what was the tipping point for you pulling the trigger and making the film this way, obviously knowing you were never going to be able to make it the way you intended?

Charlie Shackleton: I think it genuinely was like the stages of grief. After the true crime project fell apart, there was definitely a period of a month or two where I fully couldn’t contemplate focusing on anything else. I mean, I was working during that time. But in terms of my own projects, I really just had not made my peace with losing that project. And at a certain point, I think I turned a corner when I was like, well, maybe this feeling itself is a subject for art. The inability to let this go and how fully formed this film is in my head is itself kind of interesting.

HtN: Was there a light bulb moment where you were like, “This is even better than the film I’m leaving behind.”

Charlie Shackleton: Absolutely not. It was agonizing for months more after that where I was like, “Why am I making this thing that no one’s ever going to watch? That’s just a kind of pale shadow of this thing that I really wanted to do.” And I would say it was fully a year later before I crossed the threshold where I was more excited about the thing I was making than the thing I wasn’t.

HtN: Well, I love that in the movie you actually say, “Who’s going to watch this film?” And the funny thing is that now that the film has gotten the attention of Sundance, there’s the potential that more people will watch the film than would’ve watched the original documentary. Or at least more people are going to watch it with a discerning eye than the people who might have watched the original documentary.

 

Charlie Shackleton: Yeah. I’ll watch the little number on letterbox tick up until I feel that it’s got to a point where that line is invalidated.

HtN: I feel like you have done a great job of taking the true crime schlock of the world to task by just pointing out what they’re doing. What are you hoping that the general population walks away from this film with?

Charlie Shackleton: I suppose…

HtN: Are you making better viewers, do you think?

Charlie Shackleton: Well, yeah, maybe. I think the thing that was interesting to me was after I started making documentaries, it obviously changed the way I watched them. And I was consuming documentaries including true-crime documentaries, both as a viewer for entertainment, but always with one eye on how that’s come to be, how this shot has wound up in this film, how this interviewee was persuaded to participate, et cetera. And I found that very informative, because it changes how you understand the presentation of truth and where it might be lacking. So I hope that a film like this, that encourages you both to kind of imagine an entertaining documentary but also participate in its making, would encourage people to do the same. And kind of interrogate what they’re watching and think about how it’s come to take the form it has,. engaging with it on a more active level, which is obviously what this stuff is designed to encourage you NOT TO DO under any circumstances. The whole streaming mantra is like, “Don’t watch actively.”

HtN: At one point in time you talk about, “Well, and of course I would say something here because everybody’s watching as they’re looking at something else on their phone.”

Charlie Shackleton: Right? Yeah. That’s the whole thing. You have to be able to understand it just by half-listening to it, which I would say is not the most rewarding way to watch film.

HtN: Or audience to make one for. It’s interesting too. Because I think sometimes people who don’t understand a critical filmmaking eye feel like we’re not enjoying it as much. There was that point I started going to movies with my wife, and she’s like, “Stop talking about the structure.” And like, “Ooh, Act Three.” And I’m like, “But that’s me telling you that I like it. That’s like me applauding the film as having great structure.” And I think that sometimes the more knowledge you have about the way something’s put together, the more you can appreciate it as good art.

Charlie Shackleton: Yeah. I mean, the most rewarding feedback I’ve had about the film is from people who’ve said that at times, even though it’s taking this extremely, in some ways detached, analytical perspective, you can still get swept up in it. It’s like, I’m doing everything possible thing to keep you at a remove from the film, and yet you can still feel the drama of it and still kind of want to know how it’s going to turn out.

HtN: Even intentionally not talking about the details of the case. At one point in time your producer says, “Do you want to talk about the details?” And you’re like, “No, not really.”

Charlie Shackleton: It is amazing how much of the feeling of something you can get without really any of the actual content.

HtN: Yeah. I was trying to describe what I had seen to someone, and I said it was a little bit like watching the director’s commentary for a film with the film off. But also the director knowing that I was going to watch the director’s commentary with the film off.

Charlie Shackleton: Yeah, that’s a very astute analogy. Yeah, I might borrow that.

HtN: Tell me a little bit about the working order of the film. It seems like you got the footage first. And then…

Charlie Shackleton: Yeah, exactly. And actually it sort of comes back to what you were saying before about getting the viewer to engage with the mechanics of the filmmaking. Because I always had it in my head as these kind of like, three distinct stages. That we would go to the locations where we would’ve made the documentary, capture those, and then I would sit in a recording studio and watch that footage and fill in the massive blanks of everything that would’ve been happening in those spaces if only we’d been able to make the documentary. And then in the third and final stage, anything that I had come up with in the recording studio that evoked one of those little irresistible aesthetic moments from true crime, we would then go into a studio in London and shoot our own evocation of that.

HtN: Like the bullet casings dropping to the ground.

Charlie Shackleton: The crime iconography, yeah.

HtN: I love that the deeper we get into the film, it’s sort of the deeper you let us behind the curtains. There’s that great moment where we see you for the first time in the studio, which is, probably halfway through the film at that point. And then like that first moment where we hear the other voice [the producer], and then eventually you start getting in a conversation with the other voice.

Charlie Shackleton: And we recorded all of that — my producer on the intercom, everything that they said to me while we were in the studio. And we filmed a lot of me performing the voiceover — but we really didn’t know whether we were going to use either in the finished film. My main image of the film was still this much more stripped back thing that was, for the most part, just looking at an empty space and hearing a voice.

HtN: Instead you end up letting different things intrude upon the narrative of the film. We’re getting deeper down, but we’re getting further away from the actual action of the film because we’re commenting on the commenting on the film.

Charlie Shackleton: What became clear over time was that as we went on, inevitably that very tight structure would rupture. Because I’d be confronted with something that couldn’t quite fit in that very limited framework. And so the more those piled up, the more it felt natural to include those ruptures and have the film itself kind of reflect the impossibility of fitting everything in such a tightly controlled form.

HtN: So imagine that the family came to you now and they said, “Hey, we saw your pitch for a film by watching your film. We’d love for you to make that film.” I mean, I don’t know if they’ve seen it yet, but I’m sure by now they probably have heard that you have made this film. What do you think? What would happen if they were to come to you now?

Charlie Shackleton: Would I do it?

A still from ZODIAC KILLER PROJECT

HtN: Would you do it? I mean, you’ve already done all the pre-production.

Charlie Shackleton: There is obviously a part of me, yes, that still wants to realize this long-held dream. But could I submerge myself in Zodiac Killer stuff for another year, minimum? I’m already going to have to take this film around film festivals and talk about it probably for the most of this year. So it’d be another year on top of that.

HtN: And then a year taking that film around.

Charlie Shackleton: Also, if someone else wants to get the rights to the book, they can make the exact film I describe. And I don’t have a leg to stand on. So why me, really? Why come to me? Go to someone more capable.

HtN: So making this film allowed you to look at the genre of true crime in a real wide perspective. What sort of advice would you give a filmmaker who wants to make a true-crime film?

Charlie Shackleton: I think the advice I would give people is probably be realistic about what you can achieve in that genre, at least as it is made currently. Because the story I hear again and again and again from people in documentary is that they sign up for a true-crime series or film with these assurances, from the commissioner or the exec or whoever, that they’re going to be able to do something interesting within that framework as long as they also still hit the standard beats of the genre. And every time, it seems that the interesting stuff is the first thing to fall away, and actually people just want the formula followed to the letter.

So I think if you’re realistic about what you’re actually going to be able to do within that space, then maybe it’s still very possible to make interesting work in the true crime mold. Or if you’re incredibly powerful and can have your way over whoever’s in charge of you, then maybe it’s a different story. But I do feel like a lot of people are setting themselves up for disappointment in thinking that they can… As I probably would’ve in thinking that I could make the one good true crime thing in twenty.

HtN:vI mean, you got disappointed before you even tried to make it.

Charlie Shackleton: Exactly… No. In fact, I never need to be disappointed because I can always just imagine the perfect version in my head. And I never have to actually test whether I could have made it happen.

HtN: It’s every filmmaker’s dream.

Charlie Shackleton: Truly.

– Bears Rebecca Fonté

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Bears Rebecca Fonté is a transgender filmmaker, festival programmer, and journalist. She founded Other Worlds Film Festival after two years as the Director of Programming for Austin Film Festival. Her SciFi shorts ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE, PRENATAL, and THE SECRET KEEPER have played 150+ festivals including Fantasia, SciFi London, Boston SciFi, FilmQuest, Austin Film Festival and Dances With Films. Her LGBTQIA Horror short CONVERSION THERAPIST made its world premiere at Inside Out in Toronto and US Premiere at aGLIFF. Her feature thriller iCRIME, which she wrote and directed, was released on DVD, VOD and streaming by Breaking Glass/Vicious Circle Films in 2011. Bears Rebecca also was one of the producers on the Sundance Jury-Award Winning short THE PROCEDURE. In 2021, after five years on the Board of Directors she was made Artistic Director of aGLIFF, the oldest Queer film festival in the Southwest.

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