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The Ted Bundy tapes landed on my desk in January, February of 2017.
I love the perspective.
So this is now the second week of April of 2017, and Im already working on the docuseries.
Theres a handful of places around the world where the geography sets up to create these incredibly long waves.
One of them is in the Skeleton Coast of Namibia.
Wow, great idea.
Given the nature of the script, hed be perfect.
Sure, send it to him.
I get to my hotel, fire up my phone, I finally have service.
This is literally 36 hours later: Zac read the script, loves it, wants to talk.
So hes in Australia, I think promotingBaywatch; Im in Namibia shooting surfing.
So I shoot my surfing in Namibia, then the next stop is Chicama, Peru.
Im like, Do I mind?
It just seems so ludicrous that its coming together so quickly.
I get to Chicama.
The internet in Chicama was very spotty.
It was a tough shoot, exhausting.
Its a long trip home from Peru to my house.
Im like, What?
Are you kidding me?
I called my agent and he said, Yeah, we tried to reach you.
Its unheard of in this business.
So its kind of coincidental that you wound up directing both.
But it had already been announced that Zac Efron had signed on to play Ted Bundy at Cannes.
Also, my filmmaking in true crime really has a layer of social justice.
I advocate for criminal-justice reform both as a filmmaker and in my personal life.
I advocate for the wrongfully convicted.
I advocate for victims rights.
He also is extremely believable, which is how he gets his victims.
Bundy is the ultimate enigma.
I still dont understand how somebody could do what he did.
But hes a three-dimensional human being, and I wanted to explore all sides of that three-dimensionality.
Bundy is evil, but hes also capable of loving.
But I think he had a need for normalcy and a real compassion for Liz for whatever reason.
I think psychopathic behavior is on one long continuum.
On the farthest extreme, you have Ted Bundy.
All of my work is about exploding stereotypes and understanding what it is to be human.
We want to think theyre easily identifiable in society.
Theyre people you know that you like, that you admire.
Bringing the audience into Lizs perspective really drove every decision in [Extremely Wicked].
But this is an example of how you have to serve the objective of your film.
You started off makingParadise Lostassuming the West Memphis Three were guilty, but you soon realized otherwise.
With the scripted film, obviously its a little different.
You have to go with it to capture the essence of what youre there to do.
