Max Winkler On How ‘Noises Off’ and ‘Our Town’ Inspired Moments in ‘Grotesquerie’

Max Winkler likes to challenge himself as a director, and that cannot be more exemplified by two of his projects this season. Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story re-centers the narrative of a heinous, violent crime to show how two young men felt they had nowhere else to turn while FX’s Grostesquerie is a volatile, horny fiction thrill ride worthy of its place in the twisty Ryan Murphy canon. A director with an expertise of performers driving the narrative, Winkler will always go for the unexpected for the sake of the story.

Grotesquerie works from the first episode because of a key pairing of actresses. Niecy Nash-Betts gives the performance of a lifetime as Lois Tryon, a hardened cop pulled into a grisly string of murders that feel like they hit too close to home. She becomes curious by the presence of Michaela Diamond’s Sister Megan, a plucky, eager woman of faith who finds herself hugrily drawn to Nicholas Alexander Chavez’s trainer-turned-priest, Father Charlie. Many of us worship the ground that Nash-Betts walks on (any project, any role–I’m there), and I only knew Diamond from her devastatingly fragile turn as Lucille Frank in Broadway’s revival of Parade.

“That is Ryan Murphy casting genius,” Winkler says. “I read it like Frances McDormand or someone completely different in my head. Michaela kept testing, and we knew that we had Niecy [Nash-Betts]. He has worked with Niecy a few times but never had with Michaela, and we saw what a revelation she was. Without her, we couldn’t do a lot of the things we did on this season because her theater background really helped with making that character who she is. That led to a lot of the complicated stuff in episodes five, six, and seven. There is something like Polanski’s Annie Hall about her to me. The combination of Niecy and Michaela is like pure Ryan Murphy genius.”

Episode five, “Red Haze,” is a trippy, surreal experience. When Lois and Sister Megan hunt for answers, they pick up a hitchiker covered in blood named Andrea who seeks assistance at a roadside motel. Lois tells Megan that the establishment looks like it was “built for some good old fashioned fornicating,” but things descend into strange chaos almost immediately. Is the front desk clerk hiding abusive from her husband? Gunfire erupts outside. It feels dangerous and dizzying, as the episode yanks us by the scruff of the neck for a staggering oner before the shocking final moments.

“We follow Sister Megan like a play–it’s all one shot,” he says. “I read that episode and thought that this was an opportunity to so something trulty risky and scary. I told Ryan and my partner, Alexis Martin, what I wanted to do with that script, and they were so down for letting me do my thing. We would rehearse on Saturdays in the desert, and we would first just do it with the three of us and our second AD. It was very much a close collaboration between us and my cinematographer, Carolina Costa, who I made Flower with. She’s a genius, and there were days where we’d be shooting multiple episodes in the same day. Keeping that organization for a brain like mine is not very easy, so it was all very much planned out. We would bring in Neil [Bryant], who worked on The Last of Us, and he recently won Camera Operator of the Year. I loved the challenge of that episode.

With one-shot sequences, everyone goes back to Saving Private Ryan or Children of Men. A lot of times you can just cannot see invisible cuts, so the risk is gone. I felt like to understand the confusion and the paranoia of what’s real and what isn’t, we needed to shoot the episode like that. I love the surreal, kind of David Lynch parts of the show that the writers baked into the script, so the oner was the best way to do it. We got it on the last take. The idea was that the technical style was never meant to take away from what your experience was as a viewer. If you think about it, not a ton of action is happening. It’s a lot of strange people and things repeating over and over. It was a truly sadistic version of Our Town.”

There is an epic fight scene between Lois and Sister Megan in episode seven that might be one of the most brutal brawls every committed. Diamon’s character charges at Nash-Betts with a large kitchen knife (Winkler confirms a nod to Fatal Attraction) before they hurl and toss themselves through the entire space. It feels more dangerous because the camera isn’t in the characters’ faces and we have some distance between us and the action. Bodies crunch and glasses smash in this visceral throwdown.

“I was thinking a lot about Noises Off,” Winkler admits, with a grin. “How many times have we seen handheld fights scenes? I wanted to challenge ourselves, and so we built an exact replication of the set and thought it’d be fun to have it be in the void of Niecy’s comatose mind. We filmed the first part in the actual set, and then the second part when the Nina Simon starts in our replica. Kim Jennings, our brilliant production designer, Kim Jennngs, has worked a lot with Charlie Kaufman, so it was probably not that strange to her. We had so many discussions about making this different but also serve the characters like with Niecy throwing glasses and Michaela’s little foot screech out in her new Manolos. I wanted to feel that messiness of two people who are not fighters actually needing to take a break to catch their breath. Ryan would play that Nina Simone song between takes when he directed episode three, and he’s obsessed with that song. I wanted to surprise him with it, and it just happened to work so well with the scene. Ryan kept telling us that this show needs to feel like an opera, so we talked a lot about introducing new language to the show. In those wide shots, the stunt doubles and the actors are doing switches constantly.”

Critics and audiences were stunned by Erik Menendez’s retelling of his abuse in episode five of Monsters, “The Hurt Man” (read David Phillips recount of the episode from last fall) for its technical patience. We go back to learn how Jose and Kitty met as young adults and how no one believed in them as Jose tried to center himself on his idea of the American dream. Following episode five, Winkler knew that he wasn’t interested in showing Jose Menendez in consoling light, and he holds a steady hand on the story.

“I never saw him as sympathetic,” he says. “Jose is someone, in our story, that has experienced generational trauma, and it’s continuing down, and I wanted to make it crystal clear with the scene with his mother at the end of the episode. Javier [Bardem] and I talked about the immigrant version of Death of a Salesman, and we spoke about the pressure of perfection. Jose carried these wounds that he wasn’t allowed to talk about with anybody, and he learned some things at a very young age that he then carries down. Any time that you have a brilliant script written by Ryan or Ian [Brennan], it always feels different. Especially if you had Nicholas [Alexander Chavez], Cooper [Koch], and the great Chloë Sevigny. I felt no pressure, because the work was already done for me in terms of research on the page.”

There is a moment where Jose calls his mother, and Bardem’s face is bathed in darkness. So many of these characters live far away from the light, and this director wanted to show the tension Jose has to remain there.

“He’s too proud to take that phone call and when we finished, people asked if we should get coverage but we didn’t need it,” he says. “Noting else, about that story, needs to be told that isn’t on his face.” 4

Grostesquerie is streaming now on Hulu, and Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is avilable on Netflix.