The Mindhunter Dossier

Here be monsters. And spoilers.

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Amazing Mindhunter art by Roberta Ingranata

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I actually felt bad for Gregg in this scene. I will never, ever listen to those tapes.

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Mindhunter season 2, announcement poster.

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“We start wide and move closer and Holden sits down,” said Baxter.”Then we go wide again when Kemper is standing. Now they’re slowly going to get closer together until he’s finally going to be wrapped like an anaconda by this guy. And then he makes a break for it and you’re wide again. That’s the stuff editorially that you’re looking for…slowly tightening the noose in the frame so that it’s in lockstep with the danger.” http://www.indiewire.com/2018/05/mindhunter-david-fincher-editor-kirk-baxter-emmys-1201969290/ I really enjoyed this Indiewire interview with Mindhunter editor Kirk Baxter, which reinforces how much effort goes into every detail of this series. Reading it has me all excited for Season 2, which no longer seems like it’s forever away.

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Music from MINDHUNTER, a playlist by Netflix on Spotify

Music From The Netflix Original MINDHUNTER Music from the Netflix Original MINDHUNTER starring Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany, and Anna Torv. Directed and Executive Produced by David Fincher.

Just to keep you in the Mindhunter mood until Season 2 drops--presumably some time in late 2018--here’s the official Netflix Spotify playlist. 

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Amazing alternative poster by Tibor Lovas, aka Fourteenlab

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John Douglas, the Authentic Mindhunter  (Original article in Spanish, but click through to Google translate for the English version. It’s not perfect, but I think you can supply the obvious corrections.)

Douglas's novel approach emerged from an epiphany. He told her that they would never get rid of the illegal game: "You can not stop us, John, whatever you do. We are that way". That "we are like this" made him think that "there was something inherent, deep in the mind and psyche of the criminal, that pushed him to do things in a certain way. Later, when I began to study the minds and motivations of serial killers, when I began to analyze the crime scenes in search of behavioral clues, I looked for the element or set of elements that made the crime come to light and the criminal, 'who would represent what he was'. At the end I found the term 'signature' to describe that unique element and personal obsession, which remained static.

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Netflix’s Mindhunter is Full of Truly Great Cars I think the car wranglers for Mindhunter must have shed a tear when they read this Jalopnik article, which provides a highly entertaining survey of the show’s impressive array of vintage wheels. In other news, I didn’t even know such a thing as a Pinto station wagon even existed. 

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FBI guy side eye

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How Stephen Shore’s Photographs Inspired Netflix’s Mindhunter Shore’s most well-known series, “Uncommon Places,” offered consistent fodder. The body of work corrals photographs of the town squares, diners, and occasional passersby he came across during a series of road trips in the ’70s, when he was in his twenties. There’s nice connection between Shore’s tendency to drift and the main character of Mindhunter’s own penchant for cross-country travel. The former’s photographs are often titled to include the name of the town where he shot each image; likewise, the occasional title cards that pop up on Mindhunter remind the viewer where a scene is located: “Wichita, Kansas” or “Santa Cruz, California,” for instance.

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Images like this one remind me just how much technology and acting prowess it takes to produce a convincing illusion . Also, I just really like this shade of green.

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This scene, which happens about midway through the Mindhunter season finale, seems to confuse a lot of people. Holden arrives home from his trip to Georgia with Dr. Carr and finds Debbie waiting on the porch, sitting with a glass of wine and her ambivalence about their relationship. Ambivalence is not a position that Holden can tolerate, but when he pushes Debbie to say what she is thinking, she challenges him to figure it out for himself because that is his superpower. He then proceeds to figure himself right out of the scene and the relationship, rejecting Debbie before she has a chance to reject him. 

Debbie does not break up with Holden and we don’t really know how far things have gone with her lab partner, and yet I’ve heard far worse invective aimed at her than I’ve heard aimed at the guys here who are, you know, killing and dismembering women. How’s that for today’s #showerthought?  

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Cameron Britton’s performance as Ed Kemper is a freaking tour de force. So compelling is it that we may feel compelled to ask ourselves if by finding the show so deeply absorbing, we are engaging in serial killer fandom. 

As someone who spent years reading everything I could find about aberrant behavior in general and murder in particular, I tend to lean toward a more generous interpretation of that interest. Fortunately, so does the show’s creator, David Fincher: "We’re very quick to judge. That should be looked at as a human failing. But I think at its best, people’s interest in true crime is people’s interest in trying to understand why we behave the way that we do."

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Meet the Female Forensic Researcher Behind Netflix’s Mindhunter This interview with Forensic Researcher Ann Burgess is a fascinating read for viewers who are wondering how much the characters resemble their real-life counterparts and how the BSU actually operated. Comparing the real Ann Burgess to her fictional counterpart, played by Anna Torv, also provides a window into the artistry of the show’s stellar writing and character development.  

There's a scene in which Agent Holden Ford, or John Douglas, comes up with the term for "sequence killer" off the top of his head. Were the agents really coming up with this in a vacuum?  Ann Burgess: They were just tossing the terms around. For some reason "serial" caught on more than "sequential." People would make fun of it, like "corn flakes." They had to have some levity in this, because this is pretty tough crime-scene stuff to work with. John came up with the "signature" term, and he would always look for that in the crime scene: What was it in the crime scene that was psychologically motivated? He would really hammer in on that. That was an important part of their learning and teaching.

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I’m glad someone out there is doing the important work.

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Jonathan Groff on the Principal Wade Storyline: It’s one of my favorite aspects about the show, in regards to this particular storyline, is that it’s very easy to see all sides,” said Groff. “I remember in our rehearsals, it was very important for everybody to understand every side of each argument. I remember David [Fincher] saying that an argument is only interesting when both people are right. In that particular example of the foot tickler, you have a man’s life who is completely devastated and ruined, and I think it’s really heartbreaking, especially when the wife comes off the elevator. But then you also have the simple answer of ‘just stop doing it.

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Please interstellar policeman Oh won't you give us a sign Give us a sign that we've reached you With your mind you have ability to form And transmit thought energy far beyond the norm