The global press conference of the true crime film The Boston Strangler, on Disney+ from March 17, was attended by director Matt Ruskin and the protagonists: Keira Knightley, Carrie Coon, Alessandro Nivola and Academy Award winner Chris Cooper. Here’s what they told us.
The terrible story of the Boston Strangler was told in the cinema for the first time many years ago, in the film of the same name by Richard Fleischer of 1968, when the memory of those horrific events was still very much alive and in America the profiling studies on violent crimes had just begun, there was no coordination between the law enforcement agencies of the various states and the definition of serial killer had not yet been minted. Tony Curtisknown at the time for light roles, played the psychopath in the film with extraordinary skill Albert DeSalvo, earning a Golden Globe nomination for his performance. The facts that the new true crime tells today The Boston Strangler, took place between 1962 and 1964, when thirteen women (some of them very old) were brutally murdered by an unknown psychopath. Even if DeSalvo was linked in 2013, with the DNA test carried out on his nephew, to the last victim, it is now almost certain that there were more than one killers and many obscure points remain on the story to this day. Almost 60 years later, this film returns to the story (an exclusive Disney+available from March 17) directed by the producer-director Matt Ruskinwith an important cast that includes Keira Knightley, Carrie Coon, Alexander Nivola and the Oscar winner Chris Cooper. What many don’t know, and what the film tells, is that to bring to the front page that story on which the Boston police seemed not to commit at all and to give impetus to the investigation, were two courageous journalists from the local newspaper, Record American, Loretta McLaughlin e John Cole, who managed to establish themselves in a fiercely male-dominated environment. Precisely because of this and other discoveries, director Matt Ruskin decided to make the film:
“I grew up in Boston and had always heard of the Boston Strangler, but I didn’t know anything about the case. Then, several years ago, I started reading everything I could find and discovered this incredibly complex murder mystery, full of surprises and In many ways it was a story about the city at the time. So I got hooked on the case and when I learned about these female reporters, I found out that they were the first reporters to connect the murders and that they were the ones who gave the murderer named the Boston Strangler during their investigation. I thought it was a very fascinating way to revisit this case.”
The female gaze on history, and the fact that today hardly anyone remembers these courageous journalists, was instrumental in accepting the role for both Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon. “I found it very interesting to tell this story” – says the first, “through that of these two women, who have been largely erased from the history of this case”. “It’s true,” confirms Carrie Coon, “that was the most shocking part for me, the fact that these women were essential to solving the case, forcing the police to share information about it, and their names were never even mentioned when talking about it. Then there’s the story of how they became journalists, and they’re very engaging and touching stories that mirror the lives of women in the world I grew up in, the Midwest. My mother was a nurse, one of my grandmothers was a teacher and the other a housewife. Those were the opportunities available to women, other than being a secretary. Jean Cole’s struggle to become a journalist touched me a lot. And of course I had seen The courage to fight, directed by Matt, and I think he’s a really deeply moral director. I knew his interest in this story was feminist, to tell the story of a serial killer through the point of view of these two female reporters, and that he was interested in letting people know that these two women had been erased from history. I also knew Keira was involved and I was very interested in working with her.”
In addition to the interest in the case and the research, Matt Ruskin also had a stroke of luck, above all to reconstruct the story of the two journalists, both missing (McLaughlin in 2015 and Cole in 2018): “I read Jean Cole’s obituary, where it was mentioned that she had two daughters. I looked for them and one had a Facebook profile, There was a photo where she was hugging an old friend of mine. I called my friend and told her I asked how did she know her, and she explained that that was her mother and Jean Cole was her grandmother and she was someone who was respected by everyone, before her death. She introduced me to both families. And the more I learned , the more I admired them and felt compelled to tell their story.”For me,” he comments Keira Knightley“this film is a love song for investigative journalists, underlining how important it is to have these women in a position of power in the storytelling, because they were the ones who understood that this was a really important story and that the information needed to be made public.” to keep the women of Boston safe. A story up to that point mostly ignored by the male establishment.”
In the film, the veteran Chris Cooper is the editor-in-chief of the Record American, who initially, like the others, tries to keep Loretta out of the case and entrusts her with more “feminine” tasks, but then he is convinced to leave the job to her and Jean of the case. The actor talks about how he prepared for the role: I was fortunate enough to know Eileen McNamara well, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who worked at the Boston Globe in the 1970s and 1980s. Loretta McLauglin had been mentoring her and Eileen told me exactly what I needed to know. And – in a less orthodox way – I followed Jack Mclaine, the character, who wasn’t very interested in these murders, which were a total embarrassment to the Boston police who didn’t seem to put too much effort into them. But Eileen pointed me to specific sources on the newsrooms in the sixties, what happens politically, the terminology, the hierarchy within the newspaper. They were terribly contemptuous of female journalists and Eileeen would tell me about these editors-in-chief with whiskey in the drawer, not exactly a comfortable environment for women.” Alessandro Nivola is the detective who agrees, albeit secretly from his colleagues, to collaborate with Loretta: “My character is furious that the police don’t have modern forensic psychology techniques and apparently aren’t interested in linking these murders together. So he makes this desperate move and agrees to talk to her, because he’s probably a cop’s son and maybe a cop’s nephew. And therefore, on the one hand, it betrays his body and puts it in a bad light, because his impression is that it is the media that are pursuing the case instead of the police. But he does it because he’s totally obsessed with this case, and the only one who has his own obsession is her. They are made of the same stuff and he is probably also attracted to her and he likes to meet her”.
Of Loretta McLauglin, Keira Knightley appreciated above all the tenacity and to have been inspired by this woman who faced many difficulties in trying to reconcile aspects considered incompatible at the time, “from the sexist workplace to desperately trying to reconcile his private life and work and trying to raise children while doing justice to the victims. I think many women today can relate to this, and this has inspired me”. Carrie Coon comments on the relationship between the two women in this way: “I think it’s a story built on the female alliance. There’s a larger story other than the fact that they warned the women of Boston that they were in danger and told them how to protect themselves. Which is not the story we often tell. Usually in a work environment, for women, it was like this: “there is only room for one, that we already have and we don’t need another.” And I think that in the film we see the perhaps conventional way in which Jean moves in that world, undermined by Loretta’s persistence, by her desire to create controversy. Which is something Jean has avoided, outside the arena in which she has investigated. When you see how Jean’s reality is complicated by Loretta’s presence, that probably tells you why they’ve remained lifelong friends.”
Anyone who fears that, given the topic, there are too violent scenes, reassure yourself. The Boston Strangler is not a horror and, as Matt Ruskin says: “I didn’t want to depict violence in a gratuitous way, so the violence and most of the assaults happen offscreen for that reason”. If the story intrigues you, we remind you that from March 17 The Boston Strangler awaits you on Disney +.
