Filmmaker Cary Fukunaga is one of the more interesting figures working in the entertainment industry today. With each new project, the director finds some new genre or style to adopt. And each and every time, Fukunaga impresses. That’s why there’s so much buzz surrounding his upcoming Netflix series “Maniac.” And in a new interview, the director discusses how working on the series affected him. Plus, we have a new trailer that shows why Jonah Hill and Emma Stone will surely be in next year’s Emmy conversation.
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First, getting back to Fukunaga, in a new NY Times profile, the filmmaker is shown to be a perfectionist and incredibly adaptive. Whether he’s making a film about a civil war in Africa or a serial killer in Texas, Fukunaga throws himself completely into the work, doing his best to understand each story and make sure he has an intimate knowledge of the project.
The same could be said about his preparation for “Maniac.” The series follows two mentally ill people (Hill and Stone), in an alternate future, who sign up for an experimental clinical trial that is said to be able to cure them. Over the course of the series, the two characters travel to different alternate universes (in their minds, naturally), and ultimately find, as seen in the new trailer, they share a “cosmic connection.”
To help understand the material, Fukunaga explains what he and his collaborator experienced, saying, With ‘Maniac’ in particular, both Patrick [Somerville, the creator and head writer of ‘Maniac’] and I got excited about doing a year and a half of auto-analysis of ourselves. We’ve explored pretty thoroughly our relationships — sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly — with our parents and our siblings and our loved ones.”
When asked what he might have found in that discovery process, and if any of those revelations made their way on screen, the director said, I’m trying to think of one without exposing myself. I love my parents, and I don’t want to throw them … under the bridge? Under the truck?”
When the conversation turns to what’s next on Fukunaga’s schedule, he mentions working on “The Black Count,” which tells the story of French writer Alexandre Dumas’ Haitian father, as well as project that tells the story of the days leading up to Hiroshima. Of course, we also know that he signed on to direct “The American,” which stars Jake Gyllenhaal as the iconic musician Leonard Bernstein.
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One thing he won’t be doing is telling stories that should be coming from female filmmakers. However, that’s not because he doesn’t think he should be allowed. Fukunaga just believes that with society, as it stands today, it’s best for filmmakers to be incredibly careful when tackling stories from another point of view.
“What if we’re getting to the point where we’ll say you’re not allowed to tell a story about someone who is nothing like you?” he asks.
“If people can tell stories that aren’t their own, it helps make the world smaller,” he says, “but it requires a sensitivity and an attention to detail.”
“Maniac” will hit Netflix on September 21.