In an interview with Digital Trends, MatthewGentile talks about turning Jason Derek Brown's tragic story into AmericanMurderer.
The FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list is reserved for some of the most violent and heinous criminals in the world. Osama bin Laden, Whitey Bulgar Jr., Ted Bundy, and James Earl Ray are some of the notable fugitives to have made the list. While doing research for American Murderer, I learned that the subject of the film, Jason Derek Brown, occupied a spot on the list from December 8, 2007, to September 7, 2022.
As I saw his name, his face really was what struck me, his mug shot, which we show in the film that he took at a gun store three weeks before the crime was committed. Here was this guy, a surfer dude with spiky blond hair, frosted tips, and a red hoodie. I remembered his face. He resembled Sean Penn from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He resembled Sean Penn so much that Sean’s body double has been arrested twice in the 18 years he’s been missing.As you can imagine, the face just struck me.
Well, what had happened was I was kicking the script around and anyone who works in Los Angeles knows that it can be hard to get your script read. Before I went to film school, I worked at William Morris Endeavor, which is a huge talent agency. I used to be an assistant, and I was the guy reading people’s scripts so I knew how hard it is just to get people to crack a script open, period. I was sending American Murderer as a script around. It was hard to get people [to] commit to reading it.
During the process of making the movie, no they didn’t. My reason for not contacting the Brown family or really most people who are portrayed in the film — it’s not just them. I didn’t contact Lance Leising either — because I had so much information. There was so much out there about this case and the story. I feel the film is pretty compassionate toward the family. That’s my feeling.
As I said, there was a ton of research that was done on the project. There was a lot of information out there. This story was covered very well. American Greed, Dateline. There have been books written about it. There were articles nonstop. I mean there are a lot of accounts. I did do interviews with some people who I won’t name because I don’t want to out them. I did conduct interviews with people who knew them [the family] and him.
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