Teenage girls are an easy mark for TV scriptwriters. AMC’s “The Killing” spent two seasons trying to figure out who killed Rosie Larsen, a girl who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nic Pizzolatto, a writer on that show, has made the death of another teenage character (who also just happened to be working as a prostitute) the central case in “True Detective,” a new anthology series that combines elements of classic and contemporary dramas to forge something new.
Besides “The Killing,” “True Detective” also has elements of “Twin Peaks” and “Breaking Bad” — finally, HBO has a show with a meth lab! One of the prime suspects looks like he would fit in on “Duck Dynasty.” All cable television bases, highbrow and lowbrow, are covered.
Although the putative stars of this eight-week venture are “Dallas Buyers Club” star Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, who had a juicy part in the HBO Sarah Palin movie “Game Change,” the scene-stealer is the bayou country of New Orleans. Strange and haunting landscapes dominate the series and enhance the murder investigation — the victim is found with a pair of antlers attached to her body — in ways that mere dialogue can’t hope to match.
“It’s not hard to find those places in Louisiana,” says director Cary Fukunaga. “Part of my job is to open [the screenplay] up. In episodes 1 through 3, there’s always a refinery in the background. Or some broken-down church. Some trailer home. That’s always to give you a sense of place. We were still find locations while we were shooting.”
Prowling around in these outposts of progress are two Louisiana detectives, Rust Cohle (McConaughey), a loner and former narc prone to monologues about deep subjects, and Martin Hart (Harrelson), a family man itching for a little action on the side (he scratches that itch). Finding clues to the 1995 murder of Dora Lange has profound influences on their personal lives, so that when a crime with similar occult overtones crops up 17 years later, and the detectives are interviewed by two African-American detectives assigned to the new case, both Cohle and Hart have already left the force. Cohle, straggly-haired and keeping his hands busy making crucifixes out of Lone Star beer cans with a pen knife, is in particularly bad shape.
Fukunaga says that the actors filmed those interrogation scenes in marathon sessions that in which 29 pages of the script were filmed in one day. “It starts to feel like a one-man show,” he says.
The time crunch on those scenes was lost when the company went on location. It took an hour or to drive to the burned-out churches and other spooky spots. In keeping with their eccentric profiles, Harrelson and McConaughey provided their own transportation to get there. Harrelson drove a bus that “looks like it came out of a Grateful Dead concert,” says co-star Michelle Monaghan, who plays his wife, Maggie, a nurse. “It’s 100 percent green. He takes it from job to job. It has solar panels on the roof. It’s a hippie bus through and through.”
Fukunaga says the bus has a yoga swing and runs on vegetable oil. “He calls it the mother ship.”
McConaughey drove a refurbished airstream trailer from the 1970s. “It’s beautiful,” says Monaghan. “It has all recycled wood inside and a wine fridge.”
“The inside looks like it’s some kind of U-boat,” Fukunaga says. “Every now and then Matthew would strike up a barbecue outside his trailer.’
Monaghan says her two co-stars have been friends for years and that McConaughey mentioned the role to Harrelson and got him to do it. With the only prominent female role in the series, Monaghan’s character has a relationship with both men — trying to put up with her volatile husband and trying to help the peculiar Russ have a more integrated life.
“Maggie gets involved in the investigation. She develops a friendship with Russ. She finds it very easy to talk to him,” Monaghan says. “She essentially tries to be his matchmaker. As the investigation starts to unravel, Maggie becomes the grounding nature for both of these men. She’s kind of a quiet giant in this series. Both men make the mistake of underestimating her.”
“Hart feels like he has the case all figured out, and Cole seems to be the lone wolf,” says Fukunaga. “Later, Hart’s own lying to himself becomes clear.”
Although the people behind the production promise that “True Detective” will have a satisfying resolution, unlike Season 1 of “The Killing,” the show goes back and forth in time, as we saw in FX’s “Damages.” To keep everyone on the same page, a continuity bible was created and production relied on a series of very good wigs and hair extensions to make the stars seem younger — and older.
“We tried to age Woody, but it was little hard to pull off,” says Fukunaga. “He glows. He doesn’t like makeup.”
Fukunaga will not be onboard to direct a second season — he is set to helm the movie version of the novel “Beasts of No Nation” starring Idris Elba — should the show get picked up. He says there will most likely be a new case, with new characters and obviously new actors. Before then, Martin and Russ will take a dangerous trip to the aforementioned meth lab in Beaumont, Texas, and find more ways to leave their ordered lives behind. But all will be resolved.
“Nothing’s worse than waiting for an answer,” Fukunaga says.