Go mental for Crazy Love director Dan Klores.
LWLies: Can you tell us a little bit how the film came about?
Klores: There was an article in The New York Times about three or four years ago and it sort of jogged my memory because I remember when this happened, I was about nine or 10-years-old in New York. So I said, ‘Oh I remember that’. I remember the headlines and the horror of it. You know the papers were very important in my household, not The New York Times but the tabloids for a working class family.
I realised there is a good story here. I didn’t know if it could turn out to be a film, but it had the elements of a story. It had the elements of what I thought was attractive to read. It was about New Yorkers, it was about love, it was about romance, it was about obsessions. And then I called them. I called Burt. His number was listed in the Yellow Pages. I had lunch with he and Linda and that’s how it started.
There was some type of very uncomfortable commonality a lot of us share when we are hurt: what are the things that we think about? What are the things that we do but never discuss with other people? Then I began to learn more and more and the obsession and love really attracted me. Are they different? What makes them different? What would compel someone to commit such a heinous act? What would compel someone to marry that person?
LWLies: Were they at all reluctant to participate?
Klores: No they weren’t reluctant. At first I had an idea that it was going to be some type of hybrid between a feature and a doc and they were more excited about that, because it asks the question ‘who is going to play me’? But no, they were never reluctant. They were two elderly people living in this one bedroom apartment that they have had for years and years and clearly they each suffer from different types of emotional illnesses. They were very open. It took me a long time but I got them to be very, very open. And they were not reluctant.
LWLies: You’d imagine Burt might want to disappear into obscurity rather than be on the news all over again.
Klores: Yes, if you were to judge him under the sense of normalcy, but he’s not. He suffers from pathological behaviour. So whereas you or I would want to never be seen again, not him at all. I mean this is a man of immense need and who has a very high IQ, is very, very bright and it is very difficult for him to see the world similarly to a normal person at all.
LWLies: Do you think Linda’s choice to stick with Burt was an entirely pragmatic decision or do you think that she loves him? There is a point in the documentary where she says that she is not willing to say that.
Klores: I think… I tried to paint a portrait of what affected these two people in their childhood. They were deeply affected, deeply. Neither would have turned out to have had any type of normal adult life, any sense of intimacy with another human being because of their childhood. I spent a lot of time with psychoanalysts while making this movie so to a certain degree, yes; her choice was a choice of pragmatism but it was also based upon 30 years of living in the dark.
The one thing this little girl had was her physical beauty, that was a thing to be admired, that was a thing that drew men to her. Of course she couldn’t be intimate with them, I mean she could have gone either way, she could have been quite promiscuous or she could have had this virginal quality about her but neither would have been in a normal ‘give and take’ relationship. So now all of a sudden she loses that beauty, she can never really see what she looks like, she is just living in a dark world in every conceivable way, so it was more pragmatism in terms of ‘who is going to take care of me?’
It’s a factor of course, no question about it, its a factor. Most of all it’s a question of when she tried to reach out, when she tried to give of herself and be with someone else, when she tried to reveal herself and take off those glasses, she was devastated, shunned, rejected. So psychologically it was more than just a question of pragmatism: ‘who is going to pay for my rent, who is going to buy my clothes, who is going to take me places, who is going to do things for me?’ – which is what men were designed to do for her even as a little girl – but it was ‘who am I safest with? Who sees me like the beautiful girl I was?’
That’s what it was, that was a big part of it. Remember from the attack on she was 90 per cent blind and then she loses all of her vision. The only one in her mind that knows her as this beauty that she was, was Burt.
LWLies: The documentary is fairly non-judgemental. Did you ever find it difficult to maintain that stance?
Klores: Oh yes, I still do. It’s a struggle. If you catch me on the wrong day, you know… It’s very hard. I have my feelings and my conclusions but I didn’t feel like it was my role to make it obvious in the film, I mean I think you can sort of see it hopefully but it was very difficult because you have to try to not outright say that he is an absolute evil disgusting person. I have to constantly reach back and try to understand what happened to him. But nevertheless, I find his actions unforgivable. Which is not to say that I think her decisions are forgivable, I don’t.
As I said, the first thing that struck me was memory here, I knew it was a good story, the second thing was this idea of what are the things we do when we are hurt that we don’t like to share or talk about. Mostly what I learned about the film is that it is a story about what we do in order to not be alone. I waiver back and forth. I try to let the characters in the film come to the conclusions.
LWLies: He doesn’t really express remorse for the incident where she was blinded. He says if he could undo it, he would. Do you think he genuinely feels sorry?
Klores: Well, it’s a very good question because the answer’s not simple. Almost all people, if you do something to hurt someone else, you can express a true feeling of remorse – ‘I am sorry I did that because I hurt someone else’. Burt’s sorry that he did it because he messed up his own life. With Burt, Burt comes first, second and third.
LWLies: Did you feel yourself falling into his trap, being charmed by him?
Klores: Never. Never felt myself fall into his trap. Not during making the film, afterwards maybe because his obsessive behaviour helps to define him, it’s about everything. You know he would call me two, three times a day and say ‘what’s happening with the film?’
LWLies: Are you still in contact?
Klores: I haven’t spoken to him in about six or eight weeks. I’m making another film and I have a play coming out. It’s not like I am going to be friends and sitting having dinner with him.
