Writer/director Marc Meyers is having a helluva 2017 so far. His latest project, My Friend Dahmer, has been featured at numerous prestigious film festivals ever since its world premiere at Tribeca in April, and it most recently screened as part of Fantasia International Film Festival’s outstanding programming slate for 2017. Based on the graphic novel by Derf Backderf, My Friend Dahmer takes a look at the life of infamous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (played by Ross Lynch) back when he was a teenager in high school during the 1970s.
Daily Dead spoke to Meyers over the weekend about his adaptation of the acclaimed graphic novel and he discussed how he came to discover My Friend Dahmer in the first place, his approach to the screenplay version of Backderf’s account of Dahmer's struggles through high school, how Lynch came to embody the younger version of the titular character, and more.
You’ve been quite busy on the festival circuit over the last few months. How has that whole experience been for you?
Marc Meyers: Well, it’s been great. We world premiered at Tribeca, and then we also were a part of the Buzz section at the Los Angeles Film Festival, we shared it at Frameline in San Francisco, and we just played Fantasia. So, you're right—I guess I have been busy [laughs]. And there's a lot coming up that hasn't been announced for later this summer and the beginning of fall, before the theatrical release. We just announced that it'll be at Sitges in Spain, so there is some European festival stuff that's just about to start, which is very exciting for us. It's been wonderful to share it everywhere.
I know that this is based on a graphic novel, so what was the appeal of the character of Jeffrey Dahmer, or was the appeal in the source material that you were able to draw from to make this film?
Marc Meyers: A little bit of both. I will say, and I've shared this a bunch, is that I originally had this concept for a portrait of a serial killer as a young boy, because I thought that would be an interesting movie. And it's something that my producing partner, Jody Girgenti, and I held onto as a concept. I originally thought I would develop, through some research, a fictionalized character that would suggest this kid would one day become a serial killer. And what was that childhood like?
I also simultaneously knew that I'd be interested in graphic novels that were realistic, because it felt that those fit right into my own aesthetic. So I happened to come and discover the book early on, even before it was available on bookshelves. It was everything and more than I ever could have asked for. It was bigger and better than the concept that I had. It was non-fiction. It was based on an infamous character that transcends the US culture, but he's internationally known. So it was a little bit of everything. But I'm not a guy who obsesses over serial killers as a hobby. I have met a bunch of those kinds of characters, though, through my travels with the movie. There are a lot of people out there that are fascinated by serial killers.
I don't know if you have any insights into this at all, but I'm curious, from your perspective, what do you think it is about these types of people that people become obsessive over? It's fascinating to me, and I'm just curious if there's anything that you've picked up on as you've been going through this process?
Marc Meyers: It's hard for me to say, honestly, because I'm not someone that is obsessive in any part of my life, except for maybe movies. So I don't really know what would fuel someone else to be like that. I think that, on a basic level, we're all fascinated in a simple way by these people that have done horrible things—their psyche, their mental state, their charisma, their depravity, and their ghastly urges, and all of these weird things are mixed together in a way that they've been highly affected to do something very horrible, that just goes beyond the extremes of what most people think and do. It's just something so rare, that there are people that just may find that fascinating because most of us just live everyday lives that are pretty regular.
I completely agree. I'm curious, because you mentioned that before you came upon the graphic novel, you had an idea that you had percolating, in terms of exploring this kind of a story. So, when you decided to take on this project in particular, how much did that graphic novel then guide you when you were working on the screenplay? And did you do anything a little bit different to add your own flavor to it?
Marc Meyers: Oh, it’s a bit of both. I remained very loyal to the book, in many ways. But I also was very aware that it's a different medium. The book and the author had a different medium to communicate the story, and the facts that he was sharing were both personal, or taken from his own friends that remember their time and their friend Jeff, growing up. It's an extraordinary book. But as a movie, you can't just do it directly, because a movie has its own devices—the dramatic techniques of making a film, and dramatizing the story. So, there are other things I just had to do to put them out. But then it would be sort of a spoiler alert.
The main thing is that the graphic novel has prose that was looking back at present day at what their life was like in the late ’70s, and having some perspective on it. As I was working on the script and doing the rewrites, and working on re-outlining it, and rewriting it with Jody Girgenti and Adam Goldworm, we were talking a lot about what the movie should be. One thing we immediately pulled out, was just the idea of using voiceover. Knowing that the audience, watching it through a 2017/2018 lens, the voiceover could make something feel sentimental, and I didn't want to do that.
Then, I just had to focus everything predominantly on Jeff, because I know that's first and foremost the interest of the audience. So though there's a friendship there, I had to just really reimagine the story through the eyes of Jeff, through the experience that the storyteller gives in the book. Then, there are different incidences in my script that are just unique to drama, that a book either wasn't going to tell, and it just becomes its own thing, I suppose, for the sake of entertainment, without exploiting this. We were always aware that Jeff became a horrible person that did unforgivable things and hurt a lot of people, and a lot of families, so it was all about just looking at what made this person who he became. That’s what we were examining.
With this being a story about Jeffrey, you have to make sure that you've got the perfect person in that role, because it lives and dies by how well his character comes through in this film. What was it that you saw in Ross, then, that made him the perfect fit? And how did you guys collaborate together, in order to really pull back the layers on who Jeffrey Dahmer was at this point in his life?
Marc Meyers: I met with a lot of actors, and fortunately after this script was on the Black List, I started to meet with even more actors that were interested in the roles in this. Some of them, they themselves would know, or I just knew, didn't have the likeness that I felt was for Jeff, but I still wanted to meet with them, because they could very well be an interesting actor that I felt could be part of all the friends and teenagers. With that process, I met a bunch of kids; but once I met with Ross, he just stuck with me.
Not only does he have an extraordinary likeness, especially when you put the glasses on him, but I knew he was originally from Disney. He's so trained, he's so professional. He's originally a dancer, so I knew that he can inhabit the role from head to toe, where he could have the shoulder, the gait, and really the likeness of the embodiment of this teenager. I just started watching some of his Disney shows from his Austin and Ally show that ran for a number of years, and his Teen Beach movies, and I just saw in him so much talent. We got a day to hang out and mess around with the script a little bit, and I auditioned him with the camera on, and just saw how he took adjustments, and we played around with some of the scenes, too. It just was proof to me and everyone else on the team at that point that he was a unique choice, but he was going to bring so much to the role.
From the onset, I think with any role, the more scenes you do, the more you start to understand how you're coloring this character that you're creating. And within a couple days, we were beyond feeling like there was any sort of imitation aspects that we had to be thinking about. Ross had totally embodied the person, and it was his Jeff. It was his interpretation, and we just started to have fun with it. We felt like we were making a high school movie, almost like our own John Hughes movie. But for this, we were just happening to follow a guy who'd go on to do these other things.
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Keep an eye on Daily Dead for more coverage of the 2017 Fantasia International Film Festival, and check here for our previous news, reviews, and interviews from the festival.
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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