Netflix debuts filmed-in-Pittsburgh ‘Mindhunter’
The first season of Netflix’s filmed-in-Pittsburgh 1970s FBI psychological drama “Mindhunter” has been shrouded in secrecy from the start, but the show finally sees the light of day on the streaming service Friday.
“Mindhunter” is executive produced by David Fincher, who also directed four installments in the 10-episode first season. Mr. Fincher previously brought Netflix its early scripted hit drama “House of Cards.”
“Mindhunter” stars Jonathan Groff (“Looking”) as FBI agent Holden Ford, an upstanding young agent who gets partnered with a jaded veteran, Bill Tench (Holt McCallany, “Lights Out”). The pair are part of the FBI’s “road school,” traveling the country to meet local law enforcement and share details of the bureau’s latest techniques. Along the way, they are asked to consult on local cases.
But they also interview
incarcerated serial killers in an attempt to understand what makes these damaged men tick as the FBI pair pioneers research into deviant minds for the bureau’s behavioral science division.
Just because there are intense interview scenes between wet-behind-the-ears Ford and these killers, don’t compare “Mindhunter” to 1991’ s “Silence of the Lambs,” even though both were influenced by the work of real-life FBI profiler John Douglas. In “Silence” the Scott Glenn character, Jack Crawford, was supposedly inspired in part by Mr. Douglas; the “Mindhunter” producers bought the rights to Mr. Douglas’ 1995 book “Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit,” which inspired the Netflix series. Ford and Tench are fictional characters, but the serial killers they interview are based on real people.
“David said to me at the very beginning of this process, ‘I’m not interested in these sorts of very charming, Hannibal Lecter-style serial killers that seem like they would be the perfect person to add to a dinner party,’” Mr. McCallany said. “What you find is these guys are deeply troubled, fractured human beings and David wants to show them warts and all and not make them clever, charming characters.”
Mr. Groff said he jumped at the opportunity to work with Mr. Fincher, who is widely acclaimed for his work directing “Fight Club, “Gone Girl,” “Zodiac” and “Se7en.” But Mr. Groff also was intrigued by the type of work “Mindhunter” required in its interview scenes between Ford and the serial killers.
“The scenes were so long. It was almost like a theater scene, not a film or television scene,” Mr. Groff said. “They’d be 15 pages long, psychological and incredibly interesting and well written, very complicated scenes with lots of twists and turns and surprises. The idea of digging my teeth into material like that was really exciting for me.”
Directing those conversation scenes was “not for the timid,” Mr. Fincher said. “It’s about power dynamics and how people ingratiate themselves or become confrontational. It’s part manipulation, part seduction. … I love exploring all the nuances: When they blink, when they stop talking, when they nod or get up to get a glass of water. It’s an intricate dance.”
Mr. Fincher said he was intrigued by the notion of the FBI’s bureaucracy at a pivotal crossroads in 1977 when the story begins.
“They gifted their agents to do new-agey and touchyfeely law enforcement instead of just kicking down doors and taking names and trotting these guys off to the electric chair,” Mr. Fincher said. “This was a new investigation [approach] tasked with getting under the ‘why.’ It’s a very different thing from ‘Zodiac.’ ‘Se7en’ is intensely hyperbolic and much more of a horror movie. This is — I don’t know that this is procedural — but you could file this under more psychological thriller.”
The show filmed locally from May 2016 to February 2017, building its standing sets — the FBI headquarters at Quantico, Holden’s apartment — at 31st Street Studios in the Strip District. Location shooting included scenes filmed at the former State Correctional Institution Greensburg, Washington & Jefferson College and Chatham University's Mellon Hall, among other spots.
The show’s first scene takes place in Braddock — Ford is negotiating a hostage situation before being reassigned by his FBI bosses — but Mr. Fincher said it was originally written to be in Ohio or Michigan.
“We fell in love with this location we had in Braddock and we just thought, why does it have to be Ohio? It doesn’t matter,” he said.
Mr. Fincher said Pittsburgh was chosen as a filming location because it can play multiple locales (episode two is set largely in California).
“We went looking for a place that could give us a lot of different looks: flat lands, farms, downtowns, urban areas under bridges and we all converged on Pittsburgh,” Mr. Fincher said. “When we went to McKeesport, an entire street looks like it’s 1978. It was a stroke of good fortune.”
The show’s stars felt that way about making the show in Pittsburgh, a city both Mr. Groff and Mr. McCallany had some familiarity with prior to “Mindhunter.”
Mr. Groff, a native of Lancaster, auditioned for Carnegie Mellon University’s acting program and deferred for a year to tour the country with a production of “The Sound of Music” that came through Pittsburgh. (He neverwent to CMU.)
“I was going to go there for college and I couldn’t get away from it,” Mr. Groff said. “And I’d been once with an ex-boyfriend whose family lives in Pittsburgh but definitely ‘Mindhunter’ was the most time I’ve spent in Pittsburgh.”
Mr. Groff lived in Lawrenceille, jogged along the Allegheny River, dined at Bar Marco and Casbah and on Sunday, his “cheat day,” visited a different Pamela’s every week for their famous pancakes.
“I really felt like Pittsburgh, for me, was such an amazing place to work because it’s a big city and has all the entertainment factors big cities have to offer … but it’s also very neighborhoody,” he said. “I could go home to my flat in Lawrenceville and sit andlearn lines.”
Mr. McCallany for many years voiced TV commercials for UPMC and continues to do ads for the company’s health plan. He often recorded his work in Pittsburgh. And when he was injured on the set of 2004’s “Chronicles of Riddick” — his role was ultimately recast due to his injury during stunt rehearsal — he came to Pittsburgh for surgery.
“Dr. Freddie Fu repaired my ACL and I can’t give a more glowing recommendation. He’s a tremendous surgeon,” Mr. McCallany said. “I lived in Pittsburgh for about three months then and I really fell in love with the place. So when I was told ‘Mindhunter’ would shoot in Pittsburgh, I was thrilled.”
Mr. McCallany lived in the Strip District’s Cork Factory, frequented Cure in Lawrenceville and golfed at Edgewood Country Club.
Netflix has not announced an official season two renewal for “Mindhunter,” but all involved acknowledge the show will be back.
“We outlined five seasons for Netflix,” Mr. Fincher said. “We know the scene it endson, where the target is.”
But he acknowledges making a high-quality TV drama is an imperfect science. Elements producers originally planned for season two were cannibalized by season one. Production on season two was supposed to begin earlier this year, but Mr. Fincher said a first crack at scripts for the second seasondid not turn out as well as planned. Those scripts were discarded and new ones are being written with a goal of production recommencing in Pittsburgh next spring on a second season that’s largely about the 1979-81 AtlantaChild Murders.
“A TV series reveals itself to you [as you go],” Mr. Fincher said. “You see the strength of certain actors, certain characters and it’s like they’re tailoring the garment on the model as they’re walking down the runway for 10 separate shows. By the time of the 10th show you go, ‘I think I know what the strength of this is, I know the strength of the garment.’”