In 1978, a notorious serial killer discovered his next potential victim on national television. Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut, Woman of the Hour, is based on that true story. As you can see in the trailer above, Kendrick plays Cheryl Bradshaw, a single person at the center of an episode of the 1970s blind date TV show “The Dating Game.” “Bachelor #3, don’t let me down!” she laughs — when Bachelor #3 is revealed to be Rodney Alcala, a serial killer who became known as the Dating Game Killer. , this line has a chilling meaning.
Kendrick was originally only scheduled to star in Woman of the Hour, but eventually signed on to also direct. “Once I was offered to direct the movie, I realized that I loved the character, but I loved the movie as a whole far more than I loved the character,” she says. “I think I was especially passionate about the script and the parts of the script that[my character]wasn’t in, in a way that I wouldn’t normally do.”
In this bizarre tale of a serial killer and a dating game show, Kendrick saw something universal. “I love the complicated journey of a woman who shrinks herself and pleases so much, yet somehow manages to rebel and take back power,” she says. “I like the fact that it’s not as simple as, ‘Oh, she asserts herself and everything is fine,’ because this is the deal we make every day: How much do I Will I live with integrity and how much danger will it actually put me in?”
Screenwriter Ian McDonald agrees. “When Anna signed on to direct, she said what she always found interesting was that this was a movie about the dangers of us trying to get intimate with other people,” he told Tudum. speaks to. “And like any time you date someone you don’t know, you’re making yourself vulnerable. Of course, the flip side of that is that you don’t want to close yourself off to the world. So this is a necessary vulnerability, but it still comes with risks.”
Woman of the Hour turns the serial killer story on its head and focuses on Alcala’s victims and the lives he cut short. Read below to learn more about the movies currently streaming on Netflix.
What is “Woman of the Hour”?
“Woman of the Hour” is set in 1970s Los Angeles and follows an episode of “The Dating Game” about a man who aspires to become an actor and a serial killer who has been in the midst of a multi-year murder spree. This is a story stranger than a novel, where lives intersect due to certain events. .
Kendrick and McDonald dug into the documented history of the Dating Game Killer and his victims, but the edges of the story had to be filled in. “Every episode of The Dating Game feels like time has passed in a way,” Kendrick says of Tudum. “I think the majority of[the research]came from Newspapers.com subscriptions.”
Kendrick stumbled across a few clues just by driving around the Los Angeles city he calls home. “One of the articles listed the victim’s address, so I knew where it was in L.A.,” Kendrick says. “And I immediately thought, ‘Oh my god, she could hear the ocean when she died.'” Kendrick called MacDonald, and the two of them centered on that spot, where the cameras were pointing. The crashing waves transport us back to the tragic crime scene, creating some memorable moments.
When will ‘Woman of the Hour’ be available on Netflix?
“Woman of the Hour” is now available on Netflix.
Who is in the cast of Woman of the Hour?
Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air, Pitch Perfect, A Simple Favor) stars as Cheryl Bradshaw Daniel Zovatto (It Follows, Lady Bird) ) plays Rodney Alcala Tony Hale (Veep, Arrested Development) Nicolette Robinson (The Affair, One Night in Miami…) Best (4400) Katherine Gallagher (HBO Max’s Gossip Girl and Broadway musicals Jagged Little Pill and Spring Awakening) Kelly Jakle (Pitch Perfect, 42) Pete Holmes (Crash)
Kendrick was pleased with the casting of relatively fresh faces who fit into the film’s 1970s setting. “Some of these people are performers that I know,” she says. “But I’m very happy that this film might introduce some of the actors to a whole new audience.”
‘Woman of the Hour’ stars react to the script for the first time
Is “The Woman of Time” based on a true story?
yes. Rodney Alcala actually got into the dating game while committing a series of murders (he was eventually convicted of seven murders in two states and suspected of many more). ). Screenwriter MacDonald was inspired to write the screenplay after stumbling upon the Dating Game story on a true crime website, which landed him on the 2017 Black List of Unproduced Screenplays. But it wasn’t the murderer that caught his attention. “What I thought was really interesting was his surroundings,” McDonald says. “He seemed to be emblematic of the problem we were dealing with as a country at the time, which was ordinary people turning a blind eye and trying to keep bad people from doing bad things. .”
Alcala killed his first victim almost a decade before appearing on the show, and continued committing murders until his arrest the following year, but this only reinforces that idea. “In the true crime world, you sometimes hear people say, ‘Oh yeah, he looks like Ted Bundy,'” McDonald says. “But the truth is, he’s the opposite. Ted Bundy was a chameleon. He was really good at pretending to be something he wasn’t. And Rodney Alcala was the perfect example of his worst tendencies. It’s like he’s actually ignoring a lot of things. It’s not that he was being mean, it’s that other people were actively turning a blind eye.”
Kendrick considered this real-life, slow-motion tragedy to be the driving force behind the film. “There are so many heroes in this story, but they were outnumbered and outnumbered by basically incompetence and neglect and a culture that didn’t prioritize victims,” she says.
Women of the Hour wants to reprioritize these victims wherever possible. “I’m not really interested in the real Rodney,” Kendrick says. “I was more interested in trying to portray the kinds of experiences that we’re likely to have.”
