American Crime, the new TV project by Film Independent Spirit Award and Academy Award-winning screenwriter John Ridley (12 Years a Slave) puts an indie spin on the ubiquitous crime serial, creating a kind of fluorescent film noir. The series, which premieres next week on ABC, combines noir conventions (middle-of-the-night phone call, horrific off-screen “visuals,” moody close-ups) with cold-light-of-day consequences to set a glaringly unforgiving tone—one that at times seems to reveal far too much.

In the first two episodes, screened at Film Independent at LACMA last night, characters move in and out of frame, racial and cultural stereotypes are challenged and cars rain out of the sky—all in the aftermath of a horrific murder set in Modesto, California. Thematically, the noir take is key, Ridley told Film Independent curator Elvis Mitchell.

“To me what makes what we call noir is marked by two things, alienation and obsession.” In American Crime, the victim’s parents (played by Timothy Hutton and Felicity Huffman) “are in a space where they feel disconnected, they feel like the system is against them, and at the same time there’s something that they very deeply fundamentally want. The question is how do you get it?”

Another noir convention intentionally invoked is the truth-shifting. Ridley said that he and Crime co-producer Michael McDonald were taken by the Central Park Five case, as well as the 2012 documentary co-directed by Ken Burns that recounts the case and its aftermath. The widely hyped news story—that it was a band of marauding Hispanic and Black youths who brutally assaulted and raped a young, white jogger in 1989—was turned on its head years later when a serial rapist confessed to the crime. By then, the men had been demonized, convicted and locked behind bars for over six years—and, in one case, 13 years.

“We were made to believe a truth, that these young men did something,” he said. “There was evidence, they confessed, they were tried in press and in courts and convicted, and that was the truth.” To find out years later that that “truth” was completely wrong posed a fundamental question: ‘What does [a financial settlement] do to a life that’s shattered?’”

His goal with Crime is to challenge such preconceptions. “All these individuals, I just wanted to make them as complicated as possible. We’re all complicated people and we bring our bias and our hopes and our aspiration into all situations whether we choose to believe that or not.”

To get beyond the surface, Ridley focused on the details through the subtle use of language, movement and cinematography.  In a scene at a police station, when Felicity Huffman’s character confronts the fact that her son likely was a drug dealer, she moves away from the truth—literally. “Barb is running around in that space,” says Ridley, “and the detective is just, ‘Okay, you’re in my space now, so I’ll just take my time.’ She’s got the power.”

“I wanted the show to be as observant as possible,” Ridley said. For instance, during an intense conversation between Huffman and Hutton’s characters that takes place in a diner, the camera lingers on plates at nearby tables. “It’s also a way to be patient and observant and watch people in their environment rather than chase the dialogue from one person to the next.”

Crime uses techniques rarely seen on network television. For example, the pilot includes one very long take that begins in a close-up of Huffman and Hutton in a car, then follows them as they get out of the car, walk together and then apart. “To have them map out that scene and the objective was not to hold frame every step of they way but to let them move in and out of frame and catch bits and pieces,” Ridley said. The physical and emotional choreography of that one scene, as they dance around the camera and each other, is telling, Ridley explained: It’s all about the alienation of two people who used to know each other but don’t know each other at all anymore. He said, “that shot in the pilot was something where we knew we could say we have something very special.”

Hope Winsborough / Film Independent Blogger