If Jason Derek Brown, one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives, is out there somewhere in hiding and he happens to watch American Murderer, director Matthew Gentile is pretty sure the man whose story inspired the new crime drama will have “some notes.”
Tom Pelphrey expertly plays Brown in Gentile’s feature directorial debut, which follows Brown’s trajectory from small-time con man to sitting side-by-side with Osama Bin Laden and Whitey Bulger on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list after he was accused of gunning down an armored car guard and stealing a duffle bag with $56,000 in cash in 2004. Though he’s no longer in the Top 10, Brown is still wanted to this day.
He’s successfully been evading authorities for the last 18 years, but if Brown is still out there somewhere, Gentile thinks he’d be probably pleased to see Pelphrey playing him on the big screen — even if the movie isn’t 100% historically accurate.
“Spending a lot of time with this guy living in my head, I would say he’d have some notes,” Gentile told the crowd after American Murderer screened on Saturday night at The Newport Beach Film Festival. Co-star Ryan Phillippe was also at the Q&A on Saturday to talk about playing real-life FBI agent Lance Leising, who spent many years trying to bring Brown to justice.
“In terms of staying close to the facts, I call what I do ‘true-crime fiction.’ My next four screenplays that I want to shoot next are all true-crime,” Gentile added. “Research is a great way to learn a lot — and procrastinate. So the procrastination has to end at some point, and then you have to start creating… there are a lot of imagined situations, or heightened things to dramatize it for the audience. I always say I was pursuing truth, but I wasn’t necessarily pursuing accuracy. Because a lot of the earlier drafts were super close to how things happened, and shocker, they weren’t that dramatic. So I had to really kind of go in and figure out, how do I tell the story in a way that will ultimately entertain the audience the way the story entertains me?”
All that is to say that American Murderer takes some liberties with what actually happened, but the core of the story is rooted in truth. Phillippe said that although he didn’t get to meet Leising himself, he hopes the film will renew interest in Brown’s case and lead to him finally being caught.
“There were a lot of unknowns to the story. And so, to Matthew’s point about the script, he would have to fill in certain blanks. And similarly, with my take on playing Leising, I wasn’t able to talk to him. I don’t know if he was even actually allowed to because it was still an open case — it still is an open case,” Phillippe said. “If this movie’s seen and it starts a conversation, maybe this guy gets brought to justice. I feel Leising’s frustration, even watching the movie. I would love this guy to get caught, just for the character I play.”
American Murderer arrives in theaters on Friday, Oct. 21 and will be available on digital and on-demand on Oct. 28.
Main Image: Tom Pelphrey as Jason Derek Brown in American Murderer
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