Chapman Way
Appearances
Morbid
Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Did I read that one of you guys used to do autopsies? Is that correct?
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Can I ask you a question? I'm curious. Yeah. Your interpretation and take on this body parts black market conspiracy. Is this like... We were just talking about it.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
We were just talking about this. America is listening, all right? America is listening. You're about to piss off half of America and become the hero to the hat. So just choose the side.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
An outsider would look strange, but for someone who has experience knows, like, okay, these things get tested for diseases.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
I'm curious, this is an odd question, but I did, I love that we're talking to, like, the best expert on this issue on the podcast and not the documentary film that we made. Yeah.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
it's kind of giving me joy um but i did have a conversation with someone that also worked in i think a dental morgue is what it was called which i don't like i guess it's yes i don't know it's like that's interesting but identified teeth and people yeah i guess so something like that was in new york city and he and he made the point but i'm curious if this was your experience where he was like my mort was surprisingly like messier than you would think messier in terms of like bro it's grotesque it can get grotesque down there
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
So I'm curious if that was your take or if it's like, no, like that's not how it's not like it doesn't get that mess.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
The most important question I think audiences are curious about, there are no Dr. Peppers in any order. All right.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
You got that one on good authority. I can promise you that.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
The way kind of documentaries are made now is it's much more of like a factory machine where, you know, you're given two weeks of filming. You have to film all of your interviews and all your B-roll in this amount of time. And I think the one really cool thing about our partnership with Netflix is they really give us like the resources and the time to go through
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
live in these places and make these documentaries and i think when if when you just fly into somewhere as an outsider with cameras for 10 days and then just throw people on camera and then leave there's something like very like non-human about it i feel like you don't actually really get to know the people the way of life what they do so most importantly for us it was just about us getting to spend time with these people have meals with these people sit around the fire with these people and um
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
like learn how to embrace the weirdness of their lives but also like honoring the weirdness and and the humanity behind it and so being out there for nine months they know it's a cliche but it does kind of become a big family with all the different subjects and you get to know their families and by the time you start filming, there just is an inherent trust. We know them, they know us.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And I think it really lends towards kind of getting these more authentic and insightful looks into these characters and their lives. And like, it was so funny because like, since the documentary comes out, like, yeah, there has been like a big reaction to like, wow, these are some like weird characters, you know?
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
But I was always like, well, like, what about the two dudes from LA that chose to go spend like 10 months like living? Like, that's weirder than any. And I was like, they're they're weird. But like, I think we're the weirdest of them all to be like a part of this. But no, like I said at the top, like they were just so welcoming in a way.
Morbid
Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Like, I literally remember the only time I think and not that like Kevin or Laura cared about this, but it did crack me up. The only time I felt like I ever put my foot in my mouth was when you call when I called someone an Elvis impersonator. And, like, I got pulled aside and was, like, politely but sternly told that they're called Elvis tribute artists. They're not Pete's Elvis impersonators.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And I always messed that up. I was never able to really commit the Elvis tribute artists to memory. It's a mouthful. You're, like, writing it on your hand in between takes. It's a wild town. Like, it's... You know, we even have some sections that are a little like heavier, but that was like our experience there. Like Kennedy, who's Kevin's son, kind of goes on a little bit of like a monologue.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And it was one of the more interesting interviews that I think we did. And he talks about the poverty that like he feels like he and the kids around him have kind of lived in. And it's true. It's like these towns, Tupelo has Elvis. So that does go a long way in terms of like an economy and tourism. And it is like a nice town. Yeah.
Morbid
Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
But it's an interesting experience when you start to get outside of Tupelo and you start to like drive around more in the south and Mississippi and you run into areas that are time capsules from like the 1950s. And as a filmmaker, that's an interesting experience. But as a human, it's also it's heavy.
Morbid
Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
You know, it's heavy to go to a town that literally is, you know, like I said, is kind of a time capsule. So it's a weird amalgamation, you know, but like one that was was was poetic and very interesting.
Morbid
Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
It really is. It's a good way of putting it. Also, I think our favorite part about being down there is like people get off their phones and they talk and they hang out and they eat dinners and they cook. I think for us, like being from California and growing up in Los Angeles, everyone's so tied to their computers and their phones.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And honestly, my favorite part was just like eating barbecue outside, listening to the cicadas and hearing them talk about stories was like For my soul, at least, we're very, very healthy and very positive.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
That end scene.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Steve Holland. Yeah, yeah.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
kevin's family i'm like i want to go there it just feels so wholesome it really did i know it does it's like like it's uh and like again we were we were there to talk to them about a presidential assassination plot that like has that that deals with body parts that were like chopped up and awesome
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
and then they flew right past that they like didn't I didn't mean to cut you off Chad but I do find she yelled it like it was just like there's a simplicity that is just like intoxicating which is like let's eat good food let's not judge each other let's share a bunch of weird fucking stories and let's have a good time and
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
let's have a beer and let's do a lot of karaoke and sing a lot of Elvis songs. It was a really fun nine months for us that we spent out there.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
That's an interesting question. I think Mac and I grew up in a family that has worked in the film industry. Our father was a screenplay writer growing up and wrote screenplays for films. And we've had uncles and aunts who are producers and actors and things like that. And so it was kind of always around us. But truthfully, Mac and I kind of loved sports growing up. Oh, really?
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
It was interesting. There was a point in the
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
documentary where i think i was like two months in at tupelo and i was meeting a lot of people and talking about a lot of people and i was actually tired and exhausted with how many times this had happened with people i met where they would ask me they would talk about graceland and i would be like well i and eventually i'd have to interject and say i have never been to graceland and then they would just like that was the ultimate like stop like we need to go right now to graceland
Morbid
Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
So I remember like driving back to Memphis, which is like 90 minutes to get back to Memphis to go to Graceland to take the tour. And, you know, Graceland's cool. But those tours, I have to say that those tours are like three, four hours long.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
That was like when I like. I got my like Elvis education. I got my master's degree in Elvis on the Graceland tour. But no, Elvis, like, yeah, they play as we, I mean, the other cool thing is like, you think you go there to be like, all right, like let's go into on an important day.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Like Elvis, the day Elvis died is like typically actually like the biggest celebration day or obviously a birthday is big, but it's like every week there's something Elvis, right? And like, oh, this is the week that Elvis performed his first guitar concert at Milo Middle School. Like, And then it's like, cool, we're all going to go to Milo Middle School and like see the celebration.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
So Elvis is everywhere. But it was fun. I don't know. We learned a lot about Elvis. One of my favorite factoids that didn't make it in, and I have no idea if it's true or not, but our main character called Kevin Curtis is a
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
uh uh has a a foot fetish he is he is very into into women's it's part of the documentary and uh i remember him telling me that he has it on good authority um that he heard it from uh family members very close to elvis that elvis as well had a foot fetish so like it was another thing that
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
spiritually connected him to the king and I always found that always made me laugh and also one of my favorite images the first time we got there I didn't even know it was Elvis week which is like people fly from all over the world to come and I remember just like walking by and like passing a man in Elvis outfit Elvis impersonator then you turn the corner and see another Elvis impersonator and then
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
I turned another corner and I saw like an Elvis impersonator like drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette outside the coffee shop. And like these images, it was just such bizarre imagery. And then finally, Mac told me that it's Elvis week. And that's why there was literally hundreds of Elvis impersonators just walking around the town.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
It was like, I don't know if you've seen Being John Malkovich, but there's this scene where he walks in and it's just a restaurant full of John Malkovich. That was our experience. That's so surreal.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Yeah, I think like we talked about a little bit, but we're always looking for like a strong setting, a strong location. I think, especially for me, there's so much stuff on Instagram and TikTok and you see so many images that when I watch a documentary, I really want to travel to places I have not been and learn about them and learn about the culture.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
So setting location is always really important to us and no better place than the birthplace of the king of rock and roll. And then I think we're always looking for larger than light characters in a way. Nailed it.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
I've found when you have subjects who can be brutally open and honest about their wants, their desires, their insecurities, their failures, their accomplishments, that it really allows...
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
them to like hold a mirror up to the audience and for some reason allows us as the audience i think to think about our own lives and and think and what are our desires and wants and needs and having someone larger than life perform that role i've just always found it makes it easier for the audience to kind of think about their own lives in a way and so we're always looking for like really interesting characters and then i think we're also always looking for incredible twists and turns and stories where you do not know where they are going next and
Morbid
Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
We played a lot of sports and then... I think as we got older and realized there was zero chance of us ever becoming professional athletes, which my dream is still, don't kill my dream.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
There's kind of two types of documentary filmmaking. You have documentary films that are very like activist driven with an important message. And those are super important for so many reasons. I just think the only thing as an audience is you already know what the message is. You already know who the good people are, who the bad people are. And it's just a different viewing experience.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
So for us, I think we're always looking to subvert expectations, keep the audience on their toes. We never want the audience to think they know where the story is going next. And so finding locations, great towns, great settings, great characters, and then a great story of twists and turns is kind of like the three things I think we're always looking for.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
There's still a chance. I'm a 34-year-old guy and I'd still get a great jump shot. There's still time.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
There's still things that... We kind of got obsessed with music and film and the arts in high school and really kind of came to it on our own in a way. And... I was kind of studying cinematography and Mac was actually studying history at the time. And this was around, you know, 2007, 2008. And quickly realized that there was like kind of new ways to make documentary films.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
and i think you like touched on something interesting too which it's like you know i think we're actually at like an interesting time in the world of documentaries and documentary filmmaking especially at the the major platforms where um you know i i think in the last couple years it's it's like fair to say that there is a shift toward stories that people already have some familiarity or an understanding of
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And those documentaries are fascinating, too, that are on like, hey, you think you know this topic, but let me go ahead and subvert your expectations or present a little bit of a different side or something like that. It's a little bit of a different type of documentary because those comes with its own challenges and obstacles over the course of Chapman and my own career. I think that we've.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
tended to gravitate towards documentaries that most people, and by most people, I mean 90, 95% of people, if you stop them on the street and ask them about the 2013 rising presidential assassination story, they wouldn't really know what that story is. So they're coming to it for the first time. Wild Wild Country was like that too.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Like, yes, people in Eastern Oregon certainly remember the Roshnishis if they were around and cognizant in the 80s. But for most people where I come from in Southern California, my age obviously had no recognition.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And it's interesting because I think that those stories that have the familiarity, that have a name, that have just a little bit more name recognition, usually do tend to do a little bit better on these platforms. So I think that's the way that the industry is going. But
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
For Chap and I, that's always like a big question mark is like, do we want to make a story that people think that they know and figure out how to make it interesting from there? Or do we want to make a story that you're going to not zero familiarity with? And hopefully you're just along for the ride for all these twists and turns, you know?
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Yeah, that's part of the fun, I think, or at least when I'm an audience member, that's what I enjoy. I like being on the edge of my seat. I like thinking that, okay, I know who this character is, and then boom, they end up turning out to be something totally different or unexpected. And We're trying to, I mean, it can sound crude, but we are trying to make entertainment. People have busy lives.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
There's a lot of things you can spend your time doing. I think we take the responsibility seriously that if someone's going to sit down and press play, we feel responsible. We owe it to people to really give them an experience. And sometimes we do better at that than others, but that's always the goal, at least. Every time you press play, we want to make sure you know you're going on a ride.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Yeah, we definitely hope so. And I think I'm the same way you are. Like when I see something about a story I didn't know, like I'm so much more inclined to want to call it my friends or my family and.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Like I think we kind of grew up or documentaries were kind of like the vegetables. So they were like the broccoli of the entertainment industry. And we were starting to see like more entertaining, more thrilling, more artful documentary filmmaking. And so we kind of dove in and around 2010 and kind of have been doing it ever since.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
about it discuss it and share it and to me that's like the the best part about doing this is talking to your colleagues at work and sharing stories about what you've seen and then what what uh what impacted you so i hope so we we love these kind of like off the beaten path weird stories uh and and uh hopefully we'll be able to continue doing them
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Our mom certainly thinks so. She's like, oh, God, what's this other one now? She wants us to do like a great, easy, like a cooking documentary on how to make a great, yeah.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
There's knives in kitchens or anything's going to happen.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
I think we kind of touched on it a little bit, but... It quickly became clear that it was going to be impossible to like fact check or investigate a lot of these claims, you know? And so in the beginning we were sitting there kind of twiddling our thumbs like, what do we do here?
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And I just think we decided early on, like, let's just fully embrace the madness and the mythology and the storytelling. And it's such a part of the culture and these characters, like let's find a way to make that a tension point of the story. Um, is Kevin telling the truth? I, you know, he, he,
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
The story starts early on with him finding a severed head in a morgue in a hospital, which kind of kickstarts the whole path to the presidential assassination. And so much of it for us became exploring the humans inside of the story and maybe less the actual true crime facts, if that makes sense. And so I think that's what made this one a little bit more difficult to make.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Yeah, well, it's like kind of on that point, like what Chapman and I were like, We always talked about, especially with our editor, Neil Michaeljohn, who was like a big part of our character and our producer, Juliana, and everyone on our team is like, because we've made true crime documentaries before, but we learn like...
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
conspiracy is actually like a weird cousin to true crime where it's like you can rely on facts and like motivation of individuals and like that is a part of the fun game of like who done it you know and we've made those documentaries and we love making those documentaries conspiracy is like this weird amalgamation of like
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
well a the conspiracy itself is super confusing so you but but it needs to be like accurately or not accurate but it needs to be like comprehensible in the editing of it right like it needs to be comprehensible to like a wide audience to understand what the conspiracy is but then there's this whole side game of like yeah i mean this is conspiracy real or not and then you're like cool that's a whole nother thing that we need to like kind of dive into and like balance the scales a little bit of like maybe it's true maybe it's not um but like
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And then what was weird about this is like the whole conspiracy of Kevin's conspiracy and Bonnie Park's conspiracy and then like Everett's conspiracy that was above Kevin's conspiracy. It got like called in the sense of like, wait, what is real and what is not? And like...
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
are people even understanding what the conspiracy is so so i feel like that was the the genre of like we made kind of a weird conspiracy comedy documentary but the conspiracy was was the weird part to to figure out was certainly my experience but i didn't mean to cut you off yeah but i felt like that i don't even think we succeeded at that yeah i know I watch it and I'm like still confused. Yes.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
I'm like, oh, maybe it does make sense now after watching it a hundred times.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
It's like all of them would kind of share the same story, but like little details would always change. They're all different. There is some kernel of truth here, you know, but it gets built upon and built upon. And for us, that was part of the fun.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And I just think the other kind of hard thing about this one was like, I'm not too worried about spoilers for a while, but it's like the first half of the documentary is kind of made to convince you that one person committed this crime. And then there's kind of like a big rug pull and a reveal that it was possibly someone else who had framed him.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And so I think we had never really seen that in a documentary before. Like, how do we convince an audience 100 percent that this guy did it when he didn't, you know, is difficult, you know. And so that was a process that took us a while to kind of figure out. But like I said, I think those kind of reveals and twists and turns make it more fun.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Yes, I think brief is probably the most important word in that question. So I'll do my best because it's a weird story. Basically, in 2013, kind of one of our country's preeminent Elvis impersonators had been arrested for trying to assassinate President Barack Obama and had sent poison in the mail, a poison called ricin, just very potent, dangerous, rare poison.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
So it was difficult, but I think it made it more fun to take also.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Yeah, so it's not like... We set up the crime earlier, which is someone tried to kill the president. And then it cuts to a guy swimming in his outdoor pool who did it. So you kind of know right away, like, OK, I maybe get into it or what. But then our job was like, OK, well, now we're going to convince you for the next 90 minutes that this guy most likely did do this.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And I think a lot about the experience you did, which is like he's not in jail, but like a lot of this is adding up. And this is getting very strange. And then I think you learn, obviously, that he was framed and set up, and then you get to learn and meet the new character, which was fun for us. I mean, it was funny, too, because this documentary was almost like three parts.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Sorry, in terms of the production, which is like we went and made a Paul Kevin Curtis documentary. And then this middle part was like federal law enforcement going and interviewing them because they have a whole perspective and A to Z journey themselves. And then the third part was obviously Edward Dutchkey, who is in prison and all the prison phone calls that we did with him.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
But it was interesting, like federal law enforcement Without like blatantly saying it, I could tell there was a little bit of understandable sensitivity of like, listen, we do a lot of cases. And we understand that you want to make a documentary on the one out of 1000 that we arrested the wrong guy. And we know that. And we did.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And they're like, you know, we're not sure about the concept of this documentary because we did get it wrong and we don't want to come off as completely inept at our jobs. Yeah. And I remember being like, I don't think that's going to be the case. Like, I think a lot of people are going to understand, like, why you made the first arrest you did.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Like, at least, like, that's the structure of how we're making the documentary, you know? And it's been interesting because since the documentary's come out, I've never ever been like, oh, yeah, like, FBI really messed up this one. I think everyone kind of knows, like, follows the journey and gets why. Certainly arrested Kevin, you know?
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
I love in the third episode when the FBI agent reluctantly admits that it was a pretty good framed job. I always kind of appreciated that.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
That was the exonerating fact of the entire investigation.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
That was one of our, like early on with just like pre, not pre-interviewing, but you know, it's like you go to dinner with Laura or, you know, Jack, the brother or...
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Holland or blah blah blah and like or the kids Kevin's kids and like you kind of definitely like picked up early that like uh how excited they got when they found out how hard it is to make ricin because like me I was not a biology major so it's like ricin like that means nothing against Kevin's intelligence
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
for anyone but but like they were i don't think any of us know how to make like seeing the like chemical compound designs and they're like that dad's innocent there's no there's no way there's no way it's the guy holding the mensa card over there i think it's the guy over here exactly
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Yeah, that's really interesting you bring that up because that was honestly like a huge discussion point for us while making this. In the initial cut, you didn't learn anything about him.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
until it was revealed that Kevin had been framed but then it started to feel like a little cheat where you're like okay wow it's shocking but I don't know this guy at all and really tried to sprinkle him in a few times throughout I honestly wish we could have figured out more ways to do it I think it would have been interesting to even have done it a couple more times but
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
poison and basically a week later he was released from interrogation from prison and it had been announced that he had been framed by a local rival karate instructor in the town of Tupelo Mississippi where they're both from and so that's kind of the headline we flew out to Tupelo Mississippi which is the birthplace of Elvis Presley in 2020 started meeting with a lot of the characters and
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
It was a little bit like an Agatha Christie novel where you're like, you have to set up the characters and the suspects. That's actually really hard to do in documentary because you can't just make things up and write in it.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
But I'm glad that you pointed that out because it was fun to kind of find subtle ways to sprinkle in the real suspect throughout so that when it's revealed that it's him, you do have a little bit of a memory of who he is.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
One of the fun parts about this crime is that, you know, so three people got this poison in the mail where we're victims of it. These three victims were, you know, major enemies, so to speak, of Paul Kevin Curtis, the man that was framed, which is why the FBI obviously thought it was Kevin.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
But what made it interesting is that you learn that these three characters were also Everett, the guy who actually did send the rice and were enemies of his as well. And so this is where it started to get a little complex in terms of like, wow. They share the same enemies. Like, how can we set this up in a way and organize it in a way that audiences can kind of understand that component of it?
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And so, you know, we had the note cards. We had, yes, we had the string on the walls. I remember walking in, watching Mac lose his mind because he was in charge of doing most of the research. And there are times where Mac would just start ranting. And I was like, I'm not following anything you're saying right now.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
But sure enough, like I said, I think we kind of figured it out by the end, but I'm still not 100% convinced that we even know all the facts of everything that happened.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Yeah, and like Chef said, my dad was a screenwriter, and I think it's an Ernest Hemingway quote where he said, writing is rewriting. But I think that's the same thing with editing, and that was certainly our experience, was more than other documentaries we've made, we really played with structure a lot on this one. We had...
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
we were moving sections around like to just kind of set it up because to go a little deeper on something that we've touched on is the concept of like, Hey, we wanted the audience to really think Kevin did this by the time the rug pull happens at the end of episode two, where you find out he didn't do it. But that is as much of a plot as,
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
gain plot A to B to C to D on plot points as it is like a psychological descent in Kevin's mind as you feel like you really like for someone to do a presidential assassination make rice and put it in envelopes and mail to the president like I think you really need to feel like that person is psychologically capable of wanting to do something like that you know and that was certainly like a big part of the editing and a lot of the aesthetic and the music and everything else that kind of went into the series is like
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Not just explaining like, yeah, how we kind of like how Kevin gets to this point, you know, and it's a little bit of a personal journey that you follow with him to go on. But then again, the weirdest part of making this documentary was like, technically, none of that is true. Kevin didn't do this.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
kind of quickly realized that there was a whole hell of a lot more to the story than just that insane headline. So our journey began in 2020, probably, I'd say, is when we kind of started working on this full time. You left out so much, Chad. You left out, you left out. That was a lot easy. You said the dog don't realize what a great job I did.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
So you're kind of like always faking your way through to make it feel like he did in a certain way just to set up the gag that he didn't do it. Yeah.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
maybe it was worth it maybe at once maybe this is the stupidest documentary when you explain it i'm like this sounds so dumb it sounds like so stupid like you guys spent like three years of your life let us do this to sell like one joke like one joke it was such a good joke though no it's so worth it so much to work you're making us feel better fake your way i'm just getting slowly depressed on this podcast just like wait
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
How stupid our documentary is.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
That's very nice of you. That feels good.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
There's actually two sections that we worked on quite a bit that ended up not making the cut for one reason or the other. One was that we had a pretty interesting conversation and look into mental health and Kevin's mental health and how his family feels about what he's struggling with.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And Kevin had a very frank and honest discussion about medications he's been on and how certain medications have made him feel over the years.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
why he doesn't want to take certain medications and um it was like a really raw and honest look into it i think for time reasons we are never able to um quite figure out how to get it in there but i i thought it was like a really kind of just like beautifully honest look at at what he talks about his struggles what that experience has been for family members i think
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
One of the real first reasons we wanted to make this was when we were researching, I kind of became obsessed with this Reddit thread, and it was for family members who had lost loved ones to the QAnon conspiracy. And it was just their point of view. It wasn't the point of view of the conspiracy theorist. And you would read these posts, and it was such a strange combination of being like,
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
really fucking hilarious and equally heartbreaking and i'm like this is such a odd thing because it's so easy to talk about conspiracy theorists or this and that but when it's a wife or a husband or a brother or a best friend that's a little bit of a different experience to watch someone you love go through this and so that was kind of diving into not only a conspiracy theorist story but what is it like for the people around this person was important to us and
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
I think the kind of conversation and the mental health really kind of played into that. I wish we could have included it, but we couldn't for time.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And then the other interesting one was, you know, in 1992, Kevin, our main character had, and this is 20 years before the ricin is sent to Obama, had a standoff with the Chicago police SWAT team and had driven to an ex-girlfriend's house and entered the home with a gun. and then was threatening to kill himself inside the home. And it turned into a big standoff.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And this was also a big look into Kevin's mental health and what he struggled with. And it was also a big piece of evidence that the FBI used in the presidential ricin attack to say, look, this guy's unstable. This is why we believe that he did this. And so
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
All that was like a really interesting storyline and thread that would have added, I think, another layer to the onion, but ended up kind of on the cutting room floor. Yeah, people thought there were too many layers to the onions already. No more layers. It was it was unique, like like Steve Holland could be a character in a feature length documentary, like his story from life.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
No, you really did. That was like, that was like, that was like 4% of the documentary. Yeah.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And I know he's like a larger than life character, but he also like wielded like incredible effective power, like in the Mississippi state legislator and is responsible for like.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
an array of like unbelievable programs like for the people of mississippi for the state of mississippi like i it was always like and i i think every filmmaker has this and we produce as much as we direct so i've been on the producing side of these conversations where it's like you're with a filmmaker that's like oh my god i could do like six parts i could do eight parts like there is a bit of a mis exploration in the state of mississippi that
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
to this day fascinates me like and it's hard to explain unless you've gone to that state in a way but it is like every left right turn you make every you can take a drive a highway go anywhere on the highway like it is a the most fertile ground for like such fascinating fascinating stories and people that I think there's a reason that like William Faulkner was from Oxford I think there's a reason that there's like this southern noir
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
That like eccentricity is a religion down there that like they can tell stories the way they do. And it was just I almost felt like we were always having to restrain ourselves from being like, oh, my God, do we go make a 15 minute documentary on this section of Mississippi? That's kind of tangentially tied.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And of course, you like never do, because eventually you're like, hey, we're making a Netflix documentary and you really need to keep the narrative like as tight as possible. Otherwise, people will click off.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
But it was a unique experience just spending so much time down there and just like, God, I wish we could have done like eight arcs on this state and connected all these crazy pieces of information together.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
I'm talking myself into it right now.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
That's really cool to hear. Yeah, I think a lot of it is implied or you kind of pick up on kind of naturally. I think, yeah, some of my favorite sections, like, yeah, there's a lot of funny, dark, hilarious stuff, but some of my favorite stuff was the stuff with his kids and friends and family and hearing about their perspectives and kind of what they've been through.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
I think it just kind of added a level of heart and humanity to the story. And I'm glad to hear that even if we weren't able to include those sections, it still kind of is inferred and you kind of feel it in the voice.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
We always say, like, if we, like, pitch this as a narrative film, like, no one would ever believe it.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
that is an amazing you know what's funny is uh so i remember uh kevin when he sat down and told us like listen he's written this book called missing pieces i will say that when he handed it to me it was a little shorter than i expected it was like you know i was expecting that i was hoping for the the tool of of research it was a little thinner than that so i was like okay i gotta gotta figure this out more to do
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Work on it a little bit. He's got a workshop. We need to pump up the word count here just a little bit. But he was the one that said, hey, after all, I'm thinking about the story we've been interviewing him. He's like, I've come to the conclusion that missing pieces is not a missing piece to my body parts conspiracy, but it's something in my personal life and it's been family.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And so I was like, wow, that was very poignant and powerful. And Kevin can just charm you like that. And genuinely too, like a sincere guy. But the whole thing started because the Secret Service stole his manuscript. They raided his home. There was something so funny to me. It just feels like something he would make up or say. And then it's like 100% true.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
They took his hard drives and he missed his manuscript. And I had to rewrite it. Maybe that's why it's smaller than I expected. Maybe the Secret Service is sitting on the... the real expanse of missing pieces. That's the authentic one. But I remember in Justice, free missing pieces. I think the government needs to release missing pieces.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Yeah, that was our experience, too, because like we the first time we you know, when you go into Tupelo, you fly into Memphis and then it's like 90 minutes south. You crossed over the state border into Mississippi and like it. You're not really driving to anything like, you know, you just kind of like go to Tupelo.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
I remember going out to dinner with Kevin's family members and I would tell them that story about missing pieces. And it's not like Kevin was hiding that from them or something. But I was like, hey, I think that like
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
kevin's in a spot where this is he's like this is where he's at right now and i found this really beautiful and every single person i went out to dinner with said that's that's a new york tax bestseller so that's that's what i hope it is i i i hope it's a new york support system is i want what that family wants but um I doubt it. He's an incredible storyteller. He's got a vivid imagination.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
He's really funny with words. I'm rooting for him. I'm hoping he can finish it.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Somebody needs to file a Freedom of Information Act to get the big one.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
The thing that we're working on right now is we are working on, it's a big doc series for Netflix. We were able to announce it, I think, on Christmas Day. But like we said, we grew up with sports and we are going to do very different than Geeks of Tupelo. So I'll brace you for that. It is very not. It'll be interesting if you like this stuff.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
But it is a 10-part series on Jerry Jones, Jimmy Johnson, basically the Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s and Jerry Jones' story.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
It's a big, we're partnering with Skydance and NFL Films and we're doing it with Netflix. And in the sports world, this story is a bit of a white whale because Jerry and Jimmy, Jimmy was the coach, Jerry's the owner. They have an interesting backstory where they won Super Bowls together and then they went their separate ways.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
We're able to interview all these characters along with Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin and Emmett Smith. So it's a very sports one. We have more volumes of Untold coming out. But we ebb and flow. Sports documentaries are stuff that we love making, and there's just a huge audience for that. And it's a great part of the business that we do.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And then once we spend a couple years doing sports stuff, we always end up gravitating back towards Kings of Tupelo or Wild Wild Country or something that's a little bit more off the beaten path. But Chap, anything else to mention? I just remember being like, man, it's so weird being a documentary filmmaker because we went from...
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
filming inside kevin's camper so like the next week we were filming jerry jones on his private jet and it was like this is such this is too weird our lives are too strange sometimes but we're excited for dallas cowboys it's coming out this summer um and then uh we're just in the early stages of researching um some more strange off the beaten path stories and stuff
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
So much for having on. Thanks for watching. And thanks for all the nice words. We had a really fun time.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
It always felt like kind of like the town from like Big Fish a little bit where it's like you kind of like go off this like beaten path to this dirt road. And like you see these like telephone wires with like everyone's like shoes like strung up and like no one really like leaves this town. But it's like a really like cool, magical place.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
This was not an operation that was performed. This was attempted murder.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
But it was interesting because when we first got there, there was almost an element that. I was like a little nervous.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
I would wince when I would tell people I was there because we kind of just by the fact that there was like seven or eight or nine or ten of us in our film crew and we have film cameras and we had like a small production van, like people just notice you immediately and they ask you like what you're doing there. But they're very friendly about it. It's like a very hospitable welcome. Yeah.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And it almost like wince telling them, you know, like, oh, we're doing like the 2013 presidential assassination because it's like a small town. You would think that they would like that not that that's not they want to be that excited that the Netflix documentary would be doing something on that story. And it felt like their reaction was like the exact, exact opposite. Like they were so excited.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
stoked that like netflix that someone was coming to town to do something like kind of involved with elvis but more on this like wackadoo crazy story with all these like really fascinating characters and it was like that almost like set the tone for the whole doc where it's like oh we can actually have like a lot of a lot of fun with this one it's and i think we certainly did it was cool that's amazing because i would assume that you probably don't run into that a lot where people are so willing to talk to you like that and especially in a small town too
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Yeah. I mean, especially in LA, no one wants to be on camera. Everyone's very angry when they see cameras. And when we got to Tupelo, not only were they excited, but there are certain characters in our story who play the quote unquote role of the villain or the bad guy. And they were so excited by that opportunity and even relished the opportunity to be the bad guy in this story. And so-
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
uh we had so much fun we quickly realized down in the south uh especially in tupelo and mississippi that they love telling stories you know they love embellishing the truth they love heightening the truth they're just such larger than like characters they they're they're proud of their eccentricities and i think kind of where we're from is a little bit different people kind of hide their quirks and their weird things and it was just so much fun and so refreshing to be in the south where
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
It's really a badge of honor, your eccentricity. And we truly had a great time hanging out with these characters and getting to film them.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
It was our like we always joke that that was like our version of like a legal display. It was just using using like a William Faulkner quote like and then Steve Holland, who's our Mississippi undertaker, kind of just waxes poetic on on. Yeah, exactly what Jeff said, just like how they love to embellish stories for a good time, because. it was interesting.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Like there was so much to this documentary that like, I think it took a while to make it. I think it took us like, you know, from, from like real production to finishing was at least two, two and a half years, you know? And then we had support from Netflix. So it's like, it wasn't like we needed to like rally resources. Like we went at it pretty quickly.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Um, but like to investigate like all the truth claims in this documentary, like I think would have taken like 10 years to make it, you know? So there was kind of an element of like when we were down there, Like within reason, I think we just tried to like ride the waves of these interviews and some of the outlandish stuff that was that was being said said to us.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Yeah. I mean, so 2013, we just had like a very faint memory, honestly, of just the first part of the story that an Elvis impersonator had been arrested for trying to assassinate the president. So just that headline kind of always stayed with us.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And then in 2020, I kind of became fascinated with small towns and small towns that have these incredibly bizarre and human stories that maybe other people don't know. And I was doing research and kind of stumbled across Tupelo, which is like a world unto itself. It's just filled with Elvis statues and Elvis murals.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And they're kind of like the stepbrother to Graceland and Memphis, where Elvis is really known for. And And then all of a sudden, just researching Tupelo, I saw that the presidential assassination story, the two main characters lived in Tupelo. And so then I started reading it again. Mac and I started researching. We flew out there in 2020, not even knowing, is it a short doc? Is it a feature?
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
What is it? And like I said, we met Paul Kevin Curtis, who's the main character, who was initially arrested for We're trying to assassinate Obama. And within 10 minutes, I was like, Kevin is an incredible storyteller. He's an incredible character. He's so dynamic on screen and he just has an amazing story that no one really knows about. And so that was kind of the impetus that started it at all.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
dynamic environments for who they are like you just got that's really cool it was so good it's always awesome to hear i mean like we're we're less maybe like investigative documentary filmmakers and more tried like storytelling i think is as what and the town of tupelo is a character in the story so it was important for us that it'd be heightened we always said it kind of felt like a tim burton movie or something a little bit of an upside down world and
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
It was important for us to capture that had a little bit of a Twilight Zone feel.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Very much. And so it's always really cool to hear that that stuff resonates and comes through. Yeah, it was interesting because even like, yeah, when we went to like Kevin's camper, that was like we knew this is like a really like authentic, interesting place that like this that Kevin lives in, you know.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And it was not easy because we we like to shoot with three cameras for talking at interviews, which is like, you know, you at least need to. But three is just to get you like an extra angle if you want it. But but literally, like it could only like thank God, Chad, my brother knows how to do sound because like I kind of would ask the questions. Chad would do sound and run one camera.
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Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
And then our cinematographer, David Bullen, who just like shot three. So much amazing stuff in this series. It just looks so good. He was like operating two cameras at the same time. It was a tight spot. We couldn't get like everyone in there. But but no, Tupelo is kind of like a little bit like one of the last documentary series we made while all country.
Morbid
Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
There was a town called Antelope and like it very culturally different places. But. Whenever you're a filmmaker and you get into a town and you're like, oh, my God, anywhere I point the camera, it looks great. It's cool because it's real. It's authentic. And you really get those in Disley, these small historic towns. And then Tupelo is cool, too, just because Elvis is just pervasive everywhere.
Morbid
Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Every street corner has an Elvis statue or an Elvis mural. And he looks at you everywhere you go in that town.
Morbid
Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
It is a vibe. Like, and in a weird way, like, we always felt like that that was, like, the subtext to the insanity of these characters was, like, only, like, the most famous person probably of all time in Western civilization, Elvis Presley, like, came from this tiny town. And everyone here today is, like, in their own...
Morbid
Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
Kind of perverse, perverted, but really, like, interesting, fantastical way is, like, trying to reach that level of, like, notoriety. Like, the, like, illusion of grandeur are there. So, you know, that was always fun to kind of play around with that stuff.
Morbid
Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
She said the bucket list.
Morbid
Episode 644: A Sit Down With Chapman & Maclain Way, Directors of "The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga"
She's so much fun. Laura's a great character. She's really cool. Very honest. And yeah, that cracked me up when she said that. And not in a shameful way, but in a very owned it and very prideful way. I was like, all right.