Patrick Radden Keefe

And they just wouldn't engage.

And the kind of- No comment, eh?

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

I mean, that's the thing, right?

Indeed, it's the same memo.

And I think some of that is that they don't have great answers to the tough questions, but the kind of implacability, right?

The idea that a child has died

And the kind of implacability with which they just refuse to engage, I think particularly for the Brettlers who are still grieving their son, is maddening.

Yeah.

I mean, I think this is a question that animates a lot of the work I've done over the last two decades.

I don't really believe in cartoon villains, or if they exist, I'm not interested in them.

I'm interested in...

the kind of messy human beings who end up doing sometimes monstrous things.

And what has always struck me is that I don't think people are born evil.

And I think to the degree that they become evil, they get there by degrees.

And I've always been interested in, you know, each morning you kind of look at yourself in the mirror while you're brushing your teeth.

What's the story you tell yourself about who you are?

And I think that whether it's Chapo Guzman or Richard Sackler,

You got there slowly.

You became the monster that you are in a very incremental way over quite a long period of time.