Penning crimes and mysteries

With films like Legend, Mystic River and LA Confidential to his credit, Academy-award winning American screenwriter, film producer and director Brian Helgeland, is known for his projects that revolve around crime and mystery. With a spinoff on the much-loved fantasy-drama television series Game of Thrones, in the pipeline, Brian takes his time out to speak to us about his cinematic journey.

Starting his career with horror films, Brian soon found himself drawn towards mystery dramas. “I think films are very good when they involve extreme circumstances, pressure and larger-than-life moments. Such situations and stories seem very interesting to me. I think the audience is drawn too, when there’s crime and mystery on screen — it takes them into a world that you can’t get into in your own life. Also, most of the crime stories that I work on are period dramas, which makes it even more fascinating. I wanted to capture the world of crime that existed in the 60s, like through my film Legend,” shares Brian.  

Legend (2015), which was directed by Brian, brings to life the story of the Kray twins, Reggie and Ronnie, who became two of England’s most fearful mafia dons. About taking the film up, he says, “When I was approached to do the film, I was very interested, but I was a little unsure about how to do it. There was so much written about the Kray brothers by then, so I decided to read up several books on them and met people who had interacted with the brothers. I ran into several members of their gang and learnt a lot about Francis, Reggie’s wife. This was a big story back then and I decided to go ahead after I gathered the required information.”

As a screenwriter, one must get into the characters through a lot of research while writing the story, Brian believes. He goes on to say, “My writing is mostly driven by the characters — it’s something about them that draws me to a project. In case of the Krays, I was very interested in knowing what caused Reggie the breakdown that he had gone through.”

For the Game of Thrones spinoff that he is now writing, he met with George RR Martin, the novelist, as part of his research. “I can’t really share the story, but I was interested in doing a spin-off. When I met with George Martin, he had a lot of information about the worlds that are outside those that the TV series explores. I am going to tell the story in my way,” the 56-year-old shares. He is also working on a film, Finest Kind, that talks about the drama that takes place in a commercial fishing world.

(Watch Legend premiering on Sony Le PLEX HD on May 21 at 1 pm and 9 pm)