CraveOnline: American Crime is about ten episodes…?
John Ridley: Eleven episodes. Ten plus the pilot.
It’s eleven episodes, then the story concludes. Is there another American Crime to explore, or is it just the one crime?
No, I would love to. If we are fortunate enough to come back for another season, I would love to. New city, new inciting incident, focusing on other aspects. You know, we focus very much on race and religion in this series. Let’s face it, one of the few times that people of different races, classes, ethnicities, religions, we end up coming together, is when a crime happens.
Unfortunately, then we’re opposed in some regard. So if there were an opportunity to explore how people interact when there’s a forced interaction, and a forced exploration, those pieces move a little bit in terms of who’s high and who’s low. Who’s advantaged and who’s disadvantaged. Who’s advocating and who’s trying to just cope.
That’s kind of the center of every murder mystery, isn’t it? There’s an incident that throws everyone into turmoil, and then it’s mostly just an excuse to find out who these people have been all along.
Absolutely, and the one thing I think that we go at that differently is, it tends to told from the point of view of the detective or the police or the prosecutors or what have you. We just want to keep telling it from the point of view of the individuals who are wrapped up. I may never meet you but I’m trying to figure out, what is this guy about? Why did you do that, or why are you coming after me? Why can’t we just be, and you just go about your business?
Well, because something happened here and you want some kind of resolution, and I want some kind of resolution. It’s like when you’re driving down the road, you may be a wonderful guy, but when somebody cuts you off is it just that guy who cut me off, or is it that so-and-so? It becomes particular and impersonal about who cut you off. That to me is, we find out our true nature when somebody cuts us off on the 405.
You say it could be a simple as someone cutting you off. I remember that movie Changing Lanes, which was actually very good…
Yeah, I loved that film. I loved that film.
I’m wondering if you could do an American Crime that was entirely like white collar crime. That was just embezzlement, and people in high-rise offices. Could that even work?
To me, the crime is… it could work as long as there is enough about how these people are affected. The Bernie Madoff story is interesting when you think about how there are some people in the Berne Madoff [story] who actually made a return on their investment. You know? They did because they were at the top. Like any Ponzi scheme there are people who lost everything, some people lost everything who were wealthy to begin with, some of the people who lost everything had nothing. Some people came in and they made money.
So to me, if the story is more about the people and more about that cascade effect, and more about people trying to get that resolution, or people in Bernie Madoff’s family who are just like, “I’m just here. I didn’t know.” Yeah, it would be absolutely interesting. As long as it wasn’t a straight-up investigative procedural about whatever the financial crimes officers investigating Bernie Madoff… “We’re going to get this guy and we’re going to find out where the money went.”
It would probably be a little dry. There’d probably be a lot of paperwork.
I remember sitting in a hotel room, it was a hotel lobby sort of like this. I think I was waiting for an interview. And there were individuals… I was eavesdropping, because that’s what writers do, and there were some people who had been, they were all different people but they had been caught up in one of these vending machine scams. You know you see on TV, “Hey, you can start your own ATM thing,” or whatever? These people had bought in and been scammed and they didn’t have any support. They’re all sitting there and one guy starts talking about his wife, separate from all this going on, but how it had been difficult because he didn’t have any money and she’d gotten sick and gone to the hospital.
I’m like, there’s the story. Fuck the vending machine scam. All of a sudden you’ve got eight people, and I need your help about this, because I’m trying to get your money back. Maybe you’re loaded and like, “Hey, I invested, I lost, I don’t care,” and here’s this other guy [whose] wife was sick and all this kind of thing. Suddenly they’re interviewing each other. It’s about people, it’s about relationships, it’s about need.
To me, that could absolutely be a season of American Crime. It may be the other way to go. It’s the tiniest crime that could possibly happen, but the effect to some people is absolutely the same. I mean, the response so far this year has been phenomenal, the way the audiences reacted and the conversation about the show is great, so I hope if we do our job correctly we have the opportunity to come back and examine different things. It certainly seems that we’re in that space right now.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
