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Benning:
No, not really. I remember the jokes people told about Gein when I was fourteen. When something as sensational as cannibalism happens in your own backyard, the only way kids have to deal with itand adults too, I supposeis with humor. There were lots of Gein jokes.
I can relate to Protti. There have been moments in my life when I could do something like she did. And maybe I can enter Gein sometimes, too. That's frightening, but true. Our minds are capable of strange things.
MacDonald:
One of the things that's interesting about Hitchcock is his awareness that both he and the viewer aren't so different from his murderers. In
Psycho
we look through the peephole at Marian with Norman. And Hitchcock "kills her" in the shower as much as "mother" does. In both
American Dreams
and
Landscape Suicide,
you define yourself closely with criminals. In
American Dreams
you handwrite Bremer's diary. People who don't know that diary (and that's most people who see the film) probably assume it's your diary. In fact, about halfway through the film, when Bremer begins to focus on killing Nixon, the viewer wonders, "Did Jim Benning spend some time following Nixon?"
Benning:
Yes, especially since Bremer's from Milwaukee. He lived on the Southside; I lived on the Northside. But we both grew up in similar working-class neighborhoods.
MacDonald:
In
Landscape Suicide
there's a similar and maybe unconscious identification with Gein. One of the things we learn about Gein is that in the instances when he butchered people, he seems to have tried to become his mother, although he doesn't remember it (which is the element Hitchcock focused on in
Psycho,
of course). You use a woman to narrate the film. She becomes your alter ego, the way Gein's mother was his.
Benning:
I hadn't thought about that. I've used a woman's voice for my voice in a number of films. I think I began doing that just to question gender and to explore how you hear stories differently if they're told by a man's voice or a woman's voice. Also, I don't like the sound of my own voice. And I want to distance myself from the personal things that I put into my films.
MacDonald: Landscape Suicide
also points to the economic distance between rural Wisconsin (as it's portrayed in the film, it's on the skids: buildings are dilapidated, everything looks old) and suburban Orinda County, where even the prison looks like a condominium.
Benning:
There's a Porsche out front.
MacDonald:
The shots of the power lines in the Orinda County section and the noise they make seems like a metaphor for power of all kinds.
Benning:
When I went back to film in Wisconsin in 1985, I wanted