One of the first things editor Peggy Tachdjian did when she got the script for “Monsters: The Erik and Lyle Menendez Story” was Google whether the brothers had actually played Milli Vanilli’s “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You” during their parents’ memorial service. They did.
“My first cut of [the episode ‘Blame It on the Rain’] was actually pretty serious and straightforward. Then, when I was working with Carl Franklin — my director on that episode — we decided to loosen up some of the moments, go more to the audience and really have the audience tell us how ridiculous that moment was,” Tachdjian told TheWrap in a new installment of How I Did It, presented by Netflix. Watching a son dedicate a breakup song to the mother he murdered was one of the many complicated tonal changes the team behind “Monsters” had to navigate.
The story of the Menendez murders is one of the best known true crime sagas in modern American history. In 1989, Erik and Lyle Menendez shot their parents, José and Kitty. Initially, the brothers told authorities the killings were connected to the mob. But the more police poked into the case, the more the grisly truth came to light and the more the public became fixated on these handsome, wealthy murderers.
According to Tachdjian, it was important to series co-creator Ryan Murphy that the series captured both the weight of these crimes and Erik’s allegations of sexual abuse as well as the public’s fascination with these brothers.
“We were underlining a pre-existing style that had to be a part of the show because appearances is really a part of what made the Menendez story so interesting,” composer Julia Newman said. “What the show does so well, what [Tachdjian] really set the tone for was establishing the psychological spectrum, the emotional spectrum that we were going to be playing with, which was quite large, quite stylish and quite dark. It really hit the most intense points of all of those.”
This care was also baked into the music of the series. The second time “Monsters” shows the murders, the scene is accompanied by a low, ominous hum that later becomes the soundtrack of sorts for the series.
“The whole idea was that when you see the boys kill their parents for the second time, it was meant to elicit something different,” Julia Newman said.
Thomas Newman, who collaborated with his daughter as a composer on the series, agreed, noting the sound is meant to “deepen your sense of the characters, what they are and how far they had to go.”
“It helped give you a sense that these characters had a deep hunger for something,” Thomas Newman said.
Julia Newman was responsible for crafting the humming melody, which started with her playing low fifths on the piano. She then recorded herself actually humming, though her intention was to have someone rerecord the vocals.
“We were like, ‘Don’t touch it,’” Tachdjian recalled.
“It really set the tone for the nature of our collaboration on the rest of the series,” Julia Newman said.
“Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” is now streaming on Netflix.
