Results 1 to 3 of 3

Thread: Night Stalker

  1. #1
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217

    Night Stalker


    James Franco

    Spider-Man star James Franco’s next directorial effort will be an adaption Philip Carlo’s The Night Stalker which is an account of the infamous serial killer Richard Ramirez who killed 14 victims.

    It is thought that Franco is also eyeing up the role of Ramirez for himself. The real Richard Ramirez is currently awaiting the death penalty in California.



    Screenwriter Nicolas Constantine has promised that the upcoming movie will focus more on Richard Ramirez the human being than dwell on the acts of violence that landed him the name; The Night Stalker…

    “This isn’t a horror film. Nor does it glorify Ramirez in any way. Philip Carlo painted an amazing portrait of Ramirez the human being, and how he became that monster. James Franco shares that vision, and we all agree that he’s the one actor, and now director, who can do that vision justice. He read the material and responded to it immediately.”

    http://www.nerdles.com/2011/01/18/ja...talker-biopic/

  2. #2
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Lou Diamond Phillips to Play Serial Killer Richard Ramirez in New Movie

    Lou Diamond Phillips has signed on to star in thriller “The Night Stalker,” with production slated to begin this summer, Variety has learned exclusively.

    Phillips will take on the role of serial killer Richard Ramirez, dubbed “the Night Stalker” by the Los Angeles press during his 1985 killing spree. The film incorporates Ramirez’s history of violence into a fictional narrative centering on a prison interview between the aging killer and a lawyer attempting to elicit a confession from Ramirez that will save another man from death row.

    Ramirez, an avowed Satanist, was convicted of 13 murders and never expressed any remorse. He died on death row in 2013 of complications from B-cell lymphoma.

    Megan Griffiths is directing from her own script. Producers are Alisa Tager (“Enemy at the Gates”) and Matthew R. Brady (“Grassroots”) through his MRB Productions shingle.

    “I grew up in Southern California and spent the summer of 1985 in the shadow of Ramirez, and it has been a fascinating process to delve into the history in writing this script,” Griffiths said. “I could not be more excited to see Lou Diamond Phillips bring this intense character to life.”

    Griffiths directed “Lucky Them,” starring Toni Collette and Johnny Depp, which premiered at the 2013 Toronto Film Festival and was distributed by IFC, and “Eden, starring Beau Bridges, which premiered at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival and won the festival’s narrative Audience Award and the Emergent Female Director Award.

    Phillips is currently starring in the Netflix series “Longmire” and will be seen in Warner’s Chilean mining survival drama “The 33″ alongside Antonio Banderas, James Brolin and Juliette Binoche.

    Phillips is represented by Global Artists Agency and Thruline Entertainment. Griffiths is represented by WME and Untitled Entertainment.

    http://variety.com/2015/film/news/lo...er-1201516691/
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  3. #3
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2015
    Location
    Pennsylvania
    Posts
    4,795
    'Night Stalker' movie will premiere in Santa Ana, about 20 miles from the Mission Viejo site of his last crime

    A new film – “The Night Stalker,” starring Lou Diamond Phillips as Richard Ramirez – is set to premiere in Orange County in early June after producers decided the movie should be seen in an area that the serial killer terrorized in 1985.

    “We wanted to open in a place where he had an impact,” producer Matt Brady said.

    The film will be screened at The Frida Cinema, the art house theater in downtown Santa Ana, about 20 miles from the Mission Viejo neighborhood where Ramirez committed the last of his horrific crimes during the summer of 1985. The date of the premiere has yet to be determined as Brady’s production company tries to firm up a date that Phillips, who is on location shooting the television show “Longmire,” can attend.

    The film will be shown at festivals around the United States in search of a distribution deal before it can open in wider release.

    Ramirez was convicted of 13 murders and 11 sexual assaults. Most of the crimes, in which he broke into homes in the middle of the night, occurred between March and September of ’85, when people from San Francisco to San Diego went to bed afraid. He made some of his victims pledge their allegiance to Satan. Newspapers dubbed Ramirez “The Night Stalker,” after a creepy but unrelated television series in the 1970s.

    In Mission Viejo on Aug. 24, 1985, Ramirez was spotted by teenager James Romero III on Via Zaragosa. Romero gave police a description of Ramirez’s orange car and a partial license plate number. Hours later, Ramirez broke into the home of Bill Carns on Chrisanta Drive.

    Ramirez shot Carns three times in the head and raped Carns’ girlfriend. Carns miraculously survived, although severe brain injuries make his life extremely difficult.

    Thanks to Romero’s description and a media blitz by police, Ramirez was caught six days later by an angry mob in East L.A.

    The movie focuses on a fictionalized story in which an attorney (Bellamy Young, who plays Mellie Grant on the popular television show “Scandal”) tries to persuade a dying Ramirez to confess to a crime from his early years in Texas to save another man from death row. The real Ramirez died of complications from B-cell lymphoma on June 7, 2013, while awaiting execution in San Quentin State Prison.

    Flashbacks from Mission Viejo are in the film, and not everyone will be happy to see those images on the big screen.

    “Who would want to go see that?” said Anne Carns, the 88-year-old mother of Bill Carns, now 60, who still carries one of Ramirez’s bullets in his head. “Bill’s short-term memory is very bad. He showers once a week because he forgets. He doesn’t take his meds. I won’t go see it because I know what Bill goes through every day.”

    A suburban street in Van Nuys served as a stand-in for Chrisanta Drive in Mission Viejo.

    Van Nuys was chosen as the location in the summer of 2015 because of its streetlights, which were old school sodium vapor lamps – not the LED lamps that are used in most places today.

    Director Megan Griffiths, who also wrote the screenplay for the film, insisted that all the flashback scenes be accurate.

    “Shooting in the period (1985) is really hard,” Brady said. “You have to have the right cars, signage, backgrounds and street lamps.”

    Griffiths said she has known about the Night Stalker since she was 10 years old.

    “He was my introduction to evil in the world,” Griffiths said. “For this film, I didn’t want to just follow around an actor re-creating gruesome scenes. I was more interested in his psychology.“

    The Van Nuys house is the residence of a woman who alleged she saw the Night Stalker in the bushes outside the house in 1985.

    Brady said Phillips, who achieved stardom playing Ritchie Valens in “La Bamba,” did a scary and credible job re-creating Richard Ramirez. A dentist fitted Phillips with fake teeth to emulate Ramirez’s infamous rotting smile.

    “He’s fantastic,” Brady said. “Everyone who saw him just got the chills. He nails the voice.”

    The film is the most recent of several depictions of the infamous serial killer and his crimes. “Manhunt: Search for the Night Stalker” was a television movie from 1989. “Nightstalker” was a straight-to-video movie in 2009.

    Brady, who also produced the film “Dahmer” starring Jeremy Renner, said the Night Stalker case got under the skin of so many people because Ramirez’s modus operandi was unpredictable.

    “He used a knife. He used a gun,” Brady said. “His victims were old and young. He traveled from Northern California to Southern California. He had no particular MO.”

    Brady said “The Night Stalker” is a significant film because almost the entire crew is made up of women. The writer/director, film editor, director of photography and one of the producers are women.

    “That’s a rarity in Hollywood,” he said.

    Brady said he is interested in hosting the opening night of the film in conjunction with the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault. He is still working out the details of how the group will be involved.

    http://www.ocregister.com/articles/r...ilm-night.html
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •