Joe Berlinger On "Conversations with A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes"

"Conversations with A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes" brings the infamously twisted mind of serial killer Ted Bundy into the light for the very first time. This unique and gripping docuseries directed by Joe Berlinger focuses on a man whose personality, good looks and social graces defied the serial-killer stereotype, allowing him to hide in plain sight. Berlinger joined BUILD to discuss the Netflix docuseries and his new film on Bundy, "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile."

Video Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

RICKY CAMILLERI: Thanks, everybody, and welcome to BUILD. I'm your host, Ricky Camilleri. We are currently living in the golden age or a golden age of true-crime television documentaries.

Our next guest, though, basically pioneered the true-crime TV doc. In 1996 Joe Berlinger directed "Paradise Lost," the story of the West Memphis Three, which ended up launching a movement and getting three innocent men off death row. Since then, he's made documentaries on Whitey Bulger, Metallica, Tony Robbins, crude oil, and now he trains his sights on the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy in Netflix's four-part series "Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes." Let's take a look.

- He didn't look like anybody's notion of somebody who would tear apart young girls.

[DRAMATIC MUSIC]

- My name is Ted Bundy. I've never spoken to anybody about this. But I am looking for an opportunity to tell the story as best I can.

[DRAMATIC MUSIC]

- A person of this type chooses his victim for a reason. Possession. Control. Violence.

- There was something unique about Ted's brain. He talked in terms of a voice in his hand, and this voice would start saying things about women.

- He had very blue eyes. When he really got going, his eyes went absolutely black.

- Murder leaving a person of this type hungry, unfulfilled, would also leave him with the obviously irrational belief that if the next time he did it he would be fulfilled. And the next time he did it, he would be fulfilled. Or the next time he did it, he would be fulfilled.

[DRAMATIC MUSIC]

- Theodore Bundy has escaped.

- Suspected of dozens of sex killings in Washington state, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado.

- I think things are going to work out. That's about all I can say.

- Bundy is acting as his own lawyer. What is unusual to see is that many of the onlookers are women.

- He's a little scared when you look at him.

- He just doesn't look like the type to kill somebody.

- Serial killer Theodore Bundy has escaped once again.

- One of the FBI's most wanted men.

- He was charming, good looking, smart. Are you sure you have the right guy?

[DRAMATIC MUSIC]

- I mean I'm not an animal, and I'm not crazy. And I don't have a split personality. I mean I'm just a normal individual.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Everybody, please welcome the great Joe Berlinger.

JOE BERLINGER: Good to see you again.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Good to see you, sir.

JOE BERLINGER: I feel like a regular here.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Hey, man, we're happy to have you. You've always made great work, and you've made work that has been a huge part of my life going back to "Paradise Lost." So I'm always happy to get a chance to talk with you.

JOE BERLINGER: [INAUDIBLE]

RICKY CAMILLERI: Congratulations on this series, four-part series, from what I understand, massively successful. Within a week of it coming out, everybody that I knew was asking me if I had seen it, where people were posting about it. And they were fascinated, and it became a somewhat of a polarizing conversation pretty quickly.

But before we even get to that, what made you want to talk about Ted Bundy? You just released a movie at Sundance about him as well. So what fascinated you with Ted Bundy? Clearly his story in some ways had been told before.

JOE BERLINGER: Yeah, two things about Bundy. One is that he defies all expectations of what a serial killer should be, charming, good looking, white, so our culture teaches us that upwardly mobile white men are safe.

And we want to think that serial killers are like Buffalo Bill in "Silence of the Lambs." Great movie, not knocking it at all. That's one of-- I revere that movie. But we want to think that serial killers are these dark, twisted looking, easily identifiable people, because that implies, "Oh, well, we can identify them, and we can avoid them."

But what Bundy teaches us is that the people who most do evil in the world are often the people closest to us and the people you least expect, whether it's a priest who commits pedophilia and holds mass the next day-- frankly, whether it's a corporate CEO of a polluting corporation who's denying climate change and repressing the research and goes to bed at night, knowing that their industry is killing people, or the CEO of a pharmaceutical company which has shoved opioids down the throats of a whole generation, creating addicts.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Synthetic "Heroin in the Heartland."

JOE BERLINGER: And create-- and I'm sure those people have loving families and a warm circle of friends. But to me that's also compartmentalized evil. And the worst extreme of compartmentalized evil is somebody like Ted Bundy, a serial killer who had friends and colleagues and a live-in girlfriend, which is the subject of the feature film with Zac Efron. In my experience, doing real crime, those are the people who most do evil.

And for me as the father of daughters, the lesson I want my daughters to know and the lesson I want young people to know who maybe have heard of Bundy-- actually I've been surprised. So many people have in the younger demographic of my children's age don't even know who Ted Bundy is.

RICKY CAMILLERI: I get surprised when people don't know who Ted Bundy is either, but then I remember, "Oh, you didn't have a two-year phase where you just Wikipedia-ed serial killers, or you were bored. OK, never mind."

JOE BERLINGER: So one of the motivating factors for me wanting to do the doc series and then the movie, which, frankly, fell in my lap. And we can talk about that. There was no master plan to come out with a doc and a movie at the same time. it's just very coincidental and-- but wanting to do the documentary initially, which then led to the movie, was, I think, it's a lesson young people can't learn enough.

Those who deserve your trust often violate it, so somebody better deserve your trust before you give it to them. And I think that's an-- that's so important.

RICKY CAMILLERI: This is kind of a-- sorry.

JOE BERLINGER: I was just going to tell you the second reason why I'm fascinated with this story. I know I'm long winded, so let me give you another long-winded reason why I am fascinated with this story. I am a purveyor of crime programming. Wikipedia calls me a "pioneer." In fact, I think you said "pioneer" too. You must--

RICKY CAMILLERI: So you're a pioneer in the true-crime TV doc world?

JOE BERLINGER: Yeah, and--

RICKY CAMILLERI: But more than that. It's too limiting.

JOE BERLINGER: No, well, it's not just too limit-- I cringe as much as I embrace the true crime moniker, because true crime, that phrase somehow conjures up the image of wallowing in the misery of others for entertainment purposes. And I'd like to think that my work, all of my work has some social justice component, some larger reason to exist other than just telling a story of other people's misery, other people's worst thing that could ever happen to somebody.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Like any genre, if you think about even-- I know this has no social justice component, but if you think about the thriller genre, or something there, are the greatest thrillers ever made. And then there's a long list of the other ones that are pretty trashy and tacky. And you're not in that list of true crime docs.

JOE BERLINGER: Right, but I-- but conversely, I do participate in this genre, and I thought it was time. 30 years ago, he was executed, and I thought it was time to look back at Bundy.

Because to me we currently have an insatiable appetite for true-crime programming. I've never been busier. People can't seem to get enough of it.

And Bundy to me was the Big Bang of our insatiable appetite for true-crime programming. His Florida trial was the first time cameras were ever allowed in a courtroom. Just a few months before the Bundy trial, many news stations were still shooting news on 16 millimeter film, meaning there was no live entertainment-- live coverage of news. And so Bundy's trial represented this intersection of this incredible interest in Bundy with this new technology that was happening.

Electronic news gathering, as we know today, that was just in its infancy. Satellite technology was just being developed. And all of that interest in Bundy and this new technology pushed its way into a Florida courtroom, and for the first time ever, a trial was covered. A murder trial was covered gavel to gavel and became live entertainment for a whole generation of Americans. It was the first time that happened.

And you can-- Bundy represented himself at trial. It was just a circus-like atmosphere that ended up being entertainment for some people. And you can trace that line from Bundy's trial to Bundy's execution 10 years later.

Bundy's execution was around the time-- it was intersecting around the time mobile satellite trucks were starting to become common. Now you name the crime scene or the salacious crime, and 50 satellite trucks with satellite dishes pull up to the crime scene. Bundy's execution was one of the first times an event like that. Obviously, they didn't film his actual execution. Only witnesses get to witness that.

But all of that attendant hoopla that we were talking about it before. All these people with signs, "Burn, Bundy, burn." This carnival-like atmosphere--

RICKY CAMILLERI: It tailgated his execution, so that's insane.

JOE BERLINGER: Yeah, it was crazy. That became a live television event. And then you can trace that line to seven years later is the OJ Simpson trial, when there is this proliferation of cable stations. And the 24-hour news cycle is now in full swing. And to me, this is how we got to where we are today, with people just having a seemingly endless appetite.

And I have a conflicting relationship to the popularity of true crime. On the one hand, obviously, I make lots of it, and I'd like to think I do it responsibly.

But on the other hand, Bruce Sinofsky and I have said this since "Paradise Lost." God forbid, I were to undergo a tragedy that somebody wanted to make a film about, and filmmakers came knocking at my door. I don't think I'd let them in.

And yet I've made a living convincing people to let me tell their stories. So when I tell their stories, I feel I have a extra-- because of that, you could call it hypocrisy on my part that I wouldn't allow people to do to me what I would like to often do, which is to tell somebody's story. Because of that inherent hypocrisy that I'm very self aware of, I feel a real sense of responsibility to tell the stories responsibly and to infuse it with a layer of some kind of social commentary.

RICKY CAMILLERI: I have that same hesitation as of recently when it comes to opiate-based documentaries. I feel like there's been a plethora of documentaries about the heroin epidemic, and so many I've seen I've just felt like they are reveling in the grittiness of addiction. And they're not saying anything more. It's just like, yeah, we know people do heroin. I'm not really sure what we're supposed to get out of watching this man shoot up in a gutter.

And I feel that way sometimes with true-crime documentaries, mostly when I watch "Dateline." That's where you get that feeling.

JOE BERLINGER: So given that background about me and where I'm coming from, some of the commentary out there on the internet that we are glorifying Bundy I find troubling. Because the last thing I think we're doing is glorifying Bundy. We're trying to tell a cautionary tale that can't be repeated enough for young people, in my opinion, or for anybody, frankly.

RICKY CAMILLERI: I think as soon as people hear a subject in the documentary-- or an interview subject in the documentary say, "He was handsome. He was charming. He was this," they are-- it immediately overshadows the following person who says, "He was evil." Because you have both of those things within the documentary.

JOE BERLINGER: Yeah, and of course--

RICKY CAMILLERI: Many people say he was impossible to talk to. He just talked about himself. He's one of the most narcissistic people I've ever met.

JOE BERLINGER: Exactly, but he was also charming and persuasive.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Most narcissists are.

JOE BERLINGER: That was his stock and trade. That's how he lured women to their deaths, by feigning an injury, like, "I have a cast. Can you help me with my books? I'm on crutches. Can you help me bring this to my car?" And then he'd club women over the head. All of his friends thought he was a swell guy.

One of the more fascinating aspects of the Bundy story is that in his initial killing-- he's a multi-state killer, but he started off in Seattle. His initial Seattle killings in and around University of Washington and other colleges nearby-- his initial MO was just find an unsuspecting female walking alone and convince her to help him. And then he would knock them over the head when they weren't looking and do terrible things to them.

He then progressed to-- after a handful of those kinds of killings-- he then progressed to daytime killings. He became much more brazen.

There was an area outside of Seattle. There is an area outside of Seattle called Lake Sammamish State Park. It's a lake, and people go there to enjoy. And it was a busy Sunday, and he attempted to abduct-- well, he successfully abducted and killed two women in one day. But he went up to several people who rebuffed him, but obviously he ended up being successful.

But he went up to enough people to abduct the two girls he ended up abducting, and he left-- he used his real name Ted. He said, "Can you help me put a boat on my Volkswagen?" Because he was in a fake cast on his arm.

And so by the time the police realized two people had disappeared and they started canvassing the people at the park, they were able to do a composite sketch that looked a lot like Ted. And so a paper in the Seattle newspaper that circulated there was an article with a composite photo of Bundy that wasn't the spitting image, but it resembled him. The article talked about a guy named Ted who drove a Volkswagen.

Now all of Ted's friends and acquaintances teased him and said, "God, you look a lot like that guy. Isn't it funny his name is Ted, and he drives a VW like you, and he looks like you?" They didn't even think, "Oh, shit, this may be our guy." Because he was white, good looking, all the cues that our culture tells us is that's not a dangerous person. That to me is the most shocking.

So when people-- some people, because I would say the film, both the film and the doc series, have actually people are loving it. But some people are saying we're glorifying him because we're wallowing in his good looks or like, "Why did you cast Zac Efron?" Well, we cast Zac Efron because A, he's a fucking great actor and did a really great job. But we're poking a hole in his teen heartthrob image, because Bundy's stock and trade was good looks and charm. That's why we cast Zac Efron.

RICKY CAMILLERI: While we were watching the documentary, my wife kept saying, "He looks like Rob Lowe."

But she kept saying, "Did Rob Lowe ever play him? Why didn't that happen?" Also I just have to say it's really weird to have his eyes this big next to my face right now. I keep looking over. I'm like, "Oh, it's Ted Bundy's face."

I want to go back to something that you said at the beginning of this interview, which was the compartmentalization of evil. And you talked about CEOs, and you talked about the way that he did it. And then you started talking about the way that true crime has become almost ubiquitous because of how easily it can be covered.

And I would also say that the compartmentalization of evil, in a lot of ways, has become ubiquitous in our culture from the CEO down to the normal person who accesses information via their phone, which is made with parts mined from some sort of place. And we all are part of the ubiquity of some kind of evil. Do you see this as the beginning of that, and does it feel like that is more prevalent now and evil compartmentalization?

JOE BERLINGER: I don't think this was the beginning of it. Evil has existed since the beginning of time. I just look at things. I think there's-- we want to think that serial killing is some separate, aberrant behavior on the spectrum of human behavior, that it just exists over there somewhere.

And I have a slightly more nuanced view. I think sociopathic behavior is one long continuum. And on the lightest end of the continuum, we've all had a boss who is just jerky to you, mean, but presents a positive face. And they're a wonderful person to their superiors. That's just one example of just, I think, slightly sociopathic behavior, and I think we can all, "Oh, yeah, I had a boss like." Well, I did. I don't know if everyone did.

And then you move along the line, and I think the corporate CEO who goes to bed at night knowing they're killing people, which not every-- wonderful corporations out there, lots of great CEOs. If you work for a corporation, I'm not saying you're evil. Let's be clear. But there's a couple of industries that do bad things and repress research, and the results of their activities are killing people. Climate change is real.

RICKY CAMILLERI: That's all that they see it as is research. They don't see a human face at all on any of it.

JOE BERLINGER: And the opioid thing is the most flagrant example. Those-- those companies, in particular, one company repressed research about how addictive these drugs are and literally told their salespeople to tell doctors the opposite. And I'm sorry, that's evil.

People are dying. More people die each year of opioid addiction each year than in the entire Vietnam War. It's a crisis. And it could have been avoided, and it's been highly irresponsible. That's sociopathic behavior in my opinion. That's compartmentalized evil.

Then you get all the way down to a guy like Ted Bundy. He craved normalcy. He had a live-in girlfriend. He was a wonderful-- by all accounts, and I've spoken to the real Liz Kloepfer. And I've spoken to the real daughter, went out to visit them. It's why I wanted to make the movie. They thought he was a really good guy.

She had a series of bad relationships, and along comes Ted. They meet in a bar, and they quickly move in together. He kept a separate apartment. That was the key to why he got away with his crimes for so long, but they essentially lived together.

And yeah, so that was the driving force of wanting to do the movie, because he presented one face, but obviously had another. And to me all of this is a long, one long spectrum of human behavior.

And I think evil is just not explainable. A lot of people, even in our docuseries-- we give different opinions as to what made him snap. But I think trying to explain it in those terms is actually illusory for people, because you can't explain this kind of evil.

RICKY CAMILLERI: He can't even explain it.

JOE BERLINGER: Yeah, a lot of people want to believe or have said, "Well, when he found out that he was illegitimate." His mother gave birth to him out of wedlock in 1946, when that was a much bigger deal, and they hid the secret that he was the product of an illegitimate birth. And when he found out the truth as a teenager, that made him snap.

He had a girlfriend in college, his first girlfriend, with long hair parted in the middle who was of a higher social class than he was. And when she broke up with him, he felt bitter and enraged. That made him snap.

Well, I can tell you from personal experience, a lot of girls in college broke up with me. It didn't make me into a homicidal maniac. So these attempts to explain, I think, are ways to make us feel safer and better and more secure, but I think at the end of the day, this is part of the human condition, part of human behavior. And I think--

RICKY CAMILLERI: Violence.

JOE BERLINGER: Yeah, there's--

RICKY CAMILLERI: Specifically of a sexual nature, right? Because Ted is a sexually violent killer.

JOE BERLINGER: Yeah. Yes, I actually do think-- I think one of the fascinating aspects of that story, which you can bring an explanation to, is the 1960s was a time of great social progress. Women were becoming sexually liberated, emancipated in all the right ways, moving more into the workforce, traveling alone, hitchhiking.

And that, unfortunately, the downside of that is that enraged, white, inadequate men. And you saw this surge in serial killing in the 70s, and a lot of it was sexual violence against women. And I think that was one of the downsides to where we are today. I think you can trace some of the seeds of the MeToo movement to all that sexual predatory behavior that just blew up in the '70s.

RICKY CAMILLERI: When you were-- when you decided to do this documentary about Ted, what were you most surprised by? What did you already know, and what shocked you the most?

JOE BERLINGER: Just listening to these tapes. The author Stephen Michaud, who wrote a book "Conversations with a Killer" that came out several decades ago, based his book on these tapes. He did hundreds of hours of interviews over a six-month period, and when he reached out to me in January of 2017, and said "I have these tapes. Do you think there's a series here or a documentary?" I actually was dubious, because so much has been done about Bundy.

But I said, "Send me the tapes. Let me listen." And I just couldn't put them down, because it was such an interesting, deep dive into the mind of a killer so that you understand emotionally what you've read intellectually.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Do you feel like you do come to an understanding though when you listen to those tapes? Because what I found so fascinating about the documentary is that no matter how much he talks, you will never actually have a very clear understanding as to why he did--

JOE BERLINGER: No, the "why" you'll never-- it's inexplicable. That's why I was saying before, trying to write it off as, well, he was the product of illegitimacy relationship or a girl broke up with him. You'll never understand the "why." I think that's inexplicable.

But what you will understand is how victims, and that's why some of this criticism, "Oh, you're glorifying the killer at the expense of the victims." Just the opposite. The whole point of both of these films is that we want to understand the victims' experience. How do you become seduced by this type of psychopathic behavior? And those tapes and listening to him talk, you understand he was highly intelligent, diabolical, and highly believable. That's what chilled me to the bone.

RICKY CAMILLERI: There are elements of his personality and what people say about him that remind me of someone right now. I won't say names, but people can guess who I'm talking about, not to be cheeky or anything or coy.

But he throws, he sprays as much at the wall as possible as a liar and then picks and chooses what people glob on to. He's constantly lying, and that's why he's illusory and why it's hard to understand even where he's coming from when he talks. Because he almost doesn't know when he's lying at certain points, he's lying so much.

And it becomes such a part of his addiction, it feels like, a part of his compulsion is to tell lies and to present himself as something other than what he is, even if what he is in that moment is just fine for what he needs. Does that remind you of someone right now as well?

JOE BERLINGER: Gee, we could talk about that. Look, I don't want to equate. I don't want to equate a serial killer with the highest office in the land. I think that's a little too much, but I do think that someone who is narcissistic and has self-preservation as the most important value of all, I think you could draw some corollaries there for sure.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Yeah, absolutely, I guess that's what it is, self-preservation. There's a moment in the trial where he decides to represent himself, where he is interviewing the police officer who was the first responder on the scene for one of his murders. Is it the sorority house?

JOE BERLINGER: It's the Chi Omega sorority house.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Where he murdered two women and assaulted two others, right?

JOE BERLINGER: Yeah, and then ran down the street and--

RICKY CAMILLERI: Killed another.

JOE BERLINGER: --bludgeoned another woman. That's the crazy-- the crazy thing about this story. Here's a guy who escapes from prison, not once, but twice, while being held for murder in Colorado.

RICKY CAMILLERI: He's basically scot-free in his second escape.

JOE BERLINGER: Exactly. He's on the lam in Florida, and two weeks after his second-- not his first, but his second prison escape-- he's in Florida. And particularly someone who's demonstrated such a desire for self-preservation, you would think that even a psychotic killer would have the presence of mind to lay low and not call attention to himself.

And yet it's in Florida, just two weeks after the second prison escape, that he goes on this murderous rampage at the Chi Omega sorority at Florida State University. He bludgeons in one sorority house four women, thinking he's left four for dead. Two survived. And then he runs down the street a few blocks away and enters another college residence and bludgeons yet another woman, leaving her for dead. But she also survived.

And then a few weeks later, he goes to Lake City, Florida, and now he's completely unhinged. And he snatches a 12-year-old girl, Kimberly Leach, his last victim, from the schoolyard and does terrible things to her. Obviously, he kills her.

You would think that somebody would want to lay low after escaping prison twice, but that just demonstrates the inexplicable-- this thing he called "the entity," this inexplicable need to kill. And I think there's no explanation for that other than the inherent presence of evil.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Driven by compulsion in a lot of ways.

JOE BERLINGER: Yeah.

RICKY CAMILLERI: So and I think what you're also talking about goes back to what I was saying inside the courtroom, where he's interviewing this first responder. And he's basically-- Bundy is representing himself at this point-- and he is asking the first responder to pore over the details of these assaults and murders in front of the jury. So the jury is now watching Bundy listen intently to the details of the grisly, homicide scenes in a very perverse way, essentially making sure that the jury would not find him innocent at the end of the day.

JOE BERLINGER: Well, yeah, that's the strange thing. He represented himself. He had a handful of public defenders assisting him, and then eventually, he took over his own defense. But he was his own worst enemy.

Larry Simpson, the prosecutor, put on this first responder just to lay some basic groundwork. He wasn't going to go into the details of the crime scene, because he had other forensic evidence and experts to introduce later. This was just setting the table, just nuts and bolts.

And Bundy insists on the cross-examination. His public defenders were like, "Don't do this. Don't do this." And he just does it. And it's-- and he's reveling in the crime scene.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Yeah, there's something about it that feels very similar to being on the lam, basically been scot-free, and then feeling like you have to kill. He's in the courtroom. He could just let this go, but he has to hear the details.

JOE BERLINGER: Yeah, but interestingly, which what made him so dangerously intelligent, is he still understood. Even though he had that desire to revel in the crime scene, he's still-- unlike many serial killers, once they're caught, they confess.

Bundy obviously denied his crimes to all of his friends when his legal woes were mounting. Then at the trial, he defended himself and, of course, denied his crimes. When he was being sentenced to death, he continued to deny. All through his appeals process, he denied. This is very unusual.

It wasn't until the last few days of his life, before he was executed 10 years after his conviction, that he started to confess in a quixotic attempt to preserve his life. He thought that by doling out little bits of information, because there were a lot of open cases in multiple states. And so he was trying to preserve his life by becoming useful to these investigators, but this-- the state of Florida eventually had enough of it and said, "We're going to kill you."

RICKY CAMILLERI: What did you think about what the judge said to him at the end of his trial in Florida, where the judge says, "It's really sad to have seen someone turn the way that you did, a waste a waste of life"?

JOE BERLINGER: I find it utterly fascinating. We lean into that monologue in the movie as well. John Malkovich plays the judge, and it's a chilling moment. He-- they had a cat-and-mouse relationship throughout the trial.

But Cowart shows tremendous empathy and sympathy for him at the end saying, "You would've made a good lawyer. I would have loved to have you practice in front of me, but you went the other way, partner."

RICKY CAMILLERI: You killed multiple people.

JOE BERLINGER: "And I bear no ill will towards you." It was a surprisingly human comment, and was it sincere? Or was it because this was the first televised trial in history? I can't tell you. But by all accounts, it was a sincere sentiment.

RICKY CAMILLERI: But does that sincere sentiment, do you think that's born out of a certain humanity that comes with having to sentence someone to life? Or do you think that comes is born out of a certain cultural protection that we see in the cases of like Brock Turner, where a young man is basically given, I think, like a month probation.

Pardon me, I don't know the exact punishment, but it wasn't severe for raping a woman, a passed-out woman, behind a dumpster. But he was an upstanding, young, white man, and the judge saw empathy towards him.

JOE BERLINGER: Yeah, I think that's the enduring lesson of Bundy and why it's so relevant now and why the idea that somehow we're glorifying him just doesn't make sense to me. Because if Bundy was Black or other whatever, not a good looking charming guy or some other cultural cue that we've been given that you're not supposed to trust, it'd be a very different story.

He would have been apprehended quicker. The judge, I don't think, would have given him the latitude to represent himself. So the film is very much about white privilege, particularly in that period.

RICKY CAMILLERI: You said that-- before we have to go, you said-- just never, don't want to leave any questions unanswered. But you said that it wasn't your grand plan to make these two things at the same time. How did that end up happening?

JOE BERLINGER: As I said, Stephen Michaud sent me these tapes. I took a listen. I said "Wow, this would be great." So we went to Netflix, because we thought it would be a terrific docuseries. They agreed. We started doing-- sorry, I have a little bit of a cold. It's the press-tour cough that I have right now.

RICKY CAMILLERI: As do all of us. It's not press tour, but we've all got it.

JOE BERLINGER: So excuse me, but so I was in LA having lunch with my agent at CAA, Michael Cooper, great guy. And I was telling him how fascinated I am by the Bundy stuff. And it's just, "Oh, you should read this script." He remembered a script that's on the Hollywood blacklist.

The Hollywood blacklist are scripts that executives and agents and people in Hollywood think are really good, but they've been sitting on shelves for years. Because nobody can quite figure out how to make them, what the way in is.

So Michael Werwie wrote a terrific script called "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile," and it won an Academy Nicholl's prize. It was a beloved script. It read great, but no one could figure out how to make it, like what's your way in, what's your point of view.

And so he sent it to me to read it, and we weren't even thinking this is going to be my next project, per se, just I was doing Bundy. He sent me the script to read. I loved it, and said, "Wow, this is actually great. Let's take a crack at it."

But movies take forever to set up. It's like you're endlessly-- especially independent films-- you're endlessly pushing the boulder up the hill, and either the actor falls out, or the money falls out. Things take years to get done.

So mid-April of 2017, while I'm deep in the documentary, I read the script. I said to my agent, "I love this. I think I actually have a way to do this." So we got the producer who owned the rights on the phone, a guy named Michael Costigan. I pitched him on how I would do the film. He said, "Great, let's try to set it up."

Literally the next week, at a meeting of agents at CAA, their weekly meeting where they discuss what their clients are interested in doing, my agent said, "Hey--" It was like project number 800 they were talking about. It wasn't a meeting about me. They were just going through the-- Joe Berlinger's doing a Bundy docuseries, and he finds "Extremely Wicked" intriguing. Everyone knew the script.

And so Zac Efron's agent, who's also at CAA, said, "Oh, well, Zac-- why do we have Zac read it? He's looking to do something different." And when you ask somebody at Zac's level to read a script, it's a very considered decision, because it's called a reading offer. When you've given a talent at Zac's level-- if they read the script, and they say, "I want to do it," you're basically making them an offer if you know what I mean. But--

RICKY CAMILLERI: You can also then take that them wanting to do it, and go get money to make the movie.

JOE BERLINGER: Exactly. And so if they're going to take the time to read it, if they say, "Yes," you're obligated. But I didn't have a moment's hesitation. The moment that idea was articulated, I said, "That's a brilliant idea." Because I think he's a terrific actor, and I think we're playing with his teen heartthrob image in a way that a documentarian can sink his teeth into to bring some real aspect into a scripted movie. And so Zac read it, loved it.

And two weeks later, the producers were at Cannes. Cannes is not just a film festival, but it's a place to raise money for movies. And the idea of Zac playing Ted Bundy immediately sold. And so within six weeks of me having-- five or six weeks of me having read the script for the first time, I had a greenlit, funded movie starring Zac Efron, which--

RICKY CAMILLERI: Can I ask you?

JOE BERLINGER: --which never happens.

RICKY CAMILLERI: And when you found out it was greenlit, like five or six weeks later, was your first response like, "That's amazing," or was it like, "Shit, I got to make this movie now."

JOE BERLINGER: A little of both to be honest with you. I had the documentary series, and it just it happened all so quickly. I was like this--

RICKY CAMILLERI: Is this your first narrative? Since when?

JOE BERLINGER: Well, I don't want to remind viewers that my name is associated with the most reviled sequel in cinema history, "Blair Witch 2"

RICKY CAMILLERI: That can't be true.

JOE BERLINGER: "Blair Witch 2" to which happened 20 years ago. But that experience was so off putting, because my vision of the movie, which if Lionsgate would ever release my director's cut, I'd stand behind that film.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Is there a director's cut that is--

JOE BERLINGER: Locked in a vault--

RICKY CAMILLERI: Really?

JOE BERLINGER: --somewhere that I would love to be released. So, Lionsgate, if you're listening, please, let it out.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Why not? What's-- why don't they release it?

JOE BERLINGER: I don't know. I've asked many times.

RICKY CAMILLERI: You could throw it up on a streaming network. They did that with "Fair Game" last year, Doug Liman's [? work. ?]

JOE BERLINGER: If somebody takes the existing version of "Blair Witch 2" and removes all the gory recreations, which were shot against my will, and if they take-- there's a scene of all of the-- Jeffrey Donovan, who plays the tour guide, and if the stars of the movie are-- there's a scene where they're being interrogated by the police that's intercut throughout the entire film.

If you take all those moments and put them at the end, and make one long, eight-minute scene as a reveal, which was the intention of my director's cut, and you remove all the gory recreations, which were anathema to me, that is very close to my-- and take out some of the one bad song shoved in after the other, because they wanted to sell us a soundtrack. That resembles my director's cut.

And that movie, maybe people would have hated that movie as much as they hated the movie that came out. But at least they'd be hating something I created. What's worse is people hating something that your name is on, but it was not your cut, far from it.

But that turned me off of-- I re-embraced documentary, because I'm the author of my work. And I get final cut on my docs, and that was just a terrible experience. So it's taken a while for me to want to get back in the game, and I'm back.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Did this wind up being a good experience?

JOE BERLINGER: Great experience.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Would you do it again, or is it something that you're not necessarily desperate to do? It's just like if the right thing comes along--

JOE BERLINGER: If the right thing comes along. I learn-- the other lesson I learned from "Blair Witch 2" is I saw it more, to be honest, as an economic opportunity. I was recruited to shoot it. I recruited-- I was recruited, based on the heat of "Paradise Lost," I was recruited to shoot the sequel of that film. And I wasn't passionate about it. I still will go to my grave defending my cut of the movie. Doesn't mean people would have liked it. But I made the movie for the wrong reasons.

And so I love this doc series. I love-- many of my greatest experiences have happened since the failure of "Blair Witch." The Metallica film was the greatest adventure I've ever had. Continuing to work on the "Paradise Lost" series, which got the West Memphis Three out of prison. I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything.

So for me to be captivated by another scripted film, it would have to be one that I'm-- it sounds so simple. You have to be totally passionate about it, because it's not easy making a film. Even a bad film is hard to make. It's just a grueling experience. So sure, I'd love to make another film, another scripted movie, but I also would love to make another great documentary.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Do you have one lined up, another of docs, a story that you're working on?

JOE BERLINGER: I've got a couple of things cooking, lighter fare. I jokingly tell people that my filmography divides into two buckets, murder and music.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Oh, right.

JOE BERLINGER: And I've spent so much time doing murder the last two years and staring into the abyss of evil and looking at the depths of human depravity, that I need to go off and do a music film and remind me of the heights of human achievement.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Well, your first-- it's not necessarily your breakthrough film, I think "Brother's Keeper" before that was, but "Paradise Lost" was a bit of both. It was both murder and music.

JOE BERLINGER: That's true.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Not just because you're using the Metallica song.

JOE BERLINGER: You're right.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Because it is--

JOE BERLINGER: I never thought of that.

RICKY CAMILLERI: --as much about these kids who are accused of this because of the music they listen to.

JOE BERLINGER: Can I steal that from you?

RICKY CAMILLERI: 100%.

JOE BERLINGER: Perfect.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Yeah, I can be your agent. Don't worry.

JOE BERLINGER: All right, cool.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Thank you so much for being here, Joe. I your work.

JOE BERLINGER: Thank you.

RICKY CAMILLERI: It's always a pleasure to have you here.

JOE BERLINGER: I love talking with you.

RICKY CAMILLERI: "Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes" is on Netflix now. It's an incredible watch, even for someone who felt like they knew everything there was to know about Ted Bundy, which is a weird thing to say out loud. I was still fascinated, and there were things that I learned. Joe Berlinger, everybody, give it up.

JOE BERLINGER: Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.

[MUSIC PLAYING]