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Netflix’s Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan follows the story of a Billy Miligan, a man charged with sexually assaulting four women on the Ohio State University campus in the late 1970s. Milligan gained wide attention because his lawyers argued that he suffered from multiple personality disorder, and he was subsequently ruled not guilty by reason of insanity.

Olivier Megaton, the director of the four-part docuseries, says he set out not just to tell Milligan’s story, but to honor the victims whose stories were overshadowed by Milligan’s very unusual legal defense.

“I didn’t want to begin the series with his life being a kid,” Megaton, whose credits include Columbiana and Taken 2, told MovieMaker. “I decided to begin with the rapes just to have the audience keeping in mind that he raped, from what we know, four girls in 10 days.”

He added: “I wanted to talk about his social and his trauma condition and so on for sure, but at the very beginning, I just wanted to have everybody thinking, ‘What about the victims?’”

He said that Milligan didn’t seem to regret his crimes, because in Milligan’s mind, he didn’t commit them — one of his alternate personalities did. What was called multiple personality disorder in the late 1970s is now more commonly known as dissociative identity disorder.

Milligan died of cancer in 2014, but appears through extensive interview footage. Doctors treating Milligan concluded that Milligan’s frequent switching between accents and personalities meant that he was not in control at the time of the attacks. He said he had 24 personalities in all.  Milligan explains in the Monsters Inside footage that when one of his many alters would come forward, his true self would go to sleep.

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After being ruled not guilty, Milligan spent a decade in mental institutions, where he underwent extensive psychiatric treatment designed to fuse all his personalities into one. During this time, author Daniel Keyes wrote a best-selling book called The Minds of Billy Milligan. At one point, James Cameron considered making a movie about him, but the project fell through.

The docuseries explains that Milligan says he suffered severe abuse at the hands of his stepfather, Chalmer Milligan. The doctors who treated Billy Milligan say he formed the alternate personalities to cope.

Chalmer Milligan, who died in 1988, denied that he ever abused his children, though friends of the Milligan children who are interviewed in the docuseries say they witnessed the abuse.

Megaton said the production was only able to find contact information for two of Milligan’s victims, and that neither  responded to requests to be interviewed for Monsters Inside.

“The thing is that it’s very hard to try to reach people with that kind of experience 20 or 40 years after,” Megaton said. “I couldn’t imagine saying on the phone, ‘Are you the woman that was raped by Billy Milligan forty years ago?’”

Megaton wanted to make it clear that although Milligan may deserve some sympathy for the abuse he experienced as a child, he is not the victim of this story.

“During the fourth episode, we needed to be… aware about him not being the victim of all this,” Megaton said. “For sure he was a victim, for sure we needed to have empathy about it, but the thing is that he committed a couple of crimes.”

Milligan’s sister, Kathy, was adamant that no mental illness should excuse her brother’s crimes.

“The interesting thing is that his sister, the first time we met, the first thing that she told me was that she was caring about the victims all the time, every day,” Megaton said.

Megaton says he hopes Milligan’s case highlights the effects of child abuse on a person’s mental health.

“The origin of all this is about — what did he live when he was a young boy? And this is the problem,” Megaton said. “He was not the victim of his own personality, he was the victim of his trauma.”

If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, RAINN’s free and confidential National Sexual Assault Hotline is available to call 24 hours a day at 800-656-4673.

Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan begins streaming on Netflix Sept. 22.

Main Image: Billy Milligan, courtesy of Netflix.

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The movies that leave the deepest impressions on us would be nothing without the people who made and starred in them. From Cicely Tyson, the star from Sounder, Fried Green Tomatoes, and many more classic films and television shows to Christopher Plummer, forever beloved for his role as Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music, here is MovieMaker‘s list of people from the motion picture industry who have died in 2021.

Michael K. Williams

Best-known for playing Omar Little on The Wire, Chalky White on Boardwalk Empire, Moussa in Assassin’s Creed and Robert in 12 Years a Slave, Williams was found dead in his New York apartment on Sept. 6, according to Variety. He was nominated for an Emmy three times for acting, for roles in When They See Us, Bessie, and The Night Of, and is currently in contention for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series for his role as Montrose Freeman in HBO’s Lovecraft Country. He was also nominated for his work as a producer on Vice. He talked honestly about his struggles with drugs, but said he had a moment of clarity in 2008 when Barack Obama declared, at a presidential campaign rally that Williams attended with his mother, that The Wire was the best show on television — and that Omar was his favorite character. “Hearing my name come out of his mouth woke me up,” Williams later told The New York Times. “I realized that my work could actually make a difference.”

The post Notable Hollywood Deaths of 2021, From Michael K. Williams to Ed Asner appeared first on MovieMaker Magazine.

R.I.P. Michael K. Williams and Jean-Paul Belmondo; Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings blows away a Labor Day Record; Star Wars and Jurassic Park stop-motion mastermind Phil Tippett directs his own film, Mad God. All in today’s Movie News Rundown.

Congratulations Shang-Chi: The first Marvel superhero film with an Asian lead actor — Simu Liu — blew away the previous record for Labor Day weekend, earning $90 million over four-days. That’s roughly twice what it was projected to pull in. (Expectations were cautious in part becuase of COVID-19 fears.) The three-day opening of $75.5 million for Shang Chi was the second-biggest since the start of the pandemic, behind only Black Widow, which opened to $80 million in July, Variety noted.

R.I.P Michael K. Williams:  The magnificent actor, best known for playing Omar Little on The Wire, was found dead yesterday in his New York apartment. He was 54. Williams was nominated for an Emmy three times for acting, for roles in When They See Us, Bessie, and The Night Of, and is currently up for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series for Lovecraft Country. Before his breakthrough in The Wire, he was also a guest on shows including The Sopranos. I especially liked him on Boardwalk Empire, where he played Chalky White, leader of a Black crime syndicate trying to flourish during Prohibition, and had the honor of interviewing him about the show in 2013. He was friendly, funny, relaxed, charming, and very obviously adored by his cast mates. He wryly explained what it means when a show is “making multiples.”

Obama’s Favorite Character: The Associated Press said that his death was being investigated as a possible drug overdose. Williams talked honestly about his struggles with drugs over the years, but had a moment of clarity in 2008 while attending a campaign rally for Barack Obama in 2008 with his mother. From the stage, Obama said The Wire was the best show on television — and that Omar was his favorite character. “Hearing my name come out of his mouth woke me up,” Williams later told The New York Times. “I realized that my work could actually make a difference.”

R.I.P. Jean-Paul Belmondo: The star of Breathless and Pierrot le Fou, among other films, has died at 88. The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw wrote a gorgeous appreciation, which includes this description of Belmondo’s final scene in Breathless: “Defying agony from his bullet wounds, he just clownishly stretches his face into the two silly expressions he’d earlier used to explain the phrase “faire la tête”: a goofy silent scream, then a panto grin. Isn’t this what acting is, what life is: tragedy, comedy, faces, speeches? Who cares?”

Phil Tippet’s Mad God: Phil Tippet, a visual effects mastermind whose creations include Jabba the Hutt and the AT-ATs from the original Star Wars trilogy — and who won an Oscar for bringing dinosaurs to cinematic life in Jurassic Park — has always wanted to write and direct his own feature film. And now, at 69, he has. Mad God features stunning stop-motion creations he first began developing in 1987. Thanks to a very successful Kickstarter campaign and lots of help from Tippet’s loyal animators, Mad God is now playing festivals — including, last month, the Locarno Film Festival and Fantasia Festival. It makes its U.S. debut at Fantastic Fest later this month. Here is the trailer:

Main image: Michael K. Williams as Chalky White in Boardwalk Empire.

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Retired professional tennis player Mardy Fish’s battle with mental health on and off the court is at the heart of the fifth and final episode of Chapman and Maclain Way’s Untold sports documentary series, Untold: Breaking Point.

In 2015, Fish penned a personal essay in the Player’s Tribune called The Weight, which detailed his experience with the anxiety attacks that lead to him withdrawing from a match against famed Swiss tennis icon Roger Federer at the 2012 U.S. Open. It was that very story that Fish says inspired the Way brothers to reach out to him — they were already acquainted through a mutual friend, fellow pro tennis player Sam Querrey — about making a documentary on his story. From there, the rest of the Untold series was born. And in Untold: Breaking Point, Fish opens up more than he ever has before.

The reason Fish speaks so openly about his struggle with anxiety, he says, is because it makes him feel better.

“It made me feel better when I talked about it. Even if I was just sitting here with you around a coffee and we just started talking about mental health, I would feel better about how I was feeling in that moment,” Fish told MovieMaker. “So part of it was to try and educate, part of it was to try and give someone a success story of being able to really hit rock bottom with mental health and come back. And not only come back, but come back to the place that took it all away from me.”

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After bowing out of the Winston-Salem Open in 2013, Fish didn’t return to tennis again until 2015, according to ESPN. He retired that same year, ending his prestigious career at the U.S. Open. Today, he’s the captain of the U.S. Davis Cup team, a high honor in the world of tennis. And he’s highly qualified for the job — Fish knows as well as anyone that although tennis isn’t as physically taxing as sports like football or mixed martial arts, the pressure of being a one-man team takes an invisible mental toll.

“I’m a male athlete from a noncontact sport, but a pretty gladiator-ish sport where when you leave the locker room, we’re all by ourselves. We have to figure out how to beat that person across the net and we don’t have any help doing it,” he said. “We’re out there all by ourselves in front of thousands of people in attendance.”

He attributes a strong support system to his ability to come back to the sport after walking away at the height of his career.

“It had taken months in 2012 in the summer to understand what was going on,” he said. “Having a support system, or a good support system or a solid foundation is so important in mental health… Just learning from every episode, learning from every situation, and growing from that is part of the main reason why I was able to sort of beat it and still continue to fight it and beat it on a daily basis.”

Nearly a decade has gone by since Fish walked away from Roger Federer in 2012. Now, he has some advice for young athletes — or anyone at all — who is struggling with their mental health.

“If you’re having those thoughts, those issues, panic, anxiety, depression, anything like that, there are ways to get around it,” Fish says. “There are ways to beat it. Getting a great doctor… having a support system in place to where you can be vulnerable and you can really tell people what you think and what you’re feeling and be open about it. That’s the most important thing.”

Untold: Breaking Point is out today on Netflix.

Main Image: Mardy Fish pictured in Untold: Breaking Point courtesy of Netflix.

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Impeachment: American Crime Story premieres Tuesday on FX. The third installment of Ryan Murphy’s anthology series centers on President Bill Clinton’s famous affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky — and the precipitating events that lead Lewinsky’s friend and coworker Linda Tripp to expose their secret to the world.

Longtime Murphy collaborator Sarah Paulson (American Horror Story, Ratched) plays Tripp in Impeachment. But the real-life Linda Tripp passed away before she could see Paulson’s portrayal of her on cable television — or meet Sarah Burgess, the screenwriter who spent countless hours pouring over books, documents, interviews, and audiotapes to understand Tripp’s reasons for recording her phone conversations with Lewinsky in which the young woman revealed intimate details about her sexual relationship with the president.

Tripp died on April 7, 2020, according to her obituary in the New York Times, though her former lawyer, Joseph Murtha, did not provide a cause of death. According to NPR, Tripp had at one point battled pancreatic cancer, though it’s unclear whether she died from the illness.

Burgess sorely wishes she could have met Tripp before her death. She said that she “felt connected” to Tripp when she was writing Impeachment, and put emphasis on painting a fair, nuanced picture of her rather than casting her as a one-sided villain, as she has often been portrayed in the media.

“I would have loved to talk to her. It was very hard for me when she passed away last year that I’d never got the chance,” Burgess told MovieMaker. “I don’t believe characters have to be quote-unquote ‘likable,’ especially female characters. That can be sort of a trend that we fall into. Women are sometimes expected to behave differently from men and female characters have to have this more explicit warmth or vulnerability sometimes. Linda’s a messy and complicated character and someone who I… had great affection for as I was writing.”

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Burgess isn’t sure whether Tripp was ever aware of the FX series’ existence while she was alive. It was still in production when she died, and Tripp says the show’s general policy is not to reach out to its subjects for their input — Bill and Hillary Clinton were not contacted, either, though they are played by Clive Owen and Edie Falco, respectively. Lewinsky’s role as a producer on the series is an exception to this rule, allowing her some control over how she — played by Beanie Feldstein — was portrayed during the most vulnerable moments of her life.

Burgess says she was always confident that the way she wrote Tripp was fair, but that after learning of Tripp’s death, she did reconsider one part of the script.

“I didn’t feel that I had to change course because I already felt that I was writing so much from her point of view. I think it did briefly — her death made me reconsider how I would end her character. I will say that. I don’t want to give away too much,” she said. “Her final moments in the show, I think I reconsidered after her death.”

Tripp worked in the White House for multiple years before being transferred to the Pentagon to work in the Department of Defense, where she met and befriended Lewinsky. Tripp ultimately became famous for turning over tapes of their sensitive conversations to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and then later wearing a wire for the FBI to record another conversation with Lewinsky. But Burgess does not believe that Tripp ever intended for her actions to hurt Lewinsky as much as they did.

“I don’t believe this person is a complete monster,” Burgess said. “I have studied Linda Tripp so carefully over the past three years, I’ve developed I think what I would describe as an obsession with Linda Tripp… I personally wrote the story believing that she was acting on instinct and did not totally understand the forces that she was unleashing,” she added. “I wrote the story believing that some part of Linda Tripp is aware of the problems with what she did, and I think felt the need to articulate different ideas in the press because she felt under attack. And there’s a tragic loneliness to that to me.”

Impeachment: American Crime Story premieres Tuesday, Sept. 7 at 10 p.m. on FX. Main Image: Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp. Credit: Kurt Iswarienko/FX.

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