Dennis Quaid Loves Falling Asleep to 'Dateline' & Not Meeting The Killer

Transcript

00:00So, this is not your first time playing a real person, but what were the unique challenges

00:05for this specific character in finding out, you know, the tics about this real person?

00:10Yeah, I mean, I like playing real people because true stories are stranger than fiction, really

00:17when you come down to it, because you can't make this stuff up.

00:22Usually I like to meet the real-life person if they're alive, because I want to play it

00:29from their point of view, in a sense.

00:32But in this, I didn't want to meet him.

00:36He's in a hole in a prison in Oregon, exactly where he should be.

00:42I didn't want to give him any kind of satisfaction or excitement or that.

00:48And in this tale, it's really from his daughter's point of view, Melissa, who wrote a great

00:58book, which I think she knows him better than he knows himself.

01:05He lies to himself.

01:09It turns out playing a serial killer is actually kind of simple, much simpler than I thought

01:14because they don't really have human emotion.

01:17Delusion.

01:18Or human emotion.

01:19There's nothing to reach for there.

01:21Yeah.

01:22Or rationalization.

01:27He thinks he's a manipulator.

01:35He has this hold over his daughter, in a sense, because how do you reconcile that your father

01:42made that?

01:43They had a sweet relationship when she was a kid, and then she finds out he's this monster.

01:49And that's hard to get over.

01:53And she's really the hero in this, and the way that she responded to that, she reached

02:01out to the victim's families and also other families of serial killers in a way of therapy

02:06for herself.

02:08That very courageous thing to do.

02:13But he killed eight women in five years in the 90s and wanted to get caught.

02:28He wrote things on bathroom walls and a couple of letters to news outlets to get caught or

02:38catch me if you can, that type of thing.

02:43But he did it because of sex.

02:50That's really what gets down to it.

02:52He didn't have a very good self-image of himself sexually.

03:00The murders are a way of covering up his own self-image, the way he thinks of himself.

03:07He had to get rid of that in a very dastardly way.

03:14And that's why he couldn't stop sex being such a strong force in humans.

03:21So it's as simple as that.

03:24And the rest is just a bunch of bullshit he makes up to make himself feel better.

03:31But if you love true crime, I mean, I myself, I fall asleep to Dateline all the time.

03:37In a good way.

03:41Watch the rest of it the next morning.

03:45But if you love true crime, you're going to be addicted to this.