The first thing that drew Ami Canaan Mann to the film “Texas Killing Fields” wasn’t the script. “The thing that really drew me was the research material that came along with the script,” she said. The research expounded on the script, which is based on the real-life string of murders that happened in the 1970 through the 1990s along I-45, near League City, TX (according to Mann, the murders happened in Texas City, which is 30 minutes south of Houston).
When Mann finally read the script, written by Don Ferrarone, she was just as affected. “It had such a visceral quality,” she said. By the time she had read the script, the film had been in development for over a decade. It would seem that it was waiting on her to direct it.
The feeling of Texas City was easy for Mann and her crew to recreate. “We had to shoot in Louisiana,” she said. “But it was easy to replicate the feeling [of Texas City] because both are cities on the gulf, they both have the same terrain, the vegetation’s really similar. I got lucky.”
Also, along with the extensive research that went into making the film, a lot of legwork was done to ensure the authentic quality of the storytelling. “We had access to the real detectives that Jeffrey [Jeffrey Dean Morgan] and Sam [Sam Worthington] portray, to the detective Jessica Chastain’s character is based on,” she said. “I wanted to know what it was really like to look at a dead body, so we went to the LA County coroner’s office and I took the actors with me.” She also said that she and the actors went to shadow a real detective. “He talk[ed] about how you move through a crime scene, the psychological and emotional ramifications of working of the job.”
Recently, the film has been getting a lot of buzz not only for the stellar performances and storytelling, but for the fact that this film could possibly cause someone with information to step forward to the police. “That was really the intention of doing [the film,]” Mann said. “A lot of the crimes are cold cases. If someone is motivated to step forward, then the film has more than done its job.”
