THE OCTOPUS MURDERS: An Interview With Director Zachary Treitz

Synopsis

When journalist Danny Casolaro was found dead in a hotel bathtub, police ruled it a suicide. But his family and colleagues believe he may have been murdered for investigating a conspiracy he called “The Octopus” – a hidden organization connected to stolen government spy software, a string of unsolved murders, and some of the biggest political scandals of the 20th century. Years later, researcher Christian Hansen pushes to uncover the secrets behind Casolaro’s death, and the story that killed him. From Stardust Frames, Duplass Brothers Productions, and director Zachary Treitz – this four-part docuseries untangle a mystery decades in the making.

Zachary Treitz – Director and Executive Producer

Zachary Treitz was raised in Louisville, Kentucky. He later moved to New York City where he produced The Pleasure of Being Robbed, directed by Josh Safdie, and co-produced Daddy Longlegs, directed by Josh and Benny Safdie, both of which premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight section of Cannes. Zachary directed the short film We’re Leaving, which premiered at Sundance and is available on the Criterion Channel, and the feature film Men Go to Battle, which won the Best New Director prize at the Tribeca Film Festival and was distributed by Film Movement.

After years of hearing his childhood friend Christian Hansen talk about his research into Danny Casolaro’s Octopus conspiracy, Zachary and Christian began filming and investigating the story together. This began a years-long odyssey around the United States to discover the connections between Danny Casolaro’s death and his unfinished book about a complex web of interconnected political conspiracies. With Zachary directing and Christian as lead researcher, they partnered with Stardust Frames and Duplass Brothers Productions to create the four-part documentary series American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders, which is available to view on Netflix now.

Interview

Glen Dower:

I come from the more independent, fictional film world. But my friend Christian who you met in the documentary series, we grew up together. He was a photojournalist In New York City when we were both living there. Somewhere along the way, he started on the side researching this story from the ’80s and the ’90s about this journalist who had died mysteriously in a hotel room. He was working for the last year of his life on this major scandal involving this mysterious software program.

And when Christian told me about it, I had a passing interest in it. I didn’t know anything about it and had never heard of it. Then I saw him get more and more obsessed with it. That was really how I engaged with it. Because at first, I was interested. Then I was kind of worried for him as he was spending all of his time on it. I was worried for him when he told me that he was meeting up with these people and talking with the people that he had described to me. You could make your own separate documentary about the various stages of Christian’s obsession.

Glen Dower:

At what point did you think once you had gone into production and you were starting to gather data and interviewees you realize this wasn’t going to be just a feature-length film? We’re going to need, what would turn out to be, four Netflix episodes?

Zachary Treitz:

If you know anything about the story, it’s that four parts are tiny for dealing with this, you know? We originally thought of it as at least eight parts, right? Like the octopus. How can you make it with eight parts? And it for me, I guess, if you want to get into the filmmaking part of it, we weren’t lacking plot or details or stories. We were just trying to get to that last hook that keeps you going. And then you slog through another 45 minutes until the last five minutes get you excited again. It was just so wide-ranging and so, so complicated and complex that the struggle was, not in how do you fit it or how do you stretch it out for four episodes. It was like how would we ever condense this down?

Glen Dower:

That makes a lot of sense. The main story is about Danny Casalaro who was murdered. Or it is implied sinister forces were at work.

Zachary Treitz:

I think you see in the documentary where people are at and maybe some people kind of change as they go along. I certainly have vacillated widely between different theories of what happened. What was fascinating about going into this was we had news reports of people, for example, the paramedic Don Shirley. At the time, he had come forward and told a TV news outlet, like, “Here’s what I saw.” He still deals with this stuff all the time. But it was fascinating to be able to talk to him and have him take us through that again. It detailed, really, his memory of it. It also maybe gave him a longer chance to speak about it in a way that’s not truncated like maybe it is for news bites back in the day.

Glen Dower:

Yes, those long-form interviews add so much to the narrative. The documentary series is called The Octopus Murders because it just escalates into all these different areas, like tentacles, as we see in a great graphic. It goes back decades. We’re talking about the Reagan administration through the Bush senior administrations into current-day activities in the Middle East. Were you surprised at how far this thing ended up going?

Zachary Treitz:

Yes. When you look at Danny’s notes, this film is really about my friend Christian’s understanding of Danny’s notes and sources as best as we could kind of decipher. He never finished the book. Danny didn’t. And so when you go through it when you look at the notes that Danny left behind, it’s thousands of pages of a journalist’s scribble, which is almost indecipherable. As you spend time with it, you start picking up, “Oh, that is that name, and that is that name.”

And as you put it together, much like we did, as a visual metaphor, you see that octopus graphic of all the different arms and the interconnections between all these different people and organizations. It never gets any smaller. That graphic alone could easily be doubled or tripled or quadrupled. I wouldn’t say it’s an alternate history of the 20th century. But these small events are all part of a single organism or network. That’s real. It’s wide-ranging, and the intelligence connections and corporations and various things. It’s scary.

Glen Dower:

Glen Dower:

And that’s what documentaries like yours help to explain. The documentary is on Netflix now. Looking back, it must have been incredibly exciting for you and Christian to have that backing and that distribution.

Zachary Treitz:

For sure. We met with them in 2019 or so and then they said yes. But then the pandemic happened and so that seemed like it threw the whole thing up in the air, and is it going to happen, or not? But the good thing for us, I mean, I hate to say that, if there’s any sort of good thing that came out of COVID, but it gave us six extra months to do more research. And we needed as much time as possible to just figure out what it was. What is this thing and how do you do it? I mean, I credit our producers a lot with guiding us through that.

Glen Dower:

Perfect. One last question, Zachary. Why do we as an audience love a good conspiracy theory?

Zachary Treitz:

I can just go on forever on this and monologue. But I would like to put the caveat of our story, I think we make, I hope that we make it pretty clear, or it’s at least implicit, is that we take this story, the one we’re telling on its terms. We’re not generalizing about conspiracies at large. Anything that happens after our story takes place, we do not try to update it modernize it, or re-contextualize it. That’s my little disclaimer. I will throw it into the land of theory and speculation if you give me the chance, which is, to me, I think the human brain. My brain at least, in the absence of information, runs wild.

I’ll give you an example It’s like when I would tell people about the story and I would just sort of give them the basic outline of like there was this journalist. He was looking into this software case and he was found dead after a year of looking into it in a hotel. It’s like nine people out of ten or maybe 99 out of 100 just automatically are like ‘Oh, he was murdered by the government, case closed.’ It’s just your brain is geared for conspiracy. Maybe that’s why conspiracy theory videos on YouTube are so powerful. Go back to the Bigfoot photograph, right? The blurrier it is, the grainier it is, the shakier it is, the more real it seems. The more you imagine it and say “That’s real. That’s real.” And it’s like, there’s something wrong with human beings! Ha!

Glen Dower:

That’s one thing we can be sure of! Zachary, it has been a pleasure, and thank you for talking to Cinema Scholars today. As we’ve said, your series is on Netflix right now, and our readers can start watching as soon as they have finished reading if they are craving some ‘Whoa..What!?’ moments.

Zachary Treitz:

Thank you, I really appreciate it.

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