Source: Entertainment Weekly

Millions of viewers tuned in to Monster: The Ed Gein Story when it premiered earlier this month on Netflix, but acclaimed horror director Osgood Perkins was not among them.

In fact, not only has the Longlegs director not seen the latest in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s true crime anthology series — Perkins told TMZ he “wouldn’t watch it with a 10-foot pole.”

And he has good reason: In the second episode of the new season — which largely tells the story of killer and body snatcher Ed Gein and the various Hollywood horror hits he inspired — Perkins’ late father Anthony is portrayed (as played by Joey Pollari).

In it, Anthony is a closeted gay actor who is shown in a secret relationship with Tab Hunter when he learns he’s been cast as Norman Bates in the iconic Alfred Hitchcock horror film, Psycho, which was loosely inspired by Gein’s crimes. During the making of the film, Hitchcock (Tom Hollander) implies he cast Perkins because he, like Gein, has a “secret making you sick.” Anthony is also shown meeting with psychologist Mildred Newman, who suggests conversion therapy.

In real life, Anthony never publicly opened up about his sexuality. He remained married to his wife, Berry Berenson, until his death at age 60 in 1992 of AIDS-related complications.

Speaking with TMZ, the outlet notes that Osgood didn’t directly address the portrayal of his father in Monster because he hadn’t seen the show and had no plans to do so. But he did take the opportunity to comment on what he sees as “the Netflix-ization of real pain.”

The Monkey director told the outlet that streamers have made true crime into an industry of its own, and as such, regularly try to give it “glamourous and meaningful content.”

He said he worries, though, that modern culture is being “reshaped in real time by Overlords” and that it’s “increasingly devoid of context and that the Netflix-ization of real pain [ie the authentic human experiences wrought by ‘actual events’] is playing for the wrong team.”

Per the report, Osgood said he wants people to instead protect the truth without simplifying it, by instead “peering behind the veil into the unknowable and loving each other through expansive, new art.”

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