Rectify Fanblog

What would want people to take away from watching “Rectify,” in the end?

After a long wait, Rectify finally returns to Sundance tonight. In preparation of the fourth and final season, Aden Young looks back at some of the most memorable moments so far, including:

AVC: You and Aden Young obviously have such a bond as Amantha and Daniel. Was that an immediate thing, or was it something you worked on?

[Aden] Young explains that his approach to Daniel hasn’t changed much, season to season. He’s built his character on the idea that Daniel imagines himself a ghost who has returned to haunt his family. And finally, in the show’s last season, the ghost comes to realize that he is not dead anymore. There is the possibility of a life to be lived.

“Reuniting and rectifying #Rectify #UsualSuspects @abigailspencer @jd_evermore @Bruce_McKinnon @adenyoungRTFY“ - J. Smith Cameron (@j_smithcameron) on Twitter.

It was so heartbreaking when Janet acknowledged that she had not really been there for Teddy all these years, in some fundamental way.

“From my experience and observing a lot of other people often times [a transformational experience or shedding of the skin] only happens when we are at the end of our road and there is pain involved. We have to change or we continue to live in that almost intolerable pain. All of these characters, all of them, have aspects of that. For some of the characters, it is more tolerable than others, depending on the depth of the pain and also their sensitivity to the pain. Taking that into consideration, you could make an argument for all of them. Certainly Daniel is the one with perhaps with the most incriminations of not changing could be the greatest, but you never know you have to quantify what the greatest is. I don't know. Teddy has got a long way to go. We will find out a little later that old Ted Sr. is not in development, but needs to change and grow and that is the human condition.” - Ray McKinnon on change.

Ed Benitez designed Rectify’s opening titles. He talks about the process on the official Sundance site:

“I knew right away I didn’t want to set up the story [in the opening titles] as much as I wanted to just set the tone. Early on in the process I came across production photographs of a mood board on set, and I knew then that I could use the collage medium as a way to drive the sequence. I wanted the opening to be an exercise in detail and subtlety. A meditation rather than expository.

[I collaborated with Ray McKinnon], mainly over email. He was on board with the concept right away and let us run with it. As a designer and animator, it’s really rare to come across a client who is that easy to collaborate with. It wasn’t until later that I got to meet him in person. He’s truly a creative that cares a lot about the craft of title design. Somewhere in the middle of designing the boards, Ray came to us with [Balmorhea’s song Bowsprit], which helped set the pace. It was a perfect choice.

“I grew up with Teddies, right? I knew Teddies when I was in high school. And I think being an athlete growing up and being in locker rooms with these guys and spending time with these individuals that you realize that they're jerks, or they're perceived as jerks, because of their own sadness and their own insecurities. And I feel like American television has depicted these guys as being these just boisterous, confident, with the big hair and kind of good looking guys with their polo shirts on, and we never really see who these guys are. And I felt like I could bring a certain honesty to Teddy that wasn't necessarily on the page in the first script that I saw. Then after communicating with Ray, I realized that he kind of had the same intentions that I felt that I could bring to it as far as the way he wanted to depict Teddy.” - Clayne Crawford

Let's talk how doors and windows are used in Rectify. I can't think of another show that, visually, so tightly locks in its characters. For example, in this season’s premiere, look at how you re-introduce Daniel: He enters the front door of his house and stops and there's a cut to a long shot. Camera is now across the house, two rooms away. He is now framed by both the hallway arch and the front door behind him, and he’s like just a little spec, just a trapped insect. That's something you do all the time, with so many of the characters. Can you talk a bit about the visual strategy?

Ray McKinnon: “Well, we talked from season one onwards about frames within frames. We frame pictures and paintings and we frame stories and framing is the rectangular, the square, the sharp lines. 90 degree angles are human made and nature deals more with circles, so that’s interesting. We like the metaphor of being enclosed. The frame, in the most radical sense, is the frame inside the death row. So, hopefully, there are a lot of levels which it is working on and we continue with ways to do that.”

When you did the scene with Teddy and the coffee grounds in Season 1, did you know it would still be coming up and haunting these characters, so many episodes later?

Aden Young: “Yeah, I knew that was essentially the earthquake that was going to set off the tsunami. There would be no escape from that. That’s why it was such a remarkable hour of Daniel’s existence, when you look at what he experience in that one day. He gets out of bed and goes for a walk, and he meets a crazy man on the road who takes him to steal some sheep and shows him a beautiful sculpture. And then, he gets baptized against the wishes of his mother and sister. And then, he’s spurned by the woman he thinks touched the face of god for him. And then, he goes and chokes her husband. What a day! I remember getting to the end of that episode and thinking, “Oh, geez, we’re in for it,” and off we went. It’s never really changed. Every time we get the episode, I’m dumbfounded by how it could get better.”