Editor’s note: Deadline’s It Starts on the Page (Limited) features 10 standout limited or anthology series scripts in 2025 Emmy contention.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, the second installment in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan‘s true-crime Netflix anthology, re-examines the 1996 conviction of Lyle and Erik Menendez for the murders of their parents, José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez. The narrative presents a stark contrast: the prosecution’s claim of a cold-blooded pursuit of the family fortune versus the brothers’ unwavering assertion that their actions were driven by fear stemming from years of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by their parents. The series doesn’t shy away from exploring the intricacies of the brothers’ unusually close bond, further investigating the possibility that years of molestation led to incest.
Episode 5, “The Hurt Man,” centers entirely on Erik Menendez (Cooper Koch) as he recounts the horrific abuse he suffered from his father, José (Javier Bardem), to his defense attorney, Leslie Abramson (Ari Graynor). The 33-minute episode, written by Brennan and directed by Michael Uppendahl, was filmed as a single continuous shot, beginning with an establishing wide view of both characters and gradually pushing in on Erik Menendez’s face. This deliberate camerawork intensifies the tension and emotion of Koch’s performance, culminating in Erik poignantly referring to himself with his childhood nickname, “The Hurt Man.”
While the Menendez brothers story has been frequently adapted for film and television, the impact of the Netflix series has been far reaching. It has led to the case being revisited and the brothers’ original life without parole sentence changed to 50 years to life, making them eligible for parole.
Below is the script for “The Hurt Man” with an intro by Brennan, in which he describes how he wrote the episode in one sitting and reveals how many takes it took to film it, calling the episode “the most remarkable creative experience I ever expect to have.”
Ian Brennan
Getty
Monsters: the Lyle and Erik Menendez Story presented a unique creative challenge.
Both Erik and Lyle allege to have suffered horrific childhood sexual abuse at the hands of their father — so not only did we have to figure out a way to tell a story of monstrously upsetting sexual abuse, we had to do it twice.
I had finished writing Lyle’s episode, Episode 4, on what happened to be the Wednesday before the writers’ strike that was going to start at the stroke of midnight on that coming Sunday. I was very chuffed to have gotten Episode 4 in under the wire.
Ryan read it and loved it. But we didn’t know how to follow it with Episode 5, Erik’s episode, where he tells his lawyer, for the first time, of his own history of sexual abuse. We couldn’t just do Episode 4 again. We needed a big swing.
My pitch to Ryan was to try something no one had ever attempted on television (and maybe for good reason because it was very possibly not going to work). The entire, 30-something page episode would not only be filmed in a single take, but one SIDE of a single take — one long, almost imperceptible dolly push from a wide shot over the lawyer’s shoulder creeping slowly to a tight close-up as Erik describes to Leslie Abramson how he was repeatedly raped by his father from the age of 6 until just two weeks before the murders. We would never turn around on Leslie and we would never cut away.
No one had ever tried this before.
It was Thursday afternoon when I pitched the idea to Ryan, who loved it and then said — literally the most Ryan Murphy thing he’s ever said — “Can you write it before the strike?” Which would start at midnight on Sunday.
It was 6 p.m. on Thursday.
And in the most Ian Brennan thing I’ve ever said, I replied, “Yes. I can absolutely do that.”
That night, I tried to sleep and couldn’t. So I poured myself a very large glass of wine and opened my laptop.
I wrote the episode “The Hurt Man” in one sitting — or rather, my fingers were typing on the keyboard, but I can honestly say the thing happened that writers occasionally talk about — that script was written through me. When I reached the end, the clock indicated it had taken about 3 hours, though I was not aware of the passage of time. I began sobbing, which I almost never do and have not done since. I re-read it once, and didn’t change a single word or stage direction. I sent it to our research encyclopedia Todd, who agreed on the title then to Ryan, who also didn’t change a word of it, he just put the script out. That is the script we filmed. The take we used was, I believe, the ninth take. Cooper Koch and Ari Graynor’s performances are breathtaking, and Michael Uppendahl’s direction held the space for them. DP Jason McCormick refused to turn the camera around when a producer suggested it “just in case the idea doesn’t work.”
The idea did work, and “The Hurt Man” represents the most remarkable creative experience I ever expect to have. I will never write anything better.
Ian Brennan
Read the script below.
