Holden Ford quotes from Mindhunter

Holden Ford

When we know who the criminal is, we can understand what set him off. In a homicide situation, we do the inverse. We ask, "What happened? Why did it happen that way?" Which narrows the search for who did it. But what if our killer is someone who's not rational? Why do we behave the way we do? It's a question asked by poets, and philosophers, and theologians since time immemorial. The playground of Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Freud. The stuff of Crime and Punishment and Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The greatest minds in history have been fascinated by the vagaries of behavior. So, in a case where we can't immediately divine a motive, we shouldn't panic. It's a riddle, but it can be solved. It's complex, but it's human.

Holden Ford

[defending his interviewing techniques] You want truffles, you gotta get in the dirt with the pigs.

Holden Ford

You get onto a crowded elevator, and you face the opposite direction, the back of the elevator, and everybody freaks out. They're uncomfortable for reasons they can't even articulate. But if you turn around and face the front, everybody relaxes.

Bill Tench

Okay. Well, how do we do that?

Holden Ford

What do we have in common? What unites us? What keeps us all awake at night?

Bill Tench

[squabbling about their differing methods] Let me ask you something else. Do you have a girlfriend?

Holden Ford

I do now, Bill, as it happens.

Bill Tench

Okay. So next time you're a long way from home and you flip your shit, you find a pay phone and you tell it to your girlfriend. Okay?

Holden Ford

Okay.

Bill Tench

How's that sound?

Holden Ford

It sounds okay, Bill.

Bill Tench

Holden, they're not gonna let you in with a sidearm.

Holden Ford

The guy is six foot nine, weighs 300 pounds.

Bill Tench

That's right.

Holden Ford

So what's he gonna do?

Bill Tench

He's gonna take the fuckin' thing away, kill you with it, and then have sex with your face.

Can you make him shut up?

Bill Tench

I have not been able to, sir.

Holden Ford

How do we get ahead of crazy if we don't know how crazy thinks?

I like you, Bill. I don't particularly like him, but I like you... Okay, you may continue with your little sideshow. However, no one can know about it. Clear? You will relocate yourselves to the basement beneath Behavioral Sciences, reporting directly and exclusively to me.

Bill Tench

The basement? I'm 44 years old.

Holden Ford

You don't think you could benefit from psychiatry?

Edmund Kemper

I already did all that in the institution. It didn't take. For me, I think surgery might give me the best chance.

Holden Ford

And if surgery doesn't take, in this modern society, what do we do with the Ed Kempers of the world?

Edmund Kemper

Well, isn't that your department?

Holden Ford

From your perspective...

Edmund Kemper

Death by torture?

Edmund Kemper

Butchering people is hard work. Physically and mentally. I don't think people realize. You need to vent. What are you writing down?

Holden Ford

[freely showing his notebook] Oh, I just think it's an interesting choice of words, "vocation."

Edmund Kemper

Well, what would you call it? A hobby? I'd say it's more than that. Look at the consequences. The stakes are very high.

Holden Ford

So you're saying you don't think this, us interviewing these killers, is crazy?

Wendy Carr

Just the opposite. I mean, crazy in the way that anyone with a truly new idea is crazy. But no.

Holden Ford

Wow, okay. That's a relief. That hasn't really been the feedback we've gotten so far.

Bill Tench

Actually, this is the only feedback we've gotten so far.

Bill Tench

There's nothing behind Kemper's eyes. It's like standing near a black hole.

Holden Ford

Right.

Bill Tench

And he thinks we're his friends. Well, he thinks you're his friend. Which makes you a pretty great FBI agent.

Holden Ford

So what are you teaching?

Wendy Carr

Um, I'm teaching a class on the intersection of sociopathy and fame. People like, um, Andy Warhol, Jim Morrison. Their celebrity becomes the only thing they need to sustain their ego.

Bill Tench

Nixon was a sociopath.

Wendy Carr

Very similar.

Holden Ford

How do you get to be president of the United States if you're a sociopath?

Wendy Carr

The question is, how do you get to be president of the United States if you're not? That's why this work is so vital. It goes so much further than the FBI.

Bill Tench

All the way to the White House.

Wendy Carr

Perhaps, yeah.

Montie Rissell

Cancer. It's, uh... It's a bitch, man. Yeah, it's hard on a human being. So I let her go. It's, uh... It's a weird feeling, man.

Holden Ford

What's a weird feeling, Monte?

Montie Rissell

Um How do I put it?... Showing mercy.

Holden Ford

His given name is Benjamin Barnwright, but everybody calls him Benji. He came back to town, just like I told you he would. Benji was home watching TV the night Beverly Jean was killed?

That's what he told us and I believe him. He let us search his car, no warrant. And we didn't find a thing except for some of Beverly Jean's hair, but in the passenger seat, like you'd expect it.

Bill Tench

Passenger seat's not the best way to transport a corpse, I'll give you that. But you said he was home alone watching TV? That's not much of an alibi.

Why? Isn't that what most people do most nights of the week?

Wendy Carr

Psychopaths are extremely skilled at imitating human emotions. It's how they manipulate other people, or how they gain power over their environment.

Holden Ford

How do they understand emotions if they don't have them?

Wendy Carr

Well, they have emotions. They just don't believe other people have them. Or, more specifically, they don't believe that other people have interior lives.

Holden Ford

[brushing his teeth at a hotel] Here's a question, if it is Benjamin or some other boyfriend who freaked out on her, does the case merit our involvement? We still can't rule out a sequence killer, but if the perpetrator was a townie, then the crime is random, and there's no expectation that he'll be repeating it.

Bill Tench

Here's my question, shouldn't our funding cover separate rooms?

Holden Ford

You don't like my company?

Bill Tench

We'll get connecting doors.

Holden Ford

The mutilation of her body alone justifies our involvement.

Bill Tench

Would you mind sitting on your own bed, please?