The scene has verve and guts, distilling in gestures and movements Gumb's pathology. The dance, both ridiculous and sublime, alerts the audience to Gumb's motivations; it's alternately horrifying, revealing, and faintly absurd. I ask Levine how he prepared mentally for that sequence. "I took a couple shots of tequila," he says.
[SOTL producer] Saxon says "The scene took a lot of courage. It wasn't in the script, and for me it's a very moving scene, it identifies the pain and twisted psychology of this character."
"We tried it a couple different ways," Levine says. "Once a little more raunchy, except Jonathan wanted to use the 'Goodbye Horses' music, so it ended up being more gentle. The thing that was going through my mind is his physical being. He's kind of like an old glitter rocker, like Iggy Pop if he hadn't become Iggy Pop, or David Bowie hadn't become David Bowie. Here's a guy who imagines himself with this kind of feminine power, you know, this spiritual kind of mother power. Mick Jagger, Bowie, all these guys have this androgyny that makes them attractive to men and women. Serial killers all pursue that feminine energy, that female persona. They get both [masculinity and femininity] wrapped into someone, and that's like perfection, real power, and that's what Gumb is after."