“Grow,” which opens on October 17, is a charming story about a girl named Charlie (newcomer Priya-Rose Brookwell) with a gift for communicating with plants. She was abandoned at an orphanage by her feckless mother, but when the staff locates her aunt Dinah (Golda Rosheuvel). Charlie joins her on her struggling farm in a small community where the most important event of the year is the annual pumpkin competition.

In an interview, Glaswegian director John McPhail talked about finding the right cast and setting and making a movie that can be enjoyed by the whole family.

The setting you found for the film really invites us into the world of the story. It’s so charming.

It is a made-up town, but we shot it at a place called Culross. It’s a beautiful little town. There’s loads of history to it. It’s like a British town, and it’s almost got this little touch of Scandinavian architecture to it, which I thought would lean into the fantasy element. It has a big orange building from when they used to tan, and I thought, “Ah, like pumpkins.” And it’s right on the coast as well, so I thought it would just make a really lovely little setting. 

You said you wanted to make this a family film rather than a film for children. What does that mean?

I wanted to create that shared experience, where the kids are laughing and the adults are laughing. It’s trying to find that happy balance. I make films for audiences. I am here to tell stories.  

The edit was so brisk that it taught us not to take it all too seriously because it is fun and not too tense.

My editor is incredible. David Arthur is a filmmaker himself as well. He’s not a yes guy. He tells you his opinions and fights for every frame as well. That relationship starts even before we start shooting. Dave’s cutting while I’m filming so I’ll get a phone call from him saying, “Oh, this is great,” or “Can you can you pick up a shot?” And he’s a father. So, 

having him there next to me through all this was brilliant.  

You have an outstanding cast, though it took me a minute to get used to seeing Queen Charlotte on a farm! Tell me about the casting process, starting with Priya in her first screen role.

Priya was nine. She is in practically every frame of the film, and she just knocked it out of the park all the time. She never cried. She was never huffy. She never stopped. It’s like she came in every day as a bundle of energy and a joy to work with. And I would talk to her the same way I would talk to Nick and Golda. I can’t praise her enough, one incredible kid. She just loves acting. 

The magic trick you accomplished in this movie is combining a lot of different tones and genres while keeping it very organic. 

Balancing the tone overall is something that I’m thinking about all the time. It’s a British film, a British cast, but I want it to be international. When you’ve got like American financiers and UK financiers, and the Americans want to make it bigger, and the UK is like, “Bring it back down.” I have to make sure that I’m looking after and servicing both those audiences. I’d get my cast to do other takes to be a bit bigger, and then other times dial it back. That meant in the edit, I got to have fun playing with things. I can either really push it or pull it back as well. And that allows a little bit more fluidity. It just creates this nice little push and pull. It meant we could find that sweet spot.

I sit down with all my department heads, tell them what I’m looking for, and then they feed into it. But film is such a collaborative process. I get to work with incredible talent, and they’re just building on everything that I’m doing. When you’re collaborative and open like that, it creates a more harmonious set. People feel like they can talk. 

And I like to have fun. We’re making entertainment. This is my dream job. Why would I be grumpy? Why would I be fighting with folk? I just want us all to finish the day and make something that’s great, but I want us to have fun while we do it. 

I’m very selective, particularly with my heads of departments and my crew, because I want people who are going to be like that. Not everyone will know me on the first day, but by the end of the film, everyone will know me, from the security guards to the execs, because I talk to everyone. It’s about appreciating each other. 

And honestly, I had the best cast. None of them had any egos. They just wanted to come in. They wanted to have a lot of fun. Golda and Nick [Frost] were never in their trailers. They were always on set. They just wanted to hang out with the crew. When you’ve got a cast and crew who feel listened to and appreciated, the audience can sense that kind of joy. 

I always told her to go with her gut. If it feels right in the moment, go. You get some of the best stuff that way. You may get absolute nonsense, but we go again. 

Something unusual in the movie, especially in a film for young people, is having two villains. 

Even with the score, we loved writing that villain theme. I love a villain, and like I love a villain that turns around as well. Jeremy Swift was so funny. And Jane Horrocks and Tim McInnerny are those posh weirdos. I didn’t want them to be posh idiots. I wanted them to be weird. 

I don’t like spending time with John Wayne Gacy, the infamous serial killer who murdered more than 30 teen boys and very young men in the seventies, burying many of them under his house. But Peacock’s “Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy” is an important watch, exploring how ideas about masculinity enable horrible crimes like Gacy’s to happen, unpunished.

Part of what makes “Devil in Disguise” so strong is how showrunner Patrick Macmanus put his limited series in conversation with other true crime shows. We see no murders and very few acts of violence. Timothy Jack McCoy, John Butkovich, Francis Wayne Alexander, Darrel Samson, Samuel Stapleton, Randall Reffett, Michael Bonnin, William Carroll, Jimmy Haakenson, Rick Johnston, William George Bundy, Kenneth Parker, Gregory Godzik, John Szyc, Jon Prestidge, Matthew Bowman, Robert Gilroy, John Mowery, Russell Nelson, Robert Winch, Tommy Boling, David Talsma, Bill Kindred, Timothy O’Rourke, Frank Landingin, James Mazzara, Robert Piest—these are the boys, ranging in age from 14 to 21, the show names and introduces us to. We see many of these young men for who they were: boys figuring out their places in the world, friends, sons, and lovers. And in many cases, we don’t see them with Gacy at all.

The result is a haunting series that emphasizes the humanity of the victims and the loss they experienced to their loved ones and the world. These aren’t people defined by their death, but instead, by their full, if short lives. These are boys who deserved better.

The show is also very clear about who’s at fault. Of course, primarily, it’s John Wayne Gacy, played by a phenomenal Michael Chernus. As the title suggests, his Gacy is completely believable, helping an elderly neighbor through the Illinois snow and turning dark when a boy falls into his snare. This is the guy who made us all scared of clowns, a murderer who performed for sick kids in hospitals, met with first lady Rosalynn Carter, and was a well-regarded businessman. So even as Chernus embodies his real character’s midwestern nice (Gacy gets caught after he invites the police tailing him in for beers), it’s also clear that there’s evil and sickness at this man’s core.

The show helps Chernus by structuring itself not as a whodunit but as an exploration of the systems that allowed Gacy to go free for so long. By the end of the first episode, he’s in custody, although the trial occurs in the second-to-last installment, with the aftermath powering the final chapter. True to form, we don’t see testimony or courtroom theatrics. In the final installment, we don’t see Gacy at all. Instead, the show continues to focus on the surviving people in Gacy’s orbit—how they felt, how they coped, what they tried to change.

Because a lot needs to change, outside of the apprehension of this one man. Gacy’s were sex crimes between a man and many boys, some on the cusp of manhood. As such, telling his story could veer into demonizing gay men as inherently perverse or violent. But “Devil in Disguise” smartly refutes that trap, in part by showing how Gacy’s own, internalized homophobia underlied his violence.

But more than that, “Devil in Disguise” indicts our institutions for failing to believe that hard scrabble and/or queer boys could be victims. The series emphasizes that the Chicago PD consistently overlooked the boys’ disappearances, spending their resources elsewhere. Even when Jeffrey Rignal (Augustus Prew) survives an encounter with Gacy, reports it, and eventually tracks and finds his assailant, the officers refuse to press charges. They believe Gacy when he says that gay men regularly torture each other in this way, including burning Rignal with chloroform. Gacy works their prejudice to his benefit and goes free.

Gabriel Luna as Detective Rafael Tovar, the lead detective on the case, gives a haunting performance as he uncovers all the missed opportunities to catch Gacy earlier. As a father to a son just a little too young for Gacy and an officer who worked vice, he sees the humanity of the victims and aches for them. His chief, Joe Kozenczak (a strong James Badge Dale), also sees the problem and works to address it. But Kozenczak is worried about losing his institutional power and will only push so much, ultimately undercutting the victims he is trying to serve. In this, the chief’s cowardice reflects the many who know right from wrong but aren’t willing to put themselves at risk for justice, the silent majority who let evil transpire.

We also meet the attorneys who try Gacy’s case. Bill Kunkle (Chris Sullivan) is a smarmy district attorney whose professional ambitions align with his task of prosecuting the serial killer. Michael Angaranoas as Sam Amirante, Gacy’s defense attorney, is excellent. He makes a strong case for everyone’s constitutional right to rigorous defense even as he confronts Gacy’s horrible crimes and deals with his client’s inability to discern his new reality. Angaranoas has a toughness and swagger that perfectly meet the moment without ever being overwrought.

“Devil in Disguise” further succeeds by rooting itself in a specific place and time. This is a story of a generation of boys who are only valued when they come from “good” (aka well-to-do and white) families and consistently perform heterosexuality. The casting matches modern actors with their 70s counterparts, giving them the same haircuts and wardrobe. Likewise, the cars speak to the moment, with Gacy’s menacing sedan transporting us back. Even the architecture speaks to a time in the not-so-distant past when, say, the law did not recognize that the crime of rape can occur between two men.

But it does happen. And “Devil in Disguise” reminds us that when we look back on true crimes, it is not the luridness of the violence or the puzzle of the investigation that matters. It is the people affected, their futures torn asunder in the wake of such terrible acts. And the way we honor them is not simply to remember, but to work on the institutions that enable violence, that demand perfection from victims to be taken seriously, that code entire groups of people as undesirable. That’s what “Devil in Disguise” is about, and it portrays these truths artfully with a moral clarity that echoes through the script, off the screen, and into our lived, imperfect reality.

Whole series screened for review. Premieres tomorrow, October 16.

“I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to John Williams; without his music, Superman’s powers are greatly diminished. Believe me, if you try to fly without that theme, you go nowhere.” —Christopher Reeve

The above statement, said at a 1993 celebration honouring the composer, applies not only to the actor playing him but also to the character of Superman. Since Reeve flew onto screens in 1978, John Williams’ theme has been synonymous with the most famous hero in DC Comics’ stable, and it continues that legacy in “Superman,” which opens this week. So perhaps it’s time to ask ourselves: Just what is it about that theme that keeps it going beyond the film that spawned it?

“One of the essential things about the film to me,” Williams said in the 2001 documentary “Making Superman: Filming the Legend,” “was that it was fun and didn’t take itself too seriously. The way Richard [Donner] had directed it, and particularly the way Chris and Margot [Kidder] played the parts, it had almost this kind of theatrical camp to it that didn’t take itself too seriously, and if one could strike a level of theatre and sleight of hand and tongue-in-cheek in the creation of the themes, that it might be the right idea.”   

Williams wrote seven different themes for “Superman: The Movie,” including a beautiful love theme and a nostalgic Aaron Copland-esque theme for the sequences in Smallville. But it’s the Superman theme that’s appropriately dominant. It’s made up of two sections: a powerful fanfare acting as a precursor to action and a call to arms, and a big and bright main theme that uses a three-note phrasing that sounds like it says “Sup-er-man.”

So when Clark Kent has to become Superman to save Lois Lane from becoming a sidewalk Jackson Pollock, Williams plays a big rendition of the fanfare as he opens his shirt to reveal that big “S,” creating a truly iconic moment. Subsequently, the main theme plays with exuberance and vigour as Superman catches the falling helicopter, with the crowd beneath him doing the same thing the audience is doing: cheering. And it’s not just the selfless heroic act we react to, it’s the fist-pumping triumphant music underneath it.    

“Like all of John Williams’ great themes,” says Tim Greiving, author of the forthcoming book John Williams: A Composer’s Life, “the Superman theme feels like it has existed since the dawn of time, and feels like it came here with Kal-el all the way from Krypton. A great fictional character theme, like a great pop song, feels inevitable and predetermined while also delighting our ears with a sense of surprise—and Superman’s theme does that in spades.”

Williams’ theme continued to soar across the three remaining Reeve “Superman” pictures and beyond. “Supergirl” came to screens in 1984, with the same producers behind it: the infamous Ilya and Alexander Salkind. Jerry Goldsmith scored the film and wrote mostly new material for the picture, but he also found space to include a brief but reverent quote of Williams’ theme, in a scene where the title character sees a dorm poster of Reeve’s Man of Steel. This continued in both live-action and animation, with Shirley Walker’s excellent theme to the 1996 cartoon “Superman: The Animated Series,” which also utilizes the “Sup-er-man” three-note device. Although, to be fair, that phrasing was first used by Sammy Timberg in the 1941 “Superman” cartoons as produced by Max and Dave Fleischer, so it’s not especially a new thing—Williams just gave it that added oomph.

2006 saw Williams’ theme return to cinema in a big way, courtesy of Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns.” A pseudo-sequel to the first two Reeve pictures, and featured a number of homages to the films, not least the adaptation of Williams’ themes by Singer’s regular scoring partner John Ottman, who reintroduced the theme in a big main title sequence very similar to the 1978 original. Even Zack Snyder was initially interested in using Williams’ music for 2013’s “Man of Steel.” In 2022, storyboard artist Jay Oliva posted on Twitter that Snyder wanted to use the theme, but Warner Bros. preferred a new approach, eventually hiring Hans Zimmer. “Zack and I loved that theme,” Oliva said, “but the studio wouldn’t let us use it because they wanted something new for this Superman. It turned out to be a good thing because Hanz’s [sic] theme was perfect.” Williams’ theme did appear briefly in “Justice League,” as scored by Danny Elfman, but this was reversed in “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” which featured music by Tom Holkenborg.

Zimmer’s approach to Superman was admirable, but it was doomed to fail as part of a film that didn’t seem interested in taking the character seriously. The dark and gritty tone that many fans admire is ill-fitting for Superman, and as much as they tell us his “S” is the symbol for “hope,” there seems to be very little of that in the actual picture. As a result, Zimmer’s music is much more enjoyable away from the film. 

Gunn, however, didn’t hesitate to bring John Williams’ theme back. “That soundtrack,” he told Gizmodo in 2024, “was one of my favorite of all time. When I was a kid, the thing I loved the most about the movie was the music. That was the thing I took home with more than anyone else.” For “Superman,” Gunn recruited English composer John Murphy, who had scored “The Suicide Squad” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.” But at the time, Gunn had not even finished writing. “He was one of the first people I gave the script to, along with Peter Safran and a couple of others, so that he could start writing music for it. And I said, ‘I want to use a version of the Williams theme, but I want to do our own version of it.’” 

Murphy’s version of the theme debuted with the first teaser trailer in December—a more concise version of the melody played initially on electric guitar before being reprised with an orchestra and chorus. It feels fresh and unique, but still definitively John Williams, a Superman for a new generation, but one that respects where he’s come from. 

“What’s really amazing is how that leads into a lot of other pieces,” Gunn said. “Some of which come back to the Williams theme, but some of which are purely John Murphy. It goes into that, comes back out, and it’s used beautifully throughout the movie. And John has worked almost non-stop for the past almost two years, putting the score together.”

It would appear that John Williams’ Superman theme is not going away anytime soon. Perhaps this is appropriate for a world in so much turmoil, where audiences still require the escapism and symbolism his heroic acts bring, as his comics did during the Great Depression. As George Lucas is so fond of saying, it’s like poetry. It rhymes.

“The Superman theme,” says Greiving, “became permanently glued to the character, not just because the movie was so popular or even because the tune was so catchy, but because it fit Superman like a bespoke blue suit. Williams so expertly forged the right melody for that character, the perfect melody, that we just can’t imagine him without it.”