Heather Landsman
Heather Landsman
Heather Landsman first learned about Ricardo López as a precocious pre-teen. After watching Satoshi Kon’s celebrity culture psychodrama Perfect Blue, the New Jersey native hopped on the family computer and “went down an internet rabbit hole.” She soon found several conspiracies about how the making of Kon’s anime coincided with an eerily similar real-world stalking incident: the 21-year-old López’s obsessive plot to assassinate Björk in 1996.
Incited by a racist, jealous rage over the Icelandic pop sensation’s then-relationship with British producer Goldie, the Uruguayan-born, Florida-based López began recording a video diary—about 20 hours over the course of nine months—about his plot to send a letter bomb that would spurt sulfuric acid to “punish her” for this betrayal, culminating in his suicide by gunshot. When Landsman first looked up López, one of the first things she saw was a LiveLeak video of this violent act. “It scared the shit out of me as a kid,” the 24-year-old filmmaker says, “and there wasn’t really any real feature-length documentary made on the case. That wasn’t your typical true crime bullshit.” So, Landsman took it upon herself to make The Best of Me, an 89-minute document of López’s interiority culled almost exclusively from the tapes he left behind, assembled from footage on Internet Archive and made during the tail end of her undergraduate studies at Emerson College in 2024. She spent about two weeks whittling down the trove of footage (“I locked myself in my room like, ‘OK, I’m entering Ricardo’s world until I’m done’”), which included revealing musings about López’s loving mother, his body dysmorphia as a result of developing gynecomastia (i.e., breasts) and toxic views on women and sex.
“People would use the gif of him blowing his brains out as a troll,” Landsman remembers. “I want us to finally get away from that exploitation and just see it how it was.” This self-inflicted carnage is the only thing Landsman refuses to portray. Though his final moments are no less tense—scored by López himself to Björk’s “I Remember You”—her focus instead drifts to a canvas sitting just behind him, the hand-painted words “the best of me” inked across.
Because of the indeterminate nature of the footage rights, Landsman opted to self-distribute The Best of Me. Its inaugural screening took place at Brooklyn microcinema Spectacle this past February. (“Right around Valentine’s Day, ironically.”) Since then, it’s played at The Roxy in New York, LA’s Whammy! and PhilaMOCA, among other theaters. “When it comes to getting my stuff out there, I’m very shameless about sending it to people,” Landsman says. Robert Schneider, former film distribution manager at The Film-Makers’ Cooperative, negotiated a deal with Landsman to release the film through the artist-run nonprofit. “I would like to get it shown at some other places,” she says.
Future travel plans will also need to revolve around the development of her forthcoming narrative feature, You Have Been Disconnected. Landsman began penning the script back in 2023, well before embarking on The Best of Me. The project is entrenched “deep within the world of ’90s video games” and currently looking to secure additional funding. Produced in part by filmmaker Connor Martin of Spindletop Pictures and Remi Alfallah (producer of Dead Man’s Wire, Gus Van Sant’s latest), the story centers on two e-friends who reconnect within the abandoned servers of a multiplayer online game they used to play together. After one of them swears they’ve stumbled upon an elusive easter egg, the line between virtual and material worlds indelibly blurs. The entire film will unfold within the confines of a computer screen. “No AI,” she firmly states. “It’s all being made by a team of game animators that I’ve been working with.”
Recently, Landsman helped fellow transgressive trans filmmaker Louise Weard with the shoot of the second installment of her cult favorite Castration Movie anthology series. The 301-minute-long sequel continues the saga of sex worker Michaela “Traps” Sinclair (Weard), with the final product projected to span 16 hours. Among the queer icons in the cast are Jane Schoenbrun, Jack Haven and Vera Drew. (“Like The Avengers of this niche New York scene.”) Though the film wrapped over the summer, it already screened at The Roxy in mid-September. “It really gives me hope for the future of DIY filmmaking,” she says. “There’s a lot of doom and gloom, but Castration Movie makes me feel better about myself and the kind of art I want to make.” —Natalia Keogan/Image: Sam Wachs
