Warren Skeels’ terrifying new movie The Man in the White Van revolves around Billy Mansfield, a real-life convicted serial killer and sexual offender who killed a series of young women in Florida in the 1970s by kidnapping them in his infamous white van.
But Skeels made the bold choice not to ever show the audience Mansfield’s face. Instead, the story is told through the eyes of Annie (Madison Wolfe), a teenager who realizes she’s being stalked by Mansfield but struggles to make her family believe her.
Starring Wolfe, Ali Larter, Sean Astin, Brec Bassinger, Skai Jackson and Gavin Warren, The Man in the White Van premieres this weekend at the Newport Beach Film Festival.
Skeels told MovieMaker that he didn’t want the audience to know much about Mansfield himself, making it instead about Annie’s story of survival.
Warren Skeels on the Inspiration for The Man in the White Van
“We didn’t want to glorify him. And secondly, from an audience perspective, [co-writer Sharon Cobb] and I, in writing it and then also in directing it, really just wanted to root the story with Annie. We felt like if we’re going to root it with Annie, and she doesn’t have a clean shot of his face, and she doesn’t know who this person is, then the audience shouldn’t either,” Skeels says. “They should be experiencing exactly what Annie is experiencing.”
Skeels got the idea to make The Man in the White Van when he met a woman who actually encountered Billy Mansfield when she was a teenager. She became the loose inspiration for the character of Annie.
“I grew up in Florida. I live in Florida now, and I never heard of Billy Mansfield until I was having dinner with a producing financier partner of mine. I was talking about a completely different project — a serial killer story that took in Phoenix that I was developing. And he just looked at me and said, ‘Well, I mean, if you like that genre, you ought to talk to my wife about what happened to her back in Brooksville, Florida, when she was growing up,'” Skeels recalls.
“She and I got together, had a few coffees, and she proceeded to unpack these really unsettling, scary interactions with this ominous white van. It just opened up a world of interest for me. So I got together with Sharon Cobb, my co-writer, and we just started laying out this story that was really rooted with her perspective, and that’s what I really found fascinating about it.”