The Big Picture - The Art of True Crime Documentary with Erin Lee Carr | The Big Picture (Ep. 46)

Episode Date: February 2, 2018

Ringer Editor-in-Chief Sean Fennessey speaks with documentarian Erin Lee Carr (‘Mommy Dead and Dearest’) about her new project “Drug Short,” an installment in Netflix’s new doc series ‘Dirty Money’ and why she’s drawn to grim and morally gray stories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I feel so excited to be a documentary filmmaker living in this age where there's so much evidence. It's just like, you know, we live in the 21st century. We live in a digital age. This stuff is going to get found. I'm Sean Fennessey, editor-in-chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show with directors, writers, and the creative minds behind the most interesting movies in the world. Today's show is with one of my favorite young documentarians,

Erin Lee Carr. She has a keen eye for complex and upsetting true crime stories. Her first feature, Thought Crimes, directed for HBO at just 26 years old, explored the story of the so-called cannibal cop, a New York City police officer who fantasized in online chat rooms about murdering women and was prosecuted for his fantasies. She followed that up with another doc for HBO,

last year's Mommy Dead and Dearest, a grueling film about Munchausen syndrome. Both films tap into a kind of moral ambiguity that is without clear answers. Carr favors access to her subjects to show their foibles up close. Her new project is Drug Short, an installment in Netflix's six-part doc series Dirty Money. Her episode chronicles the manipulation of pharmaceutical drug prices, the impact it has on people's lives, and the stock market pirates who help tear down one company in particular. Carr got her start working at digital media companies like Vice and Vox, and she's the daughter of the late lionized New York Times columnist and reporter David Carr. In her movies, you can feel a combination of her dad's nose for a story and how those stories take off on the internet. I talked to her about making docs in

the 21st century, true crime, and what she learned from her father. Without further ado, here's Erin Lee Carr. Erin, thanks for coming on the show. Very excited to be here. Erin, you seem to be drawn to stories with a moral ambiguity, let's say. And sometimes those stories start on the internet. And I'm wondering how you decide to pick which stories you want to document on film. Well, I think it's not even stories, but I'm really drawn to people with moral ambiguity. Part of how I was raised, part of the newspapers I read, the movies I saw, the documentary films that I sort of thought about. It's all about who these people are and the gray, like the gray that exists in all of us.

Even you and I as we sit here, it's just like we are neither good nor bad. So in making films, I've always been drawn to people that have done these things of potential acts of unspeakable violence, but figuring out why and when and how. Where do you find these stories? Is it just as someone who consumes a lot of media? I try to find really lovely, smart, talented people who love searching Reddit, who love going on Twitter before the orange, you know, the orange guy took over. I have a list, a Google Doc on my computer that says, what are the articles and the things that I cannot stop thinking about? And if I will go into a deep dive, like, you know, two or three articles, and I really want to go deeper, that means I've connected something a part of my lizard brain has sort of connected to that story. So I'm always looking for that

sort of like what taps into a viral story. And so with, you know, with Gypsy or with the Cannibal Cop or, you know, I'm working on the Michelle Carter case and now we're here talking about dirty money and Valiant. It's like, I want to find out, you know, what people are talking about. So I think a lot of people know those two of those films that you identified, Thought Crimes and Mommy Dead and Dearest, both of which you made for HBO. You know, your latest work is going to be on a Netflix series. How does something like that work where you're part of sort of an anthology of documentaries versus having your own standalone

project? I've been a huge fan of Alex Gibney and the work he does for many, many years. I saw Enron, the smartest guys in the room, maybe 15 times. I used to put it on when it was raining out. I don't know why. I just love there's just something so there's so much accountability. It represented like, you know, it wasn't like he went and had and talked to those guys, Jeffrey in federal prison. He he figured out what was happening there. And so when when Netflix and Jigsaw approach Jigsaw being Alex's company, when they approach me saying we're thinking about doing the show called Dirty Money, which is about greed, which is about accountability. But we want to pick six different directors and have them each sort of tackle a subject matter. And I said, sign me up.

Like, that is what I want to be doing. And when they started talking to me about Valiant, I just I was hooked. You really have a unique approach, which is that I feel like you combine the magazine storyteller in the film with also high-level access. A lot of documentarians don't necessarily have the access to the gypsies of the world or the cannibal cops of the world. And you have a lot of the short sellers in this film. When you're starting to approach something like this, how do you start? Do you reach out to the short sellers first? Do you try to put your experts together?

What's your approach? So the person that did a lot of the pre-productions is Will Cox. And he knew about Fahmy. And Fahmy is a short seller who I feature in the episode. Somebody who looked very closely at Valiant and said, you know, I think there's something that's going to happen here. I think that this is a house of cards. And so I'm a woman. My last film was about a woman.

There are no women that are short sellers. So the second he said that there's this mystical short seller named Fahmy Qadir who saw what was happening, I said, I have to talk to her. So it was always one of my crucial objectives to tell the story in an interesting way. Yes, tell the rise and fall, but tell it through the lens of somebody looking at this, trying to short the stock. So it was reaching out to everybody, reaching out to experts, reaching out to Valiant, you know, reaching out to Bill Ackman. You know, everybody gets reached out to. That's the journalistic process. People decide if they will come to their own behalf.

What are the significant differences between, say, working at like an internet company like Vice, like you worked at in the early part of your career, and now having like a Netflix or an HBO platform? Can you explain to people kind of what the significant differences are? Sure. So when you work at Vice, it's a small team. You're working with an editor and then a a shooter and then maybe you have an like a an ap an associate producer and so you're you're in meetings with like people that are uh you know sort of more senior with you and senior than you excuse me and you say i have an idea i'm gonna do this it's not gonna cost a lot of money i swear and that's what it was like when i worked there you know i worked there i think from 2010 to 2013. And I made things about like a guy that was 3D printing

weapons. And I went down to Texas and it was, you know, three people and it was shot pretty cheaply. And we came back. You know, that's it's a different sort of it's a different. It's just a different sort of filmmaking. It's short. That was actually ended up being 27 minutes. But I think that there's something so instructive about working in that short team and working for the internet because working at Vice taught me what does well on the internet?

Sex, drugs, weapons. I hope moral ambiguity. You know, I hope pharmaceuticals, you know, texting, suicide, all these things. But it really taught me like, you know, YouTube hope pharmaceuticals, you know, texting suicide, all these things. But it really taught me, like, you know, YouTube as a platform. How do you engage intelligently with audiences? And then I was able to work with an editor, Chris O'Coin at Vice, who was incredibly instructive. He's like, don't go out into the field and not shoot B-roll.

Like, you have to be doing things. You have to be shooting the weapons. You have to be doing the things. It can't just be sit down interviews. So I would not be a person that would be picked by HBO or Netflix had it not been for the people I worked with advice. Back then, did you know you were going to be a true crime storyteller like this? Is that, was that going to be the drive of your career? I don't think we ever know what we're going to do, do we? I don't know. If you know me, maybe you can help me out. I mean, we can have a coffee chat.

Okay. Get that going on. You know, I loved capturing the Freedman's, Andrew Jarecki's film. I was obsessed with that. But it really was, you know, I met with a filmmaker named Andrew Rossi who made a beautiful movie, page one, a year in the New York Times, amongst many other films. And I had sort of been kicked loose from my job at Fox. And I said, you know, what do I do next? I don't know what to do. And he just said, I think you should make your own movies. And nobody had ever said that to me before. And so and I thought, what's interesting

for me as a woman, as a person that loves documentaries, I love crime. I love the, I want to figure out what happened with the cannibal cop. I'm just going to start going and visiting the cannibal cop in prison. Now, a lot of people may not be able to do that. But just, you know, at that point in my life, I was able to do it. You've managed to, I think, tap into a kind of a personal connection with some complicated subjects in your movies. And I was hoping you could describe how you're able to do that. Obviously, I know the cannibal cop is a complex and somewhat troubling figure. You know, Gypsy in Mommy, Dead and Dearest, too, has a complicated side.

How do you manage to make connections with these people and get them to open up? And likewise, even in your new film, you have a family that is suffering because of Valiant's actions. So how do you make connections with people? You know, I am so lucky that I had, my dad was David Carr, a well-known reporter for the New York Times, wrote a book, The Night of the Gun, about sort of moral complexity as it relates to addiction. I grew up watching him call people, watching him talk to people, reading stories. You know, every day there was four or five newspapers that, you know, that had to be gotten through at the house. So it's not I don't I don't think people are

going to be able to be given that education. But what I can tell you is what I learned from that. It's just coming from a place of openness, saying, you know, I think what's been done here is wrong. And I think you have a story to tell. Can you talk to me about what this experience has been like for you? And just being an active listener and saying, you know, I just I don't know what happened. I want to hear from you. And of course, in these cases, and especially with the case of Valiant, you know, some people will lie. Some people won't talk to you. The family that you spoke of, you know, John, I won't say his last name because his wife wants to remain anonymous. These were people who had a his wife had a orphan disease. It's called Wilson's disease. She needed the medication and they were being charged. Their insurance company was being charged three hundred thousand dollars a year. This is a pill that used to cost a dollar. And so just the outrage and the sadness and the frustration that he felt was so palpable.

And, you know, after we filmed, he would just call me and he would say, nothing has changed. I don't understand what's happening. And it's just about, you know, staying connected and listening and, you know, picking up those phone calls and being thoughtful about the film you put out into the world. Do you find yourself changing your opinion and your mind about people as you're reporting these stories? Or do you feel like you're pretty locked in on the story you're going to tell? I'm never locked in on the story I'm going to tell. At the start, you have other people's opinions. You don't have yours. And so it's important to sit with the material, you know, not to sound new agey, but sort of meditate on it and think, you know, what really happened here? And I think

through every one of my films, my opinion has changed. And so it's just about just figuring out like in the process sort of what happened. But also in a case like this with Valiant, what the evidence tells you. There was so many court documents, so much archival. You know, there's this whole sort of Philidor trap door that I want to like, you know, that people to sort of talk about. It's just like the evidence was very directive into where the guilt, you know, who was guilty and who was not. Yeah, you've done an interesting thing with animating social media and documents in your films. There's a complication there with telling stories like that and making them kinetic or interesting. How do you approach those things?

I feel so excited to be a documentary filmmaker living in this age where there is so much evidence. And yes, I'm a careful texter now. I'm going to be careful about what I'm texting you because I spend all day looking at people's text messages. Yeah. You know, I think with with, you know, with the court documents and, you know, with the Stephen King references, I was completely delighted and confused by all the things that people would do because they thought we weren't looking. And it's just like, you know, we live in the 21st century, we live in a digital age. You know, this stuff is going to get found. Can you describe what it's like to have a career as a documentarian? Because it's not a day to day

job. You know, you don't get up and go to the office. So what are your days like? I get up every day and I write a gratitude list. Really? I write 10 things that I'm grateful for. I send it to a man in Norway. I send it to a bunch of sober ladies that I like to hang out with. And I send it to my best friend. And so we start off the day with gratitude because later in the day, I'm going to get into the deep, dark dysfunction that is crime and murder and the internet. So I have to start

with some lightness. Every day is different. I do about, I do, I'm on the phone all day long. But really it's like being a perpetual student in each, in each film. It's like, sort of like getting your PhD. Maybe it's not as difficult as getting your PhD, but it's definitely you have to tap in and figure out exactly what's sort of going on. Do you mind if I ask you what was on your list today? Oh, my gosh. Here, let me see if I can find it. Let me pull it up.

Okay. Dirty money press stuff, chocolate cake, good-ish dates. Very good slash amazing, nominated for Oscar, Movement, Meditation, Even Though It's Difficult, New York City with my best friend Yuna tonight. Wow. That's very spiritual and also pragmatic. I like that a lot. Chocolate Cake. What about some of the more practical elements of being a filmmaker? Like how do you, when you were setting out to make Cannibal Cop after Andrew Ross, you said, make your own films. Like how do you make ends meet? How do you have a career?

So HBO was lovely. They gave us a development deal to create a reel based on what I pitched in the meeting that I wanted to go and film with the cannibal cop. And so I took freelance gigs. I worked for Fast Company. I did a piece for Vocative. I babysat. I, in my heart, thought, okay, HBO is going to make this movie

if I get the access. And when Gill Valley got out of prison, I was like, okay, I've got the access. I've gotten it. And I worked with Andrew Rossi on the film and we were in you know we were in a car headed towards the meeting had the hard drive and i said what's the chance that they make this movie and i expected it to be you know like 90 because i'd gotten the access and he's like you know probably about 40 i was like oh my god and i had had four hundred dollars left in my account.

It was almost like when you're so young and I was really young at the time, I think I was twenty five. I didn't realize that it maybe wasn't going to happen. Like there was no plan B. And sometimes you can't have a plan B because you just have to through sheer sheer force of will, make plan A work. That also sounds really dumb that I didn't have a safety net, but that's just sort of really what happened. I hear that a lot, that the desperation somehow inspires you to complete something and to sell it and to make it work in that way. But what do you do with the subject? If you're talking to Gil Valley, do you say, I'm making this movie for HBO,

or are you like, I really hope that they buy this movie and I'm just going to try to compel him to participate? I'm making this movie for HBO, or are you like, I really hope that they buy this movie and I'm just going to try to compel him to participate? I'm making this movie for HBO. Yeah, that makes sense. I'm, you know, when we're making the dirty money for Valiant, I mean, it was always going to be for Netflix. But it's just like, you know, there's no bigger platform than Netflix and, you know, and HBO and figuring out this. And it's just this is the incredible time for documentary filmmaking. We can talk about issues in real time that create actual change. I mean, it's just it's unprecedented. What has changed for you since that 40 percent moment? You know, is it is a lot easier for you to have a sense of what your future is going to be in terms of projects? God, I hope my odds have improved past 40%.

What has changed? Definitely more confident when you're trying to tell a story, your first story, your first feature, you don't know if you did it right. Each time, you know, I'm delivering the Michelle Carter project. I feel like there's something super weird and abstract about that. You know, I think I was nervous to come on board as a director for this show because there's just so many people involved. It's a very serious economic issue, very high level. I was nervous. But by the end of it, I was like, it's just storytelling. It is people that did something wrong and there was corruption and we need to figure out. And I was able to talk to Senator Claire McCaskill.

She's in the piece. You know, I was able to go and interview a senator about what happened and like, what is the way forward? And so using, you know, using this really weird job that I have to to instigate any sort of change is like, you know, is an absolute delight. what you're looking for, identifies people with the right experience, and invites them to apply to your job. These invitations have revolutionized how you find your next hire. In fact, 80% of employers who post a job on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site in just one day. And ZipRecruiter doesn't stop there. They even spotlight the strongest applications you receive so you never miss a great match. The right candidates are out there. ZipRecruiter is how you find them. Businesses of all sizes trust ZipRecruiter for their hiring needs. Right now, my listeners can try ZipRecruiter for free.

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You mentioned that you're working on the Michelle Carter story now. Can you explain that a little bit for the audience and also to me? You know, Michelle Carter is a young teen who was caught texting her boyfriend to kill himself when she was 17 years old. Conrad Roy did kill himself and you know she went to trial and it was this unprecedented case can you can you be found guilty of killing someone just through text she was not there at the at the scene of the crime um he killed himself using carbon monoxide and so it was this very sinewy very tension- filled legal case. And I was, you know, I had a camera in the courtroom, we got the footage. And, you know, what I found was just that there was just,

there is no like, she did this, she did not. There's just on every single side, there was so much mental illness, there was so much loneliness. And for me, it ended up becoming a meditation on teenage loneliness and mental health. It feels like a classic Aaron Lee Carr story, if you'll forgive me. That's what people, people who were ever at the trial, they're like, yo, are you seeing this? I was like, I am at the trial eating like a sandwich while I'm trying to get back in the courtroom. Like, yes, I'm here.

I'm doing it. That's really funny. You know, like the Terpin, the 13 kids that were just found in the basement, a really scary, tragic case that came out last week. People were texting me like, you've got to get on this girl. Like, talk to them. I'm like, this is a tragedy. I'm in the middle of my workday. Please email me.

Do you have any apprehension about becoming the person who's known for this kind of story? Is there any part of you that wants to do an inspirational tale in which someone overcomes a, you know, a difficult moment in their life? I mean, I just have a couple of friends that are always sending me like horrible sex tragedies, like sex crimes, not into that. Like, like thought of you when this terrible thing happened. You know, that's not something I'm really into, but I love true crime. I love crime. I think that it's, there's something so human about it, the elements. So I don't, I mean, some people in the community might consider it a little bit lower route. I really don't. It's just something that I'm obsessed with that I can't stop thinking about. So it's just, you know, maybe I'll feel differently later on, but like this is, you know,

I have a post-it note, uh, like next to my light switch, you are living the life of your wildest dreams. Just, you know, just a reminder, uh, that I like to just think about. How do you get better as a filmmaker? Do you show your movies to people and say, can you give me notes on this? Do you seek out like with Alex Gibney, for example, do you say what, what, what I need to be doing on my next one? Yes. So absolutely. You when you make films, you make them in a silo. You're working with the editor. You think that this is the you know, this is the note card way.

This is the strategy to tell this film. And so we were able to sit down with the executives at Jigsaw, you know, Stacey and Brad and our showrunner, Jan. And and it just was like, OK, what is working here and what needs to be shifted? You need to find those people that will tell you, and also the Netflix notes, obviously, but you need to find the people that can communicate those notes that will make it stronger.

And I remember Alex came back from traveling. He was shooting something and he said, yeah, you got some time to talk about Valiant? And I was like, yes, I do. And I got to have a one-on-one talking about, you know, what felt super interesting about this case. Should we include more Fahmy? What to do about the opening? And so, yes, you find those people that'll give you those notes. But also, like, I think directors feel like they need to have this ego. Like, you know, nobody can touch my movie and I know best.

And just coming from my household in a pretty collaborative environment, that's just not how I view it. It's like, you know, you just find the people that are going to give you good notes and you include it. If they're bad notes, don't take them. Is there something that you want to be able to accomplish that is a little bit more of a long-term thing? Like, do you want to continue to be telling documentaries in these sort of formats, this hour, hour and a half, two hours? Are you looking for something bigger or smaller? You know, I think that stories tell you what size they should be in. And I think we are living in an age where everything has to be a series.

And I think some stories definitely belong, like The Keep Keepers that had to be a series, Making a Murderer, things like that, like just these long, huge stories inviting – about societal impact of these cases. And then there's other things that belong as movies. Like today, the Oscars came out, Strong Island and Icarus. Those were perfect. Those were movies. Those were these cinematic experiences. So like me as a filmmaker, give me either job, I'll do it. But I'm going to let the story dictate in what format it's going to be told in. Do you ever worry about going too far into a story or becoming too consumed by something or spending too much time on it?

I mean, I definitely like in my last relationship, my ex-boyfriend was just like, this is too dark. Enough. I don't want to talk about this stuff anymore. And he loves The Ringer. So, you know, if you're listening to this, you're a wonderful person. I'm sorry that I spent so many nights talking about these terrible things. I'm thankful to him for that one small thing. I think that you have to be near dogs.

You got to get a therapist. You got to find people that will make you cackle. But it's just like there's not going to be a lot of people signing up for inspirational documentaries. I know what life I've chosen. Um, and you know, it's about, uh, having balance and like writing those gratitude lists in the beginning of the day. So you can work through it. Be near a dog is fantastic advice. Um, just be near any dog. I pet five dogs a day. I asked the owner first, hey, is it cool if I pet your dog? And it's like you get to have that sweet little moment. That's perfect. I'm going to keep that in my mind.

I once read that you would take notes when you would have conversations with your dad. And, you know, I was wondering if you could just kind of share maybe a specific example of that or memory that you have of something that he might have taught you in a moment like that. Yeah. of something that he might have taught you in a moment like that. Yeah, I think, you know, I'm trying to think of a particular moment. There's so many. I'm writing a book about him for Random House called All That You Leave Behind about his emails that he wrote to me. He wrote me these 1,900 beautiful emails, mentorship, like how to live life, how to do this. One of my favorites, and I think it fits in here, is he wrote, you are who you run with. And that means, you know, you are who you spend time with.

We are the sum total of the people that we spend time with. And so I always try to think very sort of carefully and not like, you know, cut people off the list because they're not making the list, but like, you know, who is kind, who's curious, who's smart, and, you know, cut people off the list because they're not making the list. But like, you know, who is kind, who's curious, who's smart and, you know, who am I learning from? And so that's, you know, he he had a tremendous taste in people. I'm not just saying that because I'm his kid. You know, he he chose the people to spend time with and it reflected in his work in his life. That's a that's a great one. And also explains the be near a dog thing.

So I always like to end the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen. You mentioned a couple of docs that were nominated for Oscars today, but what is the last great thing you've seen? Oh, yes. Okay, I just watched the Joan Didion doc on Netflix. Oh, yeah. What did you like about that? I read her book, The Year of Magical Thinking, in preparation for writing my book and found it so beautiful, chaotic, mystical, the way that she described things so spot on. And so to be able to watch a film where you interact with her and you're seeing her and you kind of looking at her work and what happened, it just kind of like felt like being in the same room with her. You know, and I think that that felt really special. Like I just felt like I was kind of listening in on a conversation with Joan Didion and the doc felt intimate and I think just

really well done. And I think part of that was because it was done by someone who was related to her, who didn't feel that, you know, it was Gregory Dunn, right? I believe it was Griffin. Griffin Dunn. Yes. Her nephew. So her nephew, Griffin Dunn, made the film. And you can really see that. Like, you can see the intimacy of the relationship, you know, that they weren't sort of like pressing

each other. It was just like, you know, what was your life like? What is your life like now? And like, what do you think is important about the work that you do? And she had so much great things to say about fear that I just was I was kind of taking notes while I was watching the movie. And, you know, we can all learn a thing or two from Joan Didion. That's a fantastic place to end this conversation. Erin Linkar, thank you so much for chatting today.

Of course. Hey, guys, thanks again for listening to this week's episode of the big picture we have a really exciting few weeks coming up especially with oscar season around the corner next week i'll be talking with brian fogel the director of the fascinating documentary icarus which is up for best documentary and throughout the rest of the month keep tuning in because we're gonna have some really cool conversations with directors like alex garland the director of annihilation and we'll be talking a lot of Oscars as well. So please tune in.

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