215 lbs · Scott Johnson · The Blind Side
Plus: An on-the-lam car guy gets the Apple+ treatment
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I’ll admit it. When Carlos Ghosn (rhymes with “cone”) started dominating headines in late 2018, I didn’t pay the case much more than a cursory interest. Some sort of financial crimes, various car companies, and at that point I fell asleep. What roused me were the stories about how Ghosn was smuggled out of Japan in a box, but beyond the breaking details of that aspect of the case, I just couldn’t keep focused.
That’s why I’m looking forward to watching Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn, which drops on Apple+ today. So far, it’s gotten solid reviews, all of which suggest that finally my shitty attention span will be quelled enough to understand what went down. Here’s a quick run through the coverage:
Business tycoon Carlos Ghosn’s rise, fall and dramatic escape is subject of new Apple TV+ series [AP]
“The Carlos Ghosn story is unbelievable in the sense that it’s a Shakespearean tragedy in which we have an archetypal tragic hero who everybody wants to root for but knows the train crash is coming.”
CEO-turned-fugitive Carlos Ghosn has this regret when it comes to General Motors [Detroit Free Press]
“The docuseries … features all of the key players in the saga, including Mike Taylor, the former U.S. Green Beret who helped Ghosn escape from Japan, another U.S. Nissan executive who was arrested with Ghosn and Ghosn himself, who, for the first time, tells his side of the story from start to finish.”
‘Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn’ unfolds like a twisty thriller [CNN]
“Director James Jones nicely stitches together the remarkable details of Ghosn’s escape – which involved being smuggled out in a box – as well as the lingering issues surrounding it, including the embarrassment and anger of Japanese authorities. WSJ reporter Sean McLain sums up Ghosn’s tale as a cautionary one about ‘the dangers of hubris and greed.’”
Is Fugitive Tycoon Carlos Ghosn Actually a Victim? [The Daily Beast[
“Apple TV+’s four-part docuseries contends that there was something to the idea that Ghosn was being persecuted. Moreover, it paints an intensely unflattering portrait of a Japanese judicial system in which due process is often nowhere to be found and torture (including gratuitous use of solitary confinement) is the norm, thereby providing further justification for Ghosn’s eventual perilous scheme.”
Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn review – this twisty, dramatic tale will leave you agog [Guardian]
“This series tries to give viewers the whole story, which is long and complex. It is unapologetic in taking its time to rev up. The first episode establishes the question of whether Ghosn is a victim or a villain. The second tells the story of Ghosn’s arrest and his outrage at what he still claims is a great injustice, and the third focuses on his astonishing escape while on bail in Tokyo. If you were to watch those first three episodes, you might think you have an idea of where the film-makers’ sympathies lie. Stick it out until the fourth, though, because it takes a turn: by the time the extensive postscript flashed up at the end, I was agog.”
An obvious question at this point is why we need this new series when we have Netflix’s Fugitive: The Curious Case of Carlos Ghosn, which came out lat year. (There’s also Carlos Ghosn: The Last Flight, which I hadn’t heard of until I started writing this up. Anyone watch that one?) And perhaps we will decide that we didn’t! But unlike Fugitive, which I recall as a workmanlike effort, Ghosn is directly interviewed in Wanted, which makes it a more compelling pitch.
It also helps that Wanted was made with what appears to be a substantially larger budget, has other bold-faced interview subjects, and is based on the reporting from Boundless, the book from Nick Kostov and Sean McLain that came out in 2022 and has so many interested San Francisco readers that my library reserve has yet to arrive. All this to say that with all four episodes dropping this weekend, my Saturday and Sunday watch plans are set. How about yours? — EB
Hearsay
ABC News Studios Announces New Documentary Series “Never Let Him Go” [ABC PR]
Australian officials ruled Scott Johnson’s death — a fall from a coastal cliff — a suicide, but his brother refused to believe it, and was proven right decades later. It was murder, part of a pattern of violence against LGBTQ+ folks that, as in so many places, was less rigorously investigated than those of cis and straight folks. According to Out, the four-part docuseries on the case will drop on Hulu on Sept 6. — EB
Trump Returns to the Service Formerly Known as Twitter [New York Times]
The former president returned to X Thursday, seemingly for the sole purpose of…sharing his mug shot? Also, and I hesitate to say this as someone who opposes body shaming in all cases (not just for people I like), but Trump’s (apparently self-reported?) weight at booking has prompted a slew of “here are athletes with the same physical dimensions Trump claims to have” articles and I don’t mind that a bit. — EB
‘Blind Side’ Movie Company Defends Deal and Family Accused of Cheating NFL Star Michael Oher [The Hollywood Reporter]
In the most recent season of Project Greenlight, one of the producers had a poster for award-winning, allegedly based-on-a-true-story movie The Blind Side prominently displayed in their office. That show was shot before central figure Michael Oher claimed that he’d been cheated out of revenue from the film, or that Oher and the family that — per the film — took him in traded allegations about the nature of their relationship. Can someone please make us a podcast about this increasingly tangled scandal so we can get all the details in a comprehensible package? Thanks in advance. — EB
Next week on Best Evidence: The budget doc gets cleaned up, and paid subscribers will get August’s bonus review (evil TV-movie Sam Elliott, y’all)!
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