Berlinger Beef · Des Nilsen · Real Housewives
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Joe Berlinger is allegedly back in the nastygram game. For context, I’ll refer you to Sarah’s June look at the widely admired true-crime director’s off-screen behavior, which includes suggesting that critics that take issue with his work (most recently, the problematic Cecil Hotel docuseries) just fail to understand it.
Then there’s his angry email to No Man of God director Amber Sealey over comments she made in an interview that he thought were about him, I guess — the online version of an insecure guy who starts a bar brawl because he thought someone was looking at him funny.
At the time, Sarah and I agreed, the way Berlinger’s message to Sealey read suggested that this was not the first time he sent an aggro email to a stranger, and we wondered if more Berlinger-grams would start to come out. And then, a comment on that two-month-old issue arrived late last night.
It’s from Chris Reed, a writer and educator whose work can be found at indie film site Hammer to Nail; he’s also the managing editor of Film Festival Today. He’s also the chair of the film & moving image department at Stevenson University. I know all this not because Reed gave me his résumé, but because I googled him — and that’s what Berlinger appears to have done, too, following up with an alleged email threat to Reed’s employer.
I’ll let Reed take over (I’ve broken the text up for mobile readability):
So, I have a Joe Berlinger story of my own. I only just found out about this email exchange this morning, as I was getting ready to request an advance screener of "No Man of God" (I am a film critic).
Let me copy and paste the comment I made on Amber Sealey's instagram post today: "I am very much looking forward to watching and reviewing your film (have requested a link). I have not seen Berlinger’s Bundy work, because in 2016, at SXSW, I watched his execrable Tony Robbins documentary and walked out of the screening angry, firing off one tweet about it and retweeting someone else’s (at the time, I was a fan of Berlinger’s films).
With my tiny amount of followers, I didn’t think anymore about it, but about a month later found out that, without ever first contacting me, he had emailed the Dean of the Faculty at my university (I am an academic) to complain about such unprofessional conduct on my part and vowing to never come to the school (not that anyone was inviting him…) if I remained in my position.
In other words, he “called the manager” on me. Now, I am not going to claim that those tweets were thoughtful (they were not), but his response was the behavior of a bully. Since then, I no longer watch his output. I see that nothing has changed. So sorry you have to deal with this. I am glad you have called him out." To note, I am a white male, with all the privilege that comes with that, which I acknowledge.
Here’s Reed’s comment on Sealey’s instagram post on her interaction with Berlinger; you’ll have to scroll a bit to see it. The Robbins doc Reed refers to is a glowing in its positivity film called I Am Not Your Guru, about alleged sexual assailant/self-help millionaire Tony Robbins.
Reed is a prolific enough tweeter that finding the remarks that might have ticked Berlinger off from way back in 2016 isn’t an easy task, but his notes on Guru seem pretty reasonable: saying that before the screening, Berlinger took the stage to say “he had had a life-changing experience recently and was offering up a positive portrait of a man he has come to admire,” which was fair warning of the “infomercial” that followed, “surface-level storytelling” and all.
Hardly a travel ban-worthy take. But the Robbins angle does raise an interesting point, especially if Berlinger continues to admire him. Robbins, too, has been accused of bullying (and worse) by scores of former associates. If part of how we assess a person’s character is by whom they admire, Reed’s alleged experience might provide us with another piece to the Berlinger shitty email puzzle. — EB
Have you gotten an unexpected email, message, or threat from Joe Berlinger? If so, Best Evidence wants to hear from you! Comments are below, or you can email us at editorial@bestevidence.fyi if you’d like to keep your anonymity.
Do you want to listen to a serial killer blab? That’s the question posed by Memories of a Murderer: The Nilsen Tapes (as well as yesterday’s BE discussion thread, come to think of it). I didn’t think I did, until I read Sarah’s Primetimer review of the Netflix documentary, which she says uses “a murderer's own accounting against him to shine a light on the prejudices that made his victims even more vulnerable.”
Like so many serial killers, Dennis “Des” Nilsen chose systemically marginalized folks as victims: in his case, many were homeless and/or gay men, who in the 1970s and 80s weren’t a priority for police. (Not that that’s changed tremendously today, but that’s another conversation.) These cases pose a specific risk for documentarians, as those victims often leave no one behind to tell their story — which means, inevitably, that the killer is centered in the narrative.
That’s what I assumed might happen with MoaM, especially as the film is built around tapes Nilsen left behind (he dies in jail in 2018). But you know what they say about assumptions! Sarah sets me to rights, praising director Michael Harte for how Nilsen’s own words are used:
When Nilsen isn't burbling about prison-lunch "hacks" or the pet budgerigar he's allowed to keep in his cell, he waxes with self-pity about the discomforts of police transport vans, or makes sneering observations like, "I'm a man, not a monster — awkward, isn't it?" Nilsen's high opinion of himself is evident, and untouched by the fact that he was busted; Nilsen also apparently believes that he can parlay his tale of sexual abuse at the hands of his grandfather into sympathy for himself as a victim, or at least understanding for the idea that he couldn't help himself. (Memories is quite explicit about what Nilsen did to the bodies of his victims after death; while it's relayed as tastefully as it can be under the circumstances, it's still disturbing, so consider this a content warning.)
But by choosing the portions of the tapes he does, Harte is challenging the idea that putting a serial killer at the center of a project has to mean glorifying that killer. And by using each segment as an opportunity to explore the other perspectives on Nilsen's tales — by interviewing investigators, journalists, survivors, and victims' family members — Harte takes the narrative power away from Nilsen, and puts it retroactively in the hands of the people whose lives Nilsen took, or scarred irreparably.
You can read Sarah’s full review of Memories of a Murderer: The Nilsen Tapes on Primetimer; the show is available on Netflix as of Wednesday. — EB
Seriously, more podcasts? Look, I’m not trying to break your phone with all these new shows, but there is a lot happening in the world of audio! Here are some of the latest shows I’m planning on dipping into this weekend. — EB
The 11th
I must be frank with you: there’s a tweeness to the concept of the 11th that bugs me, so please praise me for pushing past that reaction. First, the concept: “On the 11th day of every month, the show will take on an entirely new shape, length, and style. Think of it a bit like a mystery box. We want to present original reporting, personal stories, musicals, advice columns, miniseries, concept albums, and whatever else you’ve got.” Annoying, right? But the first drop, on 8/11, is definitely intriguing: it’s a four-parter on gendered harassment, each around half an hour long. This will probably be my dog-walk show when I take out the older ones.
The Incident
Stage actor Terry Vandivort was recovering from a 2013 surgery when he started work on The Incident, then a memoir of “the haunting memories of a violent assault he endured in his youth.” In the years since, the story has evolved into a one-actor-show and then into a podcast that kicked off earlier this month. Based on the overview of the episodes this far, this is a show that does not shy away from depictions of sexual assault, so this probably isn’t one for the car with the kids. It’s also not ideal for folks who want a “just the facts” reporting of a case, but it feels like an interesting experiment in the genre.
DIEOWA
You had me at the name. OK, this show has been around since the beginning of the year, so it’s hardly new — I came across it when I was researching COVID-19 rates in Iowa and Google mistakenly sent me to a story about the true crime pod about deaths in the state. (Sorry, Google, that my multiple interests confuse you.) The hosts (for whom this show is a side project) “spend about four hours researching episodes relying heavily on digitized newspaper clippings, iowacoldcases.org, books, and other sources.” This looks like (and I’m not saying this shadily) a fairly standard “interested friends chat about a case” pod, which certainly has its place in the content spectrum. But that name, well, it’s killer.
The NYT is all in on the R Kelly case. The header on pages like this one (on Tuesday’s testimony) tell the tale, with a navigation that includes Trial Begins, 5 Things to Know, Timeline of Allegations, Impact on His Music, The 2008 Trial. Across that content, I see six different bylines, all working on the story.
I’m not saying this isn’t how it should be, but I do find it interesting — that’s a lot of resources (even for one of the few still-flourishing papers left) to throw at the story, especially while we’re still in a global news cycle that’s as non-stop as ever. If this was another pub, I’d say that this was all about the clicks — but that’s not the Times’s business model, and it never has been.
If there’s anyone at the Times (or someone who has insights) who wants to talk about the editorial strategy behind this a little move, you know where to find me. Otherwise, I invite speculation below.
Whys aside, we can likely expect this to continue for the duration of the trial, which is set to run about a month. Prosecutors say they plan on calling a “large number” of alleged victims and witnesses, as some of the allegations against the disgraced musician go back 20 years. We don’t plan on providing beat-by-beat coverage of the case — with rare exceptions, that’s not our thing here at Best Evidence — but we will note significant developments and direct you to significant and thoughtful coverage as the trial progresses. — EB
Speaking of doing it for the clicks…“The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills has become a true crime doc,” reads the headline on this Vox story from last week. The topic here is 52-year-old Erika Jayne, whose 82-year-old husband Tom Girardi has been accused of various financial misdeeds.
I’m not a Real Housewives of anything viewer, not because I am too fancy for it but because I don’t enjoy shows where people are mean to each other. (Murder, I can handle. Backstabbing makes me so anxious.) But this thorough explainer (which, really, is what Vox is for, yeah?) really brought me up to speed on why its significant that this case is sort of playing out on the franchise. I found this bit especially provocative:
Regular viewers know that the women on Bravo’s shows aren’t exactly friends as much as they are contracted players on a television show whose premise is that they are friends. The cast members probably wouldn’t go on lavish vacations with their co-stars under normal circumstances. The phone calls between the women are always on FaceTime or speakerphone so they can be recorded. The lunch dates they go on are predetermined and cleared ahead of time.
“We’ve all accepted these things as part of the deal,” Gibson Johns, host and producer of the pop culture interview podcast We Should Talk, told me. Johns frequently hosts Housewives on his podcast.
Johns explained to me that while there are elements of the show that aren’t “real” and that the show creates scenarios (vacations, coffees, parties, dinners, etc.) for these women to interact, how the women act in those contrived situations is what fans want. Fans love melodrama, catchphrases, and fights. And, granted, cast members on the show are aware that it’s in their best interest to calibrate their reactions to deliver the best television.
What makes this season so different is that the very serious lawsuit, Johns says, has affected how Erika, who is presumably under legal guidance not to implicate herself while on television, presents herself on the show. It is in her best interest not just to appear not guilty but to actively come across as innocent as possible.
Am I likely to start watching RHoBH so I can examine Jayne’s potential self-incrimination? Unlikely, but if I find myself in a conversation about the show, I feel like I can (for the first time ever) make an effort to participate. Here’s the story if you’re similarly ignorant; if you are a Housewives expert, please weigh in with your assessment in the comments. — EB
Friday on Best Evidence: Book theft?
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