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By now, everyone here is familiar with the Lucky saga. When working on an adaptation of Alice Sebold’s famous memoir about her rape, a film producer was worried by some inconsistencies. He enlisted a detective, who uncovered enough evidence to exonerate Anthony Broadwater, the man convicted in the case. An interesting story, wrapped up. We moved on.
But Air Mail dropped a new episode in the story over the weekend, part one of a two-parter from veteran reporter Howard Blum. The first part focuses on Timothy Mucciante, that inquisitive producer. The reason, Mucciante says, he suspected Lucky had holes in it isn’t because he’s a woke pinko or whatever. No, it’s because he’s a convicted criminal himself, a guy who built his fortunes on cons and scams. He’s also the survivor of a shocking sexual assault.
This wasn’t something I’d seen in other coverage of the Lucky case, so that hacky record-scratch drop played for me a few times as I was reading Blum’s report, like here:
Mucciante measured out his life in deceptions. A trail of white-collar criminal deceits had earned him, in total, three convictions, more than a decade of jail time in federal prisons, a disbarment, more than $1 million in fines and restitution, a polygamy conviction, and a bankruptcy judgment that was still meandering through the courts.
Yet it would be churlish not to add that at times his schemes were audacious, even inspired. There was, for one inventive example, his producing fake Australian-government bonds on his computer, fixing a bit of ribbon on the sheets for colorful authority, and then selling his creations for $1.6 million. And there was his “picaresque” (the federal-court judge’s adjective) scam to barter two million British condoms plus two million latex gloves for Russian chickens which would then be sold to Saudi Arabia.
And then here:
Mucciante is reluctant to discuss the details of his own victimization. However, a sentencing memorandum asking for leniency submitted by his attorney in 2007 outlines “the appalling series of tragic events” that he’d lived through: “he was attacked in the bathroom [of a halfway house mandated as part of his release from prison] and forced to perform oral sex on four residents”; “he has been diagnosed as being bi-polar and suffering from PTSD”; “has become extremely fearful of African-American males”; “abusing alcohol and Vicodin.” In his grim way, Mucciante had been a fellow traveler though a similarly hellish world as the brutalized Alice.
Yet there was something, as he would later say, “nagging” him about the story. His most troubled thoughts didn’t center on the graphic description of the rape and its immediate aftermath, as painful as it was to read. It was the second section of the book, the machinations of the lineup and the whirlwind trial that resulted in the conviction of “Gregory Madison” (as the rapist is pseudonymously called in the book), that Mucciante found more disconcerting. “It just didn’t ring true,” he couldn’t help thinking. After all, while he certainly wasn’t a literary critic, he had spent enough time in courtrooms as a defendant to know “when the fix was in.”
Y’all, this is a wild ride, made somehow wilder by the fact that Air Mail’s sole advertiser seems to be Hermes. Every few grafs, I’d scroll past a $500 tie or a $10K bag, then drop back in. This is how Graydon Carter keeps the lights on, I guess. There are worse things Hermes could be financially supporting than engaging, wild reporting like this piece. If you’re comfortable with the subject matter, I strongly recommend that you read it. — EB
Sex and the City is dumb about podcasts. Long before the “shocking twist” that everyone knows about, Miranda chided Carrie, saying “wow, Instagram, podcasts, guess you’re passing as younger, too.”
So in the world of SATC, podcasts are for the spring chickens, like NFTs or asking your friends to help you move then paying them with pizza. So I hope all us podcast fans here are celebrating our relative youth. I’ll make us all feel even younger with this multi-point roundup of podcast news I have been saving for a day like today. — EB
Podcast: American Radical
Logline: “Rosanne Boyland hated politics. She was shy, and she rarely left her home in Georgia. But then her family got a shocking call: Rosanne had died at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in the middle of a crowd trying to force its way past a police line. From the depths of their grief, the Boylands vow to figure out what happened to Rosanne. Her brother-in-law, Justin Cave, reaches out to an old high school friend he hopes can help: MSNBC journalist Ayman Mohyeldin. The quest for the truth takes Ayman back to his hometown of Kennesaw, Georgia, where he retraces the last six months of Rosanne's life and picks up a trail that leads to childhood haunts, missing boyfriends, and down shadowy internet rabbit holes.
Assessment: Three episodes in, this show has yet to normalize the act of the insurgents, and humanizes Boyland in a way that still doesn’t act like her beliefs or behaviors were OK. May or may not be a good show to listen to on your way home for the holidays.
In new podcast interview, Kyle Rittenhouse says traveling to Kenosha was ‘not the best idea’ [Washington Post]
Under no circumstances am I suggesting that you listen to right-wing podcast You Are Here. It’s a show hosted by Sydney Watson, who told guest Kyle Rittenhouse last week that it was “kind of impressive” that “of all the people that you shot at, you killed probably two of the worst on the planet.” Fortunately, the Post reported on the important beats in the show, so I suggest you read the piece — it’s not every day someone who admits to shooting and killing people gives an interview about it.
Podcast: Chameleon: Wild Boys
Logline: “The latest season of the wildly popular con-themed podcast Chameleon takes place in the summer of 2003 when two half-starved young men turned up in a small Canadian town telling an incredible story. They’d been raised in the British Columbia wilderness, and this was their first-ever contact with society — they’d never seen a TV, gone to school, or registered for IDs. So the community took them in and set about introducing them to the modern world. Before long, the international media descended on the town, enthralled by the mysterious ‘Bush Boys.’ There was just one problem: not a word the boys said was true. Nearly 20 years later, award-winning comedian and journalist Sam Mullins uncovers the bizarre true story of the strangers who turned his hometown upside-down.”
Assessment: Season 2 of Chameleon doesn’t drop until Jan. 25, so all I can say is that these are the folks behind Hollywood Con Queen. If you liked that podcast, you’re likely to be cool with this one — and the case it’s based on is very compelling.
Hiring True Crime podcast writers [Reddit]
This extremely sketchy job listing has red flags galore, from the URL of the job poster to the opening line “I own a podcast network consisting of about 15 different podcasts that are gaining upwards of 6-7 million monthly listeners” to the plan that “Once a writer is accepted, I will transfer a USD $ deposit, and transfer the remaining amount upon satisfactory completion of the work.” Despite this, a multitude of commenters appear to be clamoring for this poster’s attention.
Podcast: You’re Wrong About: True Crime
Logline: “Emma Berquist stops by to tell us about how true crime doesn't have to make us better people, and in fact may be more harmful to us than we realize.”
Assessment: Berquist wrote “True Crime Is Rotting Our Brains,” a pretty good article we have discussed here before! If you hated her essay, you won’t like this podcast. I liked the essay a lot, so this was a nice listen for me.
Podcast: Cover Story
Logline: “The investigative series uncovers the secrets and exposes the darkest corners of the psychedelic revolution through a twisted, deeply personal tale at the intersection of mind, body, and control.”
Assessment: Did Nine Perfect Strangers or The Good Fight sometimes read like microdosing spon? NY Mag is here to disabuse you of the notion that psychedelic therapy might be the magic bullet you’ve been seeking, and not just because all this drug shit is totally against the law.
Exile Content Studio Launches True Crime Podcast ‘Sacred Scandal’ About 2001 Miami Murder [Deadline]
Podcast Sacred Scandal will detail the 2001 slaying of Sister Michelle Lewis, who was stabbed to death in her convent by monastery student Mykhaylo Kofel. The case is unusual because Kofel was allegedly abused by “the two highest religious leaders” at the Catholic church where he killed Lewis, crimes that eventually prompted the defense and prosecution teams to unite to try to bring the priests to justice, the Sun-Sentinel reported in 2005. The podcast’s producers “spent the past 15 years researching, conducting interviews with Kofel, Holy Cross faculty and students, detectives and attorneys assigned to the case,” Deadline reports. It drops on December 20.
An Examination of ‘Dexter: New Blood’s Baffling True-Crime Podcast (and What It Says About How Hollywood Sees the Genre) [Collider]
I’m not watching the new Dexter, so I don’t know how irritating fax podcast Merry F*cking Kill is. But it sounds pretty annoying, if writer Erin Brady has it right.
Within the world of New Blood, Park simply recounts the actions of her subjects in a crude manner. This would be fine if the audience is supposed to believe that “Merry F*cking Kill” is comparable to schlock such as “My Favorite Kill,” but we are supposed to accept that it is on par with “Serial.” Park actually does investigations onto her subjects while presenting her findings like she’s reading a gossip magazine or Wikipedia article. It is enough to get audiences to potentially wonder if the writers even understand the appeal of the true-crime genre as a whole.
If you’re watching and can confirm/dispute, you know what to do.
W. Kamau Bell has made a docuseries about Bill Cosby. Bell’s a nationally known Black comedian who’s rarely veered away from uncomfortable topics, and Cosby ranks toward the top when it comes to frustrating and painful to discuss.
His show, We Need to Talk About Cosby, talks to “people closely connected to Cosby’s life on-screen and off, including several survivors” over the course of four episodes, with the goal to discover “who Cosby was and what his work and actions say about America, then and now.”
The four-episode series will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January. This year, the fest is pursuing a hybrid model, with in-person and online tickets both available. If you’re interested in watching the show online, screenings will be Jan. 26 at 5:00 p.m. PT, with a second at Jan 28 at 7 a.m. PT. If you “favorite” a screening here you’ll be signed up to receive notifications and buy a ticket when they’re available. — EB
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