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September 5, 2023

Is your home a true-crime set?

the true crime that's worth your time

(Jake Giles Netter / HBO Max via Texas Monthly)

Would you let your place become a true-crime-series location? Texas Monthly’s Sean O’Neal did, and wrote about the experience of having Love & Death film at his house in TM’s May issue1. It’s a liiiiittle more bloggy than the mag usually goes, but still informative2, and O’Neal did a great job conveying the disorienting experience of 1) seeing your domicile “converted” for a different kind of shooting entirely, and 2) visiting the soundstage version (whose “front door” O’Neal closed, on autopilot, so as not to let a cat escape, hee/aw).

But it does sound like a hassle, and O’Neal raises a couple interesting points about the bad karma potentially involved in recreating a major case in a real residence, not to mention possibly ending up on a murder-tourism map — so, although the money sounds really good, I don’t know that I would do it!

What about you? Would you take a big check, pack up the pets, and clear out so HBO could re-enact a true-crime story on your property? And whether or not you went through with it, what properties might seek out your home in the first place? (This Bay Ridge row house, replete with preserved original details, is probably good for a midcentury-mobster project, but I don’t think we have high enough ceilings to pass the audition.) — SDB

1

Yes, I did spend much of my long weekend hacking the magazine TBR pile down to a manageable size; why do you ask?

2

like reminding me I should go back to where coverage of the case all began, namely TM in 1984

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