July 21, 2023

Last Call · Beanie Babies · James Lewis

Plus: The FBI's relationship with true crime

the true crime that's worth your time

Hello from Salt Lake! Thanks to all of you who wished me well on my trip across the country, so far it’s going well! If you have any questions about the reliability of the Western U.S.’s electric-vehicle charging infrastructure, I am developing a number of thoughts, and will likely have more the redder the region we enter. (SO many people out there with bumper stickers declaring a love for fossil fuels. Who knew?)

I’m looking forward to landing at my destination later this weekend and settling into something that isn’t a Google Map. Here’s what I’m looking forward to:

Last Call
Episode 3 airs Sunday 7/23 on HBO and Max

I know we touted the launch of the adaptation of Elon Green’s book earlier this month, but as someone who watched all the screeners of the series for work, I’ve been enjoying the week-by-week parsing out of the doc even more. Watching Last Call as its distributor intended it is indeed the way to go: giving each episode a chance to breathe each week, and to sink in, makes it feel even more impactful — and, oddly, less bleak. If you haven’t started watching Last Call and mean to, please allow this to be my consumption recommendation. [“Heartily seconded!” - SDB] And if you have, I think you’re going to like this weekend’s installment a great deal.

The Beanie Bubble
Friday, July 21 Apple+

Zac Bissonnette’s 2015 book, The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute, isn’t true crime in the classic Unsolved Mysteries/serial killer/blazing guns bank heist sense, but it’s adjacent in the same way The Big Short, LuLaRich, or Bad Vegan are. From Adam Davidson’s 2015 review for the New York Times:

Bissonnette reveals [Beanie Baby creator Ty] Warner to be an angry, broken man, emotionally destroyed by a horrific childhood, who sought some sort of comfort in plush toys. Instead he became a billionaire on the back of a frenzy that destroyed many lives, inspired at least one murder and echoed some of the most base manipulations of childhood. Along the way, Warner barely escaped prison, and so misunderstood the craze he had inspired that he destroyed it in one day with a foolish, arrogant stunt.

I don’t know how deep The Beanie Bubble goes into the actualities of the overall case, and with Zach Galifianakis as Warner and Elizabeth Banks as his business partner, I assume we’re going to see comedic deviations from reality galore. The Hollywood Reporter writes that “the liberally fictionalized screenplay looks at the story from a feminist perspective,” which is a definite tonal change from the book. (It’s not necessarily a shade on Bissonnette’s work to say as much, I don’t think?)

Also of note: its co-director and screenwriter is Kristin Gore, whose dad was once the vice-president of the U.S. I recently spent a lot of time looking at how folks who share QAnon-style beliefs consume fictionalized content (more on that in a second) and have seen a small tide of adherents telling people to stay away from the film for its ostensible relationship to not just a Democratic politician but one who pushes their incorrectly-believed-to-be-false discussion of the climate crisis. Yes, Virginia, we now live in a world where a fictionalized movie about the early-1990s global obsession with small stuffed toys has become not just a political issue, but part of a shadowy conspiracy. Welcome to the 2020s, what a time to be alive.

So, that’s me! What are you all going to dive into this lovely July weekend? — EB

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Hearsay

Sound of Freedom: The Wild True Story Behind 2023’s Most Controversial Film [Vanity Fair]
Yes, I’m touting something I wrote, thank you for your kind understanding! When we first wrote about this movie on B.E., it was as a shelved-by-acquisition-shuffles drama about Tim Ballard, a real-life former Homeland Security Special Agent who was unquestioningly presented as the savior of hundreds, if not thousands, of trafficked kids. In the years hence, journalists and investigators have raised questions about the veracity of Ballard’s claims; at the same time, the actor who plays Ballard has appeared in interviews repeating several of the false assertions of QAnon believers.

None of that is in the fictionalized biopic of Ballard, which was released earlier this month and has since earned well above expectations. Part of its success is likely due to the discourse around it, as the issue of child trafficking has been taken up as a cudgel for fringe conservative groups. I tried my best to unpack that in this piece (hence my knowledge of the rising Beanie Baby agita), which my editor told me had been published as I stood in a WalMart1 in small-town Nevada surrounded by a massive, blond family of people in matching Blue Lives Matter t-shirt and shorts sets. I felt like a spy! Anyway, I worked really hard on this and am very proud; it’s also ignited in me an interest in how fringe groups leverage true crime that I’m eager to continue to explore. — EB

James Lewis, the suspect in the deadly 1982 Tylenol poisonings, dies at 76 [NPR]
The passing of Lewis made less of a splash than I expected, though that it took us almost two weeks to acknowledge it here suggests that Sarah and I didn’t quite know what to do with this update either. The 1982 Tylenol poisonings, which killed seven, is a story that I feel few Americans remember well enough to competently describe the bones of. But it’s also a case that has an impact on our daily lives, as every time we struggle to open a medication bottle, we have the Tylenol killer to thank. Other than Richard Reid, I can’t think of a single other case that’s led to an everyday change in how we live (and in Reid’s case, if you don’t fly, even that isn’t your problem!).

Back to Lewis: during the height of the scare, he sent a note to Johnson & Johnson “demanding $1 million to ‘stop the killing,’” for which he served 12 years in prison. But he was never linked to the actual deaths in a way definitive enough to be charged. I have never felt completely comfortable about assuming he was the guy, but that said, I am not one of those folks who believed the Unabomber did it, either — that just wasn’t his style. With Lewis gone, we might not ever have an answer we can easily believe. What do you think, is there room for a dramatic adaptation here or is the unsatisfying conclusion enough to make this a no-go? — EB

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How the FBI Worked With Hollywood to Build the Crime Genre’s Early Years In Film and TV [The Hollywood Reporter]
This great longread from Thomas Doherty explores how the 1930s-era FBI built a relationship with Hollywood, an effort to control the narrative around the agency and to present them as heroes. Read this, and you’ll start rethinking everything you’ve watched from the last 80 years, from how wrongdoers are reviled to how that branch of the feds rarely faces the same on-screen scrutiny as local cops or agents with the CIA. — EB

Next week on Best Evidence: Romance scams, wine thieves, and Brooklyn teens. It’s all going down!

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