Sin City Gigolo: A Murder in Las Vegas is true crime comfort food
the true crime that's worth your time
I should lead by confessing that prior to watching new Paramount+ true crime series Sin City Gigolo: A Murder in Las Vegas, almost everything I knew about Showtime reality series Gigolos came from clips I'd seen on The Soup. Which makes sense, as its premise — self-employed male sex workers and their lives in Las Vegas — was basically made for parody, an over-the-top look at masculinity, heterosexual (don't you dare suggest otherwise) sex and the Nevada resort town.
Fortunately, I have Reality Blurred's archive of coverage to refer to, which helped me get up to speed on the nature of the series, which aired from 2011-2016. As our esteemed colleague Andy Dehnart put it in 2016, the series blended sex with comedy, playing up the ding-dongery of its cast of gentlemen of the night. Or, as show producers Jay Blumenfield (who Andy has also interviewed) and Tony Marsh say in Sin City Gigolo: A Murder in Las Vegas, the guys presented as dumb douchebags, and they "leaned in" to that for purposes of humor/virality — and that's, I suspect, how moments from the series became Soup mainstays.
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I’m a fan of Gigolos and used to follow Ash on FB (bless Showtime for not getting rid of their Late Night section like HBO), so I followed this case and started watching the first first half-hour of this documentary over breakfast this morning.
At the time the show was on, I definitely would have chosen Nick as “Most likely to beat a woman to death” because he appeared to have some anger/aggro issues and too many blackout tattoos always freak me out on a non-metal musician (whether or not that’s fair) because it comes off very anti-social personality. Wild that he’s now a swami or something and judging Ash. I saw Nick on a “Soft White Underbelly” interview a couple years back and none of that was going on.
I’ll likely be back with more…
I was about to suggest that true crime comfort didn't go together. Then I read this piece and understand the oxymoron better. As a result, I'll take the advice offered and look in, with a sharpened appreciation of the complicated question, Why do we watch and read the stuff that seems warped and twisted. I can even suggest that one of my favorite murder stories flips the script on the idea that "most homicides aren't committed by serial killers...they are committed by people." This murder involves a couple of hitmen who were set up to be killed and experienced the horror that their many victims must have felt in that last moment. There's lots of kinds of murders and in the world we inhabit today, we will encounter new ones every day. Thanks Best Evidence for broadening my perceptions.
first line should read "true crime and comfort...."