To love and die in Akron
Plus plagiarism, Polanski, and a Hey, It's That Guy BET-CRP
the true crime that's worth your time
Greetings from East Coast HQ once again, and if you’ve just joined us from elsewhere on the ’stack, welcome! I’ve got some plumbing challenges on the go here today, so it’s a bit of a dog’s breakfast in the round-up; I hope you’ll find something worthwhile. But if you just aren’t in the mood for the genre today given current headlines (and dark anniversaries), I understand. Come back when you’re ready — we’ll be here. In the meantime, here’s my dog, Bear, who suggests checking out PomTok if you’re blue. (“What kind of dog is that?” “The bad kind.”) — SDB
“Roman Polanski Always Thrived in France, But Now Even His Adopted Country is Turning On Him” [Variety] // Is Europe at long last prepared to cancel the Rosemary’s Baby director? Polanski, who fled to France decades ago amid fears that he wouldn’t get a fair shake in American courts after drugging and having sex with a 13-year-old,
has flourished as a filmmaker in his adopted country, celebrated as a lifelong member of France’s illustrious Academie des Beaux Arts (Academy of Fine Arts) and showered with a half-dozen César Awards, the latest three of which, including best director, are for his 2019 drama “An Officer and a Spy.”
But things are changing. The director’s latest César win, combined with more recent allegations of sexual misconduct, sparked outrage from French feminist groups and led to the 21-member board of the organization that oversees the Césars to resign en masse.
Other “highlights” of the piece include the producer of Polanski’s latest film, Luca Barbareschi, whining that he couldn’t get French financing, sighing that the production had some casting issues because of Polanski’s misdeeds, and grumping that “If this film doesn’t get released in France, it’s a crime.” Hey: shut up!
“How the internet gets people to plagiarize each other” [Vox] // Rebecca Jennings’s piece is more about the ethics of uncredited meme-ing than it is, or is about, true crime; Jennings says in so many words that “Plagiarism, it should be noted, is perfectly legal in the United States, provided it doesn’t cross the (often nebulous) definition of intellectual property theft.” Just prior to that comment, though, Jennings mentions the Crime Junkie accusations:
Amidst the growing thirst for captivating or sensationalist narratives, several true crime and history podcasts have been accused of plagiarizing written articles without credit over the past few years. [The Atlantic’s Brenden] Koerner has had this happen to him several times. “If something’s easy or free to access, there’s maybe a general assumption that it’s free to use,” he says. “There are a lot of people who’ve had their hard work repackaged for profit, and I fear it’s ultimately going to be a net negative for the whole ecosystem of people who create and tell stories.”
Given the proportion of the pod-verse devoted, more or less, to barely dramatized readings of Wikipedia pages about lesser-known serial killers, the part of Jennings’s overview that talks about certain disciplines self-policing for plagiarism — and, it’s implied, what happens if that doesn’t happen — is of note.
“‘Vengeance’ Trailer: B.J. Novak Takes a Stab at America’s True Crime Craze in Directorial Debut” [IndieWire] // I don’t know about y’all, but I reached max cap on scripted capital-T Takes on true crime about nine months ago. Fictional versions of true-crime worlds have a lot to offer — in theory. In practice, for every Only Murders In The Building, you’ve got a handful of lazily snide “satires” that don’t push too far past SNL’s Dateline skit, only grabbing the low-hanging joke fruit we’ve been served many times before.
Despite its pedigree, Vengeance seems like the latter, with a heaping helping of condescending to Texas rednecks on the side, which does not land great today, through no fault of the production’s, but…still. In any event, here’s the trailer:
In the movie’s defense, 1) filming on Vengeance started in March 2020, and the way we receive the entire genre, never mind satirical thinking about it, has left the broad-strokes-y humor at its expense far in the rearview since; and 2) there’s not nothing here, based on Novak’s comments about the movie:
“It’s so easy to misinterpret our connections these days, and it’s also easy to fall in love with someone after they’re out of your life, when you can obsess over their photos and your own memories and regrets,” Novak said in a recent interview with Variety about the film. “I started there which led me to this idea: what if you were expected to avenge the death of someone you barely knew?”
The story that interests me more is the one about how easy it is to fall in love with the chase aspect of a true-crime investigation, whether vicariously as a consumer or firsthand as a content creator. And who knows, maybe Vengeance is going to go there! Doesn’t look like it based on the trailer, though, and here in 2022, with Atlanta doing a sliding-doors ep about Devonte Hart? You gotta do better than “pod groupies, amirite?”
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“Local history: Thorny tales of spring romance” [Akron Beacon Journal] // The ABJ’s Mark J. Price put together “a collection of breezy items from the merry, merry month of May” last week — all love-news-of-the-weird items, all from the greater Akron area, across many many decades. Not all of them have a true-crime flavor, but there’s a bigamist, an involuntary manslaughter involving wrestling, a poisoning, and a “Jack The Hugger.” (The accompanying item for that last one describes the citizenry as being “up in arms” about the serial molester. Hee/boooooo.) And enough with the prestige docuseries about serial killers or DB Cooper; let’s have a Hulu three-parter about the jurors who “decided that the marriageable value of [Leona May Lotze’s] looks had been reduced $1,000” thanks to a scar left by a car crash. (From what I can discern, Lotze in fact married twice later on.)
Or about what police eventually decided was the “proper course of action” for George Marunic’s (ex-, we can assume) girlfriend. Honestly, that entire page of Circleville, OH Daily Herald needs to become a season of Berlinger’s Crime Scene. A Supreme Court judge “booked” — for a commencement address at the University of Toledo, that is! [rimshot] A gang, disbanded! An expert witness testifying that a murder defendant wasn’t responsible for his actions because seeing his “unclad” barmaid wife boning the boss’s kid “drove all reasoning from [Douglas Gott’s] mind”! (And the defendant’s name in German is “God”!) A lost cadaver OSU pranksters were suspected of having stolen from the med school, then chucked in the river!
Our esteemed reader Claire asked me to BET-CRP Shea Whigham, and behold, his time has come. (Not sure what the BET-CRP is? Ecce the parameters!) Whigham has a lot of credits — 92! — so my prediction, before I start the rundown, is that his number comes in at around 12-15%. He works a lot, but it’s maybe not “major case” material and he’s maybe not getting awards attention for it. Let’s find out!
Faith of My Fathers (2005) // It takes a while to get to the first qualifier, and even this is a neighborhood play; this TV movie is a John McCain biopic starring Shawn Hatosy as McCain, of all things, so the first question is whether we consider POW-related war crimes “true crime.” My feeling, for our purposes: yes, so that’s one point. As to the question of whether Whigham plays a name, well, he does play a real guy, Norris Overly, whose ministrations helped keep McCain alive, so while I’m not terribly familiar with these particulars, I’m comfortable awarding the name-figure points: 2
Psychic Driving (2005) // A short based on RL government mind-control experiments. I might not have counted it if I hadn’t just today gotten a PR blast from discovery+ about an upcoming doc on an alleged chem-warfare cover-up at Edgewood Arsenal — but I did, so I will: 1
Boardwalk Empire (2010) // It’s true enough — there’s enough real guys in it — that I’ll count it for that first point, but after that it gets dicey; the real “Nucky” did have a brother but he doesn’t seem to have been involved in bootleg shenanigans (and for that matter, the real Nucky was far less lethal than the show’s version), so he’s not a name figure per se. The cast won a few ensemble SAG Awards, so I’ll give him that one, but this is still only: 2
The Conspirator (2010) // Had…you guys ever heard of this shteez? Because I don’t think I had! Robert Redford directed it! In any event, the conspiracy in question is the one to kill Abraham Lincoln, but Whigham plays a Captain Cottingham, who does appear to have existed but I’d never heard of his ass either, so: 1
American Hustle (2013) // This is about Abscam, for a point; it got a few Best Ensemble wins, so I’ll give him that point too; his character, Carl Elway, is not a name as far as I know, and this one’s star has dimmed somewhat, so it’s not a hall-of-famer IMO: 2
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) // Just the for-showing-up point here: 1
True Detective (2014) // This one’s probably pushing it, but the first season’s central case did derive from a real story. Just the single attendance point for Whigs, though: 1
Narcos (2017) // Only a couple of episodes, but that’s enough for: 1
The Catcher Was A Spy (2018) // I don’t know, you guys. I carry espionage books at the shop, but when is it a crime and when is it just, you know, gubmint work? It’s not like Moe Berg sold secrets…and also, how major is this case really if you aren’t a baseball fan who went to Princeton? And, like, Joe Cronin (that’s Whigham) is a name…in baseball, but he wasn’t a spy. He was kind of a jackass on the management side — umpires got fired, probably for trying to unionize, while he was league president you know what I should just stop talking: 0
Waco (2018) // This didn’t end up doing much (with good reason; it’s boring as all get-out) and Whigham’s not a name in it: 1
City of Lies (2018) // For this of all things to notch Whigs a bunch of points is…odd, not to mention that I don’t relish the Depp Bet-Crapping I apparently will have to do, but despite my forgetting this Biggie/Tupac docudrama, it does exist (1), and Whigham does play a name figure in the case (Frank Lyga) (2). It appears to have sucked somewhat, so no awards pointage, but still not bad: 3
Vice (2018) // This is a bit more clear-cut than the Moe Berg flick; I have zero problem classing Dick Cheney as a war criminal and the biopic as true crime. Whigham isn’t a “name figure” here, but: 1
Dirty John (2018) // Completely forgot he showed up in an episode as the titular John’s brother William! Again: 1
Gaslit (2022) // It’s deffo true-crime; Whigham’s deffo a name figure; too early to say if it’s going to get awards attention, but Whigham is a bright spot in a production that overall is juuuust a mite too pleased with itself, so let’s hope it/he does. Until then: 3
So that’s 20 points total, divided by 92 entries, for a 21.7 BET-CRP. I tend to err on the side of awarding points versus not, but even if I throw out a couple of questionables, it’s still around 18-19%, higher than I’d predicted.
Is there an actor (or director, or longread stylist) you’d like me to do a rundown on? Email me at editorial at bestevidence dot fyi, or drop a suggestion here!
Tomorrow on Best Evidence: Well, look, I’ve just been informed that I won’t have hot water until Thursday night, so it’s possible the whole edition will focus on olfactory malfeasance. (Like the “Manson burrito” currently for sale on a murderbilia site. That thing has got to reek.) It’s also possible that I’ll review a podcast or a book! A book about…a deodorant heist!
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