True Crime Birthday · Fool Me Twice · The Irishman
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the true crime that's worth your time
It seems like every day is considered a National (something) Day, so it’s weird that no one has claimed September 30 as “National True Crime Day.” Today would have been Truman Capote’s 95th birthday, an age that I had to double-check because I feel like I’ve always thought of him as a super old-timey dude when, in actuality, he’s not much older than my father-in-law. (Born September 30, 1924, in New Orleans, all my sources say. Age 95 checks out!)
As Capote’s book In Cold Blood is considered by many to be the progenitor of modern true crime, it seems like today would be the day to celebrate the genre, were there a lobby to push such an honor. And now I’m going to saddle you with a couple questions that have haunted me since Friday, when I started making the outline for today’s newsletter: As I Googled to confirm that there isn’t a National True Crime Day, I came across this Capote-celebrating piece that was published Friday at the Bradenton (Florida) Herald, which says that In Cold Blood “remains the second best-selling true crime book in American history.”
First, is this true? I wasn’t able to verify the claim, but it seems plausible given that it’s presumably still taught in schools and is the likely subject of bulk orders. But now I’m wondering, if it is #2, what book is #1? I eagerly await your guesses and speculation in the comments. -- EB
You have spoken. Thank you, friends, for your ideas on what podcasts I should binge this week! I closed the poll Sunday morning, and the reviews you get this week will begin with Bear Brook, which took 46 percent of the vote. Watch for that one in Tuesday’s issue, as I’ll be listening today.
Then on Wednesday, you’ll get my review of Cold (which got 19 percent of the vote), on Thursday, you’ll get The Last Days of August (14 percent) and Friday will be the day you read about Broken Harts (five percent). Since all the other options basically tied for last, at 3 percent, I’ll mount a showdown between them for my drive back mid-October. -- EB
The first reviews for The Irishman are out. The film was the opener for the New York Film Festival, because of course it was. The critical consensus is not as rhapsodic as it was for some of director Martin Scorsese’s other true crime works (Goodfellas and Casino, for example), which seems to be due in part to its tone -- the NYT called it “somber,” “monumental,” and “elegiac.” (To be clear, the Times review is resoundingly positive, but A.O. Scott makes it clear that the movie pretty dark and a bummer. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) Time and CNet also praised the film, though the latter reviewer (Joan Solsman, that’s her tweet above) says that the “flawless” movie “felt like exceptional execution of the same story I've seen a billion times before.”
Of course, the other question about the movie -- perhaps asked even before “is it good?” -- is how the de-aging looks. Slate’s Sam Adams says that its limits are most apparent when we move past the faces (something I noticed with Sam Jackson in Captain Marvel, didn’t you? He’d look like the Sam I grew up with, then he’d run and I’d think “oh, yeah, this guy is almost 70”). If you’re interested in chewing over the movie before its November 27 release on Netflix, the New York Review of Books just dropped a lengthy elucidation of the film and its source material that’s worth reading when you have a moment. -- EB
A new podcast covers the mysterious disappearance of a female cryptocurrency celebrity. The BBC podcast, which as you likely guessed from the lead image is called The Missing Crypto Queen, covers the story of Ruja Ignatova, who was allegedly part of a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme at a company called OneCoin. Though OneCoin claimed to be an upstart bitcoin competitor, it was actually a Ponzi scheme that allegedly defrauded investors to the tune of $4.9 billion, the BBC reports. After its true nature was revealed, Ignatova allegedly fled, and hasn’t been seen since 2017. The podcast’s currently on its third episode, and I’m proud to say that it’s finally given me the tools to explain the blockchain to my mom, so I already feel like I’m winning. You can listen to it here, and get the backstory on OneCoin and Ignatova here. -- EB
What’s your take on Debbie Harry’s Ted Bundy story? The Blondie frontwoman has mentioned in past interviews that she believed that she might have had a brush with the serial killer, but in a recent interview with The Times (presumably to promote her recently-released memoir) she gave more details.
According to Harry, while hitchhiking in the early 1970s, she was picked up by a guy in a white car who quickly creeped her out. “I got in and the windows were rolled up except an inch and a half at the top,” Harry told reporter Decca Aitkenhead. “I realized there was no door handle, no window crank, no nothing. The inside of the car was totally stripped out. The hairs on the back of my neck just stood up.”
Harry says that the only reason she escaped the encounter was because the driver took a turn so quickly that the passenger-side door flew open, allowing her to jump out. “Thank God I got away from that asshole, and I just carried on,” she said. “Years later, after he was executed, I got on a flight and picked up a Newsweek, and I’m reading this story, and it says ‘Modus Operandi’, and it describes how he looked, the inside of his cars, and the hair on the back of my neck once again went out, and I said, ‘Oh my God, that was Ted Bundy.’” When she mentioned the encounter in past interviews, she says she wasn’t believed, but “I don’t really give a shit what they think. I just know what happened.” -- EB
Tuesday on Best Evidence: I’ll be somewhere along Highway 40, and I’ll have a lot to say about Bear Brook.
What is this thing? This should help.
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