My big problem with the Cecil Hotel thing is that I think the Elisa Lam case really isn't a case at all. I think she's a girl who had a mental illness problem and now is being endlessly exploited in death.
I watched it all but found myself doing other things while watching. It was ok --but overall boring. It might have been better cut down into a shorter product without all the filler. It was an interesting story but didn't have a clear point.
I’ve been spending a lot of time on Reddit recently (those Salt Lake City housewife reunions aren’t going to critique themselves) and the feelings there are violently negative, which surprised me. Yes, it’s overly long and meandering. But people are apparently not getting a huge part of what I thought the film’s message was: that the on line true crime community is often made up of people who are inadvisedly picking apart someone’s tragedy for their own amusement. Berlinger gave those people enough rope to hang themselves, which I thought they did quite nicely. The Reddit community seemed to think the YouTube sleuths and podcasters were being lauded, which I don’t believe was the point. People also seem to feel that if this was a “serious” documentary, Elisa Lam’s family would have participated. The documentary I would like to see would be one about the hotel’s history, in total. From building to the present day, that structure has seen a lot, including being a part of Skid Row (another documentary I’d like to see). Maybe if this docu had started out with the facts of the Lam case as they were determined to be and then went into the web sleuth nonsense, we would have gotten the point more immediately.
Personal to Eve: you can say “rich shithead” as much as you like. And I prefer my Graydon Carter from the Spy magazine days. The late, lamented Spy days. Sigh.
My big problem with the Cecil Hotel thing is that I think the Elisa Lam case really isn't a case at all. I think she's a girl who had a mental illness problem and now is being endlessly exploited in death.
I watched it all but found myself doing other things while watching. It was ok --but overall boring. It might have been better cut down into a shorter product without all the filler. It was an interesting story but didn't have a clear point.
I’ve been spending a lot of time on Reddit recently (those Salt Lake City housewife reunions aren’t going to critique themselves) and the feelings there are violently negative, which surprised me. Yes, it’s overly long and meandering. But people are apparently not getting a huge part of what I thought the film’s message was: that the on line true crime community is often made up of people who are inadvisedly picking apart someone’s tragedy for their own amusement. Berlinger gave those people enough rope to hang themselves, which I thought they did quite nicely. The Reddit community seemed to think the YouTube sleuths and podcasters were being lauded, which I don’t believe was the point. People also seem to feel that if this was a “serious” documentary, Elisa Lam’s family would have participated. The documentary I would like to see would be one about the hotel’s history, in total. From building to the present day, that structure has seen a lot, including being a part of Skid Row (another documentary I’d like to see). Maybe if this docu had started out with the facts of the Lam case as they were determined to be and then went into the web sleuth nonsense, we would have gotten the point more immediately.
Personal to Eve: you can say “rich shithead” as much as you like. And I prefer my Graydon Carter from the Spy magazine days. The late, lamented Spy days. Sigh.