Look, I get why everything is a docuseries now. Both traditional TV and streamers want more hours that make them destination/must-subscribe programming, and some subjects really do need more than a couple of hours. I also acknowledge that, as a reviewer who has to synthesize The Next Big True-Crime TV Thing for a living, ninety minutes on my docket instead of nine episodes (still kind of mad at The Vow about that tbh) does make my life easier. But I’m still not wrong that not every true-crime topic needs a four-to-eight-hour docuseries.
Yeah, some things do. Other things don’t, but they do their six-bagger thing so well, you don’t mind. But the 90-120-minute feature used to be coin of the genre realm, I wouldn’t mind seeing things trend back that way, and in the event that Netflix et al. don’t make those as much anymore because they aren’t hearing ideas that seem to fit in the feature slot, let’s make them a list. I will start: Jerry Orbach’s relationship with “Crazy” Joe Gallo. Orbach was befriended by Gallo after playing a character based on Gallo in 1971’s The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight; Gallo was a regular at Sunday-night dinners at the Orbachs’, and Marta Orbach was getting ready to write a post-prison memoir with Gallo…until Gallo got weird about the contracts, withdrew from the Orbachs socially, and kind of iced them out when he ran into them at the Copa the night of his 43rd birthday. Which is also the night he got killed. (Reports that Orbach was present at Umberto’s seem not to be true, at least according to the Orbach bio I’m in the middle of.)
This is a perfect feature slice: a famous/beloved actor, a notorious gangster, disputed facts/witnesses, and I’m willing to bet no shortage of talking-head whores willing to weigh in. It’s a chewy story, but doesn’t need 300 minutes; 93 will do fine.
Okay, y’all’s turn. What crime stories do you wish would become not a bloated limited series, but a feature doc?
I am a fan of brevity. If a story is complex and has many important threads to cover, take the time/wordcount to do it correctly, but I worship at the altar of good editing.
I did enjoy it, mostly, but I think McMillions could have been one or two episodes. Six was excessive (even though I wanted more of that one jocular FBI agent).
I think usually, if a crime is solved, it should take less time to tell the story than an unsolved crime with several theories. If an entire mythos has built up around a historical crime, I understand why it could take more than one episode, but I also think there should be many fewer crimes that fall into that category than humanity currently allows.
I’d like a Betting On Zero-style doc about Lularoe’s implosion, once it fully collapses. I’ve watched some great YouTube videos on it. Deanne Brady Stidham is actually related to killer surgeon John Robert Brown, who did unlicensed gender-reassignment surgeries before he performed a medically-unnecessary leg amputation improperly and killed that patient. Come to think of it, that’s a doc in itself. Munecat on YouTube turned up that fact, and the Behind the Bastards podcast did an episode on Brown.
The recent Bill Hwang case sounds like it's got great potential, and also the very scammy world of NFTs. There is a recent case out of Russia which is getting practically no attention in the West, of a rapper called Andy Cartwright who either od'd or was killed by his wife, then found dismembered in their flat. It's gruesome and psychologically twisted stuff.
The next great Netflix feature doc (because not everything needs a docuseries)
I am a fan of brevity. If a story is complex and has many important threads to cover, take the time/wordcount to do it correctly, but I worship at the altar of good editing.
I did enjoy it, mostly, but I think McMillions could have been one or two episodes. Six was excessive (even though I wanted more of that one jocular FBI agent).
I think usually, if a crime is solved, it should take less time to tell the story than an unsolved crime with several theories. If an entire mythos has built up around a historical crime, I understand why it could take more than one episode, but I also think there should be many fewer crimes that fall into that category than humanity currently allows.
Talking-head whores, hee!
I'd like to see something on Maura Murray, but that's in part because I kind of want to gawk at James Renner try to be a mental gymnast in real time.
I’d like a Betting On Zero-style doc about Lularoe’s implosion, once it fully collapses. I’ve watched some great YouTube videos on it. Deanne Brady Stidham is actually related to killer surgeon John Robert Brown, who did unlicensed gender-reassignment surgeries before he performed a medically-unnecessary leg amputation improperly and killed that patient. Come to think of it, that’s a doc in itself. Munecat on YouTube turned up that fact, and the Behind the Bastards podcast did an episode on Brown.
The recent Bill Hwang case sounds like it's got great potential, and also the very scammy world of NFTs. There is a recent case out of Russia which is getting practically no attention in the West, of a rapper called Andy Cartwright who either od'd or was killed by his wife, then found dismembered in their flat. It's gruesome and psychologically twisted stuff.
I'm certain I've mentioned this before, but my wish is for an Anthony Pellicano (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Pellicano) doc.
No entries in the true crime race, but whoever plays Jerry Orbach better be able to sing and sing something swank in the film. The end.