We all have cases we’re weary of, for whatever reason. Maybe it’s that a round-number case anniversary has recently come and gone (the Tate-LaBianca murders), or the signal-to-noise ratio of crackpot theories to verifiable evidence gives you a headache (DB Cooper; sorry, buddy), or there’s a jokey cynicism to the coverage (Gacy).
I have a handful of these cases, unsurprisingly, and as I was combing through a literal ziggurat of Black Dahlia books the other day and feeling mostly impatient about how coverage of Elizabeth Short’s horrible demise mostly seems premised on the rubbernecking factor, I wondered if it’s possible for anyone to write or shoot a take on that case that I’d be not just not pre-exhausted by — but actively interested in.
And then I thought, if Casey Cep went out and lived with the case for a couple years, I would read the hell out of that. And if Ava DuVernay shot a scripted three- or four-parter about it, and zoomed in on the way LAPD might have used its investigation to continue violating the civil rights of Angelenos of color for no reason, I would watch the hell out of that.
What’s the case you can’t with — and which creator could save it?
(Doesn’t have to be a creator we associate with true crime; I’ve got a list of like 15 movies fantasy-directed by Terrence Malick, going back years.) — SDB
This a good reminder that it's often the "zoom" that matters! There are many instances of properties I thought I wasn't going to enjoy because of case fatigue, but then the writer/creator puts a spin on the story that I end up finding really compelling even if I didn't think I could stand to read another word on the subject. A good example of this is Jeff Guinn's Charles Manson book. Instead of re-treading the grisly particulars of the family murders, Guinn smartly approached it as a social history of America and California in the late 60s and early 70s. Karina Longworth's podcast series on Charles Manson's Hollywood did something similar.
So here are a few creator/well-tread subject match-ups I could really get behind:
Patrick Radden Keefe on Whitey Bulger, Erin Lee Carr on Carli Ann Fugate, Barry Jenkins on The Atlanta Child Murders, Kathleen Belew on Eric Rudolph.
What about Rodney Alcala? Wouldn't it be amazing if someone put in the work and managed to identify some of the women in the photos he took? It would be interesting to hear their stories. It doesn't seem like many (if any?) have been IDed so far, though. . . .
Agree with all the comments thus far. For me it is the JFK assasination that gives me fatigue. I blame myself and my grade school obsession with the event and old Life magazines. The Sixth Floor Museum is the best take I have seen on it thus far as they spend time and space looking at how communities process trauma. But if Jeff Guinn or Tony Horowitz wrote a book on that i’d read it in a hearbeat. Same with anything he writes.
This a good reminder that it's often the "zoom" that matters! There are many instances of properties I thought I wasn't going to enjoy because of case fatigue, but then the writer/creator puts a spin on the story that I end up finding really compelling even if I didn't think I could stand to read another word on the subject. A good example of this is Jeff Guinn's Charles Manson book. Instead of re-treading the grisly particulars of the family murders, Guinn smartly approached it as a social history of America and California in the late 60s and early 70s. Karina Longworth's podcast series on Charles Manson's Hollywood did something similar.
So here are a few creator/well-tread subject match-ups I could really get behind:
Patrick Radden Keefe on Whitey Bulger, Erin Lee Carr on Carli Ann Fugate, Barry Jenkins on The Atlanta Child Murders, Kathleen Belew on Eric Rudolph.
Jeff McDonald. Ugh.
What about Rodney Alcala? Wouldn't it be amazing if someone put in the work and managed to identify some of the women in the photos he took? It would be interesting to hear their stories. It doesn't seem like many (if any?) have been IDed so far, though. . . .
Agree with all the comments thus far. For me it is the JFK assasination that gives me fatigue. I blame myself and my grade school obsession with the event and old Life magazines. The Sixth Floor Museum is the best take I have seen on it thus far as they spend time and space looking at how communities process trauma. But if Jeff Guinn or Tony Horowitz wrote a book on that i’d read it in a hearbeat. Same with anything he writes.