While corporate consolidation has led to smaller documentary production budgets and fewer indie doc sales, the demand for true-crime docus has skyrocketed over the last few years.
Thats good news for documentary production companies like Dan Cogan and Liz Garbus Story Syndicate. This year, Garbus, Cogan and Story Syndicates head of documentary and nonfiction, Jon Bardin, have produced three true-crime documentaries: Hulus Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence, Netflixs Take Care of Maya and HBOs Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York.
About a string of murders in 1990s Manhattan, Last Call, like Stolen Youth and Take Care of Maya, has become a hit with audiences and critics alike. (The final episode in the four-part series air on July 30.)
Variety spoke with Bardin, Cogan and Garbus about what they are looking for in a true-crime project and what they steer clear of when it comes to murder.
You optioned Elon Greens book Last Call when it was still in galley form. What appealed to you about the story?
Cogan: With Last Call, we were really excited about telling a story set in the gay community in New York at the height of the AIDS crisis that was about men being victimized and fighting back and finding a way to turn their victimization into power. One of the things that Anthony Caronna and Howard Gertler did so well is that they also turned it into a love story for the gay community of that era. By telling a love story about that era, it also shows you how intensely horrible it was when those spaces were violated by this killer. So, it gives you a sense of the stakes and the larger meaning of the experience for those human beings in that era.
Liz, youve directed several true crime docus including Theres Something Is Wrong With Aunt Diane (2011), Who Killed Garrett Phillips? (2019), and Ill Be Gone in the Dark (2020). Is there a through line that connects them?
Garbus: I know that those films can be called broadly true crime, but at the end of the day I always thought of them the same way that I thought of (her 1998 Oscar nominated doc) The Farm: Angola, USA, which are films that explore the justice system, and who has power within that system, and who doesnt. My approach, whether it be on victims, survivors, like those in Ill Be Gone in the Dark or what we just did as a company with Last Call has to do with the underdogs a bit and who the justice system doesnt play into.
Its a bit perplexing how much people, especially women, love true crime. The worst day in someones life brings a great amount of entertainment to so many. Why do you think that is?
Garbus: One thing that Ill Be Gone in the Dark author Michelle McNamara talked about a lot was that one in three women have been survivors of sexual violence. So, there is this sense of the larger instability of our bodily autonomy and safety. Watching these stories and externalizing them is a way to deal with that anxiety in some way. Its also hard to be human and to figure out what the lines are. When you see those lines transgressed so clearly it helps you color in your own world a little more safely. So, in that sense, there is that comforting element to it, which is almost perverse given what it is that one is consuming. What we do as filmmakers is try to foreground those larger discussions so that the meat on the bones is the part thats profound, the part that makes you a more thoughtful human being, which is often subtext in shows about serial killers. For the (true crime) shows that we make it the text as opposed to subtext.
Ive read that true-crime docus appeal to broad audiences due to the reassuring narrative formula, the sense of moral clarity that reminds us of our good luck, and they also allow viewers to vicariously participate in the forbidden. Would you agree?
Cogan: Im going to say thats not what we do. True crime can be a vessel. It doesnt have to be a style or formula. There is a lot of true crime in part because its made inexpensively and that its designed to appeal to that primal lizard part of our brain in that formulaic way and nothing else. Its a quick and dirty fear rush. But if you put resources and ambition behind it and make the crime a gateway into a larger understanding of the world or of human beings or particular communities, it can be a sumptuous gourmet meal. Thats how we approach it.
Directors Zach Heinzerling (Stolen Youth), Henry Roosevelt (Take Care of Maya) and Anthony Caronna (Last Call) had never directed a true-crime show before. Why made them each right for each doc?
Cogan: We dont have a category in our heads that says this is a true-crime show, or this is a true-crime director. Our category is, is this an extraordinary, powerful story, and who is the great filmmaker who can tell it in the deepest, most profound, most compelling way? So, we are aware that other people call these shows true-crime shows and if that helps people watch them, then thats awesome. We are happy to take advantage of that, but that doesnt have anything to do with the way that we think about telling the stories or the way we choose directors for those stories. We are just trying to tell great stories with great filmmakers.
Have these crime stories kept Story Syndicate afloat during these difficult times in the doc distribution landscape?
Cogan: We talk a lot about the Venn diagram. So, there is what the marketplace wants, and then there are stories and ways of telling them that we are interested in. We are constantly looking for that space of overlap. Sometimes that space of overlap is broader and sometimes its more narrow. We are definitely in a moment in which the streamers are all giant multinational corporations focused on the bottom line more than those who have been the main distributors of documentary films and series in the past. There has been a consolidation and all of those companies are more bottom-line focused, but thats just where the marketplace is. So as a storyteller, you have to find a way to surf those waves and tell stories that you really deeply believe in and the way thats possible in that moment. Thats what weve tried to do.
With the success of the three crime-based shows Story Syndicate produced this year do you think the pendulum is swinging in the direction of quality true-crime content?
Bardin: I think the answer is maybe. There is some fatigue with base true crime. Elegant, compelling storytelling that people dont expect, like Last Call, the appetite for that is not going anywhere. But, yes. I do think theres a little fatigue with the formulaic true crime that has driven certain corners of the business for a long time.
Cogan: The more that people want to eat the Wagyu beef of true crime as opposed to the Big Mac true crime is good for us. We do the big fancy version and we try to do it in a way that is even more compelling and moving for people.