The Jinx creators on Bob Durst, Serial, and their new podcast Crimetown

(l-r) Robert Durst and Marc Smerling.


In 2010, director Andrew Jarecki and writer-producer Marc Smerling released All Good Things, a drama starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst that was loosely based on the story of Manhattan property heir Robert Durst, whose wife Kathie went missing in 1982.

Though poorly reviewed, the film caught the eye of Durst himself, who offered the filmmakers an interview.

That sit-down interrogation became the basis for The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, a six-part HBO series which premiered in Australia on Foxtel last May, and became watercooler fodder around the world.

Two of the show's creators are headed to ACMI for the Australian International Documentary Conference at the end of the month.

As well as founding New York's Hit the Ground Running Films with Jarecki, where he produced Capturing the Friedmans and Catfish, Smerling served as both producer and cinematographer on The Jinx.

He'll be joined in Melbourne by Zac Stuart-Pontier, the show's co-producer and editor. Stuart-Pontier also edited Catfish, as well as Sundance breakout Martha Marcy May Marlene and the upcoming Bleed for This, starring Miles Teller.

The pair used the interview with Durst as a guiding light.

"When I got hired, I started with the initial interview with Bob, which was about twenty-five hours long", Stuart-Pontier told IF.

"I tried to cut almost a whole film just with that. We were constantly cutting and watching it and allowing that to direct us in terms of what holes we needed to fill in the investigation".

Initially the filmmakers intended to make a feature.

"We had a good four hour cut, but instead of getting cleaner and better as it got shorter it got worse", said Stuart-Pontier. "The magic was in the details".

According to Smerling, "the biggest challenge was getting people who had put this in their past to talk. Everybody from detectives who had investigated the original case to prosecutors to family members and people who had been left in the wake of three failed attempts to prove that Robert had committed murder – initially almost everybody was a no".

"Over time as we gained more information and we became experts on the case, we became emotionally tied into these people, like [Durst's missing wife] Kathie and [her brother] Jim McCormack. Jim we had worked with on All Good Things. He was the emotional heart which kept pushing us forward. Once we got down the line, and got a couple of people talking to us openly about it, it got easier".

Once the filmmakers settled on a more long-form approach, the length remained consistent, said Stuart-Pontier.

"The first time we laid it out it was six [episodes], and things were juggled back and forth between episodes, but it stayed at six. Towards the end there were many different things we tried to get into episode six that didn't work, but not that much".

The duo is excited to gauge the reaction to the show in Australia.

"Obviously it's a very American story", said Smerling, "but I think if there's any place that story resonates it's probably Australia. We're both former colonies right?" (laughs)

To Smerling, the rise of long-form crime investigation as entertainment – a la Serial or Making a Murderer – is exciting though not exactly new.

"I've always been a fan of detective stories, all those great Ross McDonald novels, etc. It's always been a big thing in television. Look at Law and Order".

"When crime happens, it's the most raw example of high-stakes human emotion".

"From a drama standpoint, the good guys and the bad guys are very obvious, and I think people are attracted to the simplicity of these conflicts. You get into the grey area a bit, particulary in The Jinx, when you're asked to like a guy who's been accused of three murders".

"The more an audience gets addicted to it, the more they start to see themselves in these characters, and the more they wonder what their own limitations and abilities are. I think people are attracted to the genre because it's about breaking the rules".

The pair is currently in the middle of another investigation – this time for a podcast.

"For us the podcast world is a great way to do research on projects that otherwise would be very difficult to do if you had to go out and shoot a lot of interviews", Smerling said. "It'd be very expensive. So we're using the podcast as a testing ground for storytelling".

Smerling namechecks the first season of Serial as "really well done".

"For me it was more about how a journalist interacts with someone who's in prison for murder than it was about finding out what happened and how the murder went down".

He also singles out Limetown, a throwback to the era of Orson Welles: "It's really cleverly done and those guys are really talented. They're exploring a part of radio that hasn't been explored in many years".

"With the podcast we're doing right now, the order is for twenty episodes; a hair-raising number. It's about crime again, and corruption. It's called Crimetown".

"Every season we're going to be looking at another city and a particular crime. The first season is about Providence, Rhode Island, and an era between the mid 70's and the mid 90's when organised crime, labour unions, corruption in the judiciary and corruption in politics all united in a strange and twisted way".

"People understand that the city was somewhat corrupt, but they don't understand the emotional content of it, which is these relationships which go back decades. How these different friends became intertwined and guily of this mass crime".

"I'm in deep, man (laughs). We're sitting in the edit room now. I'm telling you, it's fucking deep!"

After migrating from features to HBO to podcasting, will Smerling and Stuart-Pontier ever go back?

"I think we will go back to film", said Smerling, "but it is a bit of a dinosaur. Both things can be true".

"People have really gotten into the idea that they can absorb their entertainment over a long period of time. They can build bigger and more complicated relationships with characters".

"Once you watch Homeland or something like that, it's hard to go back and watch a two hour movie. It seems boring, because it takes so long, even though Homeland is so many hours if you put it together".

"But that fifty-minute format has created this need for a quicker piece of storytelling, even though the storytelling has slowed down. It's different. You can go off on tangents and come back. It's kind of delicious. Very much like a soap opera".

"The movie seems tired. I don't think it's the end of feature filmmaking, but people have to try harder to reinvigorate the format".

Smerling and Pontier will deliver a keynote address on The Jinx at AIDC 2016, and host a public screening of Catfish on February 28, 6.30pm, at ACMI.

Smerling will also host a masterclass: The True Detective.

www.aidc.com.au/sessions/marc-smerling-masterclass-the-true-detective

www.aidc.com.au/sessions/in-conversation-making-the-jinx

www.aidc.com.au/screenings/catfish-interrupted

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