Tag: true crime

Review: ‘Parkland Rising,’ starring David Hogg, Manuel Oliver, Rebecca Boldrick Hogg, Kevin Hogg, Ryan Deitsch, Aly Sheehy and Ronit Reoven

June 5, 2020

by Carla Hay

March for Our Lives activists in “Parkland Rising” (Photo courtesy of Abramorama)

“Parkland Rising”

Directed by Cheryl Horner McDonough

Culture Representation: Taking place in Parkland, Florida, and various other U.S. cities, the documentary “Parkland Rising” has a racially diverse group of activists (white, black, Latino and Asian) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: People affected by the mass murder at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School band together for activism against gun violence, but they face harsh opposition from National Rifle Association (NRA) supporters and other people who don’t want current U.S. gun laws changed.

Culture Audience: “Parkland Rising” will confirm the beliefs of the people who agree with this activism, while people opposed won’t change their minds or might have some misconceptions dispelled about these activists.

Patricia Paduay Oliver, David Hogg and Manuel Oliver in “Parkland Rising” (Photo courtesy of Abramorama)

There have now been several documentary films made about how people affiliated with Marjory Stoneman Douglas (MSD) High School in Parkland, Florida, have been coping with the tragedy of the mass murder that killed 17 people at the school on February 14, 2018. It’s understandable if some people might get all of these documentaries confused, and these documentaries (which are all independent films) will inevitably be compared to each other.

Before this review gets into discussing “Parkland Rising,” here’s a brief summary of the Parkland tragedy documentaries that have been completed so far:

“Parkland: Inside Building 12” (directed by Charlie Minn and released in 2018) has a step-by-step timeline account of the shooting spree, and the film includes interviews with the some of the survivors.

“After Parkland” (directed by Emily Taguchi and Jake Lefferman and released in 2019) focuses on a small group of students and some of their parents, to show how the tragedy affected them. Although activism for stricter gun control (including the formation of the activist group Never Again MSD) and school safety are mentioned and shown, the film is mainly centered on the film subjects’ lives in Parkland after the tragedy. (For example, what it was like for the students to attend their high school prom a few months after the shooting.)

“Parkland Rising” (directed by Cheryl Horner McDonough and released in 2020) takes a deep dive into chronicling the activism of the Parkland students, parents and supporters. There’s a lot of footage of what happened during the 2018 Never Again MSD tour across the United States.

“Us Kids” (directed by Kim A. Snyder) premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, and the film does not have a distributor or release date yet, as of this writing. “Us Kids” is also about the activism, but it focuses only on the students, not the parents or other authority figures.

“After Parkland,” “Parkland Rising” and “Us Kids” also cover the March for Our Lives event on March 24, 2018. The event, which was organized largely by Parkland survivors, had its flagship rally in Washington, D.C., but there were hundreds of other March for Our Lives rallies around the world that were part of the event.

Some of the same people are prominently featured in “After Parkland” and “Parkland Rising,” such as student activists David Hogg and Sam Zeiff; Manuel Oliver and Patricia Paduay Oliver, the parents of slain student Joaquin Oliver; and Rebecca Boldrick Hogg, who is David Hogg’s mother.

People interviewed in “Parkland Rising” also include Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was among those murdered in the shooting; Ronit Reoven, a psychology teacher at the school, who’s shown in the documentary leading a support group for student survivors; and David Hogg’s father, Kevin Hogg, a former FBI agent who is his son’s unofficial bodyguard and safety advisor.

“Parkland Rising” also includes footage of life at the high school after the mass murder. Teacher/yearbook advisor Sarah Lerner is shown with some students as they put together the school’s yearbook that includes tributes to the slain students. There are also separate commentaries from students in psychology teacher Reoven’s support group, including Danielle Gilbert, Morgan Williams, Elizabeth Stout, Amanda Lee and Stephanie DeOliveira.

Zeiff and Aly Sheehy (one of the more prominent Parkland student activists) are shown griping about the school’s new rule of prohibiting any backpacks that are not see-through. Sheehy calls it a “band-aid” to the problem. Zeiff holds up his cluttered see-through backpack and asks, “Do you know for certain that I don’t have a knife in here?” He adds, “It’s embarrassing that our school has to go through this. I definitely don’t think any young people were involved in this decision … We’re waiting for real change.”

One of the best things that “Parkland Rising” does that “After Parkland” does not is show how this activism does not exist in a bubble. “Parkland Rising” includes footage of a lot of raw and often angry reactions from people on the other side of the debate over gun laws. It’s what makes “Parkland Rising” a much more comprehensive film than “After Parkland,” because gun laws are a very emotional and divisive topic in the United States. “Parkland Rising” doesn’t sugarcoat or ignore that controversy at all.

“Parkland Rising” includes footage of opposition to the goals of Never Again MSD and similar groups. That opposition is shown as coming out in various ways—cyberbullying and death threats; counter-protestors or angry bystanders who try to shout down the Parkland activists during rallies and media appearances; and NRA supporters who have civil discussions with the activists.

For example, the documentary shows that every time David Hogg goes out in public, he can get praise or insults within seconds of each other in the same place. “Parkland Rising” chronicles a Never Again MSD boycott demonstration at a Publix supermarket in Florida, to protest Publix’s financial support of NRA advocate Adam Puth, a Republican who was running for governor of Florida in 2018. The protesters planned to do a “Die-In at Publix” demonstration, by lying down as a group in the supermarket, to symbolize and commemorate the people who’ve died because of gun violence.

While doing TV interviews outside the store before the protest, David Hogg (one of the most recognizable of the Parkland shooting survivors) is loudly heckled by angry white men. One of the hecklers chants while standing near his car in a nearby parking lot, “God bless America! NRA!” Another shouts from his car on the street, before speeding off: “Fuck you, David Hogg, you fucking bitch!” David Hogg wryly responds to the camera, “It means I’m doing something right.”

During another media interview, David Hogg is surrounded by TV camera people, and his father Kevin hovers protectively nearby. Kevin explains that when he accompanies his son to these types of public appearances, he’s always checking the hands of the people around David, to make sure that none of them will suddenly pull out a weapon.

During this public appearance, a middle-age male video blogger heckled David Hogg and shouted an accusation that David was being paid by billionaire George Soros, a high-profile contributor to Democratic politician campaigns. David Hogg replies to the heckler, “Dude, who the fuck is George Soros?”

David Hogg was a senior in high school when the shooting happened. At a time when many kids are worried about where they’re going to go to school or work after they graduate from high school, David Hogg and other Parkland students who became activists have to worry about death threats. The documentary shows this harsh reality and how it can take a toll on these young people and their parents.

Rebecca Boldrick Hogg, David Hogg’s mother comments in the documentary: “I’m not surprised that David’s become an activist, because he’s pretty much been an activist his entire life … My husband and daughter [Lauren] and I are the same way. That’s pretty much how we roll.”

She adds that since the mass murder, there’s been a change in David’s personality. She describes David as a “fun person,” but that people don’t see that side of him now because he’s been so “angry “since the shooting. The Hogg family also had install an elaborate security system for the home because of the death threats and other threats of violence.

Later in the documentary,  Kevin Hogg says of his children and other student activists: “I’m proud of them, but I’m sorry for what they have to go through at that age. I wish I could just put all that BS in the cabinet and let them live their years at the high school.”

His wife Rebecca adds: “I always wanted my kids to have—and they joke about this—the John Hughes high school experience, like the teen movies when I was a kid. And then, the shooting happened. I don’t there’s ‘typical’ anything anymore.”

Although the Parkland activists such as David Hogg admit that the bullying and violent threats can take a toll, they make it clear in the documentary that the changes they are fighting for mean much more to them than any threats, and that everything they’re doing to help their agenda for gun safety is worth the risk. Jaclyn Corin, one of the Parkland student activists, says that after the shooting: “My initial reaction was to get political. People were like, ‘This [political activism] isn’t going to work.’ Oh yeah, it is.”

Several times throughout the film, the activists have to reiterate that they are not against the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment (the right to bear arms), and they’re not about taking away people’s legally owned guns. In fact, many of the activists come from families who believe in owning guns. David Hogg’s mother Rebecca says, “We always had guns in our house.” But she admits, “Before the shooting, we never really talked about gun control.”

March for Our Lives co-founder Ryan Deitsch says that Never Again MSD has five main goals: (1) Repeal the Dickey Amendment to allow Centers for Disease Control research for gun violence; (2) Digitize records for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (also known as ATF), which currently keeps records on paper; (3) Ban high-capacity magazines for guns; (4) Implement universal background checks for gun buyers; (5) Ban assault weapons for private owners.

Out of all the parents of the murdered children, Manuel Oliver is perhaps the most visible and the most involved in getting media coverage for this activism. Several of the Parkland student have given him the affection name Tío Manny, which is Spanish for Uncle Manny. A Venezuelan immigrant who is now a U.S. citizen, Oliver is a visual artist who has done murals in various U.S. cities to commemorate his son Joaquin and other victims of the Parkland shooting. After Joaquin’s death, Manuel launched the nonprofit activist foundation Change the Ref, whose purpose is more gun safety and to empower future leaders who believe in this cause.

The documentary’s moments with Manuel Oliver and his family (including wife Patricia Paduay Oliver and Joaquin’s older sister Andrea Ghersi) are among the most emotionally powerful and unforgettable, especially when they have visceral reminders of Joaquin. Before leaving for a trip, he breaks down and cries as he listens to “Thinkin Bout You” from Frank Ocean, who was Joaquin’s favorite artist.

Manuel Oliver shares his philosophy on how he’s been coping with his son’s tragic death and how to handle the pushback against his activism: “I think the one main thing is to stay away from hate.” He says that he believes that Joaquin in heaven, and that his goal as a father is to do what is necessary to get to heaven. “I cannot risk the chance to be with Joaquin again.”

David Hogg praises Manuel Oliver by saying, “It’s amazing to see how the amount of love and compassion this man can have after such tragedy occurred.” Manuel Oliver says what keeps him motivated in his activism after experiencing the aftermath of the shooting: “I don’t want any other kids to feel the same nightmare, or any other parent to go through this.”

One of the standout segments in the film is showing how the Never Again MSD activists participated in a protest at NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, on August 4, 2018—what would have been Joaquin Oliver’s 18th birthday. Manuel Oliver gives a heartbreaking speech. And the approximately 1,000 activists easily outnumber the counter-protesters, who numbered about 40.

Vikiana Petit-Homme, a teenage executive director of March for Our Lives Boston, comments on the counter-protesters: “My problem with counter-protesters is … they don’t come to get anything out of it, other than to yell and scream and a bunch of kids. I know I’m on the right side of history on this one. I don’t think they can say the same.”

Guttenberg, one of the parents of a slain Parkland student, says in a separate interview: “The NRA creates this aura of this large, scary, massive group of people who are not affected by your loss and are going to punish you. And the majority is bullshit. They’re just people who buy into the delusional lie that when you say two words together—”gun safety”—that you are automatically going to be an anti-Second Amendment coming to take their guns … What’s different about Parkland is that not only are none of us shutting up, if they push at us, we come back harder.”

There are also some celebrity cameos in the film. Jennifer Hudson and Chance the Rapper are shown rallying with protesters during a March for Our Lives event in Chicago. Will.i.am, one of the executive producers of “Parkland Rising, is seen performing at another event. (Katie Couric, another executive producer of “Parkland Rising,” is not in the film.)

Several times during the filming of the movie, there were more mass shootings in the United States. The activists are shown reacting to this sad and tragic news. At one point in the documentary, there’s a harrowing montage list of mass shootings that occurred in the U.S. while the film was being made. It’s an effective way of showing how the crisis of gun violence has gotten worse, and it’s an issue that goes far beyond what is in this documentary.

“Parkland Rising” is undoubtedly sympathetic to the activists’ agenda, but director Horner McDonough does an admirable job of presenting the good, bad and ugly sides of this activism. Other documentaries might have put politicians in the film to give the perspectives of people who can make or revise these gun laws, but “Parkland Rising” wisely chose to keep the film focused on Parkland people and their supporters who are trying to make a change on a grassroots level. And really, if people need to see politicians talk about their stances on gun laws, there are plenty of other places to watch these politicians’ canned speeches. As David Hogg says at the end of the film about the activists’ goals: “This is a long fight, but the fight continues.”

Abramorama released “Parkland Rising” in select U.S. virtual cinemas on June 5, 2020.

2020 IDCon: Investigation Discovery’s annual fan event goes online-only with IDCon: Home Together

May 8, 2020

Joe Kenda (Photo courtesy of Investigation Discovery)

The following is a press release from Investigation Discovery:

ID’s beloved fan engagement event, IDCON, is going virtual for 2020 with IDCON: HOME TOGETHER. For the first time ever, ID fans are welcome to pour their favorite beverage, cuddle up with their cat and join ID for a network fan event that takes you behind the scenes of your favorite TV channel – right from the comfort of your own couch. This year will focus on keeping us all safe at home together, while still offering the chance to interact with ID’s stars. Attendees will be encouraged to ask their burning fan questions and will be treated to surprises, activations and special guest appearances throughout the two-hour event. Additionally, attendees will receive sneak peeks of upcoming programming for the network’s exclusive true-crime programming event, ID PRESENTS: NINE AT 9, kicking off on Memorial Day and featuring premium headline-making cases at 9 p.m. ET every night. ID Addicts can join the fifth annual IDCON: HOME TOGETHER on Zoom on Thursday, May 21 from 6-8 p.m. ET, sign up at IDCON2020. In lieu of an attendance fee, ID is encouraging donations to nonprofit organizations that we support at the channel, including: the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) , and  One Love.

“Connectivity is something we’re all longing for right now, and we know how devoted our ID Addicts are to our network and stars,” said Henry Schleiff, Group President, Investigation Discovery, Travel Channel, Destination America and American Heroes Channel. “For the past five years, fans have come to us in New York City and now, as a special treat during these trying times, we are coming to all of you. No lines. No sold-out venue – just the ID stars you love, the true crime content you crave, and you, from the comfort of your own home.”

IDCON: HOME TOGETHER will consist of four sessions running from 6 p.m. ET on Thursday, May 21st, and is scheduled to go until 8 p.m. ET. The session schedule is as follows:

FROM COUCH TO CAPTURE

Join crusaders of justice John Walsh and Callahan Walsh as they discuss their careers in crime-fighting and the meaningful work that they do on “In Pursuit with John Walsh.” The series alone, which relies on help from an active and engaged audience, in its past two seasons has helped bring 15 featured fugitives to justice and five missing children home. The Walshes will also discuss the inspiring work that they do with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and how their work keeps Adam Walsh’s legacy alive. Discussion will be moderated by SVP of production at ID Sara Kozak.

INSIDE JUSTICE

Take an inside look at how the justice system works through three unique perspectives – retired homicide detective Chris Anderson (“Reasonable Doubt”), former New York prosecutor Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi (“True Conviction”), and criminal defense attorney Fatima Silva (“Reasonable Doubt”). What cases are they following now?  How is the justice system adapting to change? How common are wrongful convictions?  How is self-isolation changing the crimes committed today?  Join ID for a conversation about convictions of the past and crimes of the present. Moderated by CBS’ “48 Hours” correspondent Maureen Maher.

CRIMINALLY ADDICTIVE

These are the stories that make headlines. The cases you think you know, but never really do. Join our panel of expert crime reporters, legal analyst Ashleigh Banfield, crime journalist Diane Dimond, and psychotherapist Dr. Robi Ludwig, as they discuss famous crimes that always seem to pose more questions than answers. From the purported suicide of Jeffrey Epstein to the suspicious death of Hollywood starlet Brittany Murphy, this is a discussion you won’t want to miss – and you won’t have to leave your own home to get the scoop. Moderated by Pamela Deutsch, Vice President of production for the “ID Mystery” franchise.

AT HOME WITH JOE

After 9 seasons and 142 episodes, it’s time to see a new type of Joe! Fans of the long-running hit “Homicide Hunter” were devastated to hear that the series had come to an end this past January. But with a brand-new series coming to ID later this year, we have not seen the last of Joe Kenda. Fans are invited to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear from Joe himself in the comfort of his own home – and we all know who will be operating the camera behind the scenes and hopefully make a special guest appearance! Fans are encouraged to submit video questions to Joe in advance – he might choose your question to answer in his own signature style! Moderated by Thomas Cutler, Vice President of production for “Homicide Hunter.”

About Investigation Discovery

Investigation Discovery (ID) is the leading crime and justice network on television, delivering the highest-quality programming to approximately 80 million U.S. households. From harrowing crimes to in-depth investigations and heart-breaking mysteries behind these “real people, real stories,” ID is the #1 destination for true crime stories on television. For exclusive web content and bonus material, fans can follow ID on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook or check out the network’s true crime content anytime and anywhere through ID’s TV Everywhere offering, IDGO.

Investigation Discovery is part of Discovery, Inc. (Nasdaq: DISCA, DISCB, DISCK), a global leader in real life entertainment, serving a passionate audience of superfans around the world with content that inspires, informs and entertains. Available in 220 countries and territories and 50 languages, Discovery delivers over 8,000 hours of original programming each year and has category leadership across deeply loved content genres around the world. For additional information about ID, please visit InvestigationDiscovery.com.

May 21, 2020 UPDATE: Here is the entire livestream of IDCON: Home Together:

Total running time: 2 hours, 21 minutes

Review: ‘Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story,’ starring Cyntoia Brown, Ellenette Brown, Kathryn Evans Sinback, Paul Bruno, Charles Bone and Georgina Mitchell

April 29, 2020

by Carla Hay

Cyntoia Brown and Charles Bone in “Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story”

Directed by Daniel H. Birman

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in Tennessee, this true-crime documentary tells the story of biracial Cyntoia Brown, who was adopted by a working-class black family; was convicted in 2006 of murdering a prostitution customer when she was a teenager; and spent years in a legal system of white prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and psychiatrists.

Culture Clash: Brown and her lawyers filed appeals over the years to have her life sentence reduced, because she claimed that she killed out of self-defense and that she should not have been tried as an adult because the killing happened when she was 16.

Culture Audience: “Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story” will appeal mostly to people interested in true-crime cases that explore issues over how different legal standards should or should not be applied to criminal defendants who are under the age of 18.

Kathryn Evans Sinback and Cyntoia Brown in “Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

Filmed from 2004 to 2019, the true-crime documentary “Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story” (directed by Daniel H. Birman) makes it clear from the start that it’s on the side of Nashville native Cyntoia Brown. She shot a man to death in 2004, when she was 16, and was convicted of first-degree murder two years later. Brown claimed the killing was in self-defense.

Her case and its final outcome have received a lot of media attention, so there’s really not much suspense in watching this film, which chronicles her 15-year saga to have her life-in-prison sentence reduced. (And if people don’t know the final outcome of the case, the title of this documentary pretty much gives it away.)

The film (which unfolds in chronological order) includes interview footage from the beginning of Brown’s case in 2004, when she was arrested for murdering real-estate agent Johnny Allen, who hired her for a prostitution encounter in his home. Allen was shot in the back of his head, while lying in bed with his hands clasped in front of him. Brown said she shot him because he threatened her, and she has never wavered from that story in her legal proceedings.

The beginning of the film shows Brown interviewed in juvenile detention, while awaiting trial. The main source of contention in her case was the sentencing she faced if found guilty. Under Tennessee law at the time, an underage person convicted of first-degree murder would get either a prison sentence of life without parole or a prison sentence of 60 years with the possibility of parole after 51 years.

Kathryn Evans Sinback, who was a defense-attorney advocate for Brown from the beginning, fought vigorously to prevent Brown from being transferred from juvenile detention to an adult jail. She lost that battle, but the documentary shows how the psychiatric evaluations of Brown were crucial to her defense. As Evans Sinback says in the film, “My job is to show the judge that Cyntoia is worth saving.” Evans Sinback, who at the time had to represent juveniles in the juvenile court system, was removed from the case when Cyntoia was transferred to the adult court system.

With a lot of up-close access, the documentary shows Brown’s evaluation sessions with forensic psychiatrist William Bernet and forensic psychologist James Walker in the months before she goes to trial. One of her meetings with Walker includes a Robert’s Apperception Test, where a patient is shown a drawing or a picture and asked to tell what they think is the story behind the picture. Her stories, as shown in the film, involve a lot of negative thoughts about betrayal and mistrust.

The teenage Cyntoia Brown reveals in these evaluation sessions that mood swings are very common for her and that she gets angry when she thinks people are trying to control her or tell her what to do. Viewers also are taken inside the meetings that the defense lawyers have to prepare for the trial, which include discussing with Bernet and Walker the results of Brown’s psychiatric evaluations.

Both doctors say that Brown was a very troubled person, with a mindset full of chaos, anger and paranoia. The consensus was that Brown has a serious personality disorder that required therapy in a residential program. But she was on trial for first-degree murder, and this wasn’t a charge that she could get off the hook for with a light sentence.

How did Brown end up in this mess? Although it’s already been covered in her trial and in the media reports about the case, the documentary shows that Brown had a very dysfunctional background. Her biological mother, Georgina Mitchell, came from a family with a history of alcoholism, mental illness and suicidal acts. Mitchell, who also spent time in prison, got pregnant with Cyntoia at the age of 16.

In the documentary, Mitchell says that she abused alcohol, marijuana and crack cocaine during the pregnancy. She eventually gave up custody of Cyntoia, because she said she couldn’t handle being a single mother. While still a toddler, Cyntoia was fostered and later adopted by Ellenette Brown (a teacher) and Thomas Brown (a truck driver), who is not interviewed or mentioned in the documentary. It’s implied that Ellenette and Thomas Brown eventually got divorced.

The documentary shows that Mitchell didn’t come back into Cyntoia’s life until after Cyntoia was arrested. Part of the reason was because the defense needed information about Cyntoia’s biological family background to explain why Cyntoia turned out the way that she did. The film also shows Mitchell visiting with her own mother, Joan Warren, because Mitchell says that she wants prove to the filmmakers how “crazy” her mother is and how her mother knows how to “push her buttons.” The two women don’t get into any big arguments on camera, but it’s clear that they have a very tension-filled relationship.

Ellenette, the quintessential fiercely loyal mother, says in the documentary that Cyntoia began to rebel as a teenager. She was expelled from public school, and she was enrolled in an alternative school, where she ran away. Cyntoia eventually dropped out of school, and moved out of her parents’ home. In documentary interviews, Cyntoia admits to being a rebellious drug abuser in her teen years and that she sought the wrong kind of attention, particularly from men.

By the time she was 16 years old, when the crime happened, Cyntoia was living in a motel with what she describes in the documentary as her boyfriend-turned-pimp Gary McGlothen, also known as Kut-Throat or Kut, where they would spend most of their time “getting high and having sex.” Cyntoia says that he pressured her to start prostituting herself, which led to her encounter with Allen, who picked her up from the street and took her back to his place.

According to Cyntoia, it was very unusual for her to go to a customer’s home for a prostitution job, since most of what she did as a prostitute took place in motels. She claims that during the encounter with Allen, she was very nervous because no one else knew that she was there, and he intimidated her because he seemed to be very controlling. She says she got even more frightened when he showed her his guns, but she wasn’t frightened enough to leave, because she was hoping he would fall asleep.

And at one point, when they were in bed together, she claims that Allen reached for what she thought was one of his guns, and that’s when she shot him with a gun that she kept in her purse. Courtroom footage shows that assistant district attorneys Jeff Burke and Lisa A. Naylor put a lot of emphasis on the fact that Allen was shot in the back of the head and then robbed by Cyntoia, as proof that it was first-degree murder. Although Cyntoia never denied that she killed Allen, she and her attorneys couldn’t convince a jury that she acted in self-defense. The jury came back with the guilty verdict in just six hours.

One of the core issues of Cyntoia Brown’s appeals in her case was whether or not Tennessee’s laws were too harsh in how juveniles were judged and sentenced in first-degree murder trials. The documentary also mentions that at the time she was convicted of murder, underage children involved in prostitution were treated the same as adults accused of the same crimes, but the law was eventually changed to classify underage children involved in prostitution as victims of child sexual abuse and/or sex trafficking.

The documentary moves along at a deliberate and meticulous pace, showing the dates and locations of each segment of footage. A great deal of time is devoted to courtroom footage (cameras were allowed in the trial, appeals and parole hearings), as well as interviews with the defense attorneys that Cyntoia has had over the years. In addition to Evans Sinback, Cyntoia’s other defense attorneys who are interviewed include Wendy Tucker and Rich McGee (who were the defense attorneys during the trial) and post-trial attorneys Paul Bruno, Charles Bone and J. Houston Gordon.

One of the major arguments in the defense’s appeal was that Cyntoia’s criminal actions were largely because she had fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), due to her biological mother’s abuse of alcohol while she was pregnant with Cyntoia. Studies have shown that FASD negatively affects judgment, and a high percentage of criminals have FASD. Cyntoia’s defense attorneys argued that this was crucial evidence that should have been introduced in her trial.

The documentary includes footage of forensic and criminal psychiatrist Richard Adler testifying during Cyntoia’s appeal that he examined her in 2011 and determined that she had FASD. The state of Tennessee countered with the argument that there was no medical proof (only the word of Cyntoia’s biological mother Mitchell) that Cyntoia was born with damaged health due to Mitchell’s alcohol abuse during the pregnancy.

If the conviction couldn’t be overturned, the defense team had the goal to get Cyntoia’s sentence reduced. The defense argued that Cyntoia, who had gotten a college education in prison, was a model prisoner who had greatly matured and had turned her life around. Cyntoia, her lawyers and many of her other supporters said that she was an example of someone who was rehabilitated and worthy of being let out of prison so that she could be a productive member of society.

A series of occurrences converged to create the circumstances that led to the final outcome of the case. First, and perhaps most importantly, after years of being locked up in prison, Cyntoia’s case got international media attention in 2017, when pop star Rihanna started a social-media campaign to get Cyntoia out of prison. The hashtag #FreeCyntoiaBrown went viral, and other celebrities began publicly supporting the cause, including rapper T.I. and reality TV star Kim Kardashian. These celebrity endorsements were the game-changing catalyst for the case moving forward.

Secondly, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam was leaving office in 2019. He was under pressure to give Cyntoia Brown clemency, as a good-will gesture before leaving office. Whichever side you’re on, the documentary makes it clear that Haslam’s decision had a lot to do with the timing of him leaving office. It’s up to viewers to decide whether or not Haslam’s decision was a political strategy for any future career ambitions he might have.

And what about the dead victim in all of this focus on Cyntoia? The documentary gives less than two minutes of screen time to show Anna Whaley, a family friend of Allen’s, speaking at Cyntoia’s final parole hearing. Whaley says about Cyntoia: “I hope sincerely that God has transformed her life.” She adds, “Johnny’s life mattered.” It’s the only time that the documentary tries to portray Allen as a human being who had a life worth living.

Although the documentary is undoubtedly sympathetic to Cyntoia, it’s clear that her case greatly benefited from celebrities who endorsed her. And although it’s not mentioned at all in the film, you also have to wonder if a lot of people would have cared as much if Cyntoia weren’t an attractive, photogenic young woman. Preston Shipp, a former Tennessee appellate prosecutor who changed his mind about Cyntoia serving out her life sentence and testified on her behalf during a parole hearing, seems to almost have a mild crush on her, by calling her “luminous” in his testimony.

The reality is that for every Cyntoia Brown, there are numerous other people in similar circumstances who don’t have the benefit of media attention or celebrity advocates for their cases. The media and celebrity attention definitely fast-tracked the final outcome of the Cyntoia Brown case. Otherwise, she would probably still be in prison, and director Birman would still be filming this documentary.

Although “Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story” rightfully gives credit to the defense team that didn’t give up, the documentary could have been a little more honest (and more interesting) if it explored how celebrity connections to fame, power and wealth can profoundly affect the outcome of a criminal case. In that respect, Cyntoia Brown isn’t quite the underdog that the documentary wants her to be by the end of the film.

Netflix premiered “Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story” on April 29, 2020.

Review: ‘Bad Education,’ starring Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney

April 26, 2020

by Carla Hay

Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney in “Bad Education” (Photo by JoJo Whilden/HBO)

“Bad Education” (2020)

Directed by Cory Finley

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily on Long Island, New York, and partially in Las Vegas, the drama “Bad Education” has a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Indian Americans) representing the middle-class and upper-class.

Culture Clash: Based on true events, the movie tells the story of corrupt administrators and their accomplices, who embezzled an estimated $11 million from the school district of Roslyn High School in Roslyn, New York.

Culture Audience: “Bad Education” will appeal primarily to Hugh Jackman fans and people who like dramas based on true crime.

Hugh Jackman and Geraldine Viswanathan in “Bad Education” (Photo courtesy of HBO)

“Bad Education” follows many familiar tonal beats of true-crime movies, but the riveting performances of Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney elevate what could have been a somewhat mediocre film. Based on true events that happened in 2002, “Bad Education” portrays the investigation that led to the downfalls of several people involved in an embezzlement/fraud scam that stole an estimated $11 million over several years from the high-school district in the upscale suburban city of Roslyn, New York. It’s said to be the largest prosecuted embezzlement in the history of American public schools.

The two people at the center of the crimes against Roslyn High School are school superintendent Frank Tassone (played by Jackman) and assistant superintendent/business manager Pam Glucklin (played by Janney), who work closely together and also cover up for each other. As it’s eventually revealed in the movie, they cared about more than just increasing the prestige level of Roslyn High School, the high-ranking  jewel in their school-administration crown. They also cared a great deal about increasing their personal wealth using illegally obtained school funds, mostly by billing the district for lavish trips, homes, cars and other personal expenses.

In the beginning of the film, which is effectively bookmarked with a similar scene at the end of the film, Frank is introduced like a rock star at a school assembly, which has gathered to celebrate Roslyn High School’s achievement of ranking at No. 4 in the U.S. for being the highest academically achieving high school. The school has reached this level under Frank’s leadership, and his goal is to elevate Roslyn High School to No. 1.

Frank’s friendly charm and winning smile have made him very popular with his co-workers, parents and students. By contrast, Pam has a prickly and dismissive personality, but her strong alliance with Frank has given her a lot of clout in the school district. Their boss is school board president Bob Spicer (played by Ray Romano), who is Frank’s biggest champion.

One of the school’s goals is a skywalk proposal, which would build a multimillion-dollar skywalk bridge to link the school from end to end. A bright and inquisitive student named Rachel Bhargava (played by Geraldine Viswanathan) is tasked with doing an article about the skywalk for Roslyn High School’s newspaper, The Beacon. At first, when she does a very brief interview with Frank for the article, she thinks it’s going to be a boring puff piece.

Rachel thinks so little of the assignment that she even tells Frank that it will be a puff piece. His response: “It’s only a puff piece if you let it be a puff piece. A real journalist can turn an assignment into a story.” It’s unknown if the real Frank Tassone ever said those words to any of the real student reporters of The Beacon who broke the news of the embezzlement scandal, but those words will come back to haunt Frank in this movie.

While preparing the article, Rachel needs to get some facts and statistics about the skywalk construction proposal bids that the school district received from contractors. She has to get permission from Pam to access those documents, which are in a very cluttered storage area of the school. While Frank was accommodating and gracious in giving his time to Rachel, Pam is impatient and condescending when talking to Rachel for the article. Pam gives Rachel the room key to access the requested documents, but warns her that the area is so messy and disorganized that it will be challenging for her to find the paperwork that she’s seeking.

The storage area turns out to have a treasure trove of documents that Rachel’s assigning editor Nick Fleischman (played by Alex Wolff) happens to notice when he accidentally knocks some of the papers out of her backpack when he impatiently tries to stop her while walking down a school hallway. (It’s one of those moments in the movie that probably didn’t happen in real life, but was fabricated for dramatic purposes.)

Nick thinks she may be on to a big story, so Rachel finds out through further investigation that the documents have a lot of proof that invoices charging a fortune have been billed to the school district, but many of the companies listed on the invoices don’t exist. Rachel gets help from her father David Bhargava (played by Hari Dhillon) in doing the grunt work of making calls to investigate the legitimacy of companies that are listed on the school invoices.

Why does Rachel’s father have that much free time on his hands? In a minor subplot, it’s revealed that he lost his job because of accusations that he was involved with insider trading. In the midst of investigating corruption at her own school, Rachel at one point asks her father if he really was guilty of insider trading. His answer serves to telegraph Rachel’s decision to report what she’s found out.

What happens next has a domino effect that exposes elaborate, longtime schemes orchestrated by Frank and Pam. Because of this high-profile case, many viewers might already know about the outcome. However, screenwriter Mike Makowsky (a Roslyn native who graduated from high school seven years after the scandal) and director Cory Finley infuse the movie with enough suspense and sly comedy to make it a slightly better-than-average telling of a crime story.

“Bad Education” takes a sometimes sardonic look at how manipulative and cunning Frank was in covering up his crimes. He was a man of many faces—literally, since his vanity facelifts and meticulous application of makeup are shown in the movie—and many secrets, which he covered up with a web of lies that eventually unraveled. Even in his personal life (Frank was a closeted gay man), he deceived the people who were closest to him. The movie is also a takedown of the weak-willed enablers who knew about the corruption, but were complicit in covering it up because they didn’t want to lose their jobs and they wanted to keep up the appearance that they had an ideal school district.

Frank also mastered the art of deflection, so that when he was under scrutiny, he was able to turn it around on potential accusers to make them afraid of getting in trouble for not detecting the problem earlier. He also used, to his advantage, the administration’s fixation on increasing the prestige of Roslyn High School, which tied into many administrators’ ulterior motives of raising the property values in Roslyn too.

Janney doesn’t have as much screen time as Jackman does, but she makes the most of characterizing Pam as being more than just a selfish and greedy shrew. The movie shows how she was generous to a fault in sharing her illegally funded wealth with her family. That generosity would turn out to be her downfall, since she allowed certain family members to use school credit cards to fund their lavish personal spending. The family members who were also part of the widespread scam included Pam’s husband Howard Gluckin (played by Ray Abruzzo); Jim Boy McCarden (played by Jimmy Tatro), her son from a previous marriage; and her co-worker niece Jenny Aquila (played by Annaleigh Ashford), who relies on Pam for financial help.

All of these family members are dimwitted in some way—they didn’t do much to hide their identities in the paper trail that exposed their crimes—but Jenny is portrayed as particularly loathsome. At one point in the movie, even after some of the crimes were exposed, Jenny tries to take over her aunt/benefactor Pam’s job at the school. Jenny also makes a pathetic and botched attempt to blackmail Frank, who quickly puts Jenny in her place and reminds her that she’s no match for him and his devious manipulations.

When Pam’s world starts to unravel, Janney uses subtle cues in showing how this character’s carefully constructed façade starts to crumble, as her perfectly posh, enunicated English starts to give way to a very working-class Long Island accent. Pam is so obsessed with keeping up appearances that she makes the mistake of being too loyal to Frank when things start to crash down on them.

“Bad Education” is a very Hollywood version of a seedy true crime story. In real life, none of the people were as glamorous-looking as the actors who portray them in the movie—although, in real life, the embezzlers spent money as if they were Hollywood celebrities. The movie accurately shows that people got away with crimes of this length and magnitude because they were able to fool others by having a “respectable” image. The ending scene effectively illustrates that Frank’s inflated ego and arrogance led him to believe that he was a legend in his own mind—and the results were reckless crimes that destroyed school finances, careers and people’s trust.

HBO premiered “Bad Education” on April 25, 2020.

Review: ‘A Thread of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy,’ starring Dana DeKalb, Christopher Worth, Zipporah Lomax, Nusheen Bakhtiar, Shonda Jones, Dontay Davis and Octavio Choi

April 9, 2020

by Carla Hay

“A Thread of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy.” Pictured from left to right: Ciera Hart, Jeremiah Hart, Abigail Hart, Devonte Hart, Hannah Hart and Markis Hart. (Photo courtesy of 1091 Media)

“A Thread of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy”

Directed by Rachel Morgan

Culture Representation: This true-crime documentary—about a white American lesbian couple who committed murder and suicide by driving themselves and their six black/racially mixed kids off of a cliff in 2018—interviews a diverse group of people, including friends of the couple; some of the children’s family members; and various people with knowledge about the tragedy.

Culture Clash: The lesbian couple—Jennifer and Sarah Hart—had a long history of allegedly abusing the children, but were able to fool people into letting them keep custody of the kids.

Culture Audience: “A Thread of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy” will appeal primarily to people interested in true-crime stories and real-life examples of the deep systemic flaws in America’s child-welfare system.

“A Thread of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy.” Pictured in back row, from left to right: Markis Hart, Sarah Hart and Jennifer Hart. Pictured in front row, from left to right: Ciera Hart, Jeremiah Hart, Abigail Hart, Devonte Hart and Hannah Hart. (Photo courtesy of 1091 Media)

The disturbing documentary “A Thread of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy” examines what led up to the tragedy of two mothers driving themselves and their six adopted children off of a cliff in Mendocino County, California, on March 28, 2018. Although the film (directed by Rachel Morgan) does not uncover anything new (the story has been extensively covered by the media), the documentary gives some insight into how people can be fooled by superficial images on social media.

Jennifer and Sarah Hart, who were both 38 at the time of their deaths, were a married lesbian couple who adopted six children whose biological parents no longer had rights to them. The children were two sets of biological siblings. Adopted first, in 2006, were racially mixed biological siblings Markis (born on July 1, 1998), Hannah (born on February 25, 2002) and Abigail (born on December 26, 2003), who had the same mother. In 2008, the Harts adopted their next set of biological siblings, who were all African American with the same biological mother: Devonte (born on October 24, 2002), Jeremiah (born on February 24, 2004) and Ciera (born on April 20, 2005), who sometimes had her named spelled as Sierra.

All of the children came from Texas. Tammy Scheurich—the biological mother of Markis, Hannah and Abigail—voluntarily relinquished her parental rights because she spent time in prison. Scheurich has a brief audio interview in the documentary, where she says: “When they took my children, I went into a deep depression.” She explained her decision to give up her kids: “I tried to make the most unselfish decision for the children.”

Sherry Hurd—the biological mother of Devonte, Jeremiah and Ciera—is not interviewed, but several court records shown in the documentary indicate that she lost custody of the kids because of her drug addiction. The biological fathers of all six children were unable to take custody of the kids. Devonte, Jeremiah and Ciera were living with an aunt named Priscilla Celestine (a sister of their biological father), who then lost custody of the three kids for reasons that are not stated in the documentary. (According to news reports and court records, it was because Celestine violated a court order not to let the kids be around their biological mother.) And that’s how the three kids ended up being adopted by Jennifer and Sarah Hart, who were living in Minnesota at the time.

Shonda Jones, a family attorney in Houston who was involved in the Celestine case, says in the documentary that the court’s decision to yank the children from the custody of their aunt was abrupt, unfair and cruel. She gets emotional when talking about how Celestine (who’s not interviewed in the documentary) wasn’t given a real chance to fight for custody of the kids.

Meanwhile, Hurd’s stepson Dontay Davis talks about how, because of his own legal problems, he wasn’t allowed to see his stepsiblings because he was told that he was a “bad influence” on them. Nathaniel Davis (who’s identified in the movie as a stepfather of Devonte, Jeremiah and Dontay) says in the documentary that once kids end up in the child-welfare system, “they’re lost.”

After adopting the kids, the Harts lived in Minnesota, then Oregon, and finally in Washington state, where they moved in 2017. They were investigated for child abuse by child-protective services in all three states, beginning in 2008, with reports saying that the children showed signs of being beaten and deliberately starved. In 2010, when the family lived in Minnesota, Sarah was also arrested and charged with misdemeanor domestic assault and malicious punishment of a child. She pleaded guilty, was fined $385, and given a 90-day sentence, which was later stayed, and she was put on supervised probation for one year. Abigail later told people that Jennifer was the one who caused most of the abuse, but Sarah took the blame for it.

The documentary (whose total running time is just 57 minutes) gives almost most no information about the two women’s backgrounds, such as how they met and what their own family upbringings were like. The film also has no investigation into why Jennifer and Sarah Hart were able to adopt six children in such a short period of time when it’s hard enough for people to adopt one child. What the documentary also doesn’t mention is that after Sarah Hart’s arrest, the children were home-schooled, with Jennifer as the stay-at-home-mother, while Sarah was the one who worked outside of the home in low-income retail jobs.

Also not mentioned in the movie: Both women were college-educated and majored in elementary education. It’s a sad fact that they went to college to become teachers for children, considering all the abuse that they were accused of inflicting on their own kids. As for how Jennifer and Sarah Hart were getting money to raise six kids, it came mostly from the state of Texas. That’s an important fact that should have been mentioned in the film because it shows that the Harts were raising their family mostly through government funds from a state that clearly did not keep track of or was not notified about the child-abuse allegations.

The relatives of Jennifer and Sarah Hart are not interviewed in the documentary, but several of their friends are. They all claim that they only saw a happy family and were shocked to hear about the murder-suicide tragedy. The documentary doesn’t really explain how long these friends of the Harts knew the family, but what’s clear is that all the friends were deceived into thinking that the Harts had a loving home. It’s also why they initially couldn’t believe that the car crash was a murder-suicide.

Christopher Worth, one of the family friends, described the children this way: “They were all one big hug. No pretense, no dishonesty” and that they were “completely full of effervescent, intoxicating love.” However, he admits that Jennifer (or Jen, as her friends called her) “didn’t really anticipate what she signed up for” in adopting six kids, and she sometimes seemed overwhelmed.

Other family friends who give their perspectives include Nusheen Bakhtiar, Zipporah Lomax, Riannah Weaver, Dan Corey and sisters Amanda and Jennifer Price, who all say the same thing: They saw no signs of abuse. There’s also an interview with Sharyn Babitt, who’s described as an “online gaming friend” of Jennifer Hart, who spent at least one or two hours a day playing online games. And there’s an interview with Brittini New, who used to work with Sarah at a Kohl’s store where Sarah was a manager. According to New, Sarah was very quiet and almost never talked about her kids when Sarah was at work.

Based on these interviews, a picture emerges of Jennifer and Sarah Hart being very different behind closed doors in their home, compared to the way they presented themselves to the rest of the world. They isolated their family until it was time for them to go to public events, such as music festivals and rallies, where they would pose for staged family photos and videos. It’s implied, but not explicitly stated, that the people who call themselves “family friends” of the Harts knew them mostly from these social events, not from frequently visiting the Hart family home.

Jennifer was the more dominant, abusive mother, while Sarah was the more passive, quieter person in the relationship. Based on what the children told some people, Sarah is described as someone who initially tried to stop Jennifer from abusing the kids, but then eventually Sarah tolerated the abuse. And although the family friends interviewed in this film say that they didn’t know about any abuse allegations against the Harts, some of them were aware that Jennifer expressed feelings of anger and depression about being a mother. However, the family friends assumed that they were normal, temporary feelings that all parents feel sometimes when they’re frustrated with their kids.

To the outside world, Jennifer and Sarah Hart were politically progressive liberals who would bring their kids to Black Lives Matter rallies and other events for social-justice issues. The Harts also liked to go to music festivals—many of the friends interviewed in the film are definitely neo-hippie/musician types. And the Harts posted numerous photos and videos on social media (the documentary includes many of these images), that showed that they had a seemingly loving and happy family. Unfortunately, these images were all part of an elaborate façade.

Dana DeKalb, who was the Harts’ closest neighbor in Woodland, Washington, gives the most compelling interview in the documentary. She describes how Devonte would come over to her home, sometimes multiple times a day, and ask her to give him food. Over time, he began to ask for more food and became more specific about what he wanted, but he begged her not to tell his mothers that he was getting food from her.

Eventually, DeKalb called child-protective services, which had a pending investigation against the Harts at the time of the murder-suicide. Some people speculate in the documentary that the Harts killed themselves and their children because the ongoing CPS investigation in Washington state would have uncovered information that would have led to the Harts being fully exposed as child abusers and they would have lost custody of the kids.

Even more harrowing than Devonte begging for food was an incident involving oldest daughter Hannah. DeKalb said that the first time she knew something was wrong in the Hart household was when late one night, she was awoken by a very distressed Hannah at her door. The child burst into the home and pleaded for help, by asking DeKalb to hide her from Jennifer and Sarah, whom Hannah described as “abusive and racist.” DeKalb says that she was in shock while Hannah hid in a room and while she could hear Jennifer, Sarah and the other kids outside looking for her.

Eventually, the Hart family members found Hannah hiding in the house, and Jennifer made the child leave with the family. In the documentary, DeKalb also reads an apology note that she received the next day. The note was written and signed by Hannah, but it sounds like it was dictated by an adult. In the note, Hannah says that she was sorry for the disturbance, but she was emotionally upset because of her siblings and also sad that the family had recently lost their two cats.

However, the incident with Hannah was so disturbing that DeKalb’s father, Steve Frkovich, called 911 (part of the phone call is played in the film) to report suspected child abuse in the Hart home. DeKalb tears up with emotion when she remembers that Devonte later confessed to her that what Hannah said that night was true, but Devonte implored DeKalb not to tell anyone that he told her that.

The documentary shows that DeKalb, more than the “family friends” of the Harts, comes across as the most aware that the kids needed help. And this observant and concerned neighbor also wasn’t blinded by superficial images that Jennifer and Sarah Hart put on social media. Although the film has plenty of the staged “happy family” photos and videos, there’s one heartbreaking photo that clearly shows a shirtless Devonte and Jeremiah looking emaciated with strange marks on their bodies. It’s not stated in the documentary if this photo was ever posted on social media, but it would have been enough evidence to put the kids in protective custody if their abuse had been properly investigated.

Devonte, who’s described as the “star” of the family because he was the most charismatic and sensitive of the six kids, briefly experienced fame in 2014, because of a photo of him that went viral. The photo shows Devonte, with tears streaming down his face, hugging Sergeant Bret Barman of the Portland Police Department in Oregon during a rally protesting the Ferguson, Missouri, police shooting of Michael Brown.

Because the photo became a viral sensation, the Harts experienced overnight fame, but got extreme reactions (admiration and hate) as a result. Some of the family friends in the documentary try to place some of the blame on social media for the murder-suicide tragedy, by claiming that the negative attention caused Jennifer to go into a downward spiral. But it’s a weak argument, because there were clearly major problems in the family long before they became semi-famous through social media.

Speaking of haters on social media, DeKalb said that some of the Harts’ family friends (whom she does not name) targeted her for hate on social media when they found out that her family had reported the suspected abuse of the Hart kids. DeKalb says that she was accused of being racist and homophobic by these friends of the Harts. Jennifer and Sarah Hart reportedly used these type of bigotry accusations to their advantage, in order to deflect scrutiny when people questioned their parenting skills. It might explain why they never lost custody of the kids, despite growing accusations that the Harts were abusive to the children.

Octavio Choi, a child psychiatrist who didn’t know the Harts, is interviewed in the documentary, and he warns people not to use “perfectly curated” images on social media as a way to judge how people really are, because those images are often not reality or they don’t tell the whole story. The documentary’s coverage of the police investigation in the car crash relies heavily on archival footage of a press conference given by California Highway Patrol investigator Jake Slates. After the investigation, the case was officially ruled a murder-suicide.

“A Thread of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy,” although it has several interviews and is an absorbing documentary, doesn’t really uncover anything new or insightful into how the system failed these children. There’s no mention if the filmmakers tried to contact any of the social workers who were involved in investigating the abuse claims. And there’s absolutely no explanation for why Jennifer and Sarah were able to continue to get a lot of government funding from Texas to raise these adopted kids when they weren’t even living in Texas anymore and apparently weren’t accountable to the child-welfare system in Texas. (It would be different if the children were in foster care and still wards of the state.)

There are also issues about interracial adoptions and gay-parent adoptions that aren’t fully explored in the movie. If Jennifer and Sarah Hart were black, would they have gotten away with what they did for so long? If the kids were white, would they have been treated better by the system? And in an adoption system where politically conservative states such as Texas make it difficult for same-sex couples to adopt one child, how did Jennifer and Sarah Hart end up with six adopted children from Texas?

These are questions that will never have one definitive answer, but the documentary doesn’t show any attempt to give much background information on the adoption process for these children. Did Jennifer, the more abusive parent, have a history of abuse or mental illness before she became a parent? What was the screening process for Jennifer and Sarah Hart to adopt six kids in such a short period of time? It doesn’t seem to be enough for the film just to say that the biological mothers lost parental rights to these kids.

There could have been an extra 15 or 20 minutes covering this important aspect in explaining how these kids ended up being adopted by Jennifer and Sarah Hart. The documentary also should have covered who in the child-welfare system was responsible for monitoring the kids’ well-being, considering the children’s troubled background, the numerous abuse allegations, and the fact that Jennifer and Sarah Hart were using Texas government funds to raise the children.

However, a lesson to be learned from this tragedy is that people should not be fooled by what’s presented on social media. And the most important message is that if abuse is witnessed, or if people say they are being abused, then it needs to be reported, even if there is pressure to stay silent.

1091 Media released “A Thread of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy” on digital on April 17, 2020. A portion of this movie’s proceeds will be donated to Teens Voice USA and Honor the Earth, which are two causes that were supported by the Hart kids.

Review: ‘The Scheme,’ starring Christian Dawkins, Steve Haney, Dan Wetzel and Rebecca Davis O’Brien

March 31, 2020

by Carla Hay

Christian Dawkins in “The Scheme” (Photo courtesy of HBO)

“The Scheme” (2020) 

Directed by Pat Kondelis

Culture Representation: The true-crime documentary “The Scheme”—about a corruption scandal involving the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and an aspiring manager of basketball players—interviews a mix of African Americans and white people representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: Christian Dawkins, one of the men at the center of the scandal, says that he was the “fall guy” for widespread corruption in the NCAA and that he was unfairly entrapped by the FBI.

Culture Audience: “The Scheme” will appeal mostly to people who have an interest in true crime and sports scandals, but this documentary is openly sympathetic to Dawkins, the only person involved in the scandal who’s interviewed for the movie.

Christian Dawkins in “The Scheme” (Photo courtesy of HBO)

If high-school basketball stars are paid by people who want them recruited to a college basketball team, is that corruption or is that common sense? In the very slanted documentary “The Scheme,” former basketball wheeler dealer Christian Dawkins says it’s common sense. The law takes the opposite stance, and it’s why Dawkins was busted in a 2017 FBI sting that led to two trials and Dawkins becoming a convicted felon.

“The Scheme,” directed by Pat Kondelis (who won a Sports Emmy for Showtime’s 2017 documentary “Disgraced”), doesn’t even try to be about the filmmakers doing any original investigative journalism. Instead, it’s mainly concerned with being the first TV interview that Dawkins has given since he was arrested in 2017 and later served time in prison for fraud and bribery charges.

Although the epilogue of “The Scheme” mentions that key figures in the wide-ranging NCAA scandal declined to be interviewed for the movie—including others who were arrested; coaches who were implicated but not arrested; and officials from the FBI and NCAA—this documentary instead gives a wide berth to Dawkins’ side of the story. “The Scheme” also relies heavily on interviews with journalists who actually did the investigative work that’s used in the movie, but the filmmakers chose not to do their own further investigations.

Dawkins even says in the documentary, “I don’t even want to tell my side of the story as much as I want to tell the bigger story and my opinion.” And yet, “The Scheme” filmmakers don’t follow up on the widespread corruption claims that Dawkins brings up while being interviewed. This failure to follow up is the equivalent of being handed a ball in a sports game and dropping the ball.

Dawkins was 24 years old when he was arrested in the 2017 scandal, which involved an extensive FBI investigation and federal prosecution by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, since many of the transactions took place in New York City. By his own admission, Dawkins is cocky, because he has long considered himself to be a marketing-savvy entrepreneur who’s destined for greatness. And, as the documentary shows, he has a tendency to stretch the truth or lie if it will make him look good or make him money.

The beginning of the film goes over his upbringing and background to explain how Dawkins ended up serving the longest prison sentence (18 months) out of all of the people arrested in the scandal. “The Scheme” interviews Christian Dawkins’ parents Lou and Latricia Dawkins, seated on a couch together, and they confirm that the family’s life revolved around basketball, because Lou was a basketball coach at top-ranking Saginaw High School in their hometown of Saginaw, Michigan.

All three of the  Dawkins kids—Christian and his younger brother and sister—played basketball in school. Their father Lou Dawkins says in the documentary that basketball was the children’s choice of sport and they took the initiative to play basketball, and not because of pressure from him. The skeptical “rolling eyes” reaction of Lou’s wife Latricia puts some doubt on that perspective, and she says, “I don’t know if that’s all true, but I’ll go with it.”

What the parents do agree on is that Christian showed signs of being interested in business from an early age, when he was about 10 or 11. Instead of sports magazines, he would be more likely to read business magazines. Lou says about Christian’s basketball skills as a child: “He was good, but he was stubborn,” and that Christian often had a hard time listening to advice and rules that his father gave him. But his parents lovingly describe him as “intelligent.” And his mother Latricia says about Christian: “My child has always been different.”

According to Christian, one of the biggest influences in his life was the 2000 non-fiction book “Sole Influence: Basketball, Corporate Greed, and the Corruption of America’s Youth,” by Dan Wetzel and Don Yeager. (Wetzel, who covered the 2017 NCAA scandal for Yahoo Sports, is interviewed in the documentary.) Reading the book led to Christian starting a “basketball insider” website called Best of the Best Prep Basketball Scouting, which he started while he was in high school. The website charged $600 per person to get access to information about the best high-school basketball players in Michigan and other parts of the Midwest. Christian’s mother said she didn’t find out about this business until checks started arriving in the mail for Christian.

And showing his tendency to lie in order to make money, Christian admits in the documentary that he once ranked himself as a No. 1 basketball player on the website, even though he was an average basketball player. Christian’s attorney Steve Haney, who says he’s known Christian since Christian was about 10 or 11 years old, laughs when he remembers that Christian even lied about his height on the website, by claiming he was 6’2″, when he’s actually 5’10”. The documentary has archived pages from the website that actually show the rankings with the false 6’2″ claim.

But then tragedy struck the Dawkins family: Christian’s younger brother Dorian, who was a star basketball player in high school, died of an undetected heart condition when Dorian was 14. Christian says that Dorian is still the best friend he ever had. Dorian’s untimely death led Christian to start a charity basketball tournament with the American Heart Association, and the Saginaw hometown team switched its name from Team Pride to Dorian’s Pride. Christian also says he was responsible for getting Dorian’s Pride a hefty sponsorship deal with Under Armour. He claims that Dorian’s Pride was the only Midwest high-school team at the time to get a sponsorship with Under Armour.

Christian makes several other claims in the documentary, such as that he was the “general manager” of the Dorian’s Pride team when he was 16. He says that he “picked all the coaches and players, the tournaments we played in,” but there’s no sense that the filmmakers did any independent fact-checking for many of his claims, and they just took his word for it. All that Christian’s attorney Haney says about Christian’s role in Dorian’s Pride was that Christian “had an eye for talent and, more importantly, he worked.” Because of Christian’s accomplishments while still in high school, and because he was a better wheeler dealer than he was a basketball player, Christian says he decided not to go to college, so he convinced his parents that he didn’t need a college education.

According to Christian, his first real job out of high school was as “managing director of financial services” at a company he doesn’t name. The company name isn’t as important as what Christian claims that he accomplished while working there: He says he became the youngest person to sign basketball players who ended up being first-round picks for the NBA: Elfrid Payton and Rodney Hood. Again, there’s no independent verification that Christian was the official representative of these two players at the time. He could have recommended that they get signed to his company, but that doesn’t mean he was the company’s authorized person to sign and represent these two players.

Whatever his real or imagined responsibilities were, Christian’s prodigy-like success caught the eye of sports agent Andy Miller, who recruited Christian to work for him. Looking back on their working relationship, Christian says in the documentary: “We were like Whitney [Houston] and Bobby [Brown]: We shouldn’t have been together.”

In yet another example of Christian having a tendency to exaggerate or embellish the truth, he claims in the documentary that while he worked for Miller, he was an “agent or a junior agent.” But Christian’s own attorney contradicts this claim, by saying that Christian was just a “runner,” an industry term for a person who cultivates relationships with athletes but doesn’t have the authority to sign or represent them. (Miller was not interviewed for this movie.)

During his tenure working for Miller, Christian ran into his first major legal scandal, when he was accused of misappropriating funds. In the documentary, Christian calls the scandal “Ubergate” because he was accused of running up a $42,000 Uber bill while working for Miller. In the documentary, Christian admits that his expense accounts were abused, but he puts most of the blame on unnamed people whom he claims had access to the accounts. Christian wasn’t arrested or sued over the scandal, but he was fired and his reputation was severely tarnished.

It was around this time that Christian said that he met a man named Marty Blazer through a mutual acquaintance: a banker named Munish Sood. Christian told them that he wanted to start his own sports management company specializing in representing high-school basketball players who would be recruited by colleges, but Christian needed investment money.

The company was going to be based in Atlanta, but Christian frequently made trips to New York City to meet with potential investors. Christian called his management company Loyd Management Inc., because “loyd” was an acronym for “live out your dreams.” Knowing that Christian was looking for investors, Blazer (a shady character who turned out to be an informant for the FBI) introduced Christian to a man named Jeff D’Angelo, who was described as a wealthy guy who made his fortune in real-estate. Christian was also introduced to D’Angelo’s right-hand person Jill Bailey.

D’Angelo gave Christian hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to bribe college basketball coaches and certain Adidas executives to recruit high-school basketball players, who would also be steered to Christian’s fledgling management company for representation. Christian didn’t like this idea because he says he wanted to pay basketball players directly, instead of adding an extra unpredictable set of people to the mix.

“Paying players is the cost of doing business,” Christian says. He also repeatedly mentions in the documentary that he thinks all sports players (including those in school) should be paid salaries for playing sports. (It’s currently illegal for players in U.S. non-professional basketball leagues to be paid salaries for playing basketball.) Christian says that he was initially very uncomfortable with this business model of paying coaches and other officials, but D’Angelo kept pressuring him to do it, and Christian eventually went along with it since D’Angelo was paying for all of it.

But, by his own admission, Christian said he got greedy and kept most of the payment money for himself and spent a lot of it on “entertainment” (including strip clubs) for himself and the coaches that he was supposed to be bribing. Unbeknownst to Christian until it was too late, D’Angelo and Bailey were FBI agents. (Those names were aliases.) And the reason why “Jeff D’Angelo” kept pushing hard for Christian to pay coaches was because NCAA coaches are considered public officials, and it’s a federal crime for them to accept bribes.

In the documentary, Christian and his attorney admit that although Christian took the money (they couldn’t deny it, since many of these transactions were caught on FBI surveillance video), he was not guilty of directly giving any of the money to the coaches and Adidas officials. It’s why Christian pleaded not guilty to the charges, and the case resulted in two trials for him: one involving fraud charges, and the other involving bribery charges. A great deal of the movie is about Christian giving his perspective of being “set up” by the FBI.

Throughout the documentary, Christian’s grandiosity and high opinion of himself are very apparent. He claims to know “everybody in basketball” and brags about being smart when it comes to business. But, for a guy who’s supposedly “smart,” he made a lot of dumb mistakes.

For starters, Christian admits that the sudden appearance of an angel investor (“Jeff D’Angelo”) who spared no expense (deals were done on a yacht and in lavish hotel suites) made him suspicious at first, but he didn’t do a thorough background check on D’Angelo. Christian says he thought about hiring a private investigator, but he decided not to do that because he asked a Drug Enforcement Agency contact (who’s not named in the documentary) to look into D’Angelo’s background, and the DEA contact  told Christian that D’Angelo was legitimate.

Another big mistake that Christian made was trusting Blazer, who had a long history of arrests and lawsuits (which were all public record), but Blazer mysteriously wasn’t in prison for his crimes. Any “street smart” person would immediately figure out that Blazer was probably avoiding prison time by being a confidential informant. And, as revealed by Christian’s two trials and journalists’ investigations, Blazer was indeed an informant for the FBI. But Christian, who repeatedly describes Blazer and “D’Angelo” as “idiots” and “stupid,” missed that big red flag. In the end, Blazer spent zero time in prison for his involvement in the scandal. So, who’s the stupid one?

And there was another red flag that Christian foolishly missed: The person calling himself “Jeff D’Angelo” (his real name still remains a secret) suddenly stopped doing business with Christian, and let his right-hand person “Jill Bailey” take over the transactions. The excuse was that “D’Angelo” had to go to Italy to visit his dying mother. But Christian didn’t try to find out if that story was true, because he said he didn’t really like “D’Angelo” anyway, and “Bailey” was easier to deal with on a business level.

In reality, as it came out during news investigations, “D’Angelo” had been removed from the case because he was allegedly stealing the FBI’s cash too. Haney says in the documentary that he tried to subpoena the mysterious “Jeff D’Angelo,” but the subpoena was denied. The documentary also mentions that it’s not known if “Jeff D’Angelo” is still working for the FBI. Even without the testimony of “Jeff D’Angelo,” the bottom line is that as long as the money kept flowing, Christian didn’t really care who was giving him the money. In the end, greed was Christian’s undoing.

“The Scheme” has a lot of re-enactments with Christian, as well as actual FBI surveillance and wiretaps. And the filmmakers are obviously sympathetic to Christian and his attorney Haney, given all the screen time that they have in the movie.

What’s missing from the documentary is any sense that the filmmakers cared about investigating the bigger picture that everyone interviewed in the documentary says exists—the NCAA’s widespread corruption, which includes the participation of major athletic-shoe companies (such as Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour) that pay millions to colleges for star athletes to wear their products. Unlike NBA players, the school players aren’t supposed to be paid to play basketball (a policy called “amateurism”), and the NCAA is a non-profit organization that gets massive tax breaks for the money it earns.

Christian was the one who spent the most time in prison for the scandal, while other people implicated in the scandal who are much higher up in the NCAA food chain did not even get arrested. Although the documentary is basically a platform for Christian and his attorney to complain about Christian’s prison sentence, the filmmakers don’t bother to ask why higher authorities were not held accountable in this scandal. And although the documentary includes statistics about how much money certain colleges and universities get from athletic-apparel companies, the filmmakers fail to detail or investigate how that money is moved around in possibly corrupt ways.

Christian even names some of the NCAA colleges and universities that he says are some of the worst offenders when it comes to misappropriating funds and bribing players to join their teams, yet the filmmakers don’t follow up on these claims. Christian also comes right out and says that it’s not uncommon for college coaches to use college basketball funds to hire hookers for high-school basketball players, as part of the recruiting process. Instead of uncovering anything new or looking into Christian’s claims about corruption and cover-ups, the documentary interviews journalists Rebecca Davis O’Brien (who covered the scandal for the Wall Street Journal) and Wetzel to rehash information that these journalists already covered for their media outlets.

“The Scheme” also doesn’t adequately explore the issue of racial inequalities in criminal justice. Christian frequently mentions in the movie that he was able to be “successful” because of his relationships with college-bound or NBA-bound basketball players and their families. (Toronto Raptors player Fred VanVleet is the only basketball player interviewed in the documentary, and he says he owes his career to Christian.) Because college-level and NBA-level basketball is a sport played by predominantly African Americans, Christian says that gave him an advantage to establish a type of racial rapport with players that agents and head coaches (who are predominantly white) do not have.

However, the filmmakers don’t ask Christian how his race could have been a disadvantage when he got caught in the FBI sting. “The Scheme” completely ignores the glaring fact that almost all of the people arrested in the FBI sting were people of color: Christian Dawkins; banker Sood; Emanuel “Book” Richardson (former assistant basketball coach at the University of Arizona); Lamont Evans (former assistant basketball coach at Oklahoma State University and the University of South Carolina); Tony Bland (former assistant basketball coach at the University of Southern California); and Merl Code, a former Adidas executive who was like a mentor to Christian. Jim Gatto (former Adidas executive) was the only white person arrested.

Meanwhile, the head basketball coaches at these universities (all of the head coaches are white) escaped arrest and in most cases got to keep their jobs. In the documentary, Christian claims that University of Arizona head basketball coach Sean Miller and Louisiana State University head basketball coach Will Wade blatantly lied to the media and the public about not being involved in illegal basketball deals. (Although Wade was suspended from his job, he was eventually re-instated.)

Christian says that Miller should be an “actor” for his performance at a press conference where Miller denied any involvement in the NCAA scandal. And the documentary includes Wade’s public denial of doing business with Christian by juxtaposing it with FBI wiretaps of Wade talking business with Christian. Christian and his attorney say that these head coaches who escaped arrest must have felt confident that they would be protected when they made their public denials.

Despite all this finger-pointing, the documentary does little to appear objective in trying to gather all of the facts. Instead, “The Scheme” is mostly concerned with letting Christian run the narrative. It’s clear that he did the interview to promote the fact that he’s trying to make a business comeback, but this time in the music industry—something that’s mentioned at the end of the film. (At least he’s smart enough to know that his sports career is over.)

Why the music industry? Because convicted felons aren’t as taboo there, says Christian. His attorney said that, in an example of Christian’s hustler mentality, while Christian was on trial, Christian secretly had meetings with people in the music industry to start his own record label.

And now that he’s out of prison, Christian has teamed up with Atlantic Records to fund and distribute a record label he’s founded called Chosen, even though he has no prior experience in the music industry. In the documentary, Christian doesn’t talk about any artists he’s signed to his record label, but he seems very happy with the undisclosed amount of money he’s gotten from Atlantic Records. Given his track record in handling funds, Atlantic might want to closely watch where that money is going.

In the end, “The Scheme” is kind of a reflection of the person whose perspective dominates the movie: There’s a lot of talk, but not a lot of new facts brought to the table.

HBO premiered “The Scheme” on March 31, 2020.

Harvey Weinstein sentenced to 23 years in prison, makes first public statement since his conviction of sex crimes

March 11, 2020

by Colleen McGregor

Harvey Weinstein at The Weinstein Company party in celebration of “Wind River” at Nikki Beach in Cannes, Frances, on May 20, 2017. (Photo by Dave Benett)

In a New York City courtroom on March 11, 2020, disgraced entertainment mogul Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison for a first-degree criminal sexual act and a third-degree rape. Weinstein was found guilty of these charges on February 24, 2020. On the same day of his conviction, he was found not guilty of three other charges, which were more serious: two counts of predatory sexual assault and one count of first-degree rape involving two women (Miriam Haley and Jessica Mann) in separate incidents. The jury, consisting of seven men and five women, deliberated for nearly a week.

Weinstein’s prison sentence could have ranged from five years to 29 years. According to the Associated Press, Judge James Burke commented when delivering the 23-year sentence to Weinstein, who is 67: “Although this is a first conviction, this is not a first offense.” Weinstein, who did not testify during his trial, continues to deny all sexual-misconduct allegations against him.

After his sentencing, Weinstein gave his first public statement since he was convicted of these sex crimes. According to the Associated Press, Weinstein said, “To all the women who testified, we may have different truths, but I have great remorse for all of you … Thousands of men are losing due process. I’m worried about this country. I’m totally confused. I think men are confused about these issues.”

His attorneys are expected to appeal the conviction. His defense attorney Donna Rotunno commented after Weinstein’s prison sentence was delivered: “We were looking for fairness, and we didn’t get it.”

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said that Weinstein’s sentence “puts sexual predators and abusive partners in all segments of society on notice.”

Weinstein is also facing sexual-assault charges in Los Angeles, where he is accused of raping one woman and sexually assaulting another woman on two consecutive nights during Oscars week in 2013. He is expected to be extradited to face trial in Los Angeles on those charges.

Weinstein was first arrested in May 2018, when he turned himself into the New York Police Department. He was arrested and charged with rape and forced oral sex. According to the Associated Press, the rape charge was for an unidentified woman who claims that Weinstein raped her at a New York hotel room in 2013. The oral sex charge was for a 2004 incident in which former aspiring actress Lucia Evans claims that Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him at his New York office.

In October 2018, the charge involving Evans was dismissed. According to CNN, Evans’ attorney Carrie Goldberg implied that the charge was dropped for political reasons because of a “feud between the NYPD and the DA’s office.” Goldberg added that the dropped charge “does speak to a system desperate in need of reform.”

Weinstein’s conviction and imprisonment for sex crimes are considered landmarks for the #MeToo movement, which became a major cultural force in October 2017, when The New York Times and The New Yorker reported that Weinstein has a long history of sexual misconduct allegations, going back as far as the 1980s. The reports detailed how he silenced many of his alleged victims with financial settlements and non-disclosure agreements. In the years since those reports were published, more than 100 women have come forward to claim that Weinstein sexually harassed or sexually assaulted them. Weinstein continues to claim that any sex acts he committed were consensual.

After the reports were published, Weinstein was fired by The Weinstein Company (the entertainment firm that Harvey co-founded in 2005 with his brother Bob); Harvey’s second wife, Georgina Chapman, divorced him; and the company filed for bankruptcy. The Weinstein Company has since been purchased by investment group Lantern Entertainment.

In March 2019, Lantern and Gary Barber launched Spyglass Media Group, which will own the library previously owned by The Weinstein Company. Italian film distributor Eagle Pictures, cinema chain Cineworld (which own Regal Cinemas) and later AT&T’s Warner Bros. were brought in as minority holders. The library includes Oscar-winning movies “The King’s Speech,” “The Artist,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Django Unchained,” “The Hateful Eight,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and “The Iron Lady,” as well as partial ownership of the fashion reality TV competition “Project Runway.”

Before co-founding The Weinstein Company, the Weinstein brothers co-founded Miramax Films in 1979. Miramax was the studio behind numerous Oscar-winning films, such as “My Left Foot,” “Good Will Hunting,” “Shakespeare in Love” and “No Country for Old Men.” Miramax was sold to Disney in 1993, then to Filmyard Holdings in 2010, and then to the beIN Media Group in 2016. In 2019, beIN sold a 49% stake in Miramax to ViacomCBS.

Several industry organizations (including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) have expelled Harvey Weinstein from their membership, and he has been sued by several women for sexual harassment/sexual misconduct. Ashley Judd, one of his accusers, is also suing him for defamation because she claims Harvey Weinstein damaged her reputation and career after she rejected his sexual advances.

Since the accusations about Weinstein were made public, there have been several books, news stories and documentaries about his scandals. The most notable feature-length documentary so far about Weinstein is Hulu’s “Untouchable,” which began streaming in September 2019. The entertainment industry website Deadline reported in 2018 that Plan B (Brad Pitt’s production company) and Annapurna Pictures are planning a dramatic feature film about how The New York Times broke the Weinstein #MeToo story. The movie, if it’s made, will likely begin filming after all of Weinstein’s criminal cases have been resolved.

Harvey Weinstein’s downfall is widely considered to be the turning point of the #MeToo cultural movement, which has survivors of sexual harassment and sexual assault publicly telling their stories and seeking justice. The #MeToo movement has also led to sexual misconduct allegations against many other famous and powerful men, often resulting in the accused losing their jobs and/or being sued. Harvey Weinstein now joins Bill Cosby as two of the once-powerful men in the entertainment industry who have been convicted of sexual assault since the resurgence of the #MeToo movement.

Harvey Weinstein convicted of sex crimes, including rape

February 24, 2020

by Colleen McGregor

Harvey Weinstein at The Weinstein Company’s Pre-Academy Awards Dinner sponsored by Grey Goose at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, on February 25, 2017. (Photo by Hagop Kalaidjian/BFA)

On February 24, 2020, in a New York City courtroom, disgraced entertainment mogul Harvey Weinstein was found guilty on two of five possible counts involving two women: a first-degree criminal sexual act and a third-degree rape. He was found not guilty of the three most serious charges: two counts of predatory sexual assault and one count of first-degree rape involving two women (Miriam Haley and Jessica Mann) in separate incidents. The jury, consisting of seven men and five women, deliberated for nearly a week.

The trial began on January 6, 2020, after experiencing many delays. Weinstein, who is 67, did not testify at his trial. After the verdict was read, Weinstein was immediately taken to jail, where he will be held until his sentencing on March 11, 2020. He faces up to 29 years in prison.

Weinstein is also facing sexual-assault charges in Los Angeles, where he is accused of raping one woman and sexually assaulting another woman on two consecutive nights during Oscars week in 2013.

Weinstein was first arrested in May 2018,  when he turned himself into the New York Police Department. He was arrested and charged with rape and forced oral sex. According to the Associated Press, the rape charge was for an unidentified woman who claims that Weinstein raped her at a New York hotel room in 2013. The oral sex charge was for a 2004 incident in which former aspiring actress Lucia Evans claims that Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him at his New York office.

In October 2018, the charge involving Evans was dismissed. According to CNN, Evans’ attorney Carrie Goldberg implied that the charge was dropped for political reasons because of a “feud between the NYPD and the DA’s office.” Goldberg added that the dropped charge “does speak to a system desperate in need of reform.”

A few famous actresses testified against Weinstein in his New York trial: Annabella Sciorra (who says that Weinstein raped her in her apartment in 1993 and 1994) and Rosie Perez, who testified that Sciorra told her about being raped shortly after the incident. Perez found out much later that Sciorra’s alleged rapist was Weinstein, but Perez did not go to police because Sciorra swore her to secrecy at the time.

According to the Associated Press, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. made this statement after the verdict was revealed: “This is the new landscape for survivors of sexual assault in America, I believe, and it is a new day. It is a new day because Harvey Weinstein has finally been held accountable for crimes he committed. Weinstein is a vicious, serial sexual predator who used his power to threaten, rape, assault and trick, humiliate and silence his victims. Weinstein with his manipulation, his resources, his attorneys, his publicists and his spies did everything he could to silence to survivors.”

Weinstein’s attorneys said that they will appeal the verdict. His defense attorney Donna Rotunno commented after the verdict was revealed: “Harvey is unbelievably strong. He took it like a man. He knows that we will continue to fight for him, and we know that this is not over.”

Weinstein’s conviction and imprisonment for sex crimes are considered landmarks for the #MeToo movement, which became a major cultural force in October 2017, when the New York Times and the New Yorker reported that Weinstein has a long history of sexual misconduct allegations, going back as far as the 1980s. The reports detailed how he silenced many of his alleged victims with financial settlements and non-disclosure agreements. In the years since those reports were published, more than 100 women have come forward to claim that Weinstein sexually harassed or sexually assaulted them. Weinstein has denied all the allegations, and says any sex acts he committed were consensual.

After the reports were published, Weinstein was fired by The Weinstein Company (the entertainment firm that Harvey co-founded with his brother Bob); Harvey’s second wife, Georgina Chapman, divorced him; and the company filed for bankruptcy. The Weinstein Company has since been purchased by investment group Lantern Entertainment.

In March 2019, Lantern and Gary Barber launched Spyglass Media Group, which will own the library previously owned by The Weinstein Company. Italian film distributor Eagle Pictures, cinema chain Cineworld (which own Regal Cinemas) and later AT&T’s Warner Bros. were brought in as minority holders. The library includes Oscar-winning movies “The King’s Speech,” “The Artist,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Django Unchained,” “The Hateful Eight,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and “The Iron Lady,”  as well as partial ownership of the fashion reality TV competition “Project Runway.”

Several industry organizations (including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) have expelled Harvey Weinstein from their membership, and he has been sued by several women for sexual harassment/sexual misconduct. Ashley Judd, one of his accusers, is also suing him for defamation because she claims Harvey Weinstein damaged her reputation and career after she rejected his sexual advances.

Since the accusations about Weinstein were made public, there have been several books, news stories and documentaries about his scandals. The most notable feature-length documentary so far about Weinstein is Hulu’s “Untouchable,” which began streaming in September 2019. The entertainment industry website Deadline reported in 2018 that Plan B (Brad Pitt’s production company) and Annapurna Pictures are planning a dramatic feature film about how The New York Times broke the Weinstein #MeToo story. The movie, if it’s made, will likely begin filming after all of Weinstein’s criminal cases have been resolved.

Harvey Weinstein’s downfall is widely considered to be the turning point of the #MeToo cultural movement, which has survivors of sexual harassment and sexual assault publicly telling their stories and seeking justice. The #MeToo movement has also led to sexual misconduct allegations against many other famous and powerful men, often resulting in the accused losing their jobs and/or being sued.

A+E Networks launches A&E Crime Central

February 20, 2020

The following is a press release from A+E Networks:

A+E Networks® today unveiled details of a new subscription video on demand (SVOD) offering that taps a growing consumer appetite for true crime content. A&E Crime Central is now available via Amazon Prime Video Channels, the Apple TV app, Cox Contour TV and Contour Stream Player and Premium Subscriptions on The Roku Channel allowing subscribers to stream hundreds of episodes of A+E’s deep library of classic crime series and specials from across its portfolio, commercial-free. Monthly subscriptions for A&E Crime Central are $4.99.

“A&E is known for its front-row-seat crime and justice series, and we’re pleased to offer a subscription product featuring our crime and investigative library content under one roof,” said Mark Garner, EVP, Digital Content Licensing & Business Development, A+E Networks. “A&E Crime Central continues our strategy of monetizing our troves of premium content while hyper-serving our truest fan bases.”

Spanning crime-genre content from A&E, HISTORY, Lifetime and LMN, over 900 videos of series and specials are available at platform launch, including fan-favorite titles: Dog the Bounty Hunter, The First 48: Missing Persons, After the First 48, Beyond Scared Straight, Nightwatch, and Cold Case Files Classic. The first four seasons of 60 Days In will also be available to complement the current season airing on A&E. Specials like OJ: Guilty in Vegas; Menendez Brothers: The Sins of the Children; Casey Anthony’s Parents Speak; and Life of a Gang Girl: The Untold Story will also be included. Customers can enjoy a free 7-day trial through Apple TV channels on the Apple TV app, Amazon Prime Video Channels, and Premium Subscriptions on The Roku Channel.

A&E Crime adds to the growing family of SVOD products from A+E Networks, including HISTORY Vault and Lifetime MOVIE CLUB.

About Apple TV channels on the Apple TV app
Apple TV channels on the Apple TV app allow subscribers to watch online or enjoy offline downloads of content on the Apple TV app. Through Family Sharing, up to six family members can share subscriptions to Apple TV channels using just their Apple ID and password. The Apple TV app brings together all the ways to watch shows and films into one app and is available on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, iPod touch, Mac, select Samsung and LG smart TVs, and Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices. The Apple TV app also features personalized and curated recommendations, and movies and TV shows to buy or rent.

ABOUT A+E NETWORKS
A+E Networks® is a global content company comprised of some of the most popular and culturally-relevant brands in media including A&E®, Lifetime®, HISTORY®, LMN®, FYI®, VICELAND®, Blaze® and Crime+Investigation®. A+E Networks’ portfolio extends across platforms and genres, with a scripted production division, A+E Studios™; unscripted production through Six West™; independent film unit A&E IndieFilms®; watch apps, games, FAST channels, AVOD, and SVOD initiatives including A&E Crime Central, Lifetime Movie Club and HISTORY Vault; and podcasts such as History This Week, through A+E Digital®; Experiential/branded live events and Ecommerce through A+E Consumer Enterprises®; and branded channels, content distribution and scripted/unscripted co-productions around the world through A+E International®. A+E Networks’ channels and branded programming reach more than 335 million households in over 200 territories in 41 languages. A+E Networks is a joint venture of Disney-ABC Television Group and Hearst. Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/aenetworks and Facebook at facebook.com/AENetworks.

Roku is a registered trademark of Roku,Inc. in the US and other countries. Trade names, trademarks and service marks of other companies appearing in this press release are the property of their respective holders.

 

Review: ‘Incitement,’ starring Yehuda Nahari Halevi

January 30, 2020

by Carla Hay

Yehuda Nahari Halev in "Incitement"
Yehuda Nahari Halevi in “Incitement” (Photo courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment)

“Incitement”

Directed by Yaron Zilberman

Hebrew with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Israel, this dramatic film centers mostly on middle-class Israeli residents of different ethnicities and ideological beliefs.

Culture Clash: Depicting the life of Yigal Amir in the year leading up to his 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, “Incitement” takes an unflinching look at the political and religious conflicts in Israel over Rabin’s attempts to make peace between Israelis and Palestinians. 

Culture Audience: “Incitement” will appeal primarily to those who like arthouse international films about 20th century Israeli history.

AmitayYaish Ben Ousilio and Yehuda Nahari Halevi in “Incitement” (Photo courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment)

Whenever a scripted movie is done from the point of view of someone who murdered a well-known public figure, the filmmakers have to make sure that the killer isn’t glorified. The dramatic film “Incitement—which depicts the life of assassin Yagil Amir in the year leading up to him murdering Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995—has a tone that is mostly observational, rather than judgmental. The movie is not intended to sway people in one way or the other, politically or religiously. Instead, it is a wake-up call about being more diligent about warning signs that show how someone can turn from being a hate-talking extremist into a murderer.

In the production notes for “Incitement,” director Yaron Zilberman made a statement that included this comment: “At the very beginning of the process I asked myself, together with Ron Leshem with whom I wrote the script, what the most meaningful approach would be for telling the story in order to create a cinematic experience that transmits the magnitude of the catastrophe and from which we could learn the most about how it happened. We concluded that only through an examination of the assassin’s journey could we arrive at new insights.”

“Incitement” immerses viewers on that journey by showing the gradual process of how Amir (played by Yehuda Nahari Halevi) decided to murder Rabin. (The movie also uses a lot of real-life archival news footage.) At first, Amir appears to be an unassuming law student who lives with his parents while attending Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. In one of the scenes in the beginning of the film, Armir is driving on his way to the university campus, when his car is caught in a big political protest that’s happening in the streets. As the protest becomes violent and he gets out of the car, Amir is nearly arrested because the police think he’s one of the protesters. But he’s able to talk himself out of the arrest by convincing the police officer that he’s just an innocent college student trying to get to one of his classes.

This scene is crucial to understand not only why Amir was able to fly under the radar but also to show how he could mask his dangerous personality under the guise of being a mild-mannered citizen. In the early-to-mid-1990s, Israel was divided over Prime Minister Rabin’s historic attempts to make peace between Israel and Palestine by his push for the Oslo Accords. The Oslo Accords (which included Oslo II) would have granted Palestine temporary self-government rights in certain areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the regions which Israel and Palestine have been feuding over for decades. Israelis with left-leaning political views tended to support the Oslo Accords, while those with right-leaning political views tended to oppose the Oslo Accords.

Soon after viewers see Amir arrive on campus, it’s clear which way he leans politically. He’s shown observing a protest with students, who are dressed as Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) officers, depicting what they think would happen if Rabin signs the Oslo II Agreement. The students portraying PLO officers round up other students depicting Israeli citizens, and act out the PLO officers massacring the Israeli citizens. After watching this demonstration, Amir smirks and walks away. His smile indicates that he very much agrees with the beliefs of the students protesting against Rabin’s support of the Oslo Accords.

One of the ways that “Incitement” frames Amir’s increasing obsession with targeting Rabin is by having the TV news playing in the background of many scenes. In each scene where the TV news is on near Amir, he is seen reacting to the political developments of the day that are about Rabin and Oslo II, and his anger toward Rabin grows to dangerous levels. A turning point for Amir is the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in Hebron, where an American Israeli named Dr. Baruch Goldstein killed 29 people and wounded 125 others at a mosque. In Amir’s mind, Goldstein is a patriotic and religious hero.

In another scene, Amir attends the public funeral of Baruch Kopel, a relative of Goldstein’s, and later attends a rabbi-led meeting where the rabbi leader praises Goldstein for being a good soldier of the Torah. In real life, after he was arrested, Amir claimed that several Orthodox Jew rabbis endorsed and encouraged him to assassinate Rabin, although no rabbis were ever charged with this crime.

The movie depicts Amir’s claims about the rabbis to be true, as he becomes increasingly angry at Rabin after attending rabbi-led meetings where the rabbis essentially say that Rabin is an enemy of the Jewish religion and should be killed. When Amir tells a leader of these extremist rabbis that he wants to be the one to kill Rabin, the rabbi says he was just joking about killing Rabin, but then essentially tells Amir that if he decides to go through with the murder, he would have no problem with it. We’ll never really know if that exact conversation took place, but “Incitement” makes it clear that Amir would have assassinated Rabin, with or without a rabbi’s blessing.

Throughout the course of the movie, the layers of Amir’s complex life are slowly uncovered. He has a deep infatuation with a fellow law student named Nava (played by Daniella Kertesz) and he pursues her romantically. But there are signs that he has a controlling nature. For their first date, he insists on bringing her home for dinner to meet his parents, who are immigrants from Yemen. But instead of meeting just his parents, Nava finds that several members of his family have gathered, and she’s introduced to them all.

It’s at this family gathering that more details are revealed explaining why Amir turned out the way he did. His domineering mother, Hagai (played by Yoav Levi) is against Rabin’s policies, and she has a great deal of influence on her son, whom she sees as a prince who’s destined for greatness. Amir’s father Shlomo (played by AmitayYaish Ben Ousilio) is a gentle, peace-loving parent who believes in giving Rabin’s policies a chance.

Nava is an Ashkenzai Jew, and Hagai is very prejudiced against Ashkenazi Jews, whom she believes are entitled and uppity. In a private conversation, Hagai tells Shlomo that she thinks that Nava will use and humiliate Yigal, who overhears the conversation and gets upset because he wants to marry Nava. Feeling overwhelmed at this family gathering, Nava cuts the date short before having dinner, by saying she’s stressed out over an upcoming exam and wants to leave so that she can study for it. Although she has doubts about getting involved with Amir and his family, she’s attracted to his charisma and intelligence, so she continues to date him.

It isn’t long before another side to Amir emerges, when he’s seen having  secret meetings with shady characters who are hoarding illegal weapons of war. Amir is a military veteran who has kept in touch with several people who have access to these weapons. In one crucial scene in the movie, Amir’s double life is almost exposed when at a family gathering, a fellow military veteran who was in combat with him says that Amir looks innocent on the outside but he’s a ruthless killer when he was in combat. Amir laughs off the comment, but it’s unnerved him because he doesn’t want his family to know about his dark side.

Meanwhile, Amir begins inviting students and other young people to what he has described as religious retreats. But, as he admits privately to certain people, these retreats are really just a way for him to recruit people for a radical militia that he wants to lead. “Incitement” shows how the retreats start off as road trips by bus to various religious and historical sites in Israel, but then the retreats become cult-like gatherings where the members get worked up over talking about how Rabin’s government is trying to destroy the Jewish religion.

When Amir meets Nava’s family for the first time, he makes his political views clear, by saying that he has no problem with Arabs but he has a problem with Jewish “traitors from within.” Nava becomes increasingly uncomfortable with Amir’s extreme views and his ambitions to lead a militia, and she breaks up with him. He eventually moves on to another attractive female law student: Margalit Har Shefi (played by Sivan Mast), who shares his radical beliefs and plays a pivotal role in what would become his plans to assassinate Rabin.

Through researching ancient Jewish scripture, Amir has fixated on the idea that Jews who betray other Jews are enemy informers of the religion, and that it is within a religious Jew’s right to kill those informers. As he says in a well-received speech during one of his radical retreats, Jewish law is above worldly law. And as far as Amir is concerned, Rabin is the biggest Jewish informer traitor of them all.

Amir reaches a point when he doesn’t even try to hide from his family how much he hates Rabin. While sitting at a table and watching the news with his father Shlomo one day, Amir says that Rabin “should be taken out.” Shlomo gets very upset, and during their argument, the father tells his son that the military has changed his personality for the worse. And with other people, Amir essentially comes right out and says that he wants to kill Rabin. Just as it is with many people who commit first-degree murder, all the warning signs were there, but nothing was really done to prevent the murder from happening.

In his portrayal of Amir, actor Halevi does a masterful job of embodying Amir’s dual personas as a charming student and as a cold-blooded killer. The movie leaves it open to interpretation for viewers to decide if Amir was a true sociopath or a religious fanatic who thought that committing this assassination was a noble thing for his religion. The movie works very well in other areas—such as direction, cinematography screenwriting and editing—but what makes “Incitement” the most compelling is Halevi’s performance. It’s no wonder that “Incitement” won Best Film at Awards of the Israeli Film Academy—the Israeli equivalent of the Oscars. Regardless of people’s political and religious beliefs, watching “Incitement” will leave viewers with the haunting reminder that there are no real winners in this tragic story.

Greenwich Entertainment will release “Incitement” in New York City on January 31, 2020. The movie’s U.S. release expands to Los Angeles and other cities, beginning February 7, 2020. “Incitement” was originally released in Israel in 2019.

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