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Review of the HBO docuseries The Crime of the Century

The Crime of the Century: Big Pharma and the Opioid Epidemic Written and Directed by Alex Gibney
Rating *****

In a scene in the second installment of this two-part documentary, the filmmakers follow DEA agents as they raid the house of a man in Lubbock, Texas whom they believe was selling large quantities of fentanyl. That man is eventually arrested and convicted and given a lengthy prison sentence. The arrest, however, is just one part of a much larger story that begins before the raid and continues long after the man begins his sentence.

It starts with the overdose death of a young woman. The investigation into her death and scores of other fentanyl-related deaths leads to an unassuming computer repairman named Caleb Lanier. As much as you’d like to see this man pay for the many deaths that resulted from his actions, you come to realize that he is just another addict. He is a family man whose wife knows nothing about his addiction or his connection to the fentanyl deaths. Caleb Lanier pays the price for his choices. The same can’t be said about the pharmaceutical executives, politicians, doctors, sales reps, and pharmacists whose greed and lax oversight led to the epidemic.

The filmmakers trace the origins of the opioid epidemic to a single company – Purdue Pharma. Their success is largely the result of the intervention from an FDA insider who paves the way for the company to introduce OxyContin as an all-purpose pain reliever with a low liability of addiction. Once the company has the blessing of the FDA, they are off and running using bribes, deceptive advertising, and other deceitful tactics to get physicians to over-subscribe the medication.

Other unscrupulous companies such as Insys use similar tactics to introduce even more addictive drugs to an unsuspecting population. Add to this mix a lack of common-sense regulations, politicians who promote bills written by lawyers representing the pharmaceutical companies, all while accepting large campaign donations, and you have the ingredients for a full-scale epidemic that is still causing pain and suffering.

Except for John Kapoor, the CEO of Insys, none of the big Pharma executives receive jail time. They get off scot-free with their billions in sales, leaving behind a trail of destruction and suffering.

As with any good story, there are heroes and villains. The heroes are people like former DEA official Joe Rannazzisi, who tried unsuccessfully to draw attention to the flaws in the bill proposed by Rep. Tom Marino (R-PA) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). The villains are those who turned a blind eye to what was going on because the money was just too good.

For more on this subject see the reviews for American Pain and The Pharmacist.

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The sad story of White Boy Rick

Review of White Boy Rick the documentary and film rating *****

I spend a lot of time writing about injustices in our criminal justice system. Most of the time, I’m writing about wrongful convictions. Today’s review is about an incredible miscarriage of justice surrounding the sentencing of Richard Wershe Jr., also known as White Boy Rick.

The story of White Boy Rick has been on my radar for a while. I knew it had to do with drugs and Rick’s work as a police informant. I also knew that Mathew McConaughey was in a movie with the same title. That was about all I knew.

So when Netflix came out with the White Boy Rick documentary, I thought I would start there. The documentary filmmakers use a combination of interviews, reenactments, and animation to tell Rick’s story. Rick’s involvement as a drug dealer begins when narcotics agents ask him to be an informant. His dad is facing potential illegal gun sales charges and working as an informant takes the heat off his father. Rick goes from small-time buyer to dealer in short order.

After a few drug busts, the informant gig dries up. But Rick likes the money that came with the drug business and starts dealing drugs on his own. Along the way, he gets involved with the niece of Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, who is married to a drug dealer serving a twenty-year sentence. He also almost dies from a gunshot wound and learns that he is a father.

The police eventually arrest Rick for his drug dealing. Before Rick goes to trial, the same narcotics agents who made Rick an informant earlier offer him a way out of a potential life sentence. All Rick has to do is tell the Mayor’s niece about a big drug shipment and the need for protection. The resulting investigation results in the arrest of several crooked Detroit police officers. The sting reaches the Mayor and the chief of police.

Rick eventually goes on trial for his drug arrest. His work as an informant is not allowed into evidence. This all happens during the war on drugs. The media paint Rick as a drug kingpin responsible for murders and other crimes. Rick receives a life sentence without the possibility of parole. He is seventeen years old.

Now that sentence alone would be a huge miscarriage. But that’s not the end of Rick’s misery. He has a target on his back. Years later, when life sentences for juveniles are ruled unconstitutional, Rick gets a chance for parole. By this time, Rick has been in prison for fourteen years. But Rick has enemies in high places and is denied parole. It will be nearly another twenty years before Rick gains his freedom.

After watching the documentary, I was able to track down the Mathew McConaughey film on-demand from FX. I was blown away by how accurately the film portrayed the events described in the documentary. I have no idea which came first – the film or the documentary. They both do an excellent job in telling a complex story that involves real people and real heartache.

Richard Wershe Jr. was released from prison in July of 2020 after serving over thirty years in prison.

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All about slavery and the fight for equal rights

One of this site’s goals is to bring attention to books, films, and documentaries that you might have overlooked. There is a lot of great content out there. Sometimes I like to group things based on subject matter, as I did in my recent post about abstract art. This post will point you to hours worth of top-notch storytelling involving slavery, civil rights, and the equal rights movement. There is a bit of overlap, but you won’t go wrong with any of these suggestions.

First up is the six-episode docuseries Lincoln: Divided We Stand. So you think Lincoln was one of the best Presidents in history? The man who put an end to slavery? Not so fast. This docuseries tells the real story of a President who had many flaws, including racism, and whose moral compass shifted over time. Lincoln’s first stab at freeing the slaves was to suggest that they leave the country and go to Central America. The one person whose character, intelligence, and sense of decency rose above all others was Frederick Douglass. Imagine what our country would have looked like had he been elected President. Catch this one on CNN demand.

13th (Review of 13th) – The story behind the thirteenth amendment to the constitution and a history lesson on slavery in the United States. One thing you will learn as you go through this list of docuseries is that ending slavery was no easy task. We fought a war over it where 800,000 Americans lost their lives. Politicians, business leaders, and even the Supreme Court all sided with continuing slavery. Once it was taken away from them, those who profited from slavery did everything they could to continue the practice by whatever means necessary. Catch it on Netflix.

Amend: The Fight For America – Realizing that the 13th amendment didn’t go far enough, the 14th amendment was enacted with the goal of giving equal rights to all Americans. Jim Crow, Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, due process, it’s all covered in this two-hour Netflix documentary.

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My pick for the 2021 best documentary Oscar

Thanks to on-demand video and streaming, I’ve been able to see all five of the Oscar-nominated feature documentaries. I’m a fan of documentaries, but had these films not been nominated, I might not have sought them out. The one documentary that I felt should have been nominated but wasn’t was the film A Thousand Cuts, about a journalist’s efforts to expose Duterte’s human rights violations.

Here are the five nominated films:

Collective – A story about corruption and dysfunction with the healthcare system in Romania. After a nightclub fire kills 27 and injures hundreds more, preventable deaths of some of the survivors expose numerous problems with Romania’s healthcare system. Politics, graft, corruption, and outright fraud are exposed by a team of journalists. The real power of the story takes hold when a new health minister is appointed and he is forced to grapple with a broken system that has been in place for decades. This film had English language subtitles. I watched this on-demand from my cable provider.

The Mole Agent – When the daughter of a nursing home resident believes that items are being stolen from her mother, she enlists the help of a firm to expose potential elder abuse. That firm hires an eighty-year-old man to live in the nursing home for three months to see what he can uncover. What he finds is a nursing home that has some forty women residents and just four male residents. The eighty-year-old spy soon finds himself having to fend off amorous old ladies. The film is a humorous and also sad look at life in a nursing home. This film also has English subtitles. I caught this one on Amazon Prime.

Time – This film looks at the impact of a long prison sentence on one particular family. My feeling after watching this documentary was that it was a story that involved a long string of very bad decisions. The first bad decision was getting married at a young age. It goes downhill from there. One bad decision leads to the next: starting a family at a young age, starting a business destined to fail, deciding that the solution to all of their problems was to rob a bank, bad legal advice that led to one parent not accepting a plea deal that would have had him serve less than twelve years instead of the sixty-year sentence he received, agreeing to pay another lawyer $15,000 that resulted in that lawyer writing a letter saying that there was nothing he could do. There’s a lot going on here: the depressing life of being incarcerated, the impact on the wife and children forced to move on without a husband and father, sentencing disparities. If there is a message to take from this documentary, it is to not repeat the same mistakes. Another film covering a similar topic is the film Forty Years a Prisoner.

Crip Camp – A summer camp in the seventies for kids with disabilities. Former campers look back on their time bonding with staff and fellow campers. Catch this one on Netflix.

My Octopus Teacher – A diver forms a relationship with an octopus. Now here is a film that I can guarantee you I would not have sought out unless I was totally desperate for something to watch. Instead, I discovered a film that changed my view of other living beings. This film is so unusual that it commands your attention. It is beautifully filmed, emotionally narrated, and has a great soundtrack. Who knew that an octopus could be so intelligent? This documentary is available on Netflix.

My pick for best documentary (so far I’m about 0 for 10) is My Octopus Teacher.

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Review of Murder Among the Mormons

Review of Murder Among the Mormons
Rating *****

Murder Among The Mormons is a story about greed, deception, and self-preservation. It all starts when a man named Mark Hofmann announces the discovery of a historical document that calls into question the beginnings of the Morman church. The document, later known as the salamander letter, goes through a rigorous analysis by church historians and is determined to be authentic. It’s the beginning of a long string of discoveries of rare documents by Mark Hofmann.

Mark’s uncanny ability to find rare and valuable documents raises suspicions, but the worn and tattered letters and papers he brings forward all pass inspection by numerous experts. As you might inspect, there are plenty of buyers for such material, and Mark starts a thriving rare documents business.

Things start to unravel for Mark when the police charge him for the deaths of two individuals with whom Mark had done business. The storyline is remarkably similar to the one covered in the rare art documentaries in my previous post on abstract art.

This three-part docuseries covers the story from all angles: the victims, the experts, the people who knew and trusted Mark and finally Mark himself through audio from interviews done shortly after his conviction. The audio interviews provide a rare look inside the mind of a psychopath.

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All about abstract art

A little over a year ago I purchased a 27-inch digital picture frame by Meural. I love the versatility of this frame. I take a lot of pictures. The Meural allows me to create playlists of my images. But that’s not all I use it for. I also use to display images from other sources, such as the Hubble space telescope and from other photographers. Additionally, I use it to display artwork. It’s like having an art museum in my home. Here’s a sample of some of the artists and artwork I have viewed over the past year: Van Gogh, Picasso, Leonardo Da Vinci, Monet, Rembrandt, Jackson Pollock, and many more. Additionally, every week Mueral, through a yearly subscription, sends me artwork and playlists from various artists around the world as well as museum curated picks. There’s more you can do with this frame, but that’s not what this post is about. I want to talk about abstract art.

The best way to describe abstract art is that it’s all in the eye of the beholder. It’s subjective. I’m no art expert. I couldn’t paint a telephone pole standing in an open field. But I’m pretty sure that I could create a painting that looks a lot like a Jackson Pollock. Give me a large canvas and a couple buckets of paint, and I could create a masterpiece.

This brings me to the real reason for this post, my recommendation for three excellent documentaries that deal with the subject of abstract art.

First up is the Netflix documentary Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art. This excellent documentary tells the story of how an art studio, its owner, and one particular art dealer, managed to sell nearly 80 million dollars of fake art to unsuspecting art enthusiasts. It turns into a massive white-collar crime where no one is really held accountable. Watching it unravel is worth your time.

The next documentary to add to your list is Who The &%$# is Jackson Pollock. You can find this one on Amazon Prime. This is a story about a painting bought for a few dollars that just might be a real Jackson Pollock painting worth millions.

The last of this three-film abstract art trilogy is the documentary My Kid Could Paint That. You can find this one on Amazon Prime also. This film tells the story of how a four-year-old girl, with a little assistance from her father, created paintings that would eventually sell for thousands of dollars. Is she an art prodigy? Or is she just a young child slapping paint on a canvas? Is she creating the work on her own, or is her father the real artist? This film was released in 2007. The little girl in the film, Marla Olmstead, is all grown up. She’s still painting. You can view her paintings at www.marlaolmstead.com.

Take the time to watch these three documentaries. Maybe you’ll have a whole new appreciation of abstract art.