All documentary filmmakers exist in a paradox. As they comb over the great fascinations of our world, capturing the beauty and sadness and absurdity and wonder all around us, there is a tug of war going on constantly in their heads. The tension is between art and truth.
As these documentarians prepare their product to be consumed by an audiences, they must ask themselves: Tell the truth? Or tell the best story.
My novel, Kill Show, is borne from this debate. Spoiler alert (for this essay, not the book!): I don’t have a tidy answer. But I became obsessed with observing people reckon with this dilemma in the real world and knew I had to dramatize it.
It is easiest to trace my fascinations with these questions to the finale of the HBO docuseries “The Jinx”. If you remember, the subject of the series confessed to several murders, unknowingly over a hot mic. The filmmakers were faced with a thorny decision: alert the relevant authorities immediately, so as to remove this murderer from public life, or save this blockbuster moment for the finale of their series.
I think the responsible choice is obvious here. But I am an artist, a storyteller, a proud descendent of the original campfire bards. We live to captivate an audience, stoke their curiosity to a fever pitch, and then just when they least expect it, shock them with a twist. That is the opportunity that had fallen into the laps of “The Jinx” filmmakers. They had struck storytelling gold. So, putting aside basic ethics for a moment, I know what they wanted to do.
But people who tell stories about real crimes don’t have the luxury of thinking only as a artist. They are dealing in tragedies that actually affected people, and in this day and age of contemporaneous storytelling, many of these stories don’t have conclusions yet. In fact, the very nature of how they are presented to the public may impact what happens. That’s a lot of responsibility for a storyteller.
True crime storytellers don’t have bosses, or oversight boards, or an electorate they have to satisfy. They answer to the marketplace, to their audience of consumers who, big surprise, love good, twisty, salacious, gruesome stories. The pressure to satisfy this audience puts artists – the documentarians, authors, and yes, podcasters – in a tough spot.
A character in a tough spot is catnip to me as an author. The more I consumed true crime entertainment and thought about the people tasked with making this content, the more I knew I wanted to center a book around these characters. How do their jobs impact them? How do they sleep at night?
The protagonist I conceived, Casey Hawthorne, is reality TV producer who still thinks of herself as a filmmaking artist. When she concocts the controversial plan to film the behind-the-scenes search for a missing teenage girl, she’s unaware of the dilemma she will eventually face. But like so many before her, Casey is eventually put to the test. She stumbles into the story of a lifetime, and knows just how to tell it so audiences will go wild, her company will profit, and her start will rise. She can tell that story…or she can tell the truth.
It’s a tough choice. That’s why I loved writing Kill Show. I’m just glad it’s a work of fiction.
Daniel Sweren-Becker is an author, television writer, and playwright living in Los Angeles. His play Stress Positions premiered in New York City at the SoHo Playhouse. A native of Manhattan, he is the author of the novels The Ones and The Equals.
