It is now The Staircase’s turn to catch flak for being a TV show and not a documentary
The new HBO Max version of the story features the documentary filmmakers as part of the story
Aux News The Staircase
Though hardly a new trend, TV shows based on real events have been a reliable source of attention and accolades for TV networks and streaming services recently, and as that trend continues, a similar trend has popped up in its wake: people getting made that fictionalized TV shows are not emotionless, fact-driven documentaries. A couple of years ago, Netflix had to explain that it would not be adding a disclaimer to The Crown to make it explicitly clear that it is a scripted drama series and not a long run of hidden-camera shots featuring the real royals.
Then, just a few weeks ago, HBO had to explain that Winning Time: The Rise Of The Lakers Dynasty is a TV show based on the real story of the Lakers and not a documentary about them after Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Jerry West criticized the way the show had depicted them and certain things that happened to them.
Now, in a rare one of these that actually might justify the people involved getting a little annoyed, Vanity Fair says that the people behind the original award-winning The Staircase documentary, including French director Jean-Xavier De Lestrade, feel “betrayed” by the HBO Max adaptation. It’s not just that the dramatized version is different from the documentary version, though, it’s that de Lestrade and original editor Sophie Brunet had spent time with Antonio Campos (who made the dramatized Staircase) and had initially approved of HBO Max’s plans.
But one of the twists of the HBO Max version is that the documentary filmmakers are part of the story, and it suggests that they may have been part of the story this whole time—which is to say that their work to document the story of Michael Peterson and his family may have ended up swaying perceptions of the case from a legal perspective… or at least that’s what may have happened in the fictionalized version of the story. That’s the prickly bit: This is a dramatization of a famous murder case and the documentary that was made about it, it’s not a new documentary about the murder and the documentary, so any point that the HBO Max series is making is technically a point being made about the characters based on the filmmakers who made the documentary and not the real filmmakers or the real family.
It’s complicated… and so maybe de Lestrade has a point. The Vanity Fair story says that the filmmakers have reached out to Campos to ask for edits or a disclaimer, but neither Campos or HBO Max have responded.
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It feels like there’s a nuanced discussion to be had here about what a “fictional” story about real people and real events owes to its viewers and subjects. I think everyone accepts that some details are going to be changed to compress and shape messy, chaotic reality into a dramatic narrative, but it seems kinda disingenuous to use real people’s names and biographical context and then, say, make them a hideous asshole for drama’s sake while hiding behind the “it’s all fake!” excuse. If that’s the case, just use the basic framework of the story and change all the names or make up composite characters. But insisting an using all real names to get the cultural cachet of a “true” story and then not giving a fuck about getting any of it right just seems like a blatant case of trying to have your cake and eat it too.
This is where I think Jerry West has a legitimate gripe about Winning Time. The series makes him out to be a raging asshole/alcoholic from what I’ve read, and by all accounts that appears to be 100% untrue. I think, like you said, this is a nuanced problem that deserves nuanced discussion. What do filmmakers owe to real people? Surely some modicum of fidelity to who they actually are. Dramatic license is one thing, but making someone into an entirely different “character” just to serve the dramatic tension of the plot seems problematic.
Yeah, the argument always seems to be “WELL, YOU CAN’T EXPECT AN ADAPTATION TO BE 1:1 WITH REAL LIFE, SO YOU MAY AS WELL GO ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NUTS WITH IT!” – but there is the issue of conveying the tonality of the real story you’re basing it on. Sure, yes, you don’t have the time to portray all the nuances of Jerry West – or any character – but you can convey it in other ways. That’s part of what being a good writer is.
THERE we go. I wish I’d read your comment before I whinged overlong in mine. Audiences have a right to expect the tone to be at least comparable even if details are fudged. I don’t watch series like these expecting conversations I see to be 1:1 recreations, but I expect it to overall have a tone that feels commensurate with what we know of real life events.
They had Kareem curse out a young child!
I don’t believe Jerry West has even one drink in the entire show. They also portray him as the most passionate Lakers fan in the series. Sure the show ramps up his intensity to comic levels at the start of the season, but it levels off as it goes on. I saw that as more of a device to really drive home the fact that this dude lived and bled Lakers.
Jerry West has a slam dunk defamation case if he wanted to pursue it. Defamation cases against docudramas have to overcome a lot legally, and are most often unsuccessful, but West has a case that’s better than any past successful case. The maker’s of the show basically checked off every box in West’s favor as far as the law is concerned. For instance, you can portray a real person in a bad light, contrary to their public persona, in a docudrama if you have sources close to the events depicted that say that is how the person acted in their experience. Film insurance companies recommend having at least two solid sources if you’re going that route. HBO isn’t going that route. On the contrary, the very book the show is based on present West as an extreme gentleman. Every single person who has spoke out who was actually there has said West was nothing like the portrayal in the show. The complete opposite actually.Instead HBO is, at least in their response, using the “fictional portray” defense. This defense gives the filmmakers a lot of leeway. There’s just a few things that can trip up this defense and they did one of them badly. At one point they have a character break the fourth wall and say this is what Jerry West is actually like. That scene puts West’s portrayal into the category of something the docudrama is conveying to the audience as factual.It’s for similar reason’s that Gaprindashvili’s defamation lawsuit was allowed to go forward against Netflix for Queen’s Gambit. The judge found that line that claimed she had never faced men in competition was delivered in such a manner that any reasonable audience member would think that was part of the documentary aspect of the show and not the fictionalized aspects.
Yes, and the same thing happened when it came to the show’s depiction of the awarding of the finals MVP. I don’t think anyone expects a show like Winning Time to faithfully represent the inner complexities of how that came to pass. But it’s completely another thing to change the story so that Johnson knowingly screws over Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and takes an award he knew didn’t belong to him, a scene that makes him look like an asshole, and definitely didn’t happen.
Yeah watching stories like this about real, living people, I’m always on the fence about whether it’s fair or responsible. Even watching something like The Social Network makes me a bit uncomfortable.
Amanda Knox really changed my opinion on this. I don’t actually think it’s possible to make a show like this in an ethical way when people involved in the real story are still alive, and so are close relatives of the dead.
All anyone needs to know about The HBO version of the Staircase is that Colin Firth is having the time of his life playing an American of questionable morals. Everything else is just..not important.
Untrue! There’s also Parker Posey.
I feel like basically every role Parker Posey has ever played is one where she’s having an awesome time and really going with it.
Sofie Turner is also in this and at first I didn’t recognize her.
For those of us who don’t know anything about this docudrama, I was at least hoping the article would reference what it was about, and hence, explain the context of the controversy.
Electronic ink is expensive and we’re on a tight budget here.
Wife dead. Implausible explanations by husband. Overzealous corrupt prosecution. Owls. Nobody knows what really happened to poor Kathleen.
Are viewers aware that Michael Peterson and the documentary’s editor, Sophie Brunet, became lovers? I have admittedly skipped a few places in the tv show, so maybe that becomes a plot element? The whole business is weird af.
According to the Vanity Fair article, the miniseries covers that in episode five, suggesting that Sophie Brunet edits the original eight episodes of the documentary while in a relationship with Michael Peterson. That’s one of their main bones of contention. Peterson, De Lestrade, and Brunet all claim that their relationship started via correspondence after Brunet left the project to film edit something else. I don’t know the extent to which I believe any of those people on anything, so who knows the truth at this point. She did, however, confirm that she edited three of the five additional episodes of the documentary while in a relationship with Peterson. It’s pretty rich that De Lestrade is bellyaching about fairness given the ways in which The Staircase shows a very limited view of the case and the trial, despite the hours and hours of film they shot. It’s basically a 13-hour infomercial for the defense, with minimal rebuttal from anyone on the investigative and prosecutorial side. While The Staircase was hailed as a monumental work when it was released, there are parts of it that have not aged well, particularly its misogyny and cruelty toward Kathleen’s family. De Lestrade couldn’t have helped that the prosecution grew skittish and withdrew their cooperation, but he also didn’t work very hard to balance the documentary after that. As much as De Lestrade likes to talk about truth and veracity in the documentary form, his series has taken just as many stances and perspectives, made just as many prejudicial choices about how to present people.
Thanks. I must say, your brief write-up makes the series sound much more interesting than I have found it to be. Firth (and Peterson) are just so utterly off-putting that watching is a challenge. Maybe I can try watching through a second time.
I haven’t found the fictionalized miniseries to be all that great yet, either. I’m going to stick it out, but I’m not hopeful. I was dubious about the project when I first heard about it. The original documentary is both very long and flawed, even if it did help to define the current true crime docu-craze. And the original investigation and prosecution were so flawed. And both the prosecution and the documentary are frustrating because they both avoid asking Michael Peterson key questions about holes in his story and in the evidence. With all the time and latitude De Lestrade had, very fundamental questions went unaddressed.I think a lot about narrative and adaptation in my teaching job. There are some stories that I can see in my mind how easily they could be adapted for film or stage. This isn’t one of those stories. The documentary uses 13 episodes to to tell part of one side of the story. The fictional miniseries is trying to flesh out the Petersons’ relationship, the extended family dynamics, the prosecution’s side of things, the investigators’ side of things, the trial, the appeals, the ultimate outcome. And while it’s doing all that, it’s trying to avoid the imbalances of the documentary while exploring themes of truth and injustice and perspective. All in 8 episodes. That’s a tall fucking order, and I’m not sure it’s getting the job done yet, and quite frankly I’m not sure it’s a job that can adequately be done at all.
13 hours didn’t know it was that long and it only covers the defense side. No wonder Netflix is in trouble they keep spreading money on extra episodes of shows that aren’t needed.
To be fair, the original docuseries is only 8 episodes, so it’s not that the filmmakers set out to create 13 episodes when they started. The additional episodes were commissioned as “sequels” on two separate occasions years after the trial. I would say that episodes 9 and 10 provide some necessary follow-up and context. Episodes 11-13, however, sag a bit with some bloat and repetition. Those last three could have been more tight, maybe one 75 minute episode. Both sets of additional episodes were commissioned by Canal+, so Netflix didn’t order any of this. They just bought the rights to stream it in the US in 2018.
I decided to watch the HBO show instead of the documentary. Netflix has a tendency to have very long documentaries. That’s ok for something like The Last Dance which covers a long period of time and ground but not for one true crime case. Like did Tiger King need multiple episodes to tell their story let alone two full seasons
FWIW, The Staircase is NOT a Netflix doc, but rather a doc from 2004 that has had universal acclaim for nearly two decades.
Counterpoint: American Vandal. And I know that having all these episodes examining this one inane bit of spraypaintery is a big part of the joke. But man, in that context, it fucking WORKS.
That show was a parody of true crime documentaries also. I do quite like Netflix’s shorter doc’s.
The documentary series is on Netflix, but it was made in 2004 for french TV. The length isn’t something you can blame on the streaming site.
“It’s complicated… and so maybe de Lestrade has a point.”So, these people have a point because “it’s complicated” but Jerry West can go piss up a rope despite the fact that HBO is admitting that they’re making stuff up?
Now, in a rare one of these that actually might justify the people involved getting a little annoyedNah. The Staircase barely counts as a documentary, it was completely one-sided and Michael Peterson was romantically involved with the editor while she was editing the documentary. De Lestrade and company can fuck right off.
people getting made that fictionalized TV shows are not emotionless, fact-driven documentaries.Made what?
I’m absolutely not expecting the HBO series to be a true reflection of anything but it’s just a continually slippery thing when they also want to make viewers well aware of other areas in which they really endeavored to have “accuracy” (set, for example). Have your cake and eat it too: we obsessively studied footage of these people when available, we carefully studied details to replicate them for our series, but now you’re asking us to stick to known details vs branching into fiction? How gauche!
This case is a particularly interesting one as I certainly believe that the documentary was overly favorable to Peterson, but it’s just so difficult to watch (the level of homophobia involved – 2003 is presented as a totally different time, but not that different; it was notable then and it’s absolutely jarring now). I’m watching this series I guess because I find it interesting, but I have no actual expectation of coming to any real consensus about what I think happened as I genuinely have no idea if he’s guilty or innocent but think the state did not prove its case in the slightest. But again, if they want to make it seem like it was carefully researched and attempts made to be realistic, how can they NOT expect that viewers will be using this series as a method of gauging perceptions of guilt or innocence?
I love this series. The two reenactments they’ve shown are so disturbing, but really well done.