Given the prominent names involved, the scam was a topic of fascination in Hollywood. Smith learnt of it through Scott Johnson, a tenacious reporter for the trade journal The Hollywood Reporter, who started putting the pieces together in a 2018 cover story. At first, Smith was reticent to cover another con artist, but after he talked to Johnson his outlook changed. Extracting thousands of dollars from their victims seemingly didn’t justify the trouble the scammer went to. What truly mattered to them was causing, as one victim puts it, “psychological devastation”. So the real question wasn’t how the scam operated, but rather why?
While Hollywood Con Queen reveals the perpetrator following an exhaustive investigation, this article won’t identify them to avoid spoilers. The case is outrageous and labyrinthine. Even now, with the docuseries days away from release, Smith still can’t sum up the person that Johnson and he tracked down, confronted and eventually conversed with.
“That’s what made this a project I was invested in for more than four years. Stories that have someone that complex at the centre of them is what makes an intriguing subject,” Smith says. “We realised through making the series that very little was left to chance. Everything had meaning behind it. The fact that they had decided to talk to us, we assumed, was calculated.”
Con artists and their multitude of scams are an endless source of fascination for audiences. Here are five more you can stream right now.
Art and Craft (Amazon Prime): Money isn’t the focus in this fascinating study of Mark Landis, an unknown American artist who donated Picasso forgeries to dozens of art galleries.
Bad Vegan (Netflix): Hollywood Con Queen director Chris Smith hit the motherlode with this docuseries about a celebrated New York chef who embraced embezzlement to help her husband finance their quest for immortality.
The Inventor (Binge): Director Alex Gibney breaks down the numerous deceits of Elizabeth Holmes, the supposed Silicon Valley visionary whose technology never actually worked.
McMillions (Binge): A true slice of American eccentricity, as the FBI uncovers a long-running scam to fix a popular McDonalds promotion by a motley crew of grifters.
Sour Grapes (DocPlay): A study of delusion and privilege set within the fine wine community that shows how a reckless counterfeiter went unchallenged for years.
“I still don’t feel like I know them entirely,” he adds. “They’re very affable in the way they communicate. I had to remind myself that they had a great command over how they interacted. Most of us take that at face value, but here you never feel like you know what’s real.”
There are numerous fascinating threads in Hollywood Con Queen. Johnson, for example, begins as an investigator who serves as the audience’s guide, revealing clues and peeling away his quarry’s many layers. But Smith also makes him a subject, revealing the fascinating family history that makes the journalist spend years dedicating himself to this one story.
That kind of storytelling pivot is the sort of technique a dedicated documentary filmmaker can use to add to the narrative they’re building. But as interest in documentaries has grown exponentially, so has the number of newcomers to the field competing to explain headline stories. The clock, Smith notes, is now constantly ticking for directors and producers.
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“When the Fyre Festival story broke that was in April 2017, but we didn’t start shooting Fyre until October 31st that year,” Smith says. “Today, there would have been a bidding war and three different crews shooting the day after the story broke. People would have flown down there to be on the ground. That’s how things have changed.
“There are more people making documentaries, but they’re also working at great speed. Part of that is to the detriment of the work,” he adds. “In my mind, one of the things that make a great documentary is time. When you’re in a race to get something out to the market, that’s not a benefit for the filmmakers or the audience. Our stuff takes a long time and I don’t look at that as a negative. This took four years and that gave us a perspective.”
Hollywood Con Queen is on Apple TV+ from Wednesday, May 8
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