Back in 2003 Andrew Jarecki, MoviePhone co-founder and first-time filmmaker, stumbled onto a story that became the disturbing documentary Capturing the Friedmans.
The film told the story of a man and his son who had been convicted, perhaps wrongly, of child sexual abuse. Jarecki proved to be as provocative as the material. He’d speak voluminously about his investigative process and his perception of the Friedmans (I did an hour-long interview with him in which I think I asked three questions) but wasn’t as impartial as he claimed to be. That cast some doubt upon the validity of his film, but in the long run only enhanced the story’s intrigue.
(Appropriately enough, Jarecki received advice about Friedmans from Albert Maysles, no stranger to documentary controversy through Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens.)
Jarecki’s been silent in the five years since Friedmans, while his brother Eugene made the great documentary Why We Fight. Now Variety reports that the Weinstein Co is backing All Good Things, a “love story-cum murder mystery…about a Gotham real estate dynasty in the 1980s.” Ryan Gosling, Kristen Dunst, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Frank Langella will star.
I’m really happy to see Jarecki back on the scene, and I’m trying to squash any disappointment that he’s gone dramatic instead of sticking to docs. Even in ’03 he mentioned wanting to do more than just docs, but Capturing The Friedmans was such a strong, significant debut — problems and all — that I want to see more in that vein. If nothing else, this time he’ll be able to dig into all the dubious moral standards he wants without having to worry about managing facts and truth.