Joe Berlinger Developing Series Based on the First Season of the Podcast

After a year of reading through court documents, newspaper clippings, academic work, fiction and writing this blog, I've grown chary of even minimal participation in the culture industry.  Podcasts and blogs now belong to popular culture and like films, radio, television, streaming platforms, etc., they produce standardized cultural goods for consumers who are rendered passive and docile by entertainment.  True, podcasts and blogs can motivate some to be more active and creative, but, for the most part they entertain and distract making it more likely that many of us will remain docile creatures.

Some who listened to the first season of Dead and Gone recognized the trade-offs in commercializing the stories of missing and murdered Deadheads.  They recognized that the podcast might bring TenderfootTV and Double Elvis profit and further notoriety, but if it brings attention to the cases and elicits new information, then commercializing them is worthwhile.

The podcasters were well-known, and articles promoting the podcast appeared in publications like The New York Post, The Rolling Stone, and Relix.  Word spread through social media.  And now it's been reported that filmmaker Joe Berlinger ( executive producer of series like Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, Crime Scene:  The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, Murder Among Mormons) has begun developing the first season into a scripted television series.  Here's what Berlinger had to say:

"As a former Deadhead, lifelong music fan and crime and justice filmmaker, I thought I died and went to heaven when listening to Payne and Jake’s meticulously researched podcast. Dead and Gone is an incredible weave of music history, social justice, and active true-crime investigation – three areas that I have been lucky enough to explore in most of my past work as a filmmaker. There is so much potential here to not only immerse viewers in the iconic world of the Grateful Dead and their itinerant, dedicated fans, but to also dissect a troubling story of potential wrongful conviction, a story that is infused with a compelling mystery that surrounds the entire case even to this day.” (Deadline, May 9, 2022)*

Meticulously researched?!  Really?  If this podcast was meticulously researched, then one would be hard pressed to find evidence of that in those segments covering the murders and the alternative suspect theory.**   In a previous post, I've discussed how Lindsey failed to tell his listeners that much of what he reported could already be found in court documents available online.  Although he claimed to have purchased and read Patricia Gioia's book, his reporting didn't reflect more than a cursory reading of it.  Finally, if meticulous research was done in preparation for (or even during) Lindsey's investigation, then this raises some serious questions about why he left out so much relevant information (like the prosecution's case) from his reporting.  Again, I wonder:  Did relating pertinent facts get in the way of telling an entertaining story? (see my previous post, Hucksters)

Perhaps Berlinger was referring to the investigative work that Lindsey's co-producer, Mike Rooney, continued to do after the first season.  In the second season's first episode, Lindsey told listeners that, "what he [Rooney] has been able to uncover is beyond worthy of a second season of this podcast."  (Man, I'd really like to see that research...)  Perhaps Berlinger'\s just referring to Jake Brennan's research.

So now we know the culture industry has taken greater interest in the murders, as material for the production of another story packaged for our consumption.  This brings to mind a sentiment expressed in a Facebook posting made by Amanda Finegold:

"I’ve talked to a few people I knew back then about this. All of them would like to see justice served for Mary and Greg. Some of them are very uncomfortable with the thought of their deaths being sensationalized and serialized for our consumption. I’ve felt uncomfortable with the idea of this story as entertainment, because it’s fucking horrific, and the fact that people are having fun with it is sickening.  Still, I believe International was convicted on the basis of race and circumstance, as opposed to actual evidence of a crime, and I think that should be broadcast as widely as possible. I also would really like to see their actual killer, or killers, brought to justice. If this podcast does anything to help make that happen, then it’s been worthwhile."

Perhaps the culture industry will now bring that justice, but I'm skeptical.

*Like others, the reporter for Deadline, Peter White, got a basic fact wrong.  Mary and Greg had their lives taken from them in August of '85, not in August of '86.

** Compare Lindsey's first interview with Weston Sudduth (and there's a lot to say about how he got that interview) with the second interview (the one in the last episode).  It doesn't seem like meticulous research prepared him to do either one.