Entertainment

In 'The Jinx — Part Two' finale, Andrew Jarecki says Robert Durst was enabled by wife and siblings

Published

1 month ago

May 27, 2024

In 'The Jinx — Part Two' finale, Andrew Jarecki says Robert Durst was enabled by wife and siblings

NEW YORK —

Filmmaker Andrew Jarecki has spent much of the last 20 years thinking about Robert Durst, the notorious real estate heir who was suspected in multiple murders but managed to evade justice until the very end of his life.

Jarecki’s Emmy-winning 2015 docuseries, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” thrust Durst into the spotlight by revisiting the mysterious deaths to which he was linked: the 1982 disappearance of Durst’s first wife, Kathie McCormack Durst; the murder of his best friend, Los Angeles writer Susan Berman, in 2000; and the grisly killing and dismemberment of his elderly neighbor, Morris Black, in 2001. And it famously led to Durst’s arrest in New Orleans the day before the broadcast of the explosive yet controversial finale in which he muttered, “killed them all, of course” to himself while in the bathroom.

In “The Jinx — Part Two,” a six-episode follow-up that concluded Sunday on HBO and is available to stream on Max, Jarecki looks at the dramatic events that have unfolded since Durst’s quasi-confession aired on national television and triggered a craze for high-end true-crime documentaries. This time around, the focus is less on Durst and his damaged psychology and more on the circle of friends and confidantes who helped him along the way.

“When we were making the first ‘Jinx,’ we would say, ‘How do you kill three people over 30 years and get away with it? It takes a village,’” said Jarecki, in a windowless editing suite in Chelsea, where he was joined by executive producer Zac Stuart-Pontier, who after 15 years in “The Jinx” world has a nearly instant recall of all things Durst-related. The conversation, which was scheduled for a half-hour, instead stretched to 90 minutes, an indication that the documentarians are nowhere near finished talking about Durst, who died in 2022 — or the friends and family who enabled him for years.

“This idea of complicity was for us so fascinating because it broadens the story,” Jarecki said. “Who are these people who see themselves as good, honest, decent people and don’t see themselves as accomplices in anything?”

Sunday’s finale, fittingly titled “It Takes a Village,” takes a critical look at the people who understood Durst — and what he was capable of — better than anyone: his siblings, Wendy, Douglas and Thomas; and his second wife and heir, Debrah Lee Charatan, who did not sit for an interview but is present in the series through video depositions and often riveting prison phone calls with her husband. The series portrays her as a shrewd opportunist, more consigliere than spouse, who helped Durst safeguard his fortune through numerous legal battles, used his wealth to amass a real estate empire of her own, and is now fighting a wrongful-death lawsuit from Kathie’s family, the McCormacks.

Robert Durst and his friend Susan Berman, who was killed in 2000.

(HBO)

“This is a person who’s really played the long game,” said Jarecki, whose 2010 feature film “All Good Things” was inspired by Durst — and led to his participation in “The Jinx.”

The finale recounts the history of Charatan’s relationship with Durst, which began in the late 1980s, when she was newly divorced and freshly bankrupt, and he was a wealthy eccentric rumored to have killed his first wife. The couple married in a secret ceremony in 2000, shortly after authorities in Westchester County, N.Y., reopened the investigation into Kathie’s disappearance — and days before Berman was shot in the head.

The series concludes with a dramatization of a woman resembling Charatan driving a luxury convertible down a scenic road and arriving at a palatial waterfront estate. It is intercut with deposition footage of the real Charatan, who is interrogated about sticking by Durst as he was accused of horrific things. “Was it worth it?” asks an attorney for the McCormack family. “I think so,” she says.

“I think she thought, ‘Well, I’m gonna make a calculation, that there’s so much value in staying connected to this person [Durst], because he’s going to die with 100-plus million dollars,’” Jarecki said. “By the way, it was hard, what she did — managing Bob for all those years. That was not easy. He’s an incredibly time-consuming, infuriating partner.” (Exhibit A: In one tense video call shown in the series, Durst clashes with Charatan over payment of his legal fees, threatening to write her out of his will. She skillfully walks him back.)

Charatan’s relationship with Durst came under more scrutiny following his death in January 2022. Because of a legal technicality in California, his conviction for Berman’s murder was abated — essentially vacated. This triggered the McCormack family to file a $100-million wrongful-death lawsuit against Durst’s estate, which is controlled by Charatan.

Andrew Jarecki, left, and Robert Durst standing on a street near a planter.

Charatan sat for a deposition in the case. In portions that appear in “The Jinx,” she admits to living with another man throughout her marriage to Durst and says that she “respects” the jury’s guilty verdict in the Berman case. However, she says she does not believe that Durst killed Kathie.

“She has had so many chances to redeem herself, including potentially being in the show,” Jarecki said. “She could have explained why she was with him. She could have explained what she really believed.” The filmmaker said he tried to get Charatan to participate in the documentary, even going to dinner with her multiple times to plead his case, but was not successful.

“It Takes a Village” also considers the role played by Durst’s estranged younger siblings, who in deposition testimony say that they feared their older brother and even suspected he may have had something to do with Kathie’s disappearance but did little to assist the investigation at the time. They also reportedly never reached out to the McCormack family to offer support or condolences.

In audio testimony, Thomas Durst says that his siblings Wendy and Douglas never mentioned Kathie again after the disappearance: “It was like she had become a non-person and I decided, ‘You know what? Kathie is not just missing. Kathie’s dead, and Bob is responsible — but I don’t know what I can do.’”

Kathie’s body was never found, and in 2017 she was declared legally dead. Durst was formally charged with her death in 2021, but he died before a trial got underway.

“What would it have cost for them to reach out to Kathie’s family and say: ‘Listen, we didn’t kill Kathie. But boy, we feel terrible about what happened. And we want to make some kind of a contribution for you,’” Jarecki said. “They didn’t have to admit their complicity, but at least it would have been an acknowledgment.”

“The Jinx” also captures the moment when Jarecki receives a phone call informing him that Durst is dead. Though his demise was not exactly surprising — Durst was 78 and had been in failing health for years — it still left him nonplussed, Jarecki said. “He had been in my life for so long, it didn’t feel real that he was going to disappear,” he said. “I didn’t miss him. I didn’t think, ‘Oh, we had these beautiful times together.’ … I just thought, I actually don’t know how I feel about this.”

In the months before his death, Jarecki and Stuart-Pontier said they worked together on numerous drafts of a letter to Durst, pleading with him to come clean about what happened to Kathie. But Durst never revealed what he knew about her fate.

The gist of the letter was that Durst should “just tell people what happened with Kathie,” Jarecki said. “Maybe it was a terrible accident. Whatever it was, even if it’s bad, even if it makes you look terrible … everybody’s going to say, ‘Even though he did some terrible things, before he died he somehow found a way to have a little tiny bit of redemption.’” Jarecki believed that Durst saw himself as fundamentally misunderstood and tried to appeal to that.

A man in a blue polo shirt sitting next to a woman in a pink top.

“One of the reasons why he agreed to talk to me to begin with is that he had applied to get into a co-op building and was rejected,” he said. “And his attitude was like, ‘Oh, I’ve never been convicted of murder. So why are they treating me like a pariah?’”

They decided not to send the letter because “it was inserting us in the story in a way that might alter [it],” said Jarecki, who believes that Durst killed Kathie because she had accomplished so much and thrown into relief how little he’d done despite extraordinary privilege. “Bob is a faker, and Bob knows he’s a faker,” he said. “Kathie comes along and falls in love with him, and at a certain point realizes that he’s a faker. And he’s really humiliated by that.”

The filmmakers began to think about another season of “The Jinx” as they reviewed testimony from conditional witnesses in the Berman case — people like Nick Chavin, the longtime friend turned “secret witness” against Durst. “There’s nothing like friends turning on each other,” Stuart-Pontier said. “That was the first inkling that the people around Bob were going to really play a huge part in the telling of the story going forward.”

“The Jinx — Part Two” makes the case that before Berman became one of Durst’s victims, she was one of his enablers. Perhaps the biggest bombshell of the season is the audiotape of an interview Berman did with journalist Albert Goldman a few days after Kathie’s disappearance, in which she smeared her friend’s character and planted the idea that she’d been the victim of a robbery — all of which suggested she was helping Durst cover up a crime.

The theme of complicity is, if anything, more relevant in the current political climate than it was when Season 1 of “The Jinx” aired in 2015, just a few months before Donald Trump announced he was running for president. It’s difficult to watch Season 2 without thinking about the biographical similarities between Trump and Durst, controversial scions of powerful New York real estate dynasties known for acting with impunity.

“All of this stuff is very current,” Jarecki said, noting how Republicans who once denounced Trump have since fallen back in line. “We’ve talked about why ‘The Jinx’ matters now. But it just feels like this idea of complicity is so important to what’s happening.”

Movie Reviews

All the Long Nights: meditative return by Small, Slow But Steady director

Published

3 hours ago

June 26, 2024

Press Room

All the Long Nights: meditative return by Small, Slow But Steady director

3/5 stars

The fate of the universe does not always need to hang in the balance to create compelling drama. Sometimes, something as simple as garnering a better understanding of a colleague can prove sufficient, as is the case in Sho Miyake’s new drama.

Adapted from Maiko Seo’s novel of the same name, All the Long Nights follows two young people whose prospects in the adult world have been cut short by disorders that affect their everyday experience.

Misa (Mone Kamishiraishi) suffers from extreme premenstrual syndrome, which triggers mood swings so violent that she was forced to quit her previous office job.

Meanwhile, Takatoshi (Hokuto Matsumura) is hobbled by debilitating panic attacks, which have had a similarly negative impact on his professional aspirations.

These two lonely souls meet when Misa moves back home to be close to her ailing mother (Ryo), and gets an administrative job at a small company that distributes science equipment for children.

Initially, Misa and Takatoshi have little in common, their eccentricities and peccadillos even causing a degree of tension and irritation between them.

But when Misa discovers that Takatoshi takes the same herbal medication as she does, it sparks a growing understanding and empathy between the two of them, which only grows when they team up to collaborate on a planetarium project.

Hokuto Matsumura as Takatoshi (left) and Mone Kamishiraishi as Misa in a still from All the Long Nights.

Miyake’s film conjures an affectionate portrayal of sleepy suburbia, exemplified by the low-stakes challenges of small-business office culture that unfolds at a gentle, unhurried pace, as one has come to expect from Japanese dramas of this ilk.

Where this film differs from many of its contemporaries, however, is in the absence of such archetypal clichés as romance or illness. Misa and Takatoshi’s relationship remains defiantly platonic throughout, with neither party ever threatening to overstep their boundaries or behave inappropriately.

Instead of a story about finding a kindred spirit with whom to explore the boundless expanse of the universe, All the Long Nights is a tale of curiosity and understanding.

Both characters strive to learn more about their colleague’s physiological disorder to better inform themselves, but also so that they might become a more valuable and empathetic friend to the other.

The performances are understated but also effective, unburdened by the need to resort to histrionics to advance the narrative.

Undeniably, Misa and Takatoshi come to depend upon one another as a crutch for coming to terms with their own issues, but Miyake’s proposal that this connection need go no further is as honest and refreshing as they come.

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Entertainment

'A Family Affair' is a rom-com 'dream scenario' for Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron and Joey King

Published

4 hours ago

June 26, 2024

Press Room

'A Family Affair' is a rom-com 'dream scenario' for Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron and Joey King

Nicole Kidman was yearning to make a romantic comedy.

The Oscar winner wanted to shift course after playing a tragically depressed housewife in the miniseries “Expats” on Prime Video. She wanted to have a good time. She wanted Hollywood, for once, to send a rom-com script her way.

When she received the screenplay for “A Family Affair,” Kidman leapt at the opportunity to shed her dramatic persona and take on lighter material. In the Netflix film, premiering Friday, she channels Brooke Harwood, a widowed mom and award-winning memoirist with writer’s block. Brooke’s 24-year-old daughter, Zara (Joey King), still lives at home while working her thankless day job as an overworked personal assistant to Chris Cole (Zac Efron), a vain and insecure movie star who threatens to fire her over the slightest mistakes.

One afternoon, Brooke unexpectedly encounters Chris, who’s 16 years her junior, and the physical attraction is instantaneous. It eventually blooms into real love, angering Zara; she worries that Chris will break Brooke’s heart just as he has with past exes. But Brooke is not just any woman. She’s got wisdom that comes with age, and Chris’ global fame as the star of a superhero franchise means nothing to her. Instead, she sees the playful, loving man within him. And he truly values her, body and soul, and gives her something to write about again. (Is it getting hot in here?)

In “A Family Affair,” Zac Efron plays Chris Cole, a movie star who falls for Nicole Kidman’s Brooke Harwood, the mother of his assistant.

(Tina Rowden/Netflix)

Kidman, 57, and Efron, 36, previously played lovers in 2012’s “The Paperboy,” a gritty melodrama that has an extremely different ending. They were eager to reunite, this time in a joke-filled romance where the stakes are less life-and-death and more existential. The age-old question — What am I doing with my life? — reverberates throughout the film.

The Times recently spoke with Kidman, Efron and King to discuss the joys and taboos of filming a rom-com that pairs an older woman and younger man — a dynamic that continues to stoke public interest, and sometimes contempt. Kidman, as usual, was up for the challenge, and Efron found that irresistible. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

I watch a lot of romantic comedies, and this one stands out as a happy marriage of casting and writing. How did Carrie Solomon’s screenplay get into your hands?

Kidman: It was just one of those things where it was sent to me and I read it and I went, “Yeah, I have to do something that is fun and funny and completely different.” Because I’d been through “Expats” — you know, the trajectory of my career has always led me more towards drama. I was like, “Please, I’m begging to have some fun and to be considered for some sort of romantic comedy at some point.” So, this came to me, and I was like, “Yes, please, please, please.” Because I never get offered them. I never get considered.

Efron: I think there was something specific about the characters that I felt there was a natural inroad to them. I could understand Chris on some levels and what he was going through, and that was just exciting to think about playing that for me. Then, of course, at that point Nicole was involved — and I dream of working with Nicole — and Joey was also in talks for It. That was just a dream scenario for a rom-com.

Kidman: Joey is so funny. It was that kind of thing [where] you’re going, “OK, great. There’s this young girl who can come in and just nail it.”

Efron: Initially the script was called — can I say that?

King: Yeah, say it. We’re [with] the L.A. Times.

Kidman: It had a different title.

Efron: It had a different title, which made it really exciting to read. It was called “Motherf—.” As soon as you get that script — when it says that on the front — you can’t help but want to read it.

Nicole and Joey, yours is not a typical mother-daughter story. At times, the roles reverse, and Zara occupies the position of overprotective parent — in this case wanting to keep Brooke away from Chris. How did it feel to channel that?

King: One of the most truthful and realistic parts about this, which I really love, is that particular moment when a child, no matter how old they are, realizes that their parent is a person, not just their parent. [Zara] needs to learn to grow up a bit, and Brooke’s trying to teach her and help her make her own decisions. Zara wants to be an adult but [is] still stuck in this child role. I think they both really see each other for the first time in terms of, “You’re not just my parent. You’re a real woman who has womanly desires and I need to grow up. I’m not just a kid.” That transition is really, deeply uncomfortable for them and they have a lot of tension and they’re fighting, and Chris is caught in the middle of that tension.

Kidman: There’s an enormous amount of love, too. They like hanging out together. … We watch TV together, we eat together, we watch shows together. There’s that sort of gap that I have that I’ve now filled with her, so at some point I have to let her go.

Zara standing in the kitchen looking at her mom who is seated.

Zac, you pull a Tom Hanks in “You’ve Got Mail.” You take a guy with villain qualities and make him worth rooting for. How did you connect with Chris?

Efron: I can relate to Chris in a number of ways, but it was fun to … dive into different emotions and things that [make me] feel for him. He’s struggling. He’s not handling it the best. … I think he’s honestly trying his best and it’s just hard. He’s taking it out probably in a way he doesn’t mean to be, but it’s very abrasive toward his assistant. [Then] he meets Brooke, who he doesn’t have to really pretend to be anything but himself around.

Nicole and Zac, you both starred in “The Paperboy.” Zac’s character was hopelessly in love with Nicole’s, who in turn was hopelessly in love with a convicted felon (John Cusack). How was it reuniting 12 years later — for a rom-com?

Efron: The tone of [“The Paperboy”] is very different, but I think the building blocks of our characters were there for [“A Family Affair”], and that was kind of an unrequited love. We didn’t really get to take it the whole way and this really felt like we could draw a lot from that experience and take it to a whole new level. And it was easy. It felt really natural.

Kidman: We’re very easy with each other. I mean, part of the thing was going, ”If you’re doing this, I’ll do it [with you].” We wanted to do it together. I know how funny he is and he’s also just brave. Actually, with the comedy and stuff, he was like, “OK, let’s try this. We’ll try that.” It was just “anything goes.” … I just wanted to be able to be with a group of people who weren’t going to take everything so seriously. That allowed us [to] just play. Because a lot of it is play.

The scene when Zara discovers Chris and Brooke in bed, then hits her head in horror, is a brilliant bit of physical comedy. How many takes did that require?

Kidman [motioning toward King]: The perfectionist here kept asking to do it again and again and again.

King: When I’m doing anything that has any kind of stunt work in it, I like to watch [the] playback to see if I’m selling it enough. The head bump looked fake for the first three or four takes, so I probably did six or seven or eight.

Kidman: More than that. Maybe 20, 15? She’s like, “I’ll do it again!” We’re like, “Don’t hurt yourself.”

King: The two of them were so funny and supportive. They were getting such a kick out of it. They were off camera and they stayed to watch me.

Efron: It was so entertaining, we had to stay. Like, you were doing it 100%. There were no sound effects for you hitting your head. … It was some serious Jim Carrey vibes.

Kidman: Lucille Ball.

A man sitting at a dining table holds the hand of a woman seated next to him.

Like “The Idea of You,” “A Family Affair” is a lighthearted romance pairing an older woman and a younger man, a trope that society still treats with suspicion. Why are stories like this important to tell?

Kidman: I mean, I can only say I’m glad the whole landscape is changing, and it shouldn’t be an anomaly. … We’ve had an abundance of older men and younger women, but we haven’t had the abundance of older women with younger men. And why not? … [“A Family Affair”] was written by [Solomon], who went in and [said], “This is what I want to tell. This is the story I want to tell.” Now we’re going to start to see the effects of the work that has been done for the last five, 10 years where we’re still trying to change the storytelling landscape and put women in places of power so they can tell these stories — whether they be comedies, whether they be dramas, whether they be thrillers, whatever they are. We just haven’t had the equivalent that we’ve had with the male gaze.

Efron: We want more of it. We need more of it.

Kidman: And we’re lucky to have guys like Zac who will go, “Yeah, I’m up for it. Let’s go.”

Efron: Yeah, it works out great for me. I’m like —

King: “Yes!”

Filmmakers have told me that they have a hard time persuading actors to star in romantic comedies. Why is that often the case?

King: I think maybe some people don’t do [them] because they’re afraid of not being taken seriously as a serious actor. … People who are able to [act in] very different genres, I think it’s actually the biggest flex that you can have in terms of showing the range that you have. Look at Zac. He was training for “Iron Claw” while making “A Family Affair.” … What a flex.

Efron: It’s important. You really want to, I think, be able to at least try everything.

King: Comedy’s fun! Comedy’s fun and comedy’s hard. Comedy’s really hard.

Can comedy be harder than drama?

King: It can be.

Kidman: It depends who’s at the helm. It depends on the chemistry.

Efron: If you can bring it to a place where it’s real, it kind of feels oddly similar to a drama.

Kidman: They always say it’s such a fine [line], especially when you’re doing a drama, you can move very, very quickly into satire or comedy. … In that sense, it’s almost like with drama: You’ve got to go, “No, no, stay here in the present moment.” Because if we start to ridicule it, it can move into that place very quickly and then it’s hard to move back.

King: It’s hard, and it’s easier when you have a creative team that’s supportive and the actors you’re working with are super-nonjudgmental. We’re all sitting there while each of us takes these crazy swings in terms of improv and risky swings. Some of them don’t work, but I don’t feel embarrassed. … It’s still a difficult thing to get right sometimes, but you don’t feel like there’s any limitations on what you can do when you’ve got really great people to work with.

A woman stands near a grocery counter with a shopping basket, looking at a man.

In the film, it’s revealed that Chris has not shopped at a grocery store since becoming mega-famous. Can any of you relate?

King: No, I can’t. I go to the grocery store all the time.

Kidman: I have teenage girls. We go to the grocery store because everybody wants something different.

King [to Kidman]: Do you find it hard to go to the grocery store, though? Just because everyone knows who you are?

Kidman: No. I put a cap on … and I hold my head high, and we go in there.

King: I love the grocery store.

Kidman: I have to say it’s kind of fun and relaxing.

King: Some people find the grocery store very anxiety-inducing, but I actually find it really lovely. I think it’s so fun, especially because usually I’m going to make something that I’m excited to make.

Chris asks Zara to buy him strawberry-flavored Oreos. Zac, what’s your go-to snack?

Kidman [to Efron]: You’re a great snacker because [you’re] very healthy.

Efron: I’ve been eating super-clean lately.

King: I got him these protein Pop-Tarts as part of his wrap gift.

Efron: It was the sweetest thing I’d had in months and it was so good. … I think I had them all in one sitting.

Movie Reviews

Movie review: “The Watchers”

Published

11 hours ago

June 26, 2024

Press Room

“The Watchers” is a horror/thriller movie that is Isha Night Shyamalan’s directorial debut, released in 2024. It is based on the book The Watchers by A.M. Shine. There is a hint of fantastical elements throughout the movie and lore that would have made for a great overall story, but unfortunately,…