Director Erin Lee Carr hates to use the term “brand” but that’s exactly what she’s cultivated when it comes to bizarre true crime stories. “People are like, ‘This horrible thing happened. Let’s call Erin Lee Carr,’” the documentarian told TheWrap.
It’s not surprising to see how Carr developed this reputation. She was behind HBO’s Gypsy Rose Blanchard documentary “Mommy Dead and Dearest” and “I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter,” both of which went on to inspire the Hulu scripted series “The Act” and “The Girl From Plainville,” respectively. In 2021, Carr released Netflix’s “Britney vs Spears,” the same year the pop icon’s conservatorship was terminated. She’s also produced a Peacock documentary on Stormy Daniels, a Hulu docuseries on the Sherri Papini kidnapping hoax and an HBO documentary on journalist Kim Wall, who went missing after boarding Danish entrepreneur Peter Madsen’s submarine.
If it’s too wild to be believed, chances are high that Carr is already there, camera in tow.
Now the documentary filmmaker is expanding the definition of stranger-than-fiction with two more projects premiering this week: HBO’s “I Am Not a Monster: The Lois Riess Murders” and Hulu’s “Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara.”
“[‘I Am Not a Monster’] really represented so many feelings of the female id with addiction, attention, love, guardianship, mental illness, familial inheritance. I really wanted to make something about what happens when you are middle aged,” Carr said. “What can happen in the worst-case scenario if you feel like no one paid attention to you your whole life?”
Both projects came out of Carr’s whirlwind approach to creative projects. “I basically develop around six things at a time,” Carr said. A story more in line with Gypsy Rose Blanchard or Michelle Carter’s, “I Am Not a Monster” follows the case of Lois Riess. Riess fatally shot her husband David after suffering abuse at the his hands for years. She then fled to Florida and struck up a friendship with 59-year-old Pamela Hutchinson before murdering her and trying to steal her identity.
Though Riess never discussed it with family and friends while her husband was alive, the convicted Riess has since claimed David abused her for years, which is what led to her killing him. “I just snapped,” she says in the HBO doc.
“But then when you realize the Florida of it, it twists and it turns again. Female killers never kill strangers, statistically, unless there’s undue pressure or violence from a John or something like that,” Carr said. “I needed to know what happened and also why was she not caught in Minnesota.”
Carr likened Riess’ story to working with Blanchard. Both cases involved Carr talking to an incarcerated woman who was fairly open about the violent murders she committed.
“In working with Lois, I felt her shame and I felt her humanity. When we were speaking, we talked a lot about the abuse that happened in the house. But it was really difficult because she didn’t want to talk about Pam,” Carr said. Both interview subjects also demonstrated cognitive dissonance between the actions they took and what they remember.
“[Riess] says that she did the things in an emotional and physical blackout, a sort of psychosis. But it’s really difficult to look at it that way, given how much planning there was,” Carr said.
Though any project that shines a spotlight on a convicted murderer is complicated, Carr emphasized it’s important that Reiss feels “represented” in the project. When TheWrap spoke to the director, Riess was planning to watch the two-part docuseries for the first time that day alongside her caseworker. Carr hopes the film may resonate with women who feel trapped in their own marriages. It may cause them to re-evaluate before hitting their breaking point.
“They might see this and feel differently. What does it mean to have reoccurring thoughts of violence and wanting to escape? What does it mean to be shouted at your entire life to try and commit suicide and your husband say, ‘Well, I wish you had just gone through with it?’” Carr said. “I know that it sounds a bit Pollyanna, but I hope certain people who love true crime, who are in weird marriages, are like, ‘Wait, this story is a lot closer to me than I realized.’”
“We just have to understand how layered this is. It’s just so complicated,” she added. “There were 1,000 ways that a divorce could have happened, but that’s not what happened.”
Carr has a reason to be idealistic. “Mommy Dead and Dearest” greatly increased awareness around Munchausen syndrome by proxy, the mental illness it’s believed that Dee Dee Blanchard suffered from. It’s also contributed to giving Gypsy Rose Blanchard both celebrity and what seems to be a happy life.
Since Carr’s 2017 documentary about Blanchard, Gypsy Rose has been released from prison, re-kindled her relationship with her ex-fiancé Ken Urker and is expecting her first child. Carr was even invited to her gender reveal party. “It was wild,” Carr said. Urker and Blanchard first met through the prison’s pen pal program and connected in part because of “Mommy Dead and Dearest.” Carr went on to describe Urker as “spectacular — so gentle, so sweet.”
“She actually is very in love and having a baby and in a good place,” she added.
As for what’s ahead for Carr, she wants to keep making her stranger-than-fiction documentaries and bringing up newer voices in the space as long as networks and streamers continue to buy her work. But — as is becoming depressingly routine in this era of Hollywood — Carr has found that buyers are becoming more risk-averse.
“I’m one of the very few lucky ones who can get a project sold, and that’s a really scary thing. I started making films at 25 years old because of Sheila Nevins, Andrew Rossi and Sara Bernstein. They gave me that shot a person just like me would not be given today,” Carr said. “I’m scared that the same 25 people are going to continue making films when we’re leaving talent on the table.”
Carr likened what’s happening in the documentary space to what journalism has dealt with over the last decade. “It comes for us all, right? I think it gives us a little bit more awareness and empathy as to what is it like to be a journalist? What is it like to be like an industry worker? What is it like to be a Teamster?” Carr said. “This is a cyclical thing, so people who are shocked and appalled, it’s like everybody’s industry has been going through this. It’s our turn, and it’s about weathering that and being good to the people around us.”
“My dad would be really upset about the state of journalism,” Carr added, referring to the late New York Times media columnist and author David Carr. “There’s still amazing work being done, but it’s just that much more difficult to do.”
Ever the optimist, Carr offered clear advice to anyone interested in entering the space: Find a subject you’re passionate about, get exclusive access and aim for a low budget.
“You have an OK chance of getting it made, especially if you can self-finance the development and stuff like that,” Carr said. “People are watching. There’s no decrease in appetite. But there is an increase in risk tolerance and how much networks are willing to pay for documentaries. There’s a level setting that’s going on that we will see the effects of in the years to come.”
The first and second parts of “I Am Not a Monster: The Lois Riess Murders” premiere on HBO Tuesday and Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET/PT and streams on Max.
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