‘The Jinx’ Director Andrew Jarecki Explains Why True Crime Pays
“You can lead the audience through this labyrinth. You can have twists that are true.”
Amelia Krales for Re/code
From “Making a Murderer” to “Serial” to “The Jinx,” true-crime documentary series are hot right now. And the guy who made one of those — “Jinx” director Andrew Jarecki — says there’s a reason for that.
Jarecki joined Peter Kafka on the latest episode of “Re/code Decode” to talk about his HBO miniseries, which remains relevant nearly a year after it debuted as its subject, Robert Durst, continues to make headlines.
Jarecki also talked about his history as a tech entrepreneur: He co-founded Moviefone and sold it to AOL at the peak of the dot-com bubble; now he’s trying again with KnowMe, a mobile video editing and sharing app.
Wait a minute. How do you go from getting up close and personal with an accused triple murderer to launching an iPhone app?
“I’ve never had a plan,” Jarecki said. “I’ve just got to be open to whatever the next thing is, and the next thing defines itself.”
So, why are there so many popular true-crime series coming out now? Jarecki posits that it’s about a shift in how we think about serialized entertainment.
“Series now don’t need to go on for 12 years to be successful. They just have to have a compelling story,” he said. “The crime thing has a specialness to it, because you can lead the audience through this labyrinth. You can have twists that are true.”
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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
