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MGM+ Explores The Hillside Strangler In New Docuseries · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: In 1978, the city of Los Angeles was essentially paralyzed
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: by a monster they called the Hillside Strangler. I mean,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: women were vanishing, bodies were being discovered across the wooded
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: slopes of the city, and a very specific, like, deeply
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: ingrained terror had just gripped Southern California.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a profound level of panic.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Right. Now, you flash forward nearly 50 years later, and
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: that exact same monster is being utilized as, well, a
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: corporate life raft.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Which is such a bizarre concept to wrap your head around.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: It really is. It's being deployed as a strategic asset
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: for a streaming service that is desperately trying to survive
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: this massive multi-billion dollar industry consolidation. So today, you and
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I are opening up the bloody ledger of the Hollywood
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: true crime machine.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: It's a fascinating collision of worlds. You know, usually when
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: we look at the business of entertainment, the public really
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: only sees the highly polished final product.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the shiny surface. Exactly.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You see the thumbnail on your streaming menu. You
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: click play and you watch the show. But if you
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: know where to look, if you examine the raw data
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: of how these shows are actually announced to the industry,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: you get an X-ray of the entire ecosystem.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: The whole underlying skeleton. Right.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: You see the historical tragedy, the corporate desperation, and the
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: incredibly complex psychological relationship the audience has with all of it.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this because our source material today is
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: a total masterclass in reading between the lines. We are
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: looking at a single web page.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Just one single page?
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an article published in the Hollywood Trade Publication Deadline,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: dated November 3rd, 2025. And look, the headline is totally straightforward.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: It just says, MGM Plus Explores the Hillside Strangler in
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: New Docu-Series.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Very standard trade announcement.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Right, but whether you are a diehard true crime consumer,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: or you're just fascinated by how the sausage is made
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: in modern media... This deep dive is going to give
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: you a backstage pass to how real-life murder is packaged, sanitized,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: and sold.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Because there's so much more happening on that page than
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: just the announcement.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. We aren't just reading the article text. We
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: are looking at the raw, unfiltered comments section beneath it
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: and the massive industry-shifting breaking news sitting right next to
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: it in the sidebar.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: Which is really the only way to understand how media
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: works today. You cannot look at a piece of content
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: in a vacuum.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Definitely not.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: A new true crime show isn't just some isolated creative endeavor, right?
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: It's a tiny cog turning inside a massive, completely chaotic machine.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: So let's start with the specifics of the show itself.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: MGM Plus is greenlighting a four-part docuseries called The Hillside Strangler,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: and it's premiering January 18th. Yep. And the first thing
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: that really jumps out from the announcement is the production
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: team behind it. It's a company called the Intellectual Property Corporation,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: or IPC.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, IPC.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: They are owned by Sony, and they are essentially the
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: reigning heavyweight champions of the Los Angeles true crime genre.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: They absolutely are. If you've watched a high-end true crime
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: documentary in the last, say, five years, you've probably seen
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: their logo at the end.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Almost definitely.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: The article actually points out their track record. I mean,
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: they made Netflix's Night Stalker, The Hunt for a Serial Killer.
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  Speaker 2: They did A Plan to Kill for Oxygen, and they
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: previously partnered with MGM Plus on The Wonderland Murders.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Right. I see that list, and it instantly makes me
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: wonder about the mechanics of how a company like this
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: even operates. Because we have this romanticized idea of documentarians, right?
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure. The lone researcher.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You know, a passionate filmmaker spends a decade digging
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: through dusty police archives in some basement, fighting to get
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: the truth out to the world. But IPC doesn't sound
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: like a couple of indie filmmakers. It sounds like an
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: assembly line.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is that that's a very accurate way
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: to look at it. The modern true crime boom has
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: fundamentally shifted the documentary business model from artisanal to industrial. Wow.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Artisanal to industrial. I like that.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. IPC is an incredibly efficient studio. Think about the
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: logistical hurdles of making just one of these shows.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: It's got to be a nightmare.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: It is. You need to secure the life rights of
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: the victims' families. You need to navigate the LAPD to
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: get the archival case files. You need to license local
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: news footage from the 1970s. And you have to find
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  Speaker 2: the retired detectives who actually worked the case.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Which sounds incredibly time consuming.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: And expensive. Oh, it is if you're doing it from
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: scratch every single time. But if you are a dedicated
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: studio that specializes in the dark history of Los Angeles,
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  Speaker 2: you build an infrastructure.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: You already have the contacts.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You already have the relationships with the LAPD archivists.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: You probably have bulk licensing deals for 1970s Los Angeles
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: B-roll footage.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, I didn't even think about bulk licensing. Right.
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  Speaker 2: You have researchers who specialize in finding retired California law
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  Speaker 2: enforcement officers. You aren't reinventing the wheel with every new
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: green light. You are just feeding a new case file
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: into a highly optimized machine.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: So they essentially have a monopoly on the grim nostalgia
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  Speaker 1: of Southern California.
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  Speaker 2: Pretty much.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: That actually makes a lot of financial sense. If you're
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: pitching to a streamer, you aren't just selling a story,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: you're selling your ability to execute it efficiently.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Reliability is huge for these networks.
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  Speaker 1: But the way they sell it to the public, the
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  Speaker 1: actual PR spin used by the executives is truly wild
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  Speaker 1: to read.
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  Speaker 2: The corporate vocabulary used to describe human tragedy is always jarring.
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  Speaker 2: It really is.
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  Speaker 1: I want to read the exact quote from Michael Wright.
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  Speaker 1: He's the head of MGM Plus, the executive essentially buying
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the show from IPC.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Right, the buyer. Yeah.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: In the press release, he says, and I quote, The
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Hillside Strangler is a compelling deep dive into an infamous
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: serial killing that terrorized Southern California in the late 1970s.
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  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 1: He goes on. This docuseries delivers a riveting experience with
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  Speaker 1: unprecedented access to one of the most notorious cases in
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: American criminal history, offering MGM Plus viewers the premium, thought-provoking
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: storytelling they've come to expect from our brand.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Notice the specific adjectives he employs there.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's intense.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Compelling, riveting experience, premium, thought-provoking.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: It sounds like he's describing an Emmy-winning prestige drama or maybe,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: I don't know, a really high-end luxury vacation package.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: A five-star resort, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: But he is talking about the brutal torture and murder
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: of 12 actual women and girls. How does a network
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: executive reconcile that cognitive dissonance?
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: It takes a lot of mental gymnastics.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, how do you look at a pile of
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: crime scene photos and say, ah, yes, a premium, riveting
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: experience for our subscribers?
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  Speaker 2: You do it through the mechanism of aesthetic sanitization.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Aesthetic sanitization. Explain that.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Well, in the early days of true crime, think of
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: the shows you'd see on basic cable at 2 a.m.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: in the late 90s. The aesthetic was just cheap. Oh, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Forensic file style.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Right. Reenactments with bad actors, melodramatic voiceovers, shaky camera work.
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  Speaker 2: It felt inherently trashy. And because it looked trashy, the
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: viewer felt a bit of guilt watching it.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: It felt like pure voyeurism.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: It was the tabloid newspaper of television. You didn't want
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: your friends knowing you were reading it.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Precisely. What studios like IPC and executives like Michael Wright
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: have figured out is that if you upgrade the aesthetic,
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: you remove the audience's guilt.
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  Speaker 1: Interesting. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: If you shoot the interviews on $ 50, 000 cinema cameras with gorgeous,
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  Speaker 2: moody lighting.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: If you hire a world-class composer to write a haunting,
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: minimalist synth score. If you use sweeping, high-definition drone shots
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  Speaker 2: of the Los Angeles skyline at dusk. Suddenly, it's not
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  Speaker 2: tabloid trash anymore. It's premium storytelling.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: It's like flipping a murder house in a hot real
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: estate market.
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  Speaker 2: That is a perfect analogy.
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  Speaker 1: You don't talk about the fact that something horrific happened
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  Speaker 1: in the living room. You just put down some really
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: expensive hardwood floors. Paint the walls a cool slate gray,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: install some high-end stainless steel appliances, and sell it as
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: historic luxury.
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  Speaker 2: The fresh paint covers up the past.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, the fresh paint gives the buyer permission to ignore
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  Speaker 1: the bloodstains.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. The cinematic sheen acts as a psychological buffer. It
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: allows the viewer to consume the horror without feeling like
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  Speaker 2: a ghoul. Wright's use of the phrase thought-provoking is the
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  Speaker 2: absolute key there.
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  Speaker 1: Because it makes you feel smart. Yes.
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  Speaker 2: It flatters the audience. It tells them, you aren't morbidly
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  Speaker 2: obsessed with a serial killer. You are an intellectual, engaging
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  Speaker 2: with the darker complexities of the human condition.
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  Speaker 1: But the reality of that condition is what we really
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  Speaker 1: need to look at. We can't let the PR spin
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  Speaker 1: completely overshadow the actual history that this docuseries is mining
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  Speaker 1: for content.
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  Speaker 2: We have to look at the facts.
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  Speaker 1: Right. Let's dig into the core narrative of the Hillside
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Strangler case, as outlined in the article. Because the specifics
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: of this investigation fundamentally change how we understand the serial
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: killer mythos.
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  Speaker 2: The facts of the case are grim, even by the
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  Speaker 2: elevated standards of 1970s true crime.
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  Speaker 1: Which is saying something.
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  Speaker 2: It is. We are talking about two cousins, Kenneth Bianchi
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  Speaker 2: and Angelo Buono Jr. Over a relatively short period, they
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  Speaker 2: terrorized the city, ultimately murdering 12 women and girls.
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  Speaker 1: And the geography of the crimes is deeply tied to
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  Speaker 1: the identity of Los Angeles.
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  Speaker 2: Very much so.
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  Speaker 1: The article notes that they utilized Buono's upholstery shop in
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Glendale as a primary staging ground, and then they would
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  Speaker 1: drive the bodies out and dump them across the wooded
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  Speaker 1: hillsides of the city.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: That's how the press dubbed the unknown suspect, the Hillside Strangler, singular.
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  Speaker 2: Which is the crucial pivot point of the entire investigation.
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  Speaker 2: For months, the LAPD, the media, and the public were
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: operating under the assumption that they were hunting a lone wolf.
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  Speaker 1: That makes sense though, right? When we think of serial killers,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: our cultural default is the isolated loner.
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  Speaker 2: It's the archetype.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, we picture the solitary psychopath living on the fringes
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: of society, acting out his impulses entirely in the dark.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: The idea of a team of serial killers almost feels
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: like an oxymoron.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: It does, because the psychology of serial murder is usually
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: rooted in deeply personal, idiosyncratic fantasies.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Very internal stuff.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Sharing those fantasies with another human being requires a
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: level of vulnerability and mutual validation that sociopaths rarely possess.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: But the article highlights the breakthrough made by homicide detective
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Frank Salerno. Ah, Salerno.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yes.
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  Speaker 2: He's the one who finally connected the dots and realized
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: that the logistics of these specific crimes, the way the
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: victims were abducted, controlled, and transported, required two people.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, now walk me through the mechanics of that realization.
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  Speaker 1: Because if you think about it, how does discovering that
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: there are two killers fundamentally alter the way a detective
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: works a case?
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: It shifts everything.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: It seems like it would make it twice as hard.
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  Speaker 1: Now you have two targets to track down instead of one.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: In the short term, it absolutely makes the physical manhunt
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: more complex, yes. You have to account for alibis where
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: they are covering for each other. Right. You have a
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: division of labor. Maybe one guy steals the car while
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: the other secures the location. But strategically, in the long term,
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: two killers is actually an investigator's dream. Really?
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Because it introduces the greatest weapon law enforcement has, which
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: is the prisoner's dilemma.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Ah, the classic game theory scenario.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When you catch a lone serial killer... Getting a
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: confession is incredibly difficult.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Because they have no reason to talk.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Right. It's just you and him in the interrogation room.
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  Speaker 2: He has all the leverage, because he holds all the secrets.
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  Speaker 2: And his only motivation is self-preservation.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Right. There's no weak link.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: But when you catch a duo, when Frank Salerno finally
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: gets Bianchi and Buono in custody, the entire dynamic shifts.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: You put them in separate rooms, and you don't even
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: have to prove the whole case right away.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: You just play them against each other.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: Precisely. You just have to convince Bianchi that Buono is
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: in the other room cutting a deal to pin it
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: all on him.
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  Speaker 1: You turn their shared madness into paranoia. You fracture the partnership.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: You weaponize their selfishness against each other. The shared bond
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: that allowed them to commit the crimes is inherently fragile
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: because it's built on deviance and a total lack of empathy.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: They aren't loyal to each other, not really.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Once the walls close in, they will absolutely turn
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: on each other to save themselves. That psychological warfare is
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: a massive part of Salerno's legacy in this case.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Which explains why he's such a focal point.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's why the article makes such a point of
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: mentioning that Salerno will be featured in the docuseries.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: But Salerno isn't the main selling point of this show.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: MGM Plus is heavily pushing a much darker hook.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: They certainly are.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Angelo Wono Jr. died in prison back in 2002, but
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: his cousin, Kenneth Bianchi, is still alive. And the press
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: release states very explicitly that the series will feature Bianchi,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: claiming that he has never told his story.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: This is the unprecedented access Michael Wright was boasting about earlier,
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: getting the surviving killer on camera.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: I have a really hard time with this from a
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: functional standpoint.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, I agree.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Putting aside the moral ickiness of giving a monster a microphone,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: what is the actual documentary value here? If Bianchi is
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: speaking from prison 50 years later, isn't he just going
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: to lie?
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, certainly.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: These guys are pathological narcissists. They manipulate reality for sport.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: How does a director actually find the historical truth when
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: their star witness's primary goal is to rewrite his own legacy?
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: You've hit on the central, unresolvable tension of the entire
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: true crime genre.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: It feels like a paradox.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: It is. There is a deeply flawed assumption that access
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: equals truth. Streamers market these interviews as if they are
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: finally unlocking the vault of history. Hear it directly from
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: the killer's mouth.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: As if the killer is going to be honest.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: But you are entirely correct. The killer is the ultimate
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: unreliable narrator. When Bianchi speaks, he isn't trying to provide
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: a factual historical accounting. He's trying to reclaim control of
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: his narrative. Right. He might minimize his role. He might
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: exaggerate his intelligence. He might try to shift the bulk
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: of the blame onto his dead cousin, Buono, who isn't
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: there to defend himself.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: So the filmmakers are essentially voluntarily stepping into a psychological trap.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: They want the flashy footage of the killer talking, but
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: by using it, they risk platforming his delusions.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: The best documentarians will use that footage against the killer.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: They'll let him spin his web of lies on camera
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: and then immediately cut to Frank Salerno or the archival evidence,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: completely dismantling the lie in real time.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, showing the contradiction.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: Exactly. That creates a fascinating portrait of a psychopath. But
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: the danger is that not all series do that. Some
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: just let the killer talk because the footage is compelling.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: But here is where the source material we are looking
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: at takes a brilliant turn. We don't even have to
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: wait for the show to air to see people poking
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: holes in this narrative.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: No, we don't.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Because the audience is already doing it in the comment
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: section of the Deadline article.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: The comment section on a Hollywood trade site is an
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: incredible socioscientific resource.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: It really is wild.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: It's not just random trolls. It's a highly specific mix
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: of industry insiders, journalists, and incredibly devoted fans. who know
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: the minutia of these topics.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Right. And I was reading through the thread, and a
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: user named SB posted a comment a few weeks after
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: the announcement that directly challenges MGM Plus's entire marketing strategy.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: Let's hear it.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Let me paraphrase, but they essentially said, hold on, I've
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: watched a ton of documentaries about these guys. There is
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: plenty of existing audio and film of Kenneth Bianchi talking.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: It's Buono who never spoke.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: That comment is a direct strike against the corporate PR machine.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: A total call out.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: MGM Plus is loudly proclaiming unprecedented access and he's never
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: told his story to create a sense of urgency. They
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: want you to think this is a once in a
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: lifetime historical event. Right. But the true crime audience is
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: so educated, they instantly clock the spin. They know Bianchi
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: has done interviews. They know the archival tape exists.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: It completely deflates the balloon. It makes you wonder, if
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: the core marketing hook isn't even entirely accurate, are they
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: just reverse engineering a reason to make this show?
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: That's a very valid question.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Are they saying unprecedented access just because that's the mandatory
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: buzzword you need to justify greenlighting the 10th retelling of
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: a 50-year-old case?
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: It strongly suggests that the priority isn't unearthing new historical facts,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: but rather repackaging known facts into a new monetizable asset.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Monetizing the tragedy.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: And that realization that the true crime industry is essentially
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: just an IP recycling plant sparks a much larger, genuinely
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: profound philosophical debate further down in the comments.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. Yes. The comment thread devolves,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: or maybe evolves, into a full-blown public reckoning.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: It gets deep.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: We move from fact-checking the marketing to questioning the very
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: existence of the genre. There is an anonymous user who
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: directly quotes the press release. They highlight Michael Wright's phrase,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: compelling deep dive into an infamous serial killing. And then
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: they add their own thought. They write, the way we
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: glorify murderers, killers, and criminals in our culture is so
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: freaking bizarre.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: That commenter is articulating a cultural exhaustion that has been
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: building for years.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: You can feel the fatigue.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: The aesthetic sanitization we talked about earlier, the expensive lighting
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: and the drone shots, it's starting to wear off. The
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: audience is beginning to see the scaffolding underneath.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: It really makes you stop and look in the mirror.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: When we hit play on a Friday night, what are
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: we actually doing?
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: What is the goal?
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Are we genuinely trying to learn about 1970s law enforcement techniques?
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Or are we just treating real human tragedy, the very
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: real agonizing deaths of 12 people, as our weekend adrenaline rush?
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: It's hard not to feel a little bit indicted by
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: that comment.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: It demands that we examine the utility of the content.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: If a documentary uncovers a miscarriage of justice or exposes
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: a flaw in the legal system, It has clear social utility.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Like making a murderer or something like that.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Right. But if it simply recounts a solved 50-year-old murder
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: spree with glossy reenactments, its utility is purely entertainment.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: And that's a tough pill to swallow.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: Finding entertainment in the suffering of real people is a
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: very uncomfortable reality for a culture to confront.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: And the pushback in the comments goes beyond just the
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: moral discomfort. It hits on this deep sense of franchise fatigue.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: It's the recycling aspect that seems to be driving people crazy.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: The repetition.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's an exchange between two users that perfectly captures this.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: A user going by Anonymous asks essentially what the point
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: is of telling the exact same stories over and over again.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Another anonymous user replies, pointing out the obvious. You do
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: know there's been several movies and documentaries about the Hillside Strangers,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: don't you?
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: And the response?
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: To which Anonymous just replies, exactly.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: They are asking the million-dollar industry question. Why?
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Why do it again?
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: With all the incredible untold stories in the world, why
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: does the entertainment industry insist on returning to the exact
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: same notoriously violent well in in 1970s Los Angeles?
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: It's a great point.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: We've seen the Manson family depicted a dozen times. We've
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: seen the Night Stalker. We've seen the Wonderland murders. Now
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: the Hillside Strangler again. Why are we stuck in this
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: specific geographical and temporal loop?
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you why. Because it's safe. It's intellectual property.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: IP.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: We usually think of IP as Batman or Star Wars,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: but in the documentary world, a famous serial killer is
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: essentially a superhero franchise.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: That is a dark but incredibly accurate mechanism to understand.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: It is brand recognition applied to trauma.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Think about it from the perspective of an executive whose
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: job is on the line. You have a budget of
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: $ 5 million.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: A lot of money.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Do you spend it on a brilliant, complex documentary about
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: a relatively unknown financial crime that might be hard to
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: explain to an audience? Or do you spend it on
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: The Hillside Strangler?
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: The choice is obvious to them.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: The serial killer has a built-in audience. The true crime
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: fans are a guaranteed demographic. They already know the beats
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: of the story, they love the vintage LA aesthetic, and
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: they will click on the thumbnail. It's a low-risk, high-reward investment.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: It's the exact same economic principle that drives Hollywood to
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: make Fast and Furious 11 instead of a new original
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: sci-fi movie.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Familiarity.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: The familiarity is the product. The audience isn't clicking on
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: the hillside strangler hoping for a surprise twist ending. They
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: know he goes to jail.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Right. Spoiler alert. He gets caught.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: They are clicking on it for the comfort of a
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: familiar narrative structure. They want the grim voiceover, the vintage
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: police cruisers, the tension, and the inevitable resolution.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: The formula.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: It is a highly predictable emotional arc And predictability is bankable.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: But while these anonymous users are debating the high-level ethics
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: of glorifying killers and the artistic stagnation of recycled IP,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: there is a completely different conversation happening right next to
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: it in the comments.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: This part is incredible.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: And this is where the script flips from a philosophical
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: debate into a tragicomedy about how Hollywood actually functions on
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: a day-to-day basis.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: This was without a doubt the most revealing part of
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: the entire webpage.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Amidst the heavy debates, we have the desperate plight of
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: the working producer. Let me paraphrase the sequence because the
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: sheer exhaustion in these comments is palpable.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: You can just feel the burnout.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Someone posts, asking how you actually get a pitch in
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: front of MGM Plus because the executive in charge never
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: responds to emails. Then someone else chimes in and says, well,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: they must just not be interested.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: A fair assumption.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: But then a third producer jumps into the thread, confirming
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: the blackout. They write, it's not just my company. My
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: friends in the industry have had the same experience. I
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: don't care if it's a pass. Just reply. No one
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: is that busy.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: And if we connect this to the bigger picture, it's
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: a stunning juxtaposition. You have the external face of the industry,
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: the polished press release from Michael Wright talking about premium
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: storytelling and riveting experiences.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: The glossy front.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: And then literally inches below that pristine corporate facade, you
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: have the internal reality of the industry spilling out into
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: the public square.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Just a mess.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Working professionals using a random true crime announcement comment section
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: to essentially beg a mid-level executive for the basic human
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: decency of an email reply.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: It's pathetic in the literal sense of the word. They
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: aren't even begging for a yes anymore to make their show.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: They just want the closure of a no.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: They just want an answer.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: I don't care if it's a pass, just reply. That
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: is the sound of an industry that is completely broken
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: at the middle management level.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: It highlights a severe bottleneck in the modern streaming ecosystem.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: For the last decade, we've lived under this illusion of
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: infinite content. Streamers were buying everything.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: The peak TV era.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: But what the public doesn't see is that the mechanism
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: for greenlighting that content is controlled by a shockingly small
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: number of gatekeepers. And right now, Those gatekeepers are either
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of pitches, or they're
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: structurally paralyzed.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: I see your point about them being overwhelmed, but isn't
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: that letting them off the hook a bit too easily?
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, the commenter is right. No one is that busy.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: You can set up an auto-reply. You can have an
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: assistant send a form letter that says pass. The total
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: silence feels less like being busy and more like an
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: institutional arrogance.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: There's certainly arrogance involved. But the paralysis is actually a
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: symptom of a much larger existential crisis happening above their heads.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: What do you mean?
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: To understand why that MGM Plus executive isn't returning emails,
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: we have to stop looking at the article in the comments.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: And we have to look at the margins of the
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: web page. We have to look at the sidebar.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean?
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, because this single deadline page is a snapshot of
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: a Tuesday morning in November 2025. And the sidebar reveals
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: an entertainment industry that is undergoing a massive recovery. violent
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: tectonic shift in real time. It's all right there on
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: the screen.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: The breaking news happening in the periphery completely recontextualizes everything
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: we've just talked about.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: The contrast is truly jarring.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: We've been zooming in on this highly specific localized tragedy
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: from 1970s Los Angeles and the micro drama of unreturned emails.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: But slide your eyes two inches to the right to
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: the trending section and the entire foundation of the global
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: entertainment business is being ripped up and repaved.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: The mega-mergers.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: The top headline in the sidebar is staggering. Paramount and
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Warner Bros. Discovery have officially merged.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: Let that sink in.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Two of the most historic, massive legacy studios in the
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: history of global cinema are combining. And the article notes
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: that David Ellison has named this new monolith Skydance.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: We really need to pause and drill down into the
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: sheer scale of that mechanism. Try to conceptualize the assets
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: involved here.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: It's mind-boggling.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: You have the entire history of Paramount Pictures. The Godfather,
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: Top Gun, Mission Impossible. You have the CBS television network.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Then you combine that with Warner Brothers, Batman, Harry Potter,
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: the entire history of HBO, CNN, and the Discovery Network's
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: unscripted empire. All of it is folding into a single
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: corporate entity.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: It's almost too big to comprehend.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: It feels like the end of an era in Hollywood.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: It is a fundamental contraction of the ecosystems. Think of
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: the industry right now like a giant hourglass.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, an hourglass?
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: At the top, you have thousands of producers, writers, and
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: directors with ideas like the people crying out in the
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: comments section. At the bottom, you have millions of subscribers
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: hungry for content. Right, the audience. But the neck of
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: that hourglass, the studios and the executives who can actually
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: say yes and fund a project, is shrinking rapidly. A
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: decade ago, a producer could pitch a show to HBO.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: And if they said no, they could walk across the
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: street and pitch it to Paramount or Showtime or Discovery.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Now they're all under one roof.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Now those are all the exact same company. The number
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: of buyers has evaporated.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Which perfectly explains the unanswered emails.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: So if I'm a mid-level executive at a streaming service, okay,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: and I know that these massive corporate monoliths are, like,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: merging all around me, I am absolutely terrified for my job. Yeah.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Right, you're in survival mode.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so I'm not going to stick my neck
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: out and greenlight like a new risky $ 5 million documentary
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: series today because next week the new Skydance bosses, they
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: might look at the ledger, decide I wasted money, and
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: fire me.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: The mechanism of a merger creates complete institutional paralysis. The
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: safest thing an executive can do is nothing.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Just freeze.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: You don't say yes. You don't say no. You just
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: don't reply to the email. You keep your head down
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: and hope you survive the layoffs.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: And the reality of those layoffs is playing out right
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: there in the sidebar in real time.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: It's brutal.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: The very next headline reads, Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: poised to run combined Paramount Warner Brothers film unit, setting
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: up likely Michael DeLuca and Pamela Abdi exit.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: The brutal changing of the guard.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Michael DeLuca and Pamela Abdi were absolute titans at Warner
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Brothers film.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Huge names.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: Huge.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: They were the ultimate power players, greenlighting $ 100 million blockbusters.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: And in the blink of an eye, because of a
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: boardroom spreadsheet maneuver orchestrated by billionaires, they are likely exiting.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: It's a stark reminder of the extreme fragility of power
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: in this industry. One day you are the kingmaker, and
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: the next day you are quietly packing your office because
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: a merger made your position redundant.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: No one is safe.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: But crucially, not everyone gets swept away in the flood.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Because the next headline down says... James Gunn and Peter
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Safran to stay at DC Studios after Paramount Warner Bros.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Merger. Which is a fascinating piece of strategic corporate signaling.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Right. Why them?
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: In the midst of all this bloody restructuring, why do
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Gunn and Safran survive? Because they control DC Studios. They
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: control Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: The crown jewels.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: They are the engine of the most vital intellectual property
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: Warner Bros. possesses.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: So while executives in the prestige film divisions are getting
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: the ax... The guys running the superhero factory are untouchable.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: Because IP is the only true currency in a consolidated market.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: It's all that matters.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: By publicly stating that Gunn and Safran are staying, the
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: new Skydance overlords are sending a message to Wall Street
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: and the fans. They're saying, yes, we are merging. Yes,
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: we are firing thousands of people. But do not panic.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: Your superhero movies are safe. It's a smokescreen. It is
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: a calculated move to project stability during a period of
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: utter chaos.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: And it brings us full circle back to the Hillside Strangler. Yes.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Why did the MGM Plus executive finally reply to an
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: email from IPC and Greenlight that specific show? Because, just
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: like Batman, a famous 1970 serial killer is recognized IP.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: It's a known quantity.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: In a terrifying corporate environment where everyone is afraid of
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: being fired, nobody gets fired for greenlighting a recognizable true
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: crime franchise. It's the safest bet on the board.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: The macro-corporate dread directly dictates the micro-creative decisions. The fear
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: of the merger results in the greenlighting of the serial killer.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: It is wild to see it all laid out on
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: one page. And the absurdity of this webpage doesn't stop
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: with the corporate drama.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Not at all.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: The sheer schizophrenic mix of entertainment news competing for your
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: attention as you scroll down the sidebar is a surreal
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: reflection of modern information consumption.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate flattening of reality. In the digital space, everything, tragedy, finance, gossip,
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: and art, is presented with the exact same weight and urgency.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Let me just rattle off what else is happening on
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: this exact same day, right next to the serial killer
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: announcement and the Skydance merger.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: It's a wild list.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: We have a headline. Tony Romo and CBS Sports part
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: ways after his drunk driving arrest. So a massive, lucrative
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: broadcasting career imploding overnight due to a dangerous personal failure.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: Right below that, the great British Bake Off host Alison
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Hammond has heart check after health scare live on TV.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: A very real, terrifying medical emergency happening on the set
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: of arguably the coziest, lowest stakes reality show on the planet.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Then it spirals into bizarre casting news. We have Bradley
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Cooper signing on to play the character Duke in Paramount's
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: new G.I. Joe movie. And it's going to be directed
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: by Danny McBride.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Which sounds like a hallucination.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: It really does. And my absolute favorite piece of news,
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: the number one trending article on Deadline that day, above
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: the billion dollar mergers, above Tony Romo's arrest, above the
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: true crime announcements.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: Number one trending.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Number one. IFC picks up domestic rights to an action
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: thriller starring Nicolas Cage. The title of the movie? Best
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Pancakes in the County.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: And there it is, the complete, unvarnished spectrum of the
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: human experience as filtered through Hollywood.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: You literally cannot write a more absurd sequence of information.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: Think about the emotional journey of just scrolling down this
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: one page.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: It's exhausting.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: You start at the top with the horrific historical reality
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: of 12 murdered women and a psychopath speaking from a
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: prison cell. You move down into a comment section where
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: anonymous producers are suffering existential dread over unreturned emails.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: You look to the right, and the entire corporate structure
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: of Hollywood is collapsing into a monopoly called Skydance. You
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: scroll down a little further, and Tony Romo is fired,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: the host of Bake Off is having a heart attack,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Bradley Cooper is playing with action figures, and Nicolas Cage
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: is making a movie about pancakes.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: This raises an important question, though.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: It sounds chaotic, and it is, but I think this
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: dizzying array of information actually holds the key to answering
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: the question we posed earlier.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: Which question?
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Why is the true crime genre so resilient? Why do
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: we keep coming back to it despite the ethical concerns
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: and the franchise fatigue? How does Nicolas Cage and a
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: corporate merger explain our obsession with serial killers? Connect those
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: dots for me.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Think about the daily psychological state of the modern media consumer.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: We live in a world where our information feed is
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: exactly what you just described.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: A total mess.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: A ceaseless, overwhelming torrent of random tragedy, massive corporate consolidation
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: that we have no control over, sudden personal ruin, and
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: bizarre pop culture noise. It is pure, unadulterated chaos. Nothing
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: makes sense, and very few things are resolved cleanly.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: That is undeniably true. Opening your phone in the morning
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: is an exercise in managing anxiety.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So, in an ecosystem that is that turbulent and unpredictable,
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: what does a true crime documentary offer? Yes, the subject
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: matter is dark, but the mechanism of the story is
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: incredibly rigid. and comforting.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Wait, comfort? You're arguing that watching a show about the
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: hillside strangler is a form of comfort viewing. That feels counterintuitive.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: Look at the structural architecture of the narrative. In a
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: show like the one IPC is making, the chaos is
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: strictly contained.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, contained chaos.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: A crime is committed. The world is thrown off its axis.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: But then, A brilliant professional, Detective Frank Salerno, steps in.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: He applies logic and forensic science. A breakthrough is made.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: The monsters are identified, they are apprehended, and they are
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: locked in a cage forever. Order is restored to the universe.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: When the world outside your window feels like an uncontrollable
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: mess of mergers and random disasters, a true crime docuseries
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: offers a highly controlled four-part universe where mysteries are actually solved.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: It's the illusion of control. We are using the most
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: horrific moments of human history as a soothing mechanism for
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: our modern anxieties, simply because those historical moments have a definitive,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: legally binding conclusion.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The chaos has an end date. Precisely. It is
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: anxiety management packaged as premium storytelling.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: That is a wildly dark but incredibly illuminating way to
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: look at it. It really reframes the entire genre.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: It changes how you see your own viewing habits, right?
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: It really does. Let's synthesize the journey we've just been
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: on because I think it perfectly illustrates the mission of
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: this deep dive. We started today with what looked like
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: a mundane, sterile corporate press release about MGM Plus buying
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: a TV show.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: But by refusing to take the announcement at face value,
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: we mapped the entire ecosystem.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: We zoomed out.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: We broke down the industrial assembly line of IPC, utilizing
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: bulk research and aesthetic sanitization to turn LA history into
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: premium content.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: We explored the complex psychology of the case itself. How
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: the discovery of a two-killer dynamic fundamentally changes the intelligation
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: strategy through the prisoner's dilemma.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: We waded into the comments section and confronted the deep
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: cultural exhaustion with glorifying violence alongside the tragic reality of
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: working producers trapped in an unresponsive bureaucracy.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: The human cost of the machine.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: And finally, we zoomed out to the macro view, using
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: the hourglass metaphor to understand how the massive Paramount's guidance
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: merger is causing that exact bureaucratic bottleneck. driving terrified executives
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: to greenlight safe, predictable true crime IP. And in doing so,
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: we uncovered a fascinating parallel. We talked earlier about the
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: psychology of Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, how it took
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: two of them feeding off each other to validate their
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: darkest impulses in a shared delusion.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: A folie a deux.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: Yes. But if you look closely at the corporate machinery
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: we just mapped, you see a much different but equally
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: powerful shared delusion happening in the executive suites.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: Okay. You have an entire industry of executives terrified of mergers,
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: validating each other's decisions to greenlight the exact same safe,
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: sanitized IP over and over again, convincing themselves it's thought-provoking
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: storytelling while the actual foundation of their industry crumbles around them.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: That is dark.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: Both the killers and the corporations rely on a shared
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: echo chamber to justify their actions.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: That is a brilliant, terrifying connection. The psychology of the
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: crime mirroring the psychology of the boardroom. And that is
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: exactly why we do this. I want to leave you,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: the listener, with a final thought to ponder as you
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: close this deep dive and go back to your own
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: chaotic news feeds.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Something that you want.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: In January, you might be scrolling through your streaming menu
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: and you might see the thumbnail for The Hillside Strangler.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: When you do, know that you aren't just looking at
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: a documentary. You are looking at the final output of
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: a massive, conflicted machine.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: Very desperate machine.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: And remember the primary selling point of that show, Kenneth
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Bianchi speaking from prison. He is sitting in a cell,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: a convicted monster, and suddenly, 50 years later, the cameras
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: are rolled in. Right. But think about the invisible forces
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: in that room with him. Think about the billions of
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: dollars involved in the streaming wars. Think about the Skydance
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: merger forcing executives to find a guaranteed hit. Think about
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: the producers desperate for a green light.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: The pressure is immense.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: When Kenneth Bianchi speaks into that camera, knowing that this
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: massive corporate leviathan is banking on his words to drive
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Q1' s subscription numbers, who exactly is exploiting whom?
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: It is a profoundly uncomfortable question. And the answer changes
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: depending on where you stand in the ecosystem.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: And that is exactly where we will leave it. Thank
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: you so much for joining us on this deep dive.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Keep questioning the media you consume, keep looking at the sidebars,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: and we will see you next time.