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I'll Be Gone in the Dark

I'm excited about "I'll Be Gone in the Dark," a docuseries set to premiere on HBO this Sunday. I'm excited for a few reasons:

*Liz Garbus. You won't see her on camera, but she is the brain behind the story.

Garbus's curiosity and intelligence are often on display on TV. They're on display in "There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane" and in "Who Killed Garrett Phillips" -- two of my favorite documentaries. They're on display in "Lost Girls," an intermittently-successful film on Netflix. (Even when Garbus doesn't knock one out of the park, she still gives you a thoughtful study of gender in America, and an opportunity to see Amy Ryan being ballsy, scene after scene.)

*Patton Oswalt. "Gone in the Dark" is (oddly) one of the great love stories in recent years, and I look forward to seeing Oswalt describing his efforts to finish his wife's work after her death.

*Michelle McNamara. Ms. McNamara is my hero, a wonderful writer who did not, did not, did not give up.

McNamara's pieces for True Crime Diary--including her elegant dissection of the Yale University murder (victim, Suzanne Jovin)--basically can't be matched anywhere else in the world of true crime. McNamara was simply a smart, careful, empathic artist, and her genre happened to be crime reporting.

McNamara's career-best achievement was "Gone in the Dark," and one of many alluring facets of that work was its strange "memoir" quality. McNamara blended a warts-and-all self-portrait with an account of the Golden State Killer's activities. The passages I remember most aren't the murders, but are instead McNamara's brutally honest memory of her marriage. ("Patton created handmade action figurines, for me. I was so consumed by my book, I forgot about Patton's birthday.") I also remember a vivid story about McNamara overhearing her own mother at a party. ("My daughter is a brilliant writer.....but....obviously.....her ship has sailed....")

Everything about the GSK story is astonishing, including the fact that the guy was actually apprehended after McNamara's death. It looks like Garbus's docuseries is--among other things--a loving tribute to Michelle McNamara. I'm very eager to see that.
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