Marc Smerling is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and director. [1] He was nominated for an Oscar for Capturing the Friedmans in 2003, and co-wrote and produced The Jinx , a six-part HBO documentary on suspected murderer Robert Durst. [2] He directed the FX docuseries A Wilderness of Error based on the book of the same name. [3]
Smerling attended S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and has earned a Master of Arts degree in film production from University of Southern California. [4]
Early in his career, Smerling was the associate producer of NBC's Gangs, Cops and Drugs with Tom Brokaw, and The New Hollywood. He then founded production company Notorious Pictures, producing and directing more than a hundred television commercials and music videos. [5]
Smerling partnered up with Andrew Jarecki to form their own production company Hit the Ground Running. He produced 2003's Capturing the Friedmans , which was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary and 2010's documentary film Catfish , [6] which inspired the television series Catfish: The TV Show .
In 2010, Smerling produced and wrote his first narrative feature film All Good Things , starring Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst and Frank Langella, about the suspected murderer and real estate scion Robert Durst. The film was the predecessor to the 2015 HBO documentary miniseries The Jinx , which Smerling co-wrote and produced with Andrew Jarecki and Zachary Stuart-Pontier. [7] He won the 2015 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary Series and was nominated for Outstanding Cinematography for Nonfiction Programming. [8]
Smerling and Stuart-Pontier co-created the podcast Crimetown , which debuted in 2016 and quickly became the most popular U.S. podcast on iTunes. Each season of Crimetown examines how organized crime shaped an American city, starting with Providence, Rhode Island, in season one. [9] They also co-created The RFK Tapes a Crimetown Presents podcast about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. [10] In 2022, he hosted a 15-part podcast series focused on the Mahoning Valley mafia and Congressman Jim Traficant called "Crooked City: Youngstown OH." [11]
| Year | Title | Producer | Writer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | Capturing the Friedmans | Yes | |
| 2010 | All Good Things | Yes | Yes |
| 2010 | Catfish | Yes | |
| Year | Title | Director | Producer | Writer | Cinematographer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | Catfish: The TV Show | Yes | |||
| 2015 | The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| 2020 | A Wilderness of Error | Yes | Yes | ||
True crime is a nonfiction literary, podcast, and film genre in which the author examines a crime and details the actions of people associated with and affected by criminal events.
Capturing the Friedmans is a 2003 HBO documentary film directed by Andrew Jarecki. It focuses on the 1980s investigation of Arnold and Jesse Friedman for child molestation. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2003. Some of the Friedmans' alleged victims and family members wrote to the Awards Committee, protesting the nomination.
Eugene Jarecki is an American filmmaker and author. He is best known as a two-time winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, as well as multiple Emmy and Peabody Awards, for his films Why We Fight, Reagan, and The House I Live In.
Andrew Jarecki is an American filmmaker, musician, and entrepreneur. He is best known for the Emmy-winning 2015 documentary series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst. He is also known for the documentary film Capturing the Friedmans, which won eighteen international prizes including the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the New York Film Critics Circle award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. He also co-founded Moviefone and created the KnowMe iOS platform.
Marc Levin is an American independent film producer and director. He is best known for his Brick City TV series, which won the 2010 Peabody award and was nominated for an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking and his dramatic feature film, Slam, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Caméra d'Or at Cannes in 1998. He also has received three Emmy Awards and the 1997 DuPont-Columbia Award.
Robert Alan Durst was an American real estate heir and convicted murderer. The eldest son of New York City real estate magnate Seymour Durst, Robert gained attention as a suspect in the unsolved 1982 disappearance of his first wife Kathleen McCormack, the 2000 murder of his long-time friend Susan Berman, and the 2001 killing of his neighbor Morris Black.
Kim Lankford is an American businesswoman and retired actress, best known for her role as Ginger Ward on Knots Landing from 1979 to 1983.
World of Wonder Productions is an American production company founded in 1991 by filmmakers Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey. Based in Los Angeles, California, the company specializes in documentary television and film productions with a key focus on LGBTQ topics. Together, Bailey and Barbato have produced programming through World of Wonder for HBO, Bravo, HGTV, Showtime, the BBC, Netflix, MTV and VH1, with credits including the Million Dollar Listing docuseries, RuPaul's Drag Race, and the documentary films Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures (2016) and The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2000).
Elizabeth Freya Garbus is an American documentary film director and producer. Notable documentaries Garbus has made are The Farm: Angola, USA,Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,Bobby Fischer Against the World,Love, Marilyn,What Happened, Miss Simone?, and Becoming Cousteau. She is co-founder and co-director of the New York City-based documentary film production company Story Syndicate.
All Good Things is a 2010 American mystery/crime romantic drama film directed by Andrew Jarecki and written by Marcus Hinchey and Marc Smerling. Inspired by the life of Robert Durst, it stars Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst, and Frank Langella. Gosling portrays the wealthy son of a New York real estate tycoon (Langella) who develops a disturbing relationship with his wife (Dunst) and becomes suspected of a series of murders, as well as his wife's unsolved disappearance.
A Deadly Secret: The Strange Disappearance of Kathie Durst is the true story of Robert Durst, the heir to a New York real estate dynasty who has been a person of interest in the missing-person case of his wife Kathie since her 1982 disappearance. The book was written by journalist and author Matt Birkbeck, and was published by Berkley/Penguin. A Deadly Secret was released in hardcover in 2002 and in paperback in 2003.
Marek Ariel Schulman is an American filmmaker and actor. He starred in, produced, and directed the 2010 documentary Catfish, and directed Paranormal Activity 3, Paranormal Activity 4, Nerve and Project Power with Henry Joost.
The House I Live In, directed by Eugene Jarecki, is a 2012 documentary film about the War on Drugs in the United States.
Jason Ferus Blum is an American film and television producer. He is the founder and CEO of Blumhouse Productions, which produced the horror franchises Paranormal Activity (2007–2021), Insidious (2010–2023), and The Purge (2013–2021). Blum also produced Sinister (2012), Oculus (2013), Whiplash (2014), The Gift (2015), Hush (2016), Split (2016), Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016), Get Out (2017), Happy Death Day (2017), Upgrade (2018), Halloween (2018), Us (2019), The Invisible Man (2020), Freaky (2020), The Black Phone (2021) and M3GAN (2022).
The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst is a 2015 HBO documentary miniseries about New York real estate heir Robert Durst, a convicted murderer. It was written by Andrew Jarecki, Marc Smerling, and Zac Stuart-Pontier.
Gimlet Media LLC was a digital media company and podcast network, focused on producing narrative podcasts and headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. The company was founded in 2014 by Alex Blumberg and Matthew Lieber, who serve as the company's CEO and president respectively until Lieber stepped down in 2022. In February 2019, Spotify announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Gimlet for $230 million. In 2023, Spotify merged Gimlet into Spotify Studios.
Documentary Now! is an American mockumentary television series, created by Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, and Rhys Thomas, that premiered on August 20, 2015, on IFC. Armisen and Hader star in many episodes, and Thomas and Alex Buono co-direct most episodes. Hosted by Helen Mirren, the series spoofs celebrated documentary films by parodying the style of each documentary with a similar, but fictitious, subject. The third season premiered on February 20, 2019. On April 8, 2019, the series was renewed for a fourth season, which premiered on October 19, 2022 and was also released on AMC+.
The Bonded Vault heist was the August 1975 robbery of the Bonded Vault Company, a commercial safe-deposit business occupying a vault inside Hudson Fur Storage in Providence, Rhode Island. It served as the unofficial "bank" used by the Patriarca crime family and associates. The stolen valuables were worth about $30 million. According to The Providence Journal, it was among the biggest heists in US history and resulted in the longest and costliest criminal trial in Rhode Island history.
Crimetown is a serial documentary podcast hosted by Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier and produced by Gimlet Media which looks at how organized crime has shaped particular American cities. The first season started in 2016 and focused on the city of Providence, Rhode Island.
Zac Stuart-Pontier is an American film editor, host and producer. He is known for his work on the HBO documentary The Jinx, Catfish and Martha Marcy May Marlene.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
 | This article about an American film producer is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
