Crime Seen | Episode 109: How to Rob a Bank / Moviepass, Moviecrash

[00:00:24] Hello everyone, I'm Sarah Carradine, podcasting from unceded Gadigal land. I'm Mari Forth. And this is Crime Seen, the True Crime Review podcast where we get to the heart of how true crime stories are told.

[00:00:37] You can get this fine program along with all the fantastic reality TV content by subscribing at RobHasAWebsite.com. We know reality TV. We'd love it if you would subscribe to our feed as well. Please go to RobHasAWebsite.com slash crime feed.

[00:00:54] You'll get your true crime on Tuesdays. If you've already subscribed, thank you very much. Sarah, you have some true crime news for us? I certainly do. Californian second grade teacher Wendy Munson was arrested for being drunk in class.

[00:01:10] She failed a sobriety test and was twice the legal limit two hours after her arrest. However, Mari, she is not facing charges because guess what? It's not illegal to teach drunk. Just like it's not illegal to found a fake high school, right? Everybody go and watch BS High.

[00:01:29] Okay. Yeah, it's not illegal to be drunk in class. It is not illegal to teach drunk. I think a lot of places have alcohol and drug protocols, but maybe not the school where she was. It's California. Anything goes. This is true.

[00:01:51] And you have an update on an Australian case? Yes. Former high school teacher Chris Dawson was found guilty of murdering his wife Lynette Sims more than 40 years after her disappearance. That was in 2022.

[00:02:05] Yesterday, as we recorded this, the Court of Criminal Appeal rejected his appeal with all three judges in agreement. Dawson is serving a maximum of 24 years in prison. Good. Stay there. If you're interested in that case, we recommend the excellent podcast Teacher's Pet.

[00:02:25] Last week, we watched the fascinating documentary The Contestant with Shannon Guss. Sarah, what did we watch this week? Well, we've been very busy. We watched How to Rob a Bank on Netflix, which is our main topic.

[00:02:39] But we also watched Movie Pass, Movie Crash on Hulu, which we will also discuss. Suddenly, a whole bunch of really good stuff after a bit of a slight dry spell. We have no guests today, so let's dive into How to Rob a Bank.

[00:02:54] It was directed by Stephen Robert Morse and Seth Porges. Morse produced the documentary Amanda Knox and produced and directed In the Cold Dark Night, which examines the 1983 and the 2018 investigations into the murder of Timothy Coggins, a black man brutally stabbed in a field in Georgia.

[00:03:16] Seth Porges wrote, directed and produced Class Action Park. A recommendation that is such a favorite of ours. And he has an upcoming documentary, Dream Breaker, a Pickleball story. I am not interested in Pickleball, but I will be seated for this because I think his work is great.

[00:03:36] So let's get to the crime. With the tech boom in Seattle in the 1990s, banks were springing up on every corner and bank robberies were, if not a daily occurrence, certainly a weekly one. Many bank robbers were disorganized and opportunistic.

[00:03:53] Heroin and meth were also part of the boom. But one robber named Hollywood by police and media planned his jobs in detail. He had inside information, loyal accomplices and prosthetic disguises, which hit his identity. Between 1992 and 1996, the so-called Hollywood bandits robbed 19 banks and stole over $2.3 million.

[00:04:20] In 1997, pulling one last job because, of course, technology defeated them when they were unable to discard trackers hidden in the cash. A police pursuit led to a shootout. Stephen Myers and Mark Biggins were wounded by police.

[00:04:36] They were sentenced to 21 years and three months in prison, but neither of them was Hollywood. Hollywood was in fact a man called Scott Scurlock, an adrenaline junkie, a meth cook, a so-called free spirit who admired Robin Hood and lived in a tree house.

[00:04:53] On the night of the police shootout, he escaped and hid in a camper van in a suburban backyard. For 24 hours, law enforcement searched the neighborhood until the owner of the camper van spotted Scurlock and called the police. During the ensuing standoff, Spurlock completed suicide with his gun.

[00:05:12] That reminded me so much of the Boston Bombers and how they ran and hid in the suburbs. Boston Bombers, Andrew Koonanen. You know, this happens when you get a... not necessarily a killer because Hollywood up until this point didn't kill anybody during his robberies,

[00:05:33] but when criminals get cornered, it's that type of reaction where they run, they hide, and unfortunately a lot of them take their own lives. Yes, I did put in my notes. They say he committed suicide. Oh my God. When I... When I tell you... You're taking your bullets?

[00:05:54] Exactly. Me and James are watching this and we were like, what? They hear one shot. Immediately you hear the one gunshot. So they said, oh, we heard one gunshot. We looked at each other and we were like, oh, okay.

[00:06:08] And then they're like... And so the officers didn't let loose 72 rounds. Me and him looked at each other like, oh my God, how stupid. Like, ugh. Yes. The police.

[00:06:20] I mean, we saw this in the body camera footage when they were getting the surviving Boston Bomber out of the boat. And some law enforcement was kind of begging other law enforcement, stop shooting. Like, stop shooting. Stop shooting.

[00:06:36] One of the interesting things about the documentary I found was, we don't often get this, is a feud among subcultures. The FBI agent and the Seattle police officer obviously don't see eye to eye. There is veiled criticism or not so veiled criticism between them.

[00:06:56] But one of the critiques was the FBI agent saying, I wouldn't have pursued them and fired. I would have found them another day. Whether that's true or not, we don't know. So let's before we get diving into all these details, what's your overall view on the documentary?

[00:07:16] One hour and 36 minutes, I believe. My overall view about the documentary, great length, easy watch when it comes to that. The length was very, very easy. The production value was really good. The production value was really good.

[00:07:30] I really like the animation storyboarding into the cinematic reenactment interspersed with the talking heads. This really reminds me about the Anthrax documentary I had suggested. I had made a recommendation a while ago. It was shot exactly like this, where the reenactments were all highly cinematic.

[00:07:52] They highlighted what was reenactment versus what was archival footage, if they had any. I really like the production value of this property of How to Rob a Bank. I will say though, the tone was so weird to me. Let me know if this is what you thought, Sarah.

[00:08:14] The almost reverence of the bank robber Hollywood was so weird to me that that was kind of hard to get around. The fact that we were talking to his accomplices, I didn't realize they were his accomplices, of course,

[00:08:32] because the way they lay out the documentary, they tell us about Scott Skirlak's early life. From the moment the documentary starts, it feels like they're really trying to humanize this guy to the point where you're almost supposed to be rooting for him in the documentary.

[00:08:50] But I'm not rooting for him. I'm not rooting for somebody who breaks the law. The only good thing is he didn't kill anybody during his bank robberies. But why should I be celebrating this?

[00:09:05] If you look under all of the reverence, because we speak to so many of his friends, the first 30-40 minutes is just speaking to his friends, speaking to his pathos of how he's such a good guy. But also, he's a good guy who made a lot of meth.

[00:09:20] He was a meth cooker for the longest time. He was so smart. It was so weird how they would say, they'd be like, he's so smart, he could do anything. So he decided to make meth. I'm like, what? What are we doing here?

[00:09:33] That was very, very weird to me. Other than that, I thought it was pretty good. I think it was well-produced, but the story itself didn't hold me, if that makes sense. What about you, Sarah? What do you think? Yeah, that makes sense. I've been held up.

[00:09:55] I don't know if you ever have. No. And it's held up with a screwdriver, actually, not a gun, because we don't have guns here. Well, we do. You're allowed to. Listen, Americans, you can have a gun in Australia. If you want one, you can have a gun.

[00:10:11] It's not a place where you're not allowed to have a gun. You just have to say why you want it. You don't think the farmers are all out there without guns. Anyway, that's a side story.

[00:10:22] I was held up with a screwdriver late at night in a retail environment where I was the only person working, which is such a great recipe, isn't it? And it sticks with you. I've also been assaulted in the street, but I was physically assaulted,

[00:10:37] so therefore there was harm. So you would say with these bank robberies and with the man who held me up with a screwdriver who got dobed on by his friends and so got jailed. That's what happens. They catch themselves. There is a sometimes lifelong damage that's done.

[00:10:57] We speak to a bank manager who was robbed 14 times and one of those times by Hollywood and says Susan Dodd. She doesn't belabor the point, but she still carries that with her. So I think this idea of... Sorry, at what point do you just quit?

[00:11:16] Like, I think by my fifth robbery, I feel... Susan, are you in the right job? I mean, we have Ellen Glasser, the special agent from the FBI wondering if she's in the right job as she crouches behind a car in a hail of gunfire with no body armour.

[00:11:33] Yes, Ellen, you might wonder if you're in the right job. But look, I take your point with the tone, and I listened to a very interesting interview. Rebecca Lavoie, past and future guest of the show, interviewing the two directors.

[00:11:49] I will link it in the show notes because what they say they intended is very slightly different from what I looked at. They said they didn't want to make him a hero. They didn't want to glamourise what he was doing.

[00:12:05] They were interested in him as a person. I can definitely see that. It's not that I want to be told that what he was doing was wrong, but there was a... Yeah, look, it's hard, because his friends liked him. And as TJ said, it was so interesting.

[00:12:21] TJ says, oh, people say to me, oh, you knew Hollywood? And I say, no, I didn't. I knew Scott. So the double life idea was there. I would have liked that emphasised more, and then I think it's much more palatable

[00:12:36] to have the hero worship or the admiration of his friends versus who he was when he put on the drag, the drag of Hollywood, the drag of this robber. And Rupul tells us, you put on drag, you find out who you are.

[00:12:56] It's not that that was a separate person from him, but that was his self, freedom to be this very frightening figure. And we see photographs of him in his prosthetics, and I think the reenactments are very good. Apparently people who saw, according to these directors,

[00:13:16] people who saw Hollywood say that the reenactment makeup is very good. It's frightening. It's almost nightmarish. So who is Scott, I think was the question they were trying to answer. We can discuss whether they were successful in that. Yeah, I don't think you get that success,

[00:13:41] because his childhood friends were also his accomplice. So how can you say you didn't know Hollywood, you know Scott? So his childhood friends being his accomplices and being here talking to us, that was what kind of threw me for a loop

[00:13:57] because at first they're talking like they're friends, and then all of a sudden they're like, oh yeah, me and him, we just went and robbed the bank together and we messed up. So then we tried again. Like the tone was so light.

[00:14:09] I don't know, maybe I'm just jaded, because there's such privilege here in being able to sit and talk about how you robbed a bank and how it was nothing to you. This guy was already living in a tree house that he helped build.

[00:14:30] He was off the grid. He was already well off. He was making millions of dollars from the mess he was cooking. You know what I'm saying? It was almost like he was robbing banks for fun in a sense. Or no, because once he couldn't sell meth anymore

[00:14:47] because his drug fincer was killed, so he didn't have a connect. By the Hells Angels apparently. So as I say, although I think the Hells Angels run their businesses in a very business-like way, but yeah, I guess they kill people.

[00:15:03] I'm not sure, but all I know is he didn't have his connect anymore. So he was like, oh, it was like he couldn't be bothered to work a regular job. It was the best product you've ever tasted according to one of his accomplices.

[00:15:18] Oh great, the best drug to kill the community. Yeah, calm down. I think the adrenaline junkie side of it is clear from both anecdotes from his sister and his friends, but also just behaviorally we see that escalation.

[00:15:39] I mean the final job was supposed to be three banks in one night. So I think there was this idea of hire faster more. What did you think of the home video? I'm just taking a bit of a swerve now as I try and figure out my feelings

[00:15:55] because first of all, I think it's a good documentary and very well made. Yes, that is undeniable. Full stop. So engaging with the content is something that I'm really interested in because sometimes we're criticizing the making of the work itself. Yeah, that's true.

[00:16:13] Yeah, but here I really feel engaged by the content. We get a lot of home videos, some of it repeated a little bit much, but I know if you have a limited number, you're going to repeat.

[00:16:28] Around the tree house where he took in people and he was donating to causes and certainly wandering around nude we saw a lot of buttocks. Oh my God, buttocks? We saw penis. We saw he hung dong everybody. So what were his expenses? Not clothes.

[00:16:50] What did you think about how the filmmakers, well I feel like they themselves were trying to find out who he was. Did you think they were successful in that by delving back into the friends who weren't accomplices, the friends who didn't know he was a bank robber

[00:17:07] and this archival footage plus his diary? I don't know. Like yeah, and the diary sometimes it can be heavy handed reading from people's diaries and stuff like that for me. But like my biggest thing I guess is, and the reason I guess it's sitting with me differently

[00:17:28] is because they said like, oh he likes Robin Hood. But this let's not us be real this isn't Robin Hood. He's not stealing from the rich giving to the poor. He himself is not or is not struggling. And I think that's what I'm trying.

[00:17:41] I was originally trying to say. My point is like I can see people robbing, selling drugs when it's a necessity. It's like they need it for survival. But this isn't survival to me. You know what I'm saying? Like you said, it's adrenaline kick.

[00:17:57] It's saying I'm so much smarter than you. It's playing a game. So I think that's kind of why I'm not all on the whole like, oh he was almost like a hippie. He was about community and friends and having people around and all of this stuff.

[00:18:17] And you know his friends who didn't know he was a robber. He was such a nice guy. It's just OK. OK, sure. Yeah. I think I know what you mean. It's like OK. And which is why I do recommend people listen to the interview with them

[00:18:35] because I think it illuminates what their intentions were. There's a moment where his sister Suzanne talks about he came over to see her. He sat down, he cried. He said, I don't recognize myself in the mirror. This was really odd because nothing more was made of it.

[00:18:55] Did you think this was supposed to indicate some kind of mental health issue? Was he being philosophical? Are we supposed to feel sorry for him? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know because because his bank robbery stretched like four or five years, right?

[00:19:13] And he would take a year off or something to basically spend the money. It would go and travel. You know what I'm saying? Like it almost felt like he would come back to rob banks when he needed more money.

[00:19:24] So it's just kind of like I don't feel like there is any real regret. I don't know what they put that in there for. They're saying that they're not trying to make him sympathetic. It just again, it's just the tone of the thing.

[00:19:38] The documentary itself was really, really good. Like how they put it all out there. But I just wasn't connecting with the story. I couldn't find myself connecting with the person. I thought the most interesting things unfortunately were when the cops were like so close to catching him

[00:19:59] because I loved the whole like procedural of it all, of what they were doing. I even liked when he would get away from them like just seconds before they got there and stuff like that. That part was cool to me.

[00:20:10] Like all this the bank shenanigans near the end was very, very interesting and how they would rob banks like to just to test like when they robbed the banks to see what the trackers look like

[00:20:22] so that they could be confident that they could find the trackers and toss them. Stuff like that was way more interesting than I think the humanization portion. But that's just me. Yes, I mean he is dead and in some ways unknowable.

[00:20:41] So I wonder if I would have found that tone a little more. Again, we don't want to say you got to make the documentary you want to make. But I don't know that we can know him and I don't know if I, you know,

[00:20:59] vibed with the let's try and get to know him of it. Yeah. I quite like the mystery. I think the diaries are very self-indulgent and very, you know, almost adolescent person who's reading philosophy for the first time or has just found out who Sartre is.

[00:21:20] Not illuminating, I think, except to make me feel like there's an arrested development there and not the hilarious television show. No, that's what I get. That's what I think it is. I think that's the nail on the head here.

[00:21:36] It's like they're trying to make something out of it. They're trying to find a reason why they're trying to give him a purpose and all of that. When I'm honestly over here sitting here like I think he did it because he was bored.

[00:21:46] He did it to see if he can. Whereas the law enforcement, Sean Johnson, the FBI agent and Mike Megan, the Seattle detective. I loved this kind of push pull that they were never interviewed together. They had some snipes at each other, which was great.

[00:22:08] I had some snipes at Steve Myers and Mark Biggins, who we speak to both of them extensively through the documentary. That to me was interesting. These four men almost in a dance, not only with the opponents, the robbers and the police, but also between the police.

[00:22:28] I always love that. When they cut back and forth between the people's interviews and stuff like that, that's so fun. Steve Myers' lips were moving, then he was lying. That sort of stuff. I thought, yes, of course they're intimate because the law enforcement has been pursuing the robbers.

[00:22:49] The robbers have been avoiding law enforcement. Then there would have been the whole trial and interview and all of that. There's an intimacy there that was hinted at and I thought that was fascinating.

[00:22:59] But the idea of being so frustrated that you can't catch this person sitting down, going through every robbery that he'd done, 19 at that point. How much did each robbery yield? Average that over how much he was spending.

[00:23:21] Can I find the average rate of how much he was spending? He thought it was 21,000 a month. Quite a lot of money, I would have thought. Therefore when will he rob again? He was right.

[00:23:35] That's in fact part of the reason they were caught is that he was out on the streets waiting. It's going to be one of these three banks and it's going to be one of these three dates. I was fascinated by that.

[00:23:48] In fact again, sorry for telling you the whole interview but listen to it anyway. The trackers were put in to catch Hollywood. Not just kind of generally catch these robbers that were apparently having a field day in Seattle in the 90s.

[00:24:07] Oh yeah, so it really was the better part of the documentary. It was just hearing how they were so frustrated with not being able to catch them. All of the little tricks that they were doing to catch them.

[00:24:22] All the ways that Hollywood and his friends were getting around it. That cat and mouse dynamic was the most interesting part of the documentary to me. Definitely worth it, worth watching. Yes.

[00:24:38] So Marie how many magnifying glances are you going to give this documentary, How to Rob a Bank? I'm going to give it a three because I think again it's very easy to watch.

[00:24:48] I think maybe if you're more fascinated with bank robberies, How to Rob a Bank is perfect for you. I think that's another thing too because that type of crime I guess doesn't necessarily appeal to me.

[00:25:03] Really like, you know, so but if that's something that you like, that's great. Do I think they could have gone into more of his robberies? That might have been a little bit fun.

[00:25:18] Because I like how they went into the first one and the first one was a complete shit show. I like how they talked about the Tracer's ones, but sometimes some bank, some of them are just like words on a screen.

[00:25:28] It's like robbery number four, so and so many dollars. Robbery number fifth, so and so many dollars. Which I understand because like not every robbery was, I'm pretty sure something happened. But you know maybe more of that would have helped for me. I would still recommend it.

[00:25:44] There's nothing that I wouldn't recommend about it. And like I'm not mad about it. I'm not, you know, I don't think I wasted my time. It wasn't three parts. It was very easy.

[00:25:56] The only thing that, like I said, the only thing that brings it down for me is the tone of reverence for Hollywood. I feel like there was a tone of reverence for him and I get that maybe the directors didn't think that's what they're doing.

[00:26:10] But that's what it felt like to me. How about you Sarah? How many magnifying glasses would you give it? Well, I'd definitely recommend it. I'm a little higher than you. I'm going to give it a four.

[00:26:22] I also think they had to walk a bit of a fine line. It is called how to rob a bank. We didn't, we kind of didn't get a lot of the mechanism of that. Now I know that they can't teach people how to rob banks.

[00:26:34] However, banking and security systems in the 90s are so different from how they are now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we could have got a lot more of the process of it. We knew that they had a an insider called Mustang who gave them manuals and so on.

[00:26:53] So they knew what words to say to get the best outcome. And it seems to be who is the vault teller. We have been in reenactment, the vault teller taking him into the vault.

[00:27:06] And I thought, but you're the only one in there and everybody else is out in the foyer. I would have appreciated. How do you control?

[00:27:18] How do you control the people if you're in the vault and you don't have a really said that to James, I was like, I was like, what's to stop that vault teller from closing the vault on you and waiting for the police to come?

[00:27:32] I literally said that for the first robbery with the with the vault teller and all they just kept saying is his aura commands the room. So when he goes in there, everybody just listen. Yeah, that's what he said.

[00:27:43] But I'm like, it's one of him versus all of y'all. Yes, because when I was on a jury, it was a it was an armed robbery and it was an armed robbery of a bank.

[00:27:51] And there were four of them and three of them went into the bank and the other one was driving the car. And that's sort of the classic that we see. So I would have been interested.

[00:28:02] Listen, I would have been interested to speak to a convicted bank robber who I mean, I know now I'm writing a documentary that isn't but you know, I would have liked a bit more process or a different title. Yeah.

[00:28:17] Oh, so also it was Scott Levine right that final bank manager. I loved him. He was OK. Like I really liked him. So why didn't we get more of that? So Scott Levine goes like he says, oh, Hollywood, they come in to rob me.

[00:28:35] I immediately start flipping up the the cash pins which activates an alarm. I was like, oh, cool. I didn't know about that. And then he asked me who's the vault teller. He's like, well, it's me. And he goes into the vault.

[00:28:47] He's like, there's a combination that not only opens the vault but alerts the cops as well. He's like, I want to have as many people there as possible. I was like, that's cool too. Like, tell us that.

[00:28:59] Like, I didn't know that they used to have vaults that you can they have more than one combination where the vault was still open. But then one will trigger the police. I didn't know that the money clips. Oh, that was fascinating.

[00:29:10] Or one draw where if you pull the bill out from under the clip, the clip sits and the clip hits the cash. It sends an alarm. Yes. So but nonetheless, I am going to give it four and a strong recommend. I'd love it listeners if you watch it.

[00:29:28] Let us know what you thought because we both are having a question about the tone, but certainly not the making of it nor the content.

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[00:30:42] So, Mari, take us to our secondary topic today. Movie pass, movie crash.

[00:30:48] Movie pass, movie crash is on Max and it was directed by Muta Ali, who also directed Cassius X, Becoming Ali from last year and Storm Over Brooklyn in 2020, which covers the events surrounding the murder of Youssef Hawkins, a Black teenager killed by a group of white youths.

[00:31:08] I haven't seen any of those, but now I definitely think I'm going to check out some of those by this director because I really enjoyed movie pass, movie crash. Sarah, what were your overall thoughts of this one? Well, I mean, talk about tone. Pitch perfect. Pitch perfect tone.

[00:31:33] I also don't know Muta Ali's work. I am also going to now watch other things that he has done, particularly Storm Over Brooklyn. He's an actor turned director, which I find fascinating how that transition is made as a craftsperson. This is perfectly crafted.

[00:31:56] Again, it's what an hour and 26 minutes, something like that. The tone is perfect. I didn't know about movie passes. I'm not an American and presumably for an American, it's a very familiar story.

[00:32:08] So I came to it because you said, oh, we have to, we have to cover this. We have to cover this now. Okay, okay, hold on. But I didn't know anything about it. And I absolutely saw almost immediately why you said we have to cover it.

[00:32:26] It was fascinating. It was fascinating. It was clear. We have been quite hesitant to cover money crimes because we just find like, we don't know what's going on. You know, eat the rich. You were shorting stock. What people don't know what that is.

[00:32:46] We've we have covered a few money crimes or crimes that involve money. And we're always impressed when the filmmaker is able to lead someone like you, someone like me by the hand and say, this is how money works. Yep. And I completely understood exactly what was happening.

[00:33:07] Greed, racism, money. I mean, what's interesting between the two documentaries that we watched is as Steve was lying shot on the ground by the van with the door open and he's seeing the light. Don't go to the light, Steve. You need to come back and serve your sentence.

[00:33:31] And he looked inside the van and there were just piles and piles and piles of money. And he had the vision. It's all right. It's just your brain losing oxygen. He had the vision of like, what is that? It's just like, what is that money?

[00:33:46] And I got the very strong feeling here of. What? What is money? How can you be flying around in helicopters, flying around in private jets, buying champagne, paying celebrities? What is this money? Where? Like it doesn't exist. And I love that. I thought, what a fantastic theme.

[00:34:10] And we go back and we go back to the two black men who founded MoviePass, who had a vision, who worked carefully to build it up, who were shoved out and who were unable to cash into their buyout of 80 million dollars because they had to wait a year during which time all that imaginary money was pissed away.

[00:34:32] I just, oh, I thought it was so good. What about you, Mari? What were your thoughts? Yes, MoviePass, MovieCrash was great. I didn't. I like so I knew about MoviePass and I knew when they were in beta. One of our friends had it.

[00:34:44] I remember when James finally tried to get on the on board with it. It was at the time when it was being run into the ground. And he's like, oh, no, this isn't it. You know, so like I knew what MoviePass was.

[00:34:57] I did not know all of this stuff behind it. You know what I'm saying? If I remember from my before seeing this, I remember thinking like I remember when MoviePass first came up and one of our friends is like, you know, you got to get MoviePass.

[00:35:11] You got to get MoviePass. We didn't because we still didn't have the time to go to the movies. And then I remember when it got so big that everybody's getting it and James got it. And then he's like, it doesn't work. Like, it doesn't even make sense.

[00:35:23] Like, I can't see this movie. I can't see that movie. And we were like, well, this is stupid. And we just stopped. You know what I'm saying? And but I did not know all of this behind the scenes stuff. And it was so like it was so annoying.

[00:35:37] You know how, like, I'm so mad. But because the director wants to kind of want you to be, you know, the director introduces us to Mitch and Tim like basically immediately. And they're the faces of MoviePass. We even see Stacey chiming in on MoviePass.

[00:35:54] And then it's like, like 20 minutes later, they're like, oh, but did you know that Stacey and Hamid were the ones who actually made MoviePass? And it's like, wait, what? And then they give us the founding of MoviePass and all of that. And it was so great.

[00:36:10] But it's one of those things where you're like, oh, I hate corporate America because these two Black men take years and years and grind and grind and finding Victor Capulis who believe in them to give them money to make movies. They make this thing work.

[00:36:25] They had this awesome product that consumers love and want to invest in. And all they need is the money.

[00:36:34] And I love the statistic here that only one to two percent of venture capitalist dollars are given to like Black, not only Black people or people of color, but also women. And I love how low it is for you to get venture capitalist dollars.

[00:36:48] And it just, again, shows you how racism in this society perpetually keeps people down because these men had a product. They had an idea. They created the software to make it happen. They had a willing customer base and all they needed was money.

[00:37:04] And basically people would not give it to them because of the color of their skin. And then when they finally do find an investor, I think it was that Chris guy was his name. He believed in them as well. He loved the concept.

[00:37:18] It was just that he didn't have enough money. So he enlists the help of Mitch.

[00:37:22] Mitch finds Tim and this is where it goes down, goes down because when you aren't put in access to these rooms, even when you do have access to these rooms, they will always find a way to push you out. And that's exactly what happened.

[00:37:37] They were able to create a board without Stacey or Hamid and they're able to forcibly push them out of their own company that they founded, which is still so mind boggling to me.

[00:37:49] But we saw with the Theranos show that we had back in the day, the one that we had covered so long ago.

[00:37:59] You've heard about it with like when I watched the jewel, the big vape thing, like even with social network, the movie Social Network, you can push somebody, a CEO or founder out of their own company. And that is still mind boggling to me.

[00:38:16] But the fact that these black men were pushed out of their own company when their company was doing great while they were there, it wasn't like they messed up or anything.

[00:38:24] They were actually pushed out of their company because they were trying to tell these men, if you keep doing what you're doing, we will not be successful.

[00:38:32] We like Stacey straight up was like as a chief, he was the chief operating officer, a chief operations officer that is supposed to be the main person you listen to about the day to day operations of the product.

[00:38:46] But these men, these men, these men Mitch and Tim, they didn't care. They didn't care about the product like Stacey did. They just cared about making those imaginary dollars on Wall Street. All they cared about was the stock. They wanted the stock price to go up.

[00:39:01] They were doing all this stuff so that the stock price would go up, just like Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, that they let their product, their actual product slide tremendously.

[00:39:12] And I love talking to the we got several of the customer service agents who were just, I felt so bad for them. This is why I'm not rude to people who work customer service. Oh, no.

[00:39:23] You know what I'm saying? Because it like 90% of the time, it's not their fault. And then 90% of the time they can't do anything because of how the system is made.

[00:39:32] So hearing their struggles with when MoviePass starts, the product itself starts to deteriorate and they're fielding angry calls from customers. One customer sent a box of shit to the office. Box of actual shit. It was so funny. Don't do that. I mean, that's how angry people are. Yes.

[00:39:50] Like the way this story was told was just so crazy because like you said, Sarah, when they did push the two black men out, it was under a deal where they kept their shares, but they were not allowed to cash their shares in for up to a year, 12 months, which apparently they said this is standard.

[00:40:11] This is just so that the stock prices don't like you. You don't want to hear that the founders are selling their stocks because that might scare people into, you know, making the stock prices jump. I mean, plummet. So apparently this is something reasonable. I don't think it's reasonable.

[00:40:28] I would have said you will have to buy me out if you want me to go anywhere. But again, we don't know what was going on behind the scenes.

[00:40:35] But in that 12 months, they said it took them almost 10 years to build it up to the point where there's their stocks that they had were worth $80 million.

[00:40:43] But within that 12 months, those two white men drove that company into the ground to the point where by the time they could share their stocks, their stocks were worth pennies. Like, can you imagine that? Like, can you imagine that? And these men were given are always given money.

[00:40:59] Like it is just the privilege of it all. It's such a great it's such a great documentary. It's only what was it an hour 40 minutes or something like that.

[00:41:11] Something just maybe that there was a moment where as I said before, we sometimes have trouble with the money document. Not because we're stupid by any means, but because our interests are otherwise they are science and entertainment. Yeah. And there was a moment. Finances are hard.

[00:41:30] Finances are hard. But anyway, JD finance JD. But there was a moment when one of the talking heads said he's not he's not an investor in business. He is a seller of stock. And I thought, ah, that makes complete sense. Exactly what you said.

[00:41:49] They're not understand they're not interested in the business. They're interested in the stocks. And I think we did have such a great time with the wonderful customer service agent who was so thrilled to get a job at movie pass. She thought it was the best job ever.

[00:42:06] She said when she was out at cinemas and she saw someone with a movie pass card that she was so proud and sometimes there might be a problem and she'd actually step in and say, can I help you? While she's there like.

[00:42:18] While she was there and then the software engineer who was also thrilled to get a job there. And we thought I thought first of all, oh, he's just going to talk about the software and how it was developed.

[00:42:28] But of course, he is instrumental in telling us that word came down. Block this movie. Don't make it impossible to book these days. So it wasn't just that there was a software glitch, which is what the company was told to claim.

[00:42:45] They were actively making it so that you couldn't access what you were paying for. Oh, I just thought it was absolutely terrific. Yeah, yeah, it's a great documentary. I don't know if I want to give too much more away about it.

[00:43:03] We I mean, we gave a lot, but it was so good that you could still see it. Go see it. Yeah, it's really funny how see when when documentaries are only an hour and a half,

[00:43:16] we have enough time to talk about two of them in one sitting and still get our points across and stuff. But yes. So how many magnifying glasses would you give movie past movie crash? Sarah and any final thoughts? No, my final thought is just see it.

[00:43:33] We could we could talk about this for a whole episode, but we'd only be recounting. And, you know, we don't like to recount documentaries necessarily. But but I'm so excited by it that I would like to tell you about it step by step.

[00:43:46] I'm going to give this a pure five. I don't see a reason to take any points off. I think it's really, really good. And I'm going to go and watch other work by this very, very talented director. Mari, how about you? How many magnifying glasses for you?

[00:44:01] I agree. I'd give it a five as well. I think that they really walk you through, like we said, step by step how these two men just ran this product into the ground. Like spending money on Coachella to send to advertise at Coachella.

[00:44:19] Like send an influencer to Coachella. Why? Again, watch it. There's so many things we haven't talked about. If you like. So it's like I think what it is, it tickles that part of your brain who like if you like the fire festival documentaries.

[00:44:37] Right. Right. Fire. Fire fraud or the festival that never was. You know, the two. We work. We work. Yes.

[00:44:46] Like it's basically it's about a scam, but it's about, you know, real business that these two these are scam artists that took over a real business and ran it into the ground. So I think that's why it's so easy to really like is very digestible.

[00:45:04] The direction was amazing. You get to talk to the actual people who were who were involved in it, including Mitch. I think it's one of the one of the white men who took over and who who ran into the ground and he was so blase.

[00:45:19] Oh, my God. There are moments that he says stuff and I'm like, I want to punch him. Oh, he was going through a messy divorce and he had he took his eye off the ball because he had to go to a private island and recover from that.

[00:45:33] You're a multi million dollar business, Mitch. What is going on? Exactly. So I to give it five magnifying glasses out of five. Definitely go and check it out.

[00:45:43] This is a much easier recommend for me personally, because it's just it is it really is one of those moments where you're like where you're like, I cannot believe they did this.

[00:45:55] And and for this story to have happened and I really had no clue about it is amazing. Well, I love that. So, Mary, what else do you have to recommend to our listeners? What else have you been watching, listening to or reading?

[00:46:12] So if you want something really fun that just started, I think I was the one who recommended The Floor a few months ago. Remember the quiz show The Floor? I think I recommended that I have another quiz show I want to recommend.

[00:46:26] I love quiz shows like I'm the nerd who loves trivia. Yeah, I love trivia. So the quiz with balls. That is what it's called. It is on Fox. You can also find it on Hulu.

[00:46:38] It's hosted by Jay Farrow, comedian Jay Farrow, who's known for his really good impersonations. It's called The Quiz with Balls and it's really cool. It's kind of like family feud in a sense, like the way that it's set up.

[00:46:51] So it's two families of five face off against each other. And they're given this. They start off with 10 categories because there's going to be five rounds. So they're given categories and the categories could be like girl groups, green thumb on Broadway.

[00:47:09] It's like really it's really just generic categories that you could try and guess. You might think what they might ask you, but then you don't know. So like it'll be like girl groups. You select girl groups and it'll say what are the last names of the Spice Girls?

[00:47:28] Yeah, that was an actual question. And so what it is is when there's five family members, there are six balls. And it's literally these huge balls. Like think of like Wipeout, the show Wipeout if you've ever seen the show Wipeout.

[00:47:44] It's these huge balls at the top of these shoots. There's answers to the question. There's six answers to the question. You have to go each family member has to stand on an answer. When there's five of you, there's one incorrect answer.

[00:47:57] And if you are standing on the one with the incorrect answer, when they let the balls drop, the ball will roll down this hill and hit you into a pool that's waiting down below. So it's like family feud mixed with like Wipeout. It's so hilarious.

[00:48:16] And so it gets harder and harder as like you lose family members. So if you go down to five family members, there's always going to be six balls rolling down the hill. So that means now that answer has four correct answers and two incorrect answers.

[00:48:32] Yeah, if you have four family members after you lose one, there'll be four correct answers, two incorrect answers. So you run the risk of like losing two people at one time if you don't know the answers. If you get down to three people, it's a 50-50 shot.

[00:48:46] It's three correct numbers, three correct answers, three incorrect answers. And you could run the risk of wiping out your whole entire family in one round. So and it's so good and it goes round by round until whichever family has either the most people or the most money

[00:49:04] because each correct answer, of course, is worth money as the round goes by. Whichever family has either the most money or the most people go on to the hundred thousand dollar round. And in the hundred thousand dollar round, you get one category.

[00:49:18] So it'll be like James Bond villains and there'll be there'll be six answers. Only one family member gets to compete in this. And it has to be a family member who hasn't gone into the drink, hasn't gone into the pool.

[00:49:32] So that family member then goes one by one choosing the correct answers. So if there's they say, which one of these are James Bond villains? There are five correct answers, one incorrect answer. So they say, please stand on the first correct answer.

[00:49:50] You go you stand on the answer. If you get that answer correct, you don't go into the pool. Then you continue. So you have to pick out all five correct answers in order to get the hundred thousand dollars.

[00:50:00] And that part is so, so fun when it gets down to that part. So if you're looking for something light, if you like quiz shows, if you like trivia, the quiz with balls is very fun. I think it comes out every Tuesday, Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

[00:50:15] I just watch them on Hulu and it's just so fun. Sarah, how about you? You have a recommendation? I do. I have a few things. First of all, the two movies specifically referenced in our main topic, how to rob a bank point break and heat.

[00:50:34] They're both very, very good movies. So if you don't want to watch the documentary, just watch those two and you'll get the idea. I mean, point break. Yes, it does glamorize bank robbers. But yeah, it's fictional. It's fictional. Yeah. I'd like to recommend Hitman on Netflix.

[00:50:53] There was something that just didn't appeal to me about it with the promos and everything. I thought, oh yeah, I can give that a miss. But somebody said you must watch it. Apparently I'm very biddable because I thought, well, all right, I will watch it then.

[00:51:04] Oh, it's absolutely terrific. You don't know what's going to happen. Like we see a lot of movies and so on. We're very, let's say culture literate. And I didn't know what was going to happen. And I thought things and they were wrong. The performances are great.

[00:51:25] The writing's great. I thought it was going to be more sort of hectic and overdramatic. It's not in the end. It's almost quiet for such a topic. I thoroughly recommend that. So I won't say any more again. If you've watched it, hit me up.

[00:51:39] Let me know what you thought. Hit me up for Hitman on Netflix. I'm also going to recommend that you become a patron. I'm also going to recommend that you become a patron. Not only of Rob has a podcast, which I'm sure you already are,

[00:51:51] but also of crime writers on. They have great patron only extras. Currently Rebecca Lavoie. Previously mentioned. Is giving daily updates of the Karen Reed case and. Being a patron is worth it for that alone. So that is fascinating.

[00:52:10] And we'll probably talk about the Karen Reed case once the court case. Wines up. Very interesting case to say the least. To say the least. And there'll be a documentary and a dramatization of it. I'm sure we're ready in the works. Yeah. At crime scene,

[00:52:31] where you get to hear your feedback and suggestions for future episodes. You can follow crime scene on Twitter at crime scene. R H A P that's S E E N. Or email us at crime scene. R H A P at gmail.com. We're on tick tock at crime.

[00:52:47] Scene and on all other social media at crime scene podcasts. And please remember to subscribe to our feed by going to Rob has a website.com slash crime feed. It makes a big difference. Barry, what have you got going on and where can the people find you? Well,

[00:53:05] I'm here on crime scene with you, Sarah. I'm also over on the recap kickback. Me and Chappelle will be doing a episodic review of house of dragon season two. We are so excited to be covering that over on the recap kickback.

[00:53:21] You can go to recap, kickback.com to subscribe. You can also go to our YouTube. YouTube.com slash at recap kickback. Uh, I mean, I love, uh, the game of Thrones universe. I love house of the dragon. I love the game of the dragon.

[00:53:39] I love the game of the dragon. I love the game of the dragon. I love the game of the dragon. I have read all of the books. I can't wait to explain all of that to Chappelle. And this is one of the like biggest hits.

[00:53:52] You know, this is, this is it. This is the appointment TV. This is where everybody will be watching and I can't wait to talk about it. So please go subscribe to that. You can also follow me on Twitter at Mari talks too much where I'm on Twitter.

[00:54:05] You can follow me at Sarah Carradine on all the things over on silent podcasts, comedian Sam Smith and I have just wrapped up our coverage of the traders, Quebec, a fantastic finale. And we have a brilliant guest next week. One of the players in the game Maxence.

[00:54:24] If you've been watching it, he will be very, very interesting. And then we take about a week off and then we start covering the game of the traders, New Zealand season two. I'm also covering taskmaster Australia season two with a rotating band of wonderful little assistance.

[00:54:43] That's all on silent podcasts along with all sorts of other fantastic content. Next time on crime scene, we're covering tell them you love me with guest Matt Scott. What should on Netflix and send us your comments and questions.

[00:54:58] Thanks to Wil from America for the theme music and the whole R.H.A.P. team behind the scenes until next time case closed.