, who’d just so happened to have briefly worked as a telemarketer when he was in college in Boston. “Let me be clear, it waslike the CDG experience,” Safdie says, over a separate Zoom call. “It was for a chamber-music nonprofit.
When Lough and Lipman-Stern began to fill Safdie in on what happened after that, and how this model had evolved into a billion-dollar scam around the country, he went: OK,is your docuseries. Benny, Josh and their production company Elara also came on as producers, with Benny helping the filmmakers to shape an arc, blend the early footage and their later investigative material, and suggest where to fill in the gaps with new reporting.
Sam would also come close to being a disruptive force at times as well. “There were moments when Sam got a little too Jersey,” Lough exclaims, as Sam cracks up. “Like he’d almost physically fight somebody. And I would pull him aside, and say, ‘Don’t jeopardize this just because you know, somebody mouthed off to you, and now you want to now you want to knock them out Jersey style.”I don’t think I could do that to, like, Danny McBride or David Gordon Green.