Today’s podcast is part one of a two-part interview with Brian McGinn, Executive Producer and Director of the Netflix series Chef’s Table and, our primary focus in today’s conversation, the feature documentary Amanda Knox.
The conversation was recorded as part of a series of classes that I taught at The University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Each week I would host an artist for a discussion that would help us better understand the values and aims of storytellers in the world of crime and justice.
I connected with Brian through my USC colleague, filmmaker Ted Braun, who joins me in interviewing McGinn on the podcast. I found Brian’s perspective on filmmaking in general and the Knox story in particular, refreshingly down to earth and unpretentious. The Knox film is especially insightful, as the New York Times put it, about “how we judge attractive young women who dare to stray from what we consider appropriate social behavior.”
You can find a complete transcript of part 1 of the interview here.