Mark & Jay Duplass Auto Scam Docuseries Leads Latest HBO Doc Slate
Room 104 and Togetherness creators Mark and Jay Duplass have set their latest HBO project – a documentary series about a 1970s auto scam centered around a mysterious entrepreneur.
The Lady and the Dale is one of a number of new documentaries unveiled by WarnerMedia’s premium cable network.
The film, which is directed by Nick Cammilleri (Slide) and Zackary Drucker (Transparent), tells the story of Elizabeth Carmichael, who rose to prominence when she released a fuel-efficient three-wheeled vehicle during the 1970s gas crisis.
However, the problem was that there were questions marks whether Carmichael and the car were real. Liz Carmichael was born Jerry Dean Michael, a criminal wanted for grand theft, fraud and involvement in the Colombian drug ring. The story involves investigative journalists and hit men with employees insisting that Carmichael, one of the first public figures to be outed as transgender, worked non-stop on the revolutionary car, while others suggested Jerry Dean Michael was a con man.
The series is expected to air in 2021. Mark and Jay Duplass, who are behind docs including Netflix’s Wild Wild Country and HBO’s On Tour with Asperger’s Are Us, will executive produce, along with Mel Eslyn, through their production company Duplass Brothers Productions. Andre Gaines, Allen Bain, Cammilleri, Alana Carithers and Drucker will also serve as executive producers
Mark Duplass recently told Deadline, ahead of the launch of the fourth and final season of Room 104, that he enjoyed working with HBO. “They’re a really, really good home for us because we’re doing a specific thing. Never say never, but I don’t think I’m going to go out and make Game of Thrones. I just don’t think that way. I like making little things that have the chance to break out,” he said.
The Lady and the Dale is one of a number of new documentaries unveiled by HBO.
Elsewhere on the slate are Alabama Snake and The Soul of America. Alabama Snake is directed by Theo Love and produced by Bryan Storkel, who both worked on Netflix’s The Legend of Cocaine Island, and explores an incident in Scottsboro, AL in 1991. Glenn Summerford, a Pentecostal minister, was accused of attempting to murder his wife with a rattlesnake. The details of the investigation and the trial that followed has haunted Southern Appalachia for decades.
The Soul of America, which is based on Jon Meacham’s 2018 book, looks our the present day political reality by exploring historical challenges of the past such as the women’s suffrage movement, the incarceration of Japanese Americans, McCarthyism and the struggle to pass Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s. It is directed by Katie Davison (Ordinary People), produced by George Kunhardt and Teddy Kunhardt and executive produced by Peter Kunhardt.
HBO has also set premiere dates for a number of films. NXIVM doc The Vow launches August 23 and Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn debuts August 12. Starting in November, HBO will air a weekly crime doc including Crazy, Not Insane, Baby God and The Art of Political Murder.
