Making documentaries about crime is hard. You can’t capture the real thing because – of course – people would be arrested. Crooks is our answer to that problem.
It feels like there’s a wall between the filmmaker and the crime itself. You can stick a camera over that wall. But the view is from a distance.
TV dramas and movies are another way to tell crime stories. You can write a script and get actors to play the parts. But usually (and with few exceptions, like ‘The Wire’) non-criminal actors, directors and writers just don’t get the essence of what goes on on the street. Criminals and filmmakers have for the most part grown up in very different worlds and find it hard to understand each other.
But what if your creative team were made up of people who used to be in that world? There are many talented actors and writers who are also ex-criminals. After all, if an actor gives a bad performance s/he gets a bad review. But if a criminal gives a bad performance while trying to cash a dodgy cheque, they get 3 years!
So we decided to make use of the talent out there. For ‘Crooks’, we developed a method of writing with our ex-criminal actors. Each actor created a charachter who is fictional versions of themself (or people they knew). Then we all worked together on storylines involving those characters. There’s no shortage of experience to draw from and everyone checks each other’s ideas to make sure they’re real. Then we workshop the scenes and write them up into a script.
We believe that we’ve ended up with the closest thing you can get to an all-access documentary. The stories are just far enough from reality to make sure no one incriminates themselves and no real people can be identified.
Everyone on our team has a hunger to tell the real human story of crime on our streets. We feel we’ve made an important contribution to the understanding of crime and the people who commit it. Because if you don’t understand it, how can you deal with it?
And judging from the reactions we’ve had so far from the people who still live in that world, it’s pretty accurate.
