BEHIND THE SCENES OF HBO MAX’S LIFE OF CRIME
I was beyond thrilled when Jon Alpert, the acclaimed filmmaker and director of the HBO Max documentary Life of Crime, told his colleagues to hold on a moment because he was—and I quote—”on the phone with my friend Tim.”
At first, I dreaded talking to Alpert. How, after all, do you interview someone who has interviewed the likes of Saddam Hussain and Fidel Castro? Thankfully, our talk was as easy as it was pleasant—and it’s mostly thanks to Alpert’s ability to treat strangers the same way as he would his lifelong friends.
That ability has allowed Alpert to produce some of the most succinct and brutally honest documentaries of all time. His first project, the 1980 film Third Avenue—which chronicles the existence of a thief, a homeless man, a mother on welfare, a male prostitute, a factory worker and a barber—cemented Alpert’s interest in and allegiance to the ignored or downtrodden.
He also founded the Downtown Community Television Center in lower Manhattan, an organization that offers free or low-cost production courses and access to broadcast-quality equipment to fellow New Yorkers, and which has helped many a disenfranchised youth to kickstart
