EXCLUSIVE: Jenner Furst, the Peabody-winning Emmy nominated director and exec producer of numerous hot button documentaries, has teamed with Arnold Rifkin and former CJ Entertainment exec Justin Lee to form Incite. Rifkin is the Hollywood vet who ran WMA for years and was producing partner with Bruce Willis after that, and who will move Incite into scripted fare next year.
Incite’s aim is to finance and produce premium non-fiction fare, and they have started out with a bang. Furst just sat with George Santos, the former Queens pol who became only the sixth person in history to be expelled from US Congress. Santos has left a trail of lies and fabrications that started being exposed before he became the first openly LGBTQ+ person to be voted in on the Republican ticket.
When Deadline spoke to Furst on Thursday, he was tired after completing 8 hours worth of interviews with Santos the day before – get me the fact checker, please – and he was bummed after reading the results of placing his trust in The New York Times reporter Grace Ashford to reveal the docu. He was disappointed she focused mostly on Santos cashing a check to take part and furnish materials. It is understandable Ashford would be skeptical; she’s the main chronicler of Santos’ nosedive and teamed with colleague Michael Gold on an expose on the freshman congressman’s long list of fabrications. That greased the chute for Santos’ breathtaking DC downfall, turning the first term congressman into a running gag on late night TV shows, and leading to scathing House Ethics Committee findings that ended his political career.
Paying for access has been a murky part of the news business forever, going back to David Frost’s transactional series of interviews with former US president Richard Nixon. Furst’s track record is impeccable for generating hot button docus that have drawn big streamer viewership, including Time: The Kalief Browder Story, Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal, Shiny Happy People, Fyre Fraud (which drew some criticism because fraud perpetrator Billy McFarland benefitted financially), Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story, Lu La Rich, and The Pharmacist, to name a few. In his mind, the key is grabbing hold of what is needed to tell a story with truth and also empathy, even when dealing with a loathsome subject like Alex Murdaugh, who is serving life after being convicted of murdering his wife and son.
Furst said he got Santos’ number, left a message and got a phone call in ten minutes because Santos had watched some of his films, including The Pharmacist, which aired on Netflix. The well-funded Incite will give him the chance to tell many more stories viewers are starved for, and here, Furst discusses his Santos encounters, and the voracious appetite for stories about people who take wrong turns. At the end of the interview you will find quotes from Santos, given to Furst during the interview, about why Santos is making the docu with Furst and Incite.
DEADLINE: This is something brought up by The New York Times, but I’d ask the question anyway. Here on Long Island, my hometown paper Newsday reported that 21 politicians want to amend the Son of Sam law because the wife of the prime suspect in the Gilgo Beach murders supposedly made a $1 million deal to be part of a Peacock documentary. George Santos not only killed his career, but his transgressions were enough to get him expelled from Congress, and indicted. Just to be clear, what was Santos paid for, exactly?
JENNER FURST: I would never ever tell you that amount. And not only that, do I find it that that’s the only thing we’re going to talk about? This is one of the biggest stories in the news right now. A man has mountains of exclusive archival material that no one has ever seen. He has evidence that no one has ever seen. He has waited to show that evidence, not related to his criminal case or the DOJ investigation because that would be illegal, but to his life. To the several allegations and basically to all of the people who have come forward and claim to have known him. If you read the book [Mark Chiusano’s just published The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos which Deadline revealed has been optioned by HBO and Succession EP Frank Rich for a narrative film or series], they are bit characters in his life.
I’m not defending George Santos in any way. I’m a storyteller. I think that there is problematic aspects of this all across the board. And he himself on the record says, I lied and it’s the greatest mistake of my life. He says in many points of the interview that he believes he has sold his soul. But the actual depth of that story is so much deeper than what was reported and the way in which it occurred. The amount of information, material evidence around his life story and the material evidence around the connections that have been promoted by every media outlet. It’s laughable, actually. In fact, one of the books about him is called The Fabulist, and in many ways what I am starting to learn through my own investigation is that the media itself became the fabulist, and that people who were bit characters in this man’s life all came forward to claim their 15 minutes of fame.
That in itself is an amazing phenomenon, and this is bigger than partisan politics. I have no interest in a partisan story. I think something deeper occurred here. I see this as a modern day, Great Gatsby, and it’s ironic that the man came from the Gatsby district, the third district of New York, one of the richest in America, and also a place that is home to some of the most influential people in America. And he was fabricated as an individual, sold his soul. In order to enter politics, to have a chance to get to DC, and from what I’m learning, he became completely part of fabricating his identity. It was a big lie he could never escape. And that to me is the stuff of Hollywood, the stuff of timeless storytelling. And that’s fascinating to me. And the way it’s been scooped, frankly, I think I’ve unfortunately seen many times that it’s sometimes sloppy reporting. I mean, people aren’t even really checking to see who people are.
DEADLINE: Gatsby had reasons to reinvent himself that were honorable, as it unfolds in the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. He was trying to measure up for a woman he loved but who was above his station. What was Santos’ motivation for reinventing himself with falsehoods?
FURST: He has the gift of gab and an amazing ability to connect with people and as is common with many who decide to get into politics, it’s hard not to feel charmed when you’re in person with him. He has that talent. Ultimately it’s a tale of misdirected talent and potential. From my own extensive interview, I believe he could have really helped people and he still believes he can, even having fallen from grace. But the only service he has left to do is to expose the utter hypocrisy of the place that he sought to be part of. That it is a universal story. Although his lies were grandiose, although he was outlandish, that is the place that he was part of, this is not uncommon.
In fact, it’s highly common that in a place like DC, people fabricate their backgrounds, educations, they lie on FEC filings and the ethics committee. It’s a bit of a farce as far as what it chooses to investigate and what it doesn’t. This film will expose that many people in DC on both sides of the aisle regularly violate things in the ethics committee and FEC regulations. I am not interested in telling a partisan story, I don’t think that is interesting to a global audience or for an audience that really is interested in the human condition. There’s something more universal here, and that is that there is duplicity, there is hypocrisy, and there is outright fraud in every aspect of the basic institutions that run the world. And [touches] the people who strive to succeed in it. He’s not unique.
DEADLINE: Just before I called you I read an opinion piece arguing that US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from voting on the validity of the Colorado Supreme Court judgment that kicked Donald Trump off the ballot in the next presidential election because of his role in fomenting the January 6 insurrection. The writer was saying, Judge Thomas’s own wife was in the middle of that whole effort to overturn the election, that led to the insurrection. You’re right, there’s hypocrisy to go around.
FURST: I don’t want to give comment on that, but the latter is totally true.
DEADLINE: I could feel you bristle that the idea of Santos getting compensated. So let’s get it out of the way and outline exactly Santos is being compensated for, so distributors who’ll knock on your door base a deal on your track record as a filmmaker, and don’t think Santos is getting a whitewash.
FURST: But Mike, this is entirely common in my industry. This is not unique, same as Santos is not unique. The idea of licensing inclusive materials is completely and totally not unique. So if someone has a song, if someone has a picture, if someone has a famous picture, those things get licensed and something is exchanged in return. Here, if someone has hundreds of photographs, access to documents and e-mails, things that could completely and totally change the public perception and are entirely a DNA test. Things that have never been seen by the public, that are intimate, that are authenticated, and that are personal to the source, who has now become a global news story, it would make perfect sense to do a license agreement around those materials. I did not option his life rights, and I never pay for interviews.
DEADLINE: But you just spent eight hours interviewing him…
FURST: I have no interest in paying someone for an interview. Everything is based off the materials that substantiate the person’s story, and I’d have to license those materials in the open market anyway. It’s not unique. I think this idea that licensing materials is somehow some step to a bridge too far in the industry of storytelling is one of the most Pollyanna aspects of the reporting of this that I think is just not worth focusing on, but I understand it. There is widespread fraud in every single corner of the US government, and that is what they should be reporting on, not the fact that he got a license agreement.
Especially in the entertainment industry context. I beat out over 100 different people, who were trying to get this story. That is how crazy our industry has become. The man was being pandered to by filmmakers, by major studios, by venture capitalist firms, that is how valuable they saw his content. And I will tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, based on my own verification, I was not the highest bidder for his materials, that people were offering to pay him just for an interview or just for his life rights, which I did not do.
DEADLINE: Fascinating, because when Ziwe Fumudo interviewed Santos on her YouTube show, a crawl that preceded the chat said Santos wasn’t paid, but asked to be, multiple times. Attention on him will end when the public moves on, and he’ll be hard pressed to make a living. It’s understandable Santos would want to set himself up at a time when networks are selling ads off his popularity.
FURST: Yeah, he didn’t do the interview because I was the highest bidder. He looked at my work and decided I would be the most trustworthy storyteller. And when it comes to Ziwe, some YouTuber did pay him, I’m almost certain, and I will show that that happened because I don’t think he just showed up for that interview. I don’t think he referred to it as ‘a gig’ by coincidence. And I don’t think the content that you saw in that interview will be anything even close to the content I got in my interview. Mine is about setting the record straight about his life story and providing a roadmap for which I have to now verify in actual storytelling, in a premium setting, all of his claims and the actual moment in which I asked him, is this true? Is that true? Is this true? That is the fabric of premium storytelling, not spot cloud chasing on YouTube, which is not what I do.
DEADLINE: I expected you to break this documentary and your launch of Incite with Arnold Rifkin and Justin Lee, I pressed because I saw the traffic potential. Those clicks went to The New York Times.
FURST: I’m sorry to sound antagonistic about all this, and I regret giving New York Times the exclusive. I would’ve rather given it to you at this point. I don’t think they did anything interesting with this story. They just continued the exact same track that they’re on and made a spectacle mostly out of the money that he got. When in actuality, how much money do they get from the hundred million clicks on the story, which was frankly sensational. That’s the bigger story. We want to watch something like this. What the hell is wrong with us? And I know that that’s a self-reflexive comment for someone making a story about something like this. But I will tell you, it’s all on the table here, the whole aspect of our society and the way we operate and the way we promote people and the way we take them down, and the way we then digest these sensational stories that distract us from the very substance, the actual meat on the bone.
DEADLINE: But you don’t have to worry about Santos doing five more of these interviews that might undermine the film you’re making?
FURST: He’s only agreed to do this exclusively with us because in his eyes, he’s releasing his life story. I have to honor that but at the same time, be wary. And this is in the very fabric of an eight-hour interview that no one on the planet, no reporter, no author, has gotten. There’s an entire book about him, which includes absolutely no commentary from him, and is basically comprised of spot interviews with people that crossed paths with him for a year, a couple months, no one that actually knew the person. And the difference is this is all the people that knew the person and were in the inside circle and could say, yeah, he lied, made a mistake, but this is who he actually is.
DEADLINE: You spent eight hours with George Santos. He’s a guy who has been a national punchline, a running joke on Saturday Night Live. He’s been accused of fabricating his resume, many details of his life, serious enough to be only the sixth person expelled from Congress. What did you learn in eight hours with him that most surprised you?
FURST: I think the man is at his core a very charming individual. That doesn’t mean I think that anything he said was completely truthful or honest, because at this point you have a conundrum; your life story has been called a lie, and everything about your life story has become a lie. So at this point, anything you say is assumed to be a lie. And to me, that is an amazing foundation to talk to someone. You have to validate and or dispute every aspect of your life. So imagine telling me about your childhood, your mother, your father, all the things that define you as a person. And at this point in the world, everything is viewed as a lie. And I’m not surprised by anything, at this point in my career. If you look at my body of work, if you look at the other films that I’ve done and cite them, I’ve done The Murdaugh murders, Fyre Fraud, The Pharmacist. I’ve spent time unpacking the opioid epidemic and the multi-level marketing, one of the biggest crime cases in the history of America.
Things don’t surprise me, including some of the other things he said about the very institutions and halls of power that we like to put on a pedestal and think are so ethical and pure. When the reality is, he’s not unique. I didn’t go in thinking would be surprised. I already knew that ultimately this was a story worth telling. I am surprised by how comprehensive the story becomes at this point. And it’s not just a story about one guy who lied. It’s about a story about the way we promote and digest these stories, about the way in which our entire system works. And sadly, works against small people, and frankly that is George Santos. He comes from a working class family in Queens, New York, the most diverse place on the planet. You have a juxtaposition, you have the Great Gatsby District and you have Queens, and a guy who just came from this melting pot of America and ultimately had dreams of being successful and found his way into a circle of people and through the seduction of power and ambition and whatever drives him to want to help people, he made a crucial decision in his life. And he sabotaged everything about his self-worth and about his potential. That’s the subject of novels; that’s The Great Gatsby, that is every con movie you’ve ever seen. The con man has a story, and right now the only thing valuable to him, the only thing he has, are the last slivers of truth about who he actually is. And whether he gave it to me yesterday over eight hours or he didn’t, it’s still an amazing story. If he didn’t, the stakes are so high for him. If he did, the stakes are still so high for him. That is what’s so fascinating about it.
DEADLINE: Feels like you’ve got a lot of fact checking ahead. And the job of finding a broadcaster or a streamer to air it while it’s timely…
FURST: We’ve been in production. It’s a story that all the buyers have heard. There are countless pitches that have already been out there at this point from people claiming to have access. This is the access. I don’t care who else has amassed whatever they have amassed. Like I said, it’s become a feeding frenzy. I’ve been on the front line of the most competitive documentaries in the streaming world, from Fyre Fraud to Lu La Rich to the Murdaugh murders, which had at one point 10 different crews on the ground trying to secure access.
DEADLINE: What’s that like?
FURST: This is something I have been part of in my career, and it is sometimes a fiasco and a circus and behind the camera it can be as chaotic and fascinating as in front of the camera. But it’s important to note that I’ve launched an entire studio with Arnold Rifkin for the explicit purpose that these films no longer need to be pitched at the outset. If you can be part of putting them together, that you can really expedite the process and bring them to the public when they want to see them. Because there is a whole process to funding a film and buying a film from a major streamer the way that they purchase this content, that ultimately there are stories now moving so fast that you have to be in a position that we’re now in. Which is to actually launch these stories and start producing them at record pace so that you can keep up with the demand for the content.
DEADLINE: How quickly will George Santos be ready for broadcast?
FURST: We could have a series or a feature out to the public by late spring or summer if we want to. We could do more of a news style piece. But that’s not my interest. I think this is a timeless story, but I know I feel very confident in saying that based on my track record, I’ve turned around these stories that appear to have taken years in record time, six months, eight months. That is how soon we could have a premium documentary, which could align with the process of justice. For the most part, this is about the court of public opinion, and everyone is fascinated with the verdict. They continue to want to watch him on every single nightly show, every cameo. And so I think that for us, it’s very much acknowledging the fact that this is a story that’s in the zeitgeist. We plan to give the public what they want, which is a true understanding, an actual substantiated, deeply grounded understanding of him. I don’t believe in villains. I don’t believe in bad guys. That’s the stuff of fiction. In my genre of storytelling, there’s machines and there are greater conditions that lead to characters. And George Santos is a pretty insane character, but he did not act alone.
I find them to also be very understandable to the masses that if you can really sit with someone and learn what makes them tick, learn all the turns in their life, that somehow it rectifies all of these different scams and frauds, and we’re living in a scam economy. We’re living in a scam economy.
DEADLINE: What’s that mean?
FURST: Everybody has either been scammed, has had a friend who’s been scammed or has done the scamming, and social media itself is somehow a loose rig of a scam. We’re all trying to promote who we are, what we do. We’re all trying to game the system. And so when we see someone who’s done it in sort of a fabulously insane way, it enthralls us. There’s something deeply human about that person having to face the music and having to actually go through that process of being humiliated publicly and then defend the very value of their life, and whether it’s a murderer or a fraudster or someone who claims to be innocent, when people can see those folks in a human setting, it provides for a deep look into the very core of who we all are. And so when we are in certain mediums like spot reporting, nightly news, commentary, social media, it’s a superficial telling of a very deep and interesting story. And so I have no fear of the competition, and I know for a fact that [George] did not choose the highest bidder. He chose who he felt could tell the best story, and that happened to be me.
***
During his 8-hour interview, Santos explained his decision in how to tell his story, in quotes supplied by Furst:
“I received over the last 11 months crazy offers. I mean, from “resign from Congress and will make you a millionaire overnight” to, you know, “we want to do this documentary, we want to do it Veritas style. We want to follow you in Congress,” which would involve a whole bunch of ethics permissions, things that I wasn’t just willing to deal with.
My experience with the Ethics Committee is one that I think the entire country and world knows is not positive. And I didn’t want to go ahead and open myself to more scrutiny by asking them for any kind of privileges. So I just declined everything until the moment I was out of Congress. I started receiving even a bigger wave from very reputable studios and production companies, some that I know because they’re household names.
To mention, one was one of the first with, you know, pretty you know, aggressive proposals. And who doesn’t know Lionsgate at this point, right? They’re–they’re well known for movies, docus and all sorts of stuff. I think everybody in this room has watched a Lionsgate production at one point in time. I thought it was crazy at that point.
I’m like, wow, we’re dealing with pretty big people here now. Everybody is the best. Everybody’s going to tell my story the best way. Everybody’s going to pitch me like it’s about my human factor. The end of the day, it’s all about the bottom line for everybody’s earnings. Obviously, the story is interesting to everybody, but I don’t allow myself to be naive to the point that everybody is in it to, you know, because they care.”
This is a transaction. And I chose you specifically because of the work you did with The Pharmacist and with the Murdaugh Murders, because I have watched both my husband and I watched, we went back and revisited some of that, you know, work of yours. And I said, Yeah, no, I feel pretty good about this guy.
I mean, money is trivial when you’re trying to tell your story. Give–given the opportunity to work with somebody who’s captured something as heinous as the Murdaugh Murders and was able to actually give a human–a human life element to a monster, I said, well, I’m nowhere near, like, not even ten decibels close to that to a person like Murdaugh.
I turned down seven figures and I’m proud I did because I– I’m not going to surrender my life rights and story to some company or production team that’s going to script it and make it fit the narrative they want instead of just telling it how it is. So I turned down– for all of those trying to say that I’m in it for the money…Tons. Yeah, we did get some people interested in buying the rights to then go bid it out to production companies. But it was too much of a blank check kind of signing over my entire life. Write stories so people can go capitalize and make millions of dollars like, we all fall with Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street. He got the short end of the stick on that deal.
But for me, it was never about that. It was about how do I tell my story with my voice and finally sit down and go over topics that I’ve never spoken about and cover them all in a comprehensive manner, deliver receipts and allow people to actually see the real George Santos that the media has kept away from them.”
