HBO's Doc Series "Telemarketers" By The Safdie Brothers Is A Wild Ride And Very Compelling

I put this on not expecting a single thing. What I got was a super entertaining documentary, some laughs, and an absolute itch for Part 2 of this series. Let's start here... I didn't even know it was by The Safdie Brothers. If you are unfamiliar with their work... Good Time and Uncut Gems are absolute ROLLERCOASTER movies. Have you on the edge of your seat yet squirming the entire time. Both very very good films. They also did a doc on HS Basketball legend/ all time bust Lenny Cooke. I don't have film knowledge and memory of directors like some of the movie guys here like Jeff D Lowe, Ken Jac, or Kirk but The Safdie brothers could make a film or a doc about reading the newspaper and I would give them a chance with a watch based on their body of work. Really really good. 

Anyway, this documentary series (only Part 1 has been released) takes you inside CDG, a telemarketing company that says it's doing fundraising for The Fraternal Order of Police. Inside the walls of a CDG call center is a mix of Oz and Animal House. There's literal criminals working as callers, there's people doing drugs in the bathroom, there's live animals on keyboards, there's people videoing all the shenanigans for Youtube, and there's also supervisors leaning on employees to hit their numbers while running what turns out to be the biggest telemarketing scam in history. Hooked yet ? 

Two former employees Sam and Patrick are telling the story with the goal of exposing the scam and giving a first hand account of just how insane the place was. Sam was the one with a camcorder out in the office most days, and uploaded a ton of his videos to Youtube. Patrick is referred to as a "telemarketing legend" and makes calls despite nodding off on the job in between during heroin... IN THE OFFICE. Don't believe it? Watch yourself. 

Here's some other gems from the Youtube page ... 

Place is circus. It's also as we learn a multimillion dollar criminal enterprise across the entire country raking in MILLIONS of dollars from unsuspecting citizens and not giving nearly anything back to the organizations it says it raising money for. Stand up organizations like Police, Fire Departments, Veterans, and Cancer Survivors to name a few. The people running the thing are some of the biggest scumbags on the planet, the people working there are convicted criminals themselves with no real job options yet were so mistreated and knew the scam was so bad that two guys (Pat (left) Sam (right) )  that look like this :

decide they've had enough and act like Sherlock Holmes and Dr.Watson to show the world just how shitty these people are. 

Listen … a lot can happen in the next two episodes, and I've purposely tried not to read into the story to giveaway the ending (which is killing me because I'm literally hooked on this series) but I can't wait for Part 2. Some of the former employees they interview say stuff so bluntly and unintentionally funny it's amazing. I was laughing yet super interested in what happens next, and it seems like they only crack the surface in the first hour. 

If I didn't sell you yet, read these paragraphs from Rolling Stone, and tell me you wouldn't be interested … 

Rolling Stone - SAM LIPMAN-STERN WAS 14, he’d just dropped out of ninth grade, and he needed a job stat. There wasn’t a host of options for an underage kid in New Jersey in terms of gainful employment, and his main interests at the time — skating, graffiti, filming his friends on his camcorder — weren’t necessarily gateways to a paying gig. But his parents told him that if he left high school, he would need to work, full stop. And then Sam heard about the Civic Development Group.

The telemarketing firm, commonly referred to as CDG, had what you might call a loose hiring process. The joke around the office was: Could you properly pronounce the word “benevolent?” OK, great, you start tomorrow! That was it. Sam’s age wasn’t a hindrance. Neither was a criminal record, which is why a lot of ex-cons and a number of shady dudes worked there as well. Pay was $10 an hour, no commission. But in order to keep employees working the phones day and night, the powers that be had a lax policy toward enforcing any sort of rules whatsoever, and they’d make sure that all of the needs a CDG call jockey would have (food, booze, drugs, sex) could be fulfilled on the premises. The fact that the bulk of their clients were state lodges of the Fraternal Order of Police was simply ironic. You could basically do whatever the hell you wanted. You just had to make your sales.