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The world of documentary filmmaking has become more creatively innovative and accessible to viewers than ever before. Even in this increasingly crowded landscape, one of HBO’s most recent documentaries stands out. Erin Lee Carr’s Mommy Dead and Dearest is a deep dive into one true crime story that will leave viewers with emotional whiplash.
Mommy Dead and Dearest starts as an examination of the brutal murder of Dee Dee Blanchard, the mother of a disabled child who was brutally stabbed to death in 2015. However, the film’s sad but seemingly by-the-books investigation quickly unravels into a story of child abuse, manipulation, lies, fraud, secret online lives, and mental illness. Shortly after her mother’s murder, Gypsy Rose Blanchard, the daughter who many assumed was severely disabled, was revealed not only to be able bodied but connected to her mother’s death. Nothing is as it appears when it comes to the lives and crimes of Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose Blanchard, and the resulting documentary is one of the most riveting and twisting narratives of the year. Decider had the chance to speak to Carr about what led the director to Gypsy Rose’s story, how fans and critics have reacted to the film, and how she thinks streaming is changing the world of documentary filmmaking.
“I love working in the crime and internet space. How Allison [Byrne] and I got into this story was basically Gypsy confessed on Facebook,” Carr said. “That seemed in line with what we were personally interested in, but then it just got deeper and crazier.”
This is Carr’s second documentary for HBO, the first being the critically-praised Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop. The Facebook post that initially drew Carr and Byrne’s attention was post that police later discovered came from Gypsy Rose and her secret boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn. Posted on Dee Dee Blanchard’s account, the post claimed that the elder Blanchard had been murdered — a tactic that was supposed to trick police into thinking Dee Dee Blanchard had been killed by a random serial killer. This strategy failed quickly, and led police to Dee Dee’s real killers, her daughter and her boyfriend. Though the murder happened in June of 2015, Carr didn’t start working on the documentary until August of 2015, two months after the murder.
Mommy Dead and Dearest achieves a delicate balance. The film retains all of the shocking twists of the case all while feeling tonally intimate. When asked how she approached this complicated story, Carr said that, for her, the material dictates how a story is told. “So with my first film, Thought Crimes for HBO … it was dangerous what was happening to Gil Valle, and it presented more of a societal issue,” she said. “Andrew Coffman, the editor, and I talked a lot, and we decided that (Mommy Dead and Dearest) isn’t so much of an issue-driven film. This is more about what happened in that little pink house that night, so it’s about unravelling the mystery from there.”
For the documentary, Carr and her crew were able to interview Gypsy Rose in jail for roughly three hours. However, they also spent a lot of time communicating with the documentary’s subject by both phone and letters. “The whole interview felt very captivating for me,” she said. “There was stuff that couldn’t make it in, but I think we included the really crucial parts.”
One of the most interesting interviews in the documentary is with Dee Dee Blanchard’s parents and Gypsy Rose’s grandparents. In a story filled with lies, they are two of the few people who seem to know some form of truth. “Those grandparents are such characters, and this is like a Southern, gothic, weird mystery murder. They add that sort of Southern Louisiana drawl,” she said.
Carr said she was also excited she was able to interview Rod and Kristy Blanchard, Gypsy Rose’s father and stepmother. According to Carr, she still talks to them both. “Kristy love the internet. We talk about people reacting to the movie, about Decider articles, about other articles. We just kinda talk about the reaction,” she said.
“I think that there is this sort of mentality when a film is over that documentary subjects feel sort of abandoned, and I don’t want to be another person doing that,” Carr said about her ongoing communication with the Blanchard family. “I am going to start working on other movies, and I have in the last six months, but everyone is understanding. They’re busy, and Gypsy is trying to acclimate in prison. I just want to keep a fairly consistent line of communication open.”
So far, the film has been met with both positive critical reviews and audience reactions. Though Thought Crimes was reviewed positively, Carr says that Mommy Dead and Dearest has been met with with a much more intense fan response. “This was sort of amazing concoction of good reviews and good audience reactions. People are going to Twitter and saying it has them shook, this is the craziest and most wild thing they’ve ever seen,” she said. “We have celebrities tweeting about the movie, which seems like sort of a vapid thing to bring up, but when you live in an age where Chrissy Teigen has 5 million Twitter followers and she says that your film — the one that you’ve worked on for a year and a half — is a must watch, that’s a moment. It’s somebody using their social capital to talk about what they like.”
Carr also praised working with HBO. “They’re such dreamboats,” she said. “I think that HBO is the crème de la crème. It’s hard to start your career in features there. It’s like where do you have to go from there? My favorite thing about them is that they trust filmmakers, and they’re really respectful of roles, and we don’t go through a long notes process.” However, Carr mentioned that the notes she received from HBO executives were very helpful. In fact, the director still has a note from Shelia Nevins, President of HBO Documentary Films, hanging in her office as a source of inspiration.
She also discussed how streaming has changed documentaries as a whole. “Honestly, I think that streaming is a good thing. It means there’s more eyeballs on things … We had such an amazing time, our crew, sitting there and watching the live broadcast,” she said. “Not a lot of people plan their night around a film, so the fact that it exists online on HBO in perpetuity in this digital fashion is all for good. It means more and more people can watch it.”
