What I’m watching: a great pair of new documentaries

Date: 4/5/2021

On Netflix: “Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel” and “Operation Varsity Blues”
 
As regular readers know, I’m a sucker for a good documentary and these two new offerings on Netflix offer not just a principal story, but also present a conversation about other subjects that are tangential but important to the main story.

The documentary about the disappearance of a young woman at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles in 2012 is not just about that mystery, which is immensely compelling, but it is also about much more.

In 2012, a young woman from Canada stays at the Cecil Hotel in downtown LA. She disappears without a trace, prompting a major police investigation. The film not only traces the steps police made in their effort to discover the truth, it  also offers some hard realities about the setting of the film, the Cecil Hotel.

Have no doubt, the hotel is a major character in this story. The hotel was a marvelous new addition to LA when it was completed in 1924, but changes in its neighborhood caused a major transition from a genteel place to stay to a $14 a night flophouse where the homeless went when they had the money. By the 1960s and ‘70s it was a place largely used by the poor as a permanent residence, as well as drug dealers and addicts and prostitutes.

Richard Ramirez, the serial killer known as “the Night Stalker,” reportedly stayed there.

The film also details how the city of Los Angeles managed to corral as many homeless people as possible into the neighborhood where the hotel was located.

The last manager of the hotel spoke of continual efforts to police the hotel and to revive it as an inexpensive place for youthful travelers.

It was this environment in which young Elisa Lam stayed and her disappearance brought forth not just a police effort to solve the mystery, but with the release of the single video from the hotel in which she is seen, also investigations from “web sleuths.”

These amateur investigators may have done more harm than good as they concocted conspiracy theories, one of which involved a Mexican death metal musician whom they suspected of killing Lam. He was vindicated but he had to suffer death threats and the end of his music career.

So this film is not just about a mystery, it’s also about urban planning gone very wrong, and the assumption of people on the Web that somehow they are solving a puzzle without all of the pieces. The film is a great example of following the story wherever it goes.

“Operation Varsity Blues” looks at the college admission scandal that broke in 2018 when it was revealed that wealthy families, eager to have a child  accepted in a prestigious college, were paying a man to make it happen.

Rick Singer had developed a network of college officials and a process to get a student into a college through “the side door.” Singer – played by Matthew Modine in the reconstructed scenes but whose dialogue came from FBI wiretaps – explained a parent could allow the merits of a student to be the reasons for acceptance (the front door) or could donate millions of dollars to a school to get a child into “the back door.”

The “side door” was a way that Singer used to bribe athletic officials to bring a student to the school and have them placed on a lesser-known athletic team such as water polo, crew and sailboat racing. The kid got in and the school officials and Singer made money.

Singer even offered a service in which a student’s SAT exam could be faked and could be brought to any level needed for admissions officials.

The film is hard-hitting in showing the power of the wealthy and the hypocrisy of the universities.

Again this film brings up a side issue which is important: just why do people go to the most well-known universities? Well, in the case of the families depicted here it’s simple: going to an elite school is a status symbol. The designation of being an alumni is clearly more important than the education the school could provide.

For those of us who got into a school based on who we were as opposed to how much money our families could afford, this film could elicit some anger.