Anthony Pellicano Doc Reporters on Why the Notorious PI Matters Today: “Is Hollywood Still Above the Law?”
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When news emerged in 2021 that Anthony Pellicano, fresh from serving a 15-year prison sentence, had returned to Hollywood and was working again for a major entertainment figure, the New York Times took notice.
Then-Times reporter and New York Times Presents senior producer Rachel Abrams was intrigued by reports that Pellicano had been hired by mega-producer Joel Silver (Die Hard, The Matrix) after his release from prison in 2019. Pellicano, a former go-to private investigator for the stars — his client list included Chris Rock, Michael Jackson, Brad Grey and Michael Ovitz — came under fire in the 2000s, when the PI was convicted of wiretapping and racketeering, among other crimes, in legal proceedings that exposed the extent of Pellicano’s surveillance apparatus and the Hollywood figures that knowingly or unknowingly benefited from it. Abrams was joined in her interest by Liz Day, then a reporter and New York Times Presents supervising producer who had worked on 2021’s blockbuster doc Framing Britney Spears and pursued reporting on the world of high-end private security firms and investigators. The Times’ documentary unit, The New York Times Presents, decided to take a crack at the story, through a decidedly modern lens: “A lot of powerful people in Hollywood that are still operating today benefited from [Pellicano’s] work, but almost none of them were held accountable. Why?” asks Day. “We felt it was worth examining how that happened and to explore what it reveals about how power still works today. And to essentially ask, is Hollywood still above the law?”
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The result of that inquiry, the two-part documentary Sin Eater: The Crimes of Anthony Pellicano, releases Friday at 6 p.m. PT simultaneously on FX and Hulu. Drawing from the document and audio contents of an FBI case file on Pellicano that the Times obtained, interviews with former employees and alleged victims as well as a sometimes-combative interview with Pellicano himself, the film outlines his operation and the players it supported. Ultimately, the film questions why the justice system didn’t implicate more famous and powerful figures into its proceedings.
In an interview with the film’s supervising producer and EP Day and senior producer Abrams, the reporters discussed how they convinced Pellicano to appear in their documentary, why they spent time detailing the operative’s relationships to high-powered industry lawyers and why his story matters now.
Tell me a little bit about how this project began, and why you initially wanted to tell this story now, in 2023.
Rachel Abrams: Multiple people, including Liz and myself, had come up with the idea to do this at the same time. Pellicano had been in the news in 2021 because he got hired to help Joel Silver with a business dispute. And that caught my eye because I had remembered stories about Pellicano and was immediately struck by the fact that he was, once again, back in business. And Liz had been really fascinated by and done a lot of research on private security firms and investigators because of her work on Britney Spears. He was interesting for a bunch of different reasons, one [being] that he’s a window into how powerful people operate when they don’t think other people are looking and how they bend the system to gain an advantage. That is still relevant today and, frankly, that’s a tale as old as time. Right now we’re grappling with issues like for example, the LAPD internal investigation into the leak of the police report accusing Les Moonves of rape. Who’s going to suffer consequences for that? Who’s going to be held accountable for that? Black Cube, the Israeli security firm that Weinstein used to try to gain dirt on some of his accusers and thwart media attention that was focused on him, I’ve heard that business is booming for them since those articles [revealing their involvement] came out. There are still powerful people who have the resources to turn to places that ordinary people can’t in order to gain an advantage. And that’s exactly what Pellicano was — he was just more of an analog version of that. And so, as we grapple with some of these questions in this post-#MeToo era, what lessons can we glean from who was held accountable and why 15 years ago?
Liz Day: Rachel said it really well: Yes, this is a documentary about a scandal that happened 20 years ago, but its lessons are timeless. A lot of powerful people in Hollywood that are still operating today benefited from [Pellicano’s] work, but almost none of them were held accountable. Why? And we felt it was worth examining how that happened and to explore what it reveals about how power still works today. And to essentially ask, is Hollywood still above the law?
There was a Sugar23 documentary in the works about Pellicano around the same time as you were in production on yours. It was said to have his participation but ultimately fell through. How did you convince Pellicano to take part in your project?
Abrams: One thing that’s really amazing about watching Pellicano on screen is how mercurial he is, how you see him going from being ferociously angry to flirtatious back to ferociously angry. And that dynamic also played out offscreen as well. I had reached out to Pellicano initially and we had sort of a friendly back and forth, and then he kept hearing things that got him really upset about the documentary, and he’d get angry and he’d swear he would never work with us. And this happened a few different times, and we thought it might be smart to have somebody else try to convince him to work with us because he and I were just having all of these back-and-forths. And, and Liz has a lot of experience working with delicate or mercurial or difficult, fill in the word, sources. And so she ultimately reached out to him and successfully convinced him to participate.
Day: We basically got in a fight (laughs). The context and background here is I was coming off of maternity leave last year and was really excited to dive into this project. Rachel had been engaging with Pellicano, he had originally said yes, then got very upset at something or other, changed his mind [and] was adamant, no, he would not participate on camera. Our director, John, I believe, had also then tried to engage with him, but Pellicano was still [an] adamant no. So I figured maybe the third time’s the charm and called him up. We started talking and then quickly we got into a fight over something I don’t even remember, and I believe he said, “Eff you,” I may have said that back, and we hung up on each other. And a few minutes later, he called me back and apologized and said, “Let’s go to dinner and you can make your pitch to me and I can look you in the eyes and see if I trust you.” So we went to this five-hour-long dinner in Beverly Hills where we talked about everything from did he believe in God to his relationship to his mother. And I told him [that] I thought that his story revealed a lot about important themes about how power operates, flaws of the justice system, and that there was a lot to learn from revisiting his story. He said, “Okay, I’m in. I know you’re going to ask me uncomfortable questions and this isn’t going to be a walk in the park, but I’ll do it.” All of us probably were on pins and needles up until the day he arrived at the shoot because we were really nervous that he was going to change his mind, to get really upset at something that we couldn’t control and back out. But he showed up and sat down and answered our questions.
Abrams: Liz and I are both very glad that he decided to participate in this documentary, not just because he’s an engaging person to watch on screen, but also the Times would never make a documentary or write a story or do a podcast about anybody without finding out their response to accusations. Having him answer for some of the stuff that he did I think is really valuable. And we were very careful to not give him a megaphone and a platform to go unchecked. We did a ton of reporting to basically be able to refute things he said that might not be true or to provide context for things. Because Pellicano, as people will [see] in the documentary, is not exactly a repentant figure. And there’s still stuff that he denies. We wanted to make sure that viewers understood the evidence against him and draw their own conclusions.
Ron Meyer seems to be the only major industry figure that speaks on Pellicano’s behalf in this film. How many of Pellicano’s former and current clients did you reach out to for the film and what kind of response did you receive?
Day: We reached out to as many former clients and friends that we could find. As you probably expect, not many of them wanted to go on camera. And I believe that Ron went on camera because Pellicano asked him to. He had suggested Ron, or “Ronnie,” as he calls him, and we thought, what a great opportunity: He is a legend in the industry, he co-founded CAA, he ran Universal, and he has this really close, almost brotherly relationship with Pellicano. And we wanted to find out more about how did they become so close? Why did they become so close? And what does this tell us about Hollywood, if this legend in the industry think so highly of someone who has been accused of a lot of really unsavory things and was convicted of them, too?
The documentary team on this project acquired some documents and recordings that haven’t previously been released publicly. What further light do you think these shed on a figure and story that’s generated plenty of headlines?
Abrams: We really got a treasure trove of material that we think viewers are going to be really shocked to listen to or watch. People who are famous and/or powerful [are] talking to Anthony Pellicano on these recordings and saying things that frankly they probably regret saying now, knowing that they were going to become public.I can’t think of another example where you get to hear these kinds of backroom negotiations in real time, where you get to hear how a Chris Rock or a powerful lawyer is accepting information from somebody like Anthony Pellicano and what do they plan to do with it? It’s a window into how disputes are handled at a completely different level than most average viewers are familiar with.
Day: In addition to almost the entire FBI file that the New York Times had received back in the day for this documentary, we also got a trove of deposition videos that have never been publicly seen before. And they feature interviews with Pellicano employees who are testifying under oath about how the wiretapping operation worked and how they went about wiretapping people and kind of the guts of the machine. We also obtained some deposition videos that shed light on Pellicano’s role quieting the first public accusations against Michael Jackson for child sexual abuse. And in those depositions former Jackson employees are talking about how Pellicano told them, “Don’t talk to the police. Michael says he loves you, he doesn’t want you to talk to the police.” And in another one, Wade Robson’s mother describes how she felt coerced by Anthony Pellicano to trot out her little son on CNN in order to tell the public that yes, he slept in bed with Michael Jackson, but nothing happened. We now know many years later that Wade has come out and said, “Actually, I was sexually abused. I was a victim of Michael.”
Abrams: I feel like if, if you are alive today and believe that Michael Jackson was innocent of the child molestation charges against him, Anthony Pellicano deserves more credit than 99.9% of people on the planet for helping convince you of that. He was instrumental in creating the narrative of Michael Jackson’s defense. Now, I’m not saying that none of that is true, it’s just that I don’t think people fully understand the machinery that kicked into gear and who was involved in defending him and crafting the story that, for example, his accusers were exploiting the family. Pellicano was instrumental in that. And this film really shows you how for the first time.
The documentary spends a fair amount of time drawing the connections between Pellicano and major entertainment attorneys such as Bert Fields, Howard Weitzman, Dennis Wasser and Marty Singer. Why was it important for you to shine a light on these lawyers and their role in the Pellicano story?
Abrams: Because I think there was a big question about why more people didn’t [face] consequences, and chief among those people were the lawyers that hired Pellicano and benefited from his services. As long as there are powerful people with problems, there will always be high-powered attorneys who have various ways of serving their clients. And as Liz said, a lot of the people who use Pellicano continued to work. And I think if the #MeToo movement has taught us anything, it is about taking a step back and not just looking at the bad actors, but looking at the systems in which they operate and the enablers around them. And we’re not trying to say in this documentary that more people should have gone to prison, but it’s a worthwhile question to ask, why weren’t more people held responsible for this? And to what extent does the same kind of work or relationships continue today?
Day: I was struck by how many conversations I had in reporting the story with prominent L.A. attorneys who told me off the record, I really respect that Pellicano never ratted. And I thought that was really interesting and raises a lot of questions about the rule of law and values in the entertainment industry.
The physical attack that Anita Busch describes in the film is presented quickly without much detail, though the film says it confirmed that she told others about the attack after it happened. What was behind the decision not to go into too much detail there?
Abrams: With any kind of victim of a violent crime, it’s really up to that victim how much they want to share and what detail they get into. So Anita really led that one — the decision was hers. We asked her questions and she answered them to the extent that she was comfortable, and that’s what you see on screen.
What’s your sense of how Hollywood has or has not changed since the days when major industry representatives and litigators hired Pellicano to give their clients an edge? Are there more modern equivalents or has that era passed?
Day: Rachel and I talked to a lot of experts in the private investigative and security industry, and they kind of laughed when we asked them, is this stuff still going on today? They’re like, “Yeah, of course. No one’s wiretapping your landline phone anymore because no one uses a landline phone anymore. But of course there’s all sorts of ways in which people’s privacies are being invaded and the law is being bent by these types of actors.” We were surprised to hear that and disturbed to hear that as well. And they enlightened us as to the way that the laws can often be really vague about this and oversight can be almost non-existent in this industry. So there’s all sorts of similar things going on today to what Pellicano was doing in this documentary.
Can you be specific about any potential similar things going on today?
Day: One of the things that we’ve been told as pretty commonplace and had come up in my reporting for the Britney Spears conservatorship cases was the extent to which our cell phones are not always private. Even your call records can be accessed, we’ve been told, on the black market. Sometimes that’s done by pretexting, sometimes that’s done by phishing links. But it was something we had to think a lot about during our reporting for this story, our cell phones being monitored. We’re having all sorts of off the record conversations with sources in order to cultivate them and get them to go on the record and tell us secret things and do people know that, basically. So that was something we had to keep in mind with reporting for this story and really any investigative reporting.
Has Pellicano seen the film yet?
Abrams: He has not seen it yet.
Day: That we know of. We kind of joked to ourselves that as soon as it went out to the press, we wouldn’t be surprised if he somehow got access to it. But, yeah, as far as we know, he has not seen it. We have not sent it to him.
What do you hope viewers take away from this film?
Abrams: One hope I have is that people do a really interesting thought exercise, [which is] what do you think you would do if you had a big problem and all the money in the world to solve it, to hire anybody that you thought you needed to hire or were told to hire? Because I think that that’s a more interesting takeaway-slash-thought than just “look at these powerful people doing bad stuff, isn’t that bad.” It’s always more interesting to think that [way than that] the quote-unquote bad actors and bad actions are done by monstrous villains that are in no way relatable to you. While we might condemn some of the actions that Pellicano took and the crimes that he committed, and the people that seem to have no qualms with benefiting from his activities, I don’t think that this stuff is so removed from us as we might like it to be. I just hope that it’s thought-provoking in that way.
Day: I agree with Rachel that exercise was really enlightening, but I do think that when we were playing devil’s advocate here, we realized, that’s a lot of power to give a man like Anthony Pellicano to decide where the line is. Do the ends really justify the means, and do you want to give the power to make that decision to one individual? And I think that’s where I came down realizing that obviously the traditional justice system may have its flaws, but if you truly are innocent, I think I’d rather rely on that.
Abrams: One of the reasons why we did this film was because we wanted to revisit some of the stories from the victims you mentioned. I think some combination of this story coming out of Hollywood, the sideshow that was the trial of Pellicano, who did not use his own attorney and made big missteps [in] representing himself — basically it was buffoonery in some ways — that was a distraction from the real harm that he caused. There are victims of his invasions of privacy and intimidation that say they’ve never recovered from the trauma of that. And I think that those stories might have gotten lost a little bit in, you know, the fact that Chris Rock was testifying or that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s name came up. There was so much celebrity and flash and pomp and circumstance surrounding this trial that I think that maybe the victims’ stories weren’t given their proper due. And so I hope that by revisiting them, people understand the real seriousness of what he did and the harm that it caused.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
