Suffused with enough gonzo journalism to bring Hunter S. Thompson back to life,
Telemarketers sasses and swaggers its ass off en route to a defining expose of “the biggest telemarketing scam in history.”
In episode one of three-part HBO documentary series airing at 10 p.m. on consecutive Sundays and streaming on Max, co-directors Sam Lipman-Stern and Adam Bala Lough convey Lipman-Stern’s employment with the now shutdown Civic Development Group (CDG), where he started as a mere 14-year-old after dropping out of high school.
What Lipman-Stern found at the company was an abundance of derelicts and ex-cons who were hired without background checks or drug tests. As one employee states, “Every other person was a drug dealer.” Though the job paid no commissions, it offered ex-cons a place to get hired.
Telemarketers is all sauciness and self-effacing honesty. Part One plays out as a compendium of naturalist footage mostly from around 20 years ago and is shot to allow the viewer a “you are there” experience of a company that keeps 90 percent of the proceeds from heavily scripted phone calls. Organizations like the Fraternal Order Of Police typically received 10 percent. The burned-out callers also got to practice “putting more bass in your voice,” so they could emulate cops while often implying that a donation would earn the giver an FOP sticker that would preclude a traffic ticket were they to be stopped.
Eventually, other organizations such as fireman groups were spotlighted. In an uncanny march toward the greed that will eventually spell the company’s downfall, one week‘s phone solicitations would be on behalf of the firemen, the next week a retired firemen group, the week after a firemen chiefs’ group. Then the 90 percent take wasn’t enough for the company’s owners. They wanted 100 percent and when they were finally closed by the Federal Trade Commission’s efforts, they paid a paltry $19 million fine and agreed to close down. The fine paled in comparison to earnings that were estimated to be in the $250 million range
The first episode’s cliffhanger promises a pair of walloping followups
since Lipman-Stern and memorable supersaleman Patrick J. Pespas (aka “Pat The Smack”) say to themselves, “Let’s take down the whole industry” after copycat groups emulating CEG immediately began to proliferate.
Lipman-Stern and Pespas vow to “take them down from the inside.” If the forthcoming episodes are as daunting and compelling as this one, I can’t wait. At a time when many documentaries feel overly wooden and careful, Telemarketers is splendidly unrestrained and garishly amusing while still aiming its vigorous ire at a sub-industry run amuck.