David Grann's Roll

 

The Ringer - "Chronicler of the Flower Moon"

"Practically every Grann fan can recall the first time they came across his work. For me, it was my senior year of college. I’d picked up an issue of The New Yorker before my shift at the campus library and began reading what I initially thought was a story about the politics of art authentication. It unfolded like an elegant piece of origami, describing what some say was an elaborate con in which a man allegedly forged the fingerprints of famous painters on so-called newly discovered works of art. When I finished the story, I looked up from the magazine to realize I was 20 minutes late to work. It was years later, when I landed a job at Condé Nast and overheard editors in the elevator discussing Grann’s writing as if it were sport, that I realized I was not alone in my awe of his work.

For Edward Zwick, a longtime writer, director, and producer, the first Grann story that really stuck with him was “To Die For,” a 2001 piece in The New Republic about 1930s celebrity and murder. Zwick clipped it out of the magazine with the thought that it could one day become a movie.

“It was just a really great story,” said Zwick, who has worked on dozens of film and television projects and won an Academy Award in 1998 as a producer on Shakespeare in Love. “I think it revealed even then what has been revealed in so many articles and stories since. That he has this uncanny ability to pull the threads of these strong narratives out of these stories.”"

Previously,
The Wager A TALE OF SHIPWRECK, MUTINY AND MURDER By David Grann (Jul. 2022)