THE JINX – PART TWO Delves Deeply Into Who Helped Robert Durst Along The Way, Says Filmmaker Andrew Jarecki

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede To get an idea of what THE JINX – PART TWO is all about, Andrew Jarecki suggested gazing up at the stars in the sky. “It’s easy to say, well, look at Bob Durst, you know, Bob Durst is a crazy guy, and he did all these terrible crimes,” said Jarecki, the director and executive producer, in a virtual panel interview. “But if you pull the camera back, you realize there was a constellation of people who looked the other way, or helped in some way. And that’s compelling to me.” Premiering Sunday, April 21 on Crave, HBO’s THE JINX – PART TWO is a continuation of the 2015 award-winning documentary series THE JINX: THE LIFE AND DEATHS OF ROBERT DURST, which changed the genre forever, became a worldwide phenomenon, and is available on Crave in its entirety now, for anyone who needs a refresher. THE JINX – PART TWO sees Jarecki and his team extending their probe through the subsequent eight years, uncovering hidden material, examining Durst’s prison calls, and interviewing tons of people, some of whom hadn’t come forward previously, alongside many who were involved the first time. Speaking directly about that last point, Jarecki said there was a big difference between the first series and the second series. “The second part is happening in the moment, where we’re really following along as these developments are happening, starting with (Durst) getting arrested the day before the final episode,” Jarecki said. “The urgency is much higher (in the second part), the anxiety level for a lot of the people involved is much higher. So as Zac (Stuart-Pontier, executive producer) was saying, in the second season, many people don’t want to be in the film. For the first time, these people are saying, well, maybe this is not so good for me. Maybe there were things I did that I’m not proud of, or I don’t want revisited, or things that seemed okay in the moment. But, in retrospect now, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to go to the UPS and put $118,000 in a bag and send it to Bob Durst when he was about to go on the run.” Nonetheless, Jarecki said the key figures were “caused, compelled, and cajoled” to participate in PART TWO. “There were all different ways of getting them to do it. But ultimately, they knew they had to do it.” Jarecki recalled that he thought he was “sort of done” with Robert Durst after making a feature film inspired by him in 2010 titled All Good Things, starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst. “I had researched the story, and I thought, ‘well, I’ve gotten as close as I could get without talking to the real guy’ – and then the real guy called me,” Jarecki said. “I always felt conflicted about the fact that we had made a (documentary series) that got him locked up, not because I didn’t think it was the right thing to do – we did think it was the right thing to do. But it was still sad. It was still getting to know a person who is making a valiant effort to prove that they were innocent, even though they bizarrely always knew they were guilty.” One of the many odd things about Durst was that he thought collaborating with Jarecki on the first series would result in some kind of exoneration story. “He thought to himself, ‘yeah, well, I killed those three people, that’s true, but you know, it’s not really fair that I can’t get into this co-op, or that people are walking away from me on the street, because I was never convicted,’ ” Jarecki said. “He really thought to himself, ‘I am being mistreated, because I’ve never been convicted of murder.’ He didn’t really stop to think, ‘but I did kill them, right?’ It was a strange little twist in Bob’s mind that he always did feel maligned.” With Durst having died in 2022 at age 78 – Jarecki tried to visit him in prison once, but Durst “declined” – there’s still plenty of room for reflection and investigation in THE JINX – PART TWO. “I don’t think Bob wanted to kill these people,” Jarecki said. “I don’t think Bob was, you know, a bloodthirsty killer. I don’t think of Bob as being like Jeffrey Dahmer, or somebody who just has bloodlust. I always think that for Bob, murder is not preferred, but it is one of the possible means of conflict resolution. It’s on the table. It’s a possibility. It’s difficult. It creates all kinds of risks. He tries not to do it, but sometimes it has to happen. I saw this strange humanity in Bob. So when he died, I still felt sad, even though I knew what happened to him had to happen.” Jarecki concluded, “I think that for me, there’s something about PART TWO that is so revealing about human beings. We would always say, when we were making part one, how do you kill three people over 30 years and get away with it? It takes a village. This season gets much more into the issue of complicity, to try to understand who was helping Bob along the way.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv