Marc Smerling
Marc Smerling is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and director. He was nominated for an Oscar for "Capturing the Friedmans" in 2003, and co-wrote and produced "The Jinx", a six-part HBO documentary on suspected murderer Robert Durst. He directed the FX docuseries "A Wilderness of Error" based on the book of the same name. Education. Smerling attended S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and has earned a Master of Arts degree in film production from University of Southern California. Career. Early in his career, Smerling was the associate producer of NBC 's "Gangs, Cops and Drugs" with Tom Brokaw, and "The New Hollywood". He then founded production company Notorious Pictures, producing and directing more than a hundred television commercials and music videos. Smerling partnered up with Andrew Jarecki to form their own production company Hit the Ground Running. He produced 2003's "Capturing the Friedmans", which was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary and 2010's documentary film "Catfish", which inspired the television series "". In 2010, Smerling produced and wrote his first narrative feature film "All  Good Things", starring Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst and Frank Langella, about the suspected murderer and real estate scion Robert Durst. The film was the predecessor to the 2015 HBO documentary miniseries "", which Smerling co-wrote and produced with Andrew Jarecki and Zachary Stuart-Pontier. He won the 2015 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary Series and was nominated for Outstanding Cinematography for Nonfiction Programming. Smerling and Stuart-Pontier co-created the podcast "Crimetown", which debuted in 2016 and quickly became the most popular U.S. podcast on iTunes. Each season of "Crimetown" examines how organized crime shaped an American city, starting  with Providence, Rhode Island, in season one. They also co-created "The RFK Tapes" a Crimetown Presents podcast about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.