![]() To that point, something I most regret that was left on the cutting room floor was sequence in which I pieced together all the bits of information I’d heard from the police to find out whether or not I was their number one suspect, and if they thought that, did they think I was doing this documentary in an effort to know what they know. Mostly it was from a First Amendment rights standpoint. With the police, the legal team at Jigsaw had the recordings legally vetted and made a group decision that it was okay. For the past seven years, all my calls to him have been from one-way consent states. In regard to conversations with my dad, my production team had lengthy discussions about consent states. Without knowing the laws in particular states about consent to record conversations, how was it that you were able to use all those recorded conversations in the series? At the end of day, if I don’t solve this, was I just creating a path of destruction? With my sister and her, there is a light at the end of the tunnel for their relationship, which I was really concerned about. Out of anyone, I was most worried about my aunt, Conway, and she’s in a really good place now. What has the progress been like for mending family relations? So, I think what I’m doing is necessary, and I think “good” and “bad” are too binary for how complex humanity is. I haven’t talked to my dad in depth about the documentary yet. All of them are in a good place, outside of my dad. I had family screenings for all four episodes before they came out, which for me was mandatory, and we had conversations around how they come across, the questions that they are asked and the things that are said about them. ![]() A big part of that was seeing how my family was going to react to how they’re portrayed. I think what weighed on me was that I am not the gauger of that. There’s no way around that.ĭo you have that answer now? Is it good that you did this? These are family members, this is my life, this is my mother’s story, and it’s airing publicly, exposing vulnerabilities. The biggest challenge I’ve dealt with and had to ask myself throughout the making of this is whether I’m doing good. There’s been a lot of good news and response to the story. Madison Hamburg: Lately, I’ve been relieved. Observer: First, I want to ask, genuinely, how are you? Observer went deeper with Hamburg in an interview to find out how his family has been now that most of the episodes have aired, how his aunt Conway Beach (who discovered Barbara’s body and was at the center of the third episode, “Sisters”) has responded to the series and how he was legally able to use all those secret recordings with his father and the Madison Police Department. “I feel like it’s my chance to define it,” says Hamburg, “and also to be whole again, to stop living this double life.” It never defined him-“I didn’t have to walk around with the label of the kid whose mom was murdered me”-and now people will see the story unfold almost as its unfolding for Hamburg himself. ![]() ![]() It turns out that Hamburg’s keeping the secret of his mom’s murder and the making of this documentary from even his friends for this long has worked in the show’s favor. “I really wanted it to be from my perspective as much as possible.” “If I tried to tell it like it’s in the past or tried to distort what’s going on or say that I think this person did it and here’s why,” he says, “I’m going to lose the trust of the audience. His advice was to invite the audience into everything Hamburg was going through, because it would be the most honest way to tell a story full of dishonesties, twists, turns and many unanswered questions. Hamburg opened up the fourth wall and took his cue from an editor who worked on Minding the Gap, the 2018 documentary about skateboarders. Otherwise it wouldn’t accomplish that goal of subverting those conventions.” “Once I partnered with HBO last year,” says Hamburg, “I realized that this was going to be a really public thing and that the documentary at some point had to ask questions. For better or worse, it has turned into riveting television and a docuseries that gives the true crime genre a new spin into ethically ambiguous territory. Hamburg began his work on the story as a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design and has since dedicated himself to exploring the complexities of family secrets through documentary filmmaking-a much more expositive task than, say, therapy. Subscribe to Observer’s Keeping Watch Newsletter It’s a fraught and complicated journey following Hamburg as he tries to find answers surrounding his mother’s brutal murder while also absolving the people he loves and mending a fractured community. HBO’s four-part documentary series Murder on Middle Beach, which premiered on HBO on November 15 and is available to stream on HBO Max, is Hamburg’s first major project as a filmmaker. ![]()
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