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Paul T. Goldman
★★★★
Stan*, June 15
Paul T. Goldman, which aired in the US in January, is a multilayered parody of true-crime documentaries, one that folds in on itself like a balled sock swallowing another sock. It’s exploitation TV that playfully blurs the lines between fact and fiction and its real-life titular subject, the hero of his own delusions, is its poor preening chump.
Paul T. Goldman, aka Paul Finkelman, is the series’ completely unreliable narrator.
The series’ backstory is convoluted. Goldman is the author of Duplicity, a true-crime memoir that spins the tale of his own experience being duped, and financially fleeced, by Audrey, a woman he married within weeks of meeting. Goldman, who self-published the book, also turned it into a screenplay, which he’d been shipping around Hollywood (he tweeted at every director he could think of), grand visions of Oscars glory in his eyes. It met radio silence before it found its way to director Jason Woliner, who must’ve rubbed his hands in glee that such a doofus fell into his lap.
After 10 years of work, Woliner’s conjured up something remarkable with Goldman’s script (if not the Oscar-winning film Goldman originally envisioned): a six-episode series that is part documentary and part true-crime parody, in which Goldman narrates his own story of woe to the camera while also awkwardly starring in elaborately staged reenactments of his mishaps alongside professional actors including Frank Grillo and James Remar. But the early revelation that Goldman’s real name is actually Paul Finkelman – he changed it to sound cooler – is a hint that maybe the full story isn’t 100 per cent as he relays it (“97 per cent… approximately,” Finkelman offers).
Woliner was the director of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and various episodes of Nathan Fielder’s Nathan For You, and Paul T. Goldman shares their DNA – mostly in its ethically dubious reliance on a guileless rube to drive its comic engine. But, like Sacha Baron Cohen’s targets, Paul T. Goldman might get away with it due to the subject’s own needy opportunism. If it’s cruel exploitation, well, he brought it on himself.
Finkelman is a compelling figure. He’s frantic in real-life, and bug-eyed and delusional in his hammy acting. “He’s kinda like a kid,” says one of the professional actors tasked to be in a scene with him. “It’s like if my son, you just put him here and, you know…” He’s got a touch of the Larry Davids about him, but the onscreen persona of Larry David, not the Emmy-winning multi-millionaire comedian who lives in luxury in Pacific Palisades. That Larry David’s a winner; Paul Finkelman is not a winner. He’s a chump with a trusting heart, an overzealous libido bordering on misogynistic, and a darker edge than the “aw shucks” attitude he puts across.
The true-crime reenactments feature professional actors such as Frank Grillo.
A scene in episode two – after Finkelman, during a break while shooting a re-enactment about Audrey’s betrayal, reveals to his fellow actors that he’d also been duped by another business partner years ago who fleeced him out of his paint company – sums up the series’ discomfiting mood. Woliner cuts to an interview with Finkelman’s father and stepmother, who dissect their son’s problem: “Unfortunately, he’s vulnerable, because of the fact that he trusts everybody and can’t believe anybody would do these things to him. He’s too good a person, and these things happen to him,” says his dad. “I don’t think somebody could pull the wool over his eyes again, I don’t think so,” adds his stepmum. At which point the action cuts away to Woliner on set, directing this whole bogus enterprise, who shoos the camera away with a sly glint in his eye.
But as Finkelman’s story takes a turn to the increasingly unhinged (wave a red flag for the words “international sex trafficking ring”) and the show becomes a timely allegory for conspiracy theory – the way someone who’s down might concoct a self-empowering fantasy narrative as a substitute for their own real-world impotence – Woliner pulls back, his conscience seemingly getting the better of him. It’s an empathetic response, but one that costs the series its teeth.
After ongoing debate about the ethics of cringe comedy and the cruelty involved in milking everyday dolts for our comic enjoyment, it’s odd seeing the humane response play out. In Paul T. Goldman the final turn is so unsatisfying that you’re left wondering how Finkelman convinced Woliner to make an entire series out of his unremarkable nonsense with himself centre-screen. But, in the end, it feels like a fitting grift.
* Stan is owned by Nine, as is this masthead.
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