The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Spectrum series revisits serial bomber
Ten episodes chronicle Centennial Olympic explosion, manhunt.
Creative minds sometimes do think alike.
A year ago, two documentaries about the failed Frye Festival came out the same week. Currently in Atlanta, there is a film and a TV series about Aretha Franklin in production.
Earlier this week, Spectrum released all 10 episodes of a series featuring Richard Jewell — the falsely accused security guard of the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing. This is just a few weeks after Clint Eastwood’s major release of a film called “Richard Jewell.”
The cable provider has about 26 million subscribers — 385,000 customers in Georgia. Locally, Spectrum is available in Athens, Buford, Covington, Duluth, Gainesville,
Newnan, Roswell and Stockbridge. The series is otherwise unavailable for those without Spectrum subscriptions.
“Manhunt: Deadly Games” is set in Georgia and North Carolina but was shot in Pittsburgh last year. The shooting schedule overlapped with that of Eastwood’s movie, which was shot in metro Atlanta.
“Manhunt” executive producer Andrew Sodroski — who has yet to see Eastwood’s film — said metro Pittsburgh provided quicker access than Atlanta to forests that resembled the Nantahala National Forest in North Carolina where enigmatic serial bomber Eric Rudolph (played by British actor Jack Huston) hid out for six years as a fugitive.
“The forests are a character,” Sodroski said, full of caves and ravines. “Eric hid out in the middle of nowhere. He knew that terrain, and the FBI didn’t.”
The producers were otherwise able to faithfully recreate the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing in an outdoor space in Pittsburgh, adding digital versions of Coca-Cola and CNN headquarters into the skyline.
The series opens with the park bombing. Jewell (played by Cameron Britton) becomes the lead suspect, fitting a “lone bomber” profile FBI had created, covering some of the same material Eastwood carved out.
“Manhunt” relies heavily on a 2007 book about Rudolph by Maryanne Vollers called “Lone Wolf” and her stash of files from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The series also spends plenty of time with a composite ATF bomb investigator and a composite FBI agent.
Producers changed the timelines significantly, so Jewell’s story and the chase for Rudolph overlap, which didn’t actually happen.
“We wanted to capture the true feelings by fictionalizing our timeline,” Sodroski said. “Also to make it more exciting. A lot of the manhunt involved sitting and waiting in the woods looking for Eric for years.”
The FBI cleared Jewell three months after the July 27, 1996, bombing. Another 14 months actually passed before Rudolph was identified as the likely Olympic bomber in February 1998 and officially charged in October. But “Manhunt” leaves Jewell as a suspect for several months longer and even creates a fictional scene in episode three where Jewell shops at a grocery store and is kicked and spat on by a man who blames him for the bombing. (Sodroski said they added it for dramatic effect.)
Rudolph in January 1997 bombed a Sandy Springs abortion clinic and an Atlanta gay bar a month later. A Birmingham abortion bombing a year later was made to appear in “Manhunt” as happening soon after the first two. These changes are supposed to amp up the drama but make the FBI seem even less successful since they never actually arrest Jewell. They just tail him for months on end in “Manhunt.”
In reality, the FBI immediately tied the abortion clinic and gay bar bombings to the Olympic bombing because Jewell was already off their radar. In “Manhunt,” FBI agent Jack Brennan (Gethin Anthony) is initially skeptical that there is any connection between the park bombings and the others. “Manhunt” proceeds to make the FBI agent early on obnoxious and arrogant.
“He’s one man,” Brennan tells a local North Carolina sheriff in episode No. 4, referencing Rudolph. “We’re the FBI.”
Brennan does get humanized later in the season as Rudolph’s years-long success at evading authorities turned him into a folk hero among those who distrusted the government, including the local militia. “Brennan will be humbled,” Sodroski said. “He will rise to the occasion and grow as a human being in a really cool and beautiful way.”
Carla Gugino (“Spy Kids”) provides a more nuanced, fully formed take of Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs, who broke the Jewell story, compared to Olivia Wilde’s version in the Eastwood film.
“Manhunt” in the later episodes explores the FBI’s often hapless efforts to catch the evasive Rudolph on his home turf. But Rudolph eventually is careless and was captured while dumpster diving in 2003. He is now spending the rest of his living days in ADX Florence Supermax prison in Colorado with the likes of “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski and Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols.
Sodroski said the series serves as a lesson in humility, about how false presumptions can impact lives.
“When we approach the truth and facts with an open mind, that is really a powerful thing,” he said. “It is the only thing that can save us from our own division in 2020. We often lack the humility to admit the other side is right sometimes, and the facts don’t always support us. And the people who don’t look like us can often be more right, more correct.”