‘POISONED’ AND BEYOND
The e’er-busy world of Jeff Benedict
Jeff Benedict is eating breakfast on the screened-in porch behind his Waterford home on a warm Monday morning. Is he having a sausage biscuit? A cinnamon roll? Biscuits and gravy?
Uh, decidedly not.
Benedict is the author of 17 bestselling nonfiction books and one of them, “Poisoned,” is the story of a deadly 1992 Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak and the subsequent rise of food safety attorney Bill Marler. The crisis killed four children, made over 700 people gravely ill, and the book helped scare plenty of Americans into a more diligent awareness of what they eat.
During the hour-long interview, the decidedly fit writer pops an occasional blueberry into his mouth from a small bowl of fruit on the table in front of him. Earlier, he had a cup of coffee.
Though “Poisoned” was published in 2011, it’s particularly timely this summer. An 83-minute documentary of the book, called “Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food” had a world premiere in June at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, followed a few weeks later with an exclusive theatrical screening in New London’s Garde Arts Center.
The documentary was made for Netflix and will begin streaming on the service Friday.
“Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your
Food” was directed for Campfire Studios by Stephanie Soechtig, an award-winning writer, producer and documentary maker. It features Marler in a narrator capacity, and Benedict is a co-producer and is credited with writing the film — although, as he points out, a documentary by definition doesn’t have a script per se.
That “Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food” is a documentary shouldn’t be surprising. After all, it’s based on a nonfiction book now — which is incidentally available in in new trade paperback edition.
On the other hand, an earlier Benedict effort, “Little Pink House,” a captivating story about New London’s Fort Trumbull eminent domain case that would seem ideal in a documentary format, was made into a feature film in 2017 starring Catherine Keeler and Jeanne Tripplehorn. And “Poisoned,” the book, has an even more tantalizing narrative thread.
In fact, “Poisoned” frankly reads like a John Grisham-style legal thriller, with a distressing and horrifying opening and set-up, and in Marler, Benedict compellingly captures a real-life lawyer whose charisma, character and commitment would seem ideal for a Hollywood feature film.
“I always thought ‘Poisoned would make a fantastic movie,’” Benedict says. “You have a great young attorney who has pulled himself up by his bootstraps and finds himself in way over his head in this colossal case about foodborne illness. It’s hard not to think of Tom Cruise in ‘The Firm’ or in ‘A Few Good Men.’ The food-borne pathogen would be a frightening backdrop, but for a feature film, I thought the attorney was Hollywood gold. I did not see it as a documentary.”
Maybe the lesson to be learned is that great narrative nonfiction is ideal for either form of visual storytelling. After all, in addition to “Little Pink House” and “Poisoned,” Benedict’s #1 bestselling biography “Tiger Woods” (cowritten with Armen Keteyian) was made into a two-part HBO documentary. And the similarly top-selling “The Dynasty,” which Benedict wrote about the 21st century success of the New England Patriots, will be a 10-part docuseries for Apple TV+ scheduled for airing in 2024.
With a slowly dwindling supply of fruit, Benedict talks about balancing a seemingly overwhelming creative schedule, the nuances and surprises of the “Poisoned” documentary, and why he’ll be sticking close to home Friday rather than attending any Netflix celebrations. Here are excerpts from the conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Q: Given that you had hopes that “Poisoned” might become a thriller-style feature film, how did the documentary come about?
Benedict: I did want it to be made, and I thought it would make a better movie than “Little Pink House” because it’s an easier
story line. But the group that wanted to do it saw it as a documentary because, currently, food-borne pathogens are on people’s minds and a big deal. Stephanie thought a documentary was a way to take the book and turn it into something else.
If you read the book and then watch the film — or the other way around — you think, “Wow, the only thing that connects them is the lawyer. The first 15 minutes of the film is him and this massive E. coli case that launches his career. Then they use him as a narrator. That’s why I didn’t want to be involved. The book and the film are completely different — and I was completely comfortable. Stephanie did a fantastic job using the book as a springboard to do a documentary on the current state of food-borne illness in America. It’s a great idea and we worked really well together. I couldn’t be happier with the way it turned out.
Q: Both “Tiger Woods” and “The Dynasty” went into documentary production relatively soon after publication. It took a while longer for “Poisoned” and “Little
Pink House” to get made. At a certain point, does it all just come down to luck?
Benedict: It’s not just luck, although that’s certainly part of it. We’re coming out of a period in TV and film where the rise of streamers created a huge demand for content. Before that, I sold the rights to “Little Pink House” and worked as producer on it, and by the time it was actually on screen, the streamers were really moving in. The Netflix model grew and Amazon and Apple TV and Hulu and all these others were clamoring for intellectual property.
So I was able to sell “Tiger” and “The Dynasty” and “Poisoned” all in that small window that’s now closing — or has already closed. And that’s the reason “Poison” sold after 10 years although, in the old Hollywood model, 10 years wasn’t such a long time; it was pretty common for studios to make movies based on books that were published years ago. I was just fortunate that there was an appetite for acquiring content and I was able to find a producer and studio that wanted to turn “Poisoned” into a documentary.
Q: It seems there’s an increased public appetite for documentaries. Do you think that’s an accurate observation, and if so, does it reflect a sort of reality versus fiction dynamic in visual entertainment?
Benedict: All sorts of things affect how consumers want to be entertained, and sometimes there’s even a way to sort of tell people what they want. After 9/11, people wanted escapism. They wanted fake stuff and material that was inspiring and uplifting and humorous.
Now, for a variety of reasons, there’s been a popular emergence of reality content. Part of that was fed by Netflix and their need for content.
And people started to watch documentaries and listen to podcasts. And documentaries are evolving. Normally, you’d sit down one night and watch a two-hour documentary and it was usually on the National
Geographic channel or PBS.
Now, what’s emerging are docuseries, which is a whole new thing, other than “American Experience” on PBS, and now we’re regularly seeing three- and five- and even 10-part documentary series. And that’s the format for “The Dynasty.”
Q: Speaking of which, what can you tell us about that?
Benedict: I’m very limited on what I can say at this point. The series if based on the book, which was written from the inside-out because I had unprecedented access to (Patriots owner) Robert Kraft, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. It was the first time the organization ever let anyone in to tell the story, I that’s why the book did as well as it did. And we had even better access for the series.
Q: One last question about “Poisoned.” When was the last time you ate at McDonald’s?
Benedict: (laughs) I know exactly when. It was 2007. As frightening and eye-opening at writing “Poisoned” was, my wife Lydia had started our family on a much healthier approach to eating and nutrition well before that. We had a garden and grew our own vegetables and got our milk from a farm down the road that we trusted. So it’s been a while since a fast food experience.