PODCAST CREATOR LINDSEY A SUCKER FOR TRUE CRIME
Payne Lindsey likes to tell stories, whether through filmmaking, directing or podcasting.
The Georgia native created and produced the investigative podcast Up &
Vanished — about the disappearance of Tara Grinstead — with his company Tenderfoot TV, which is now in development with Oxygen as a TV series. Lately, his podcast Atlanta Monster, about the Atlanta child murders of the late 1970s and early ’ 80s, has soared to the top of the iTunes podcast charts.
USA TODAY caught up with Lindsey Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity).
Question: What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever done?
Answer: Just the whole journey of Up & Vanished. I didn’t know what that was going to turn out like, and it was pretty life-changing for a lot of people, including myself.
Q: Who has been your biggest mentor?
A: My business partner, Donald Albright. He is more of the brains — I am more of the creative side, and he is more of the business side.
After Up & Vanished, I met Mark Smerling, someone I’d always really looked up to — he made Crimetown and the docu-crime series The Jinx — and
The Jinx was one of the inspirations for even doing Up & Vanished in the first place. He’s someone I’ve grown close to, someone I look up to.
Q: What does a typical day look like for you during podcast production?
A: I go to sleep very late usually, and I wake up by 7 every morning. I get coffee, get going, and unless I’m going to an interview for the podcast or some sort of PR about the podcast, I’m going straight to my office in Atlanta, and I’m basically editing a podcast and putting the story together all day with my team.
It’s a lot of juggling different people and just trying to make it happen, and it’s just a non-stop thing — it never actually pauses, it’s bizarre. We do it to ourselves. It’s why podcasts like Atlanta
Monster and Up & Vanished are special, because we kind of let the story itself drive in new information and more people to build the story. In doing that, you get stuff last-minute, it’s always changing, and it’s really affected by popularity and people talking about it, so you’re always shaping the story and making it sound good. During a podcast series like this, I literally don’t do anything else.
Q: How do you start to put ideas into fruition, like with Up & Vanished and Atlanta Monster?
A: I spend a lot of time researching and thinking. To be honest, there’s never a clear moment where you’re like “this is it,” and you know for sure — there’s never this satisfying moment when you know you’ve picked the right story. That never really happens. Eventually, you just have to pull the trigger with stuff like that, and that’s one thing I think I’ve gotten better at over time — not overthinking stuff.
That’s how Atlanta Monster came about. I didn’t know what to expect at all, and I knew it was a much bigger story than Up & Vanished. There were just so many victims, and it was in a time period of segregation — black and white, just so many themes that are very important and very sensitive.
Q: What does your career path look like?
A: I went to college for a few years off and on. To be honest, I was switching around and I hated school so much. I wanted to make videos, tell stories, do all this stuff on my own. I didn’t like the structure of school and it showed, and my dad eventually just cut me off when I was about 23.
I transitioned to more directing and wanted to escalate my film career and enter that space. I always, as a kid, wanted to be a director of feature films. I started directing music videos for artists in Atlanta, and it was a slow start, but I eventually made a name for myself. It wasn’t satisfying anymore, and I felt completely stuck — my desire was not to make music videos. My passion was to make movies, make TV shows.
I was watching Making a Murderer, then I watched The Jinx — I was always kind of a sucker for true crime, and I was sitting there and so compelled by them. I was like, why am I not making one of these? I should make a docu-series or a movie or a TV series or something on some sort of cold case that happened in Georgia. I spent weeks searching, felt kind of crazy, and I took it very seriously from the beginning. I had no clue what to expect. I was taking less jobs and I was so broke. Up & Vanished came out and was a total roller coaster, gained a lot of popularity and even affected the case. I was in over my head, and I had to buckle down and finish it out until the end. I learned a lot in that process and was able to set the stage for myself to do that again and begin to enter that TV space that I wanted to be in so badly.
Q: What advice would you give someone who wants to follow in your footsteps?
A: You need to be able to make a decision — it’s never going to feel 100% right. You just have to pull the trigger, and do it. If you feel good about it, do it. It doesn’t always work out, but try your hardest to make it the best and take everything as inspiration.