Amazon debuts series based on New Yorker magazine
The New Yorker regularly features a formidable mix of deeply reported stories and profiles, fiction, slices of life, cultural coverage and cartoons.
Makers of "The New Yorker Presents" achieved the small miracle of capturing the magazine's rhythm and pioneering a "60 Minutes"-style newsmagazine with the work done by documentarians instead of news reporters.
Each 30-minute episode has stories of various lengths, anchored by a longer piece from filmmakers like Gibney, Steve James, Roger Ross Williams, Dawn Porter and Eugene Jarecki.
Examples are a profile of the gay star of Mexican wrestling, stories on competitive bull riding and police pursuit of a legendary silver thief, and a look at intelligence agency infighting before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Shorter pieces include a skit with Charles Grodin and John Turturro as a psychiatrist and patient, a story on erotic art created by a Finnish advertising executive and people who tell, in a 12-step style meeting, of odd encounters with Bill Murray.
Random Manhattan sites are visited, like a hat maker in Harlem or the Morbid Anatomy Museum, where hipster girls skin rats.
Producers are also figuring out ways to take advantage of the magazine's cultural critics.