Best of 2021: Operation Varsity Blues

You Can’t Make This Up

Netflix

True Crime, Documentary, Tv & Film, Society & Culture, Film Interviews

4.2 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we are looking back on some of your favorite 'You Can't Make This Up' episodes of 2021. Today we are throwing it back to our interview with the editor, writer, and producer of Operation Varsity Blues, Jon Karmen, and the film's director and producer, Chris Smith. You may have heard a lot about the 2019 college admission scandal, but you haven’t heard everything yet. Operation Varsity Blues goes beyond the celebrity-driven headlines with real conversations from FBI wiretaps. The film offers a rare glimpse of the man at the center of the scandal, Rick Singer, and the methods he used to help his wealthy clients cheat a system already designed to benefit the privileged. If you have a favorite Netflix documentary from 2021 or a favorite You Can't Make This Up podcast episode, tweet our host @Reblavoie your thoughts. Thanks for listening!

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Rebecca Lervoy and this is you can't make this up is the podcast where we uncover the true stories behind
0:18.9	your favorite Netflix documentaries and films and in 2021 we had some great titles to choose from.
0:26.4	I'm thinking about some of my favorites.
0:28.9	They include the famous Unsolved Case from Ireland, Sophie, Murder in West Cork.
0:34.8	There was Brittany versus Spears, a deep dive inside the legal stranglehold on the singer.
0:40.8	And I loved the fun stories of regular people tempted by a big score in the series
0:46.4	Heist. What was one of your favorite Netflix titles from 2021? One of the
0:52.0	podcast episodes you listen to the most was our discussion about
0:55.4	varsity blues, the college admission scandal. We got to hear from the
1:00.2	investigators, the parents, and the coaches who helped get privileged kids into competitive
1:04.8	schools by taking money in exchange for bogus athletic scholarships.
1:10.1	He contacted me almost right away and was like,
1:13.0	is there any other way you could support?
1:15.2	Her family is pretty wealthy and they would be
1:17.1	interested in donating about a million dollars.
1:19.7	My athletic director said that it is something that
1:22.2	Stanford could do, but that a million dollars
1:25.0	wasn't enough.
1:26.3	But what made varsity blues unique was its hybrid format.
1:30.4	Not only did we meet the real life people involved in the scandal,
1:33.8	we saw dramatized versions of events played by actors like Matthew Modine
1:38.6	who played fixer Rick Singer.
	...

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