I'm Wesley Morris and this is Cannonball today.

These are the people in your neighborhood.

Anytime to very different people I love tell me I need to watch something, I'll probably do it.

Even if it's something I strongly suspect, I'm not going to enjoy watching at all.

That is pretty much how I found myself making my way over to Netflix to watch the documentary The Perfect Neighbor. It's about a woman who in 2023 shot and killed the lady who lives

across the street in their working class, Central Florida neighborhood. The shooter, Susan

Lawrence, is a middle-aged white woman. Her victim, Ajika Owens, is a much younger black woman and the mother of four children.

Half the movie is about the events that culminated in Owens' murder.

The other half is about what happened in the immediate wake of her death.

And part of what makes this documentary, I'll say fascinating, is that a lot of the film's footage comes from police body cameras.

And the movie's marriage of subject and form raises some moral, ethical, and emotional questions

that left me no other choice but to reach out to my friend and colleague, Parole Sagal,

one of my favorite critics, if anything, period,

and definitely one of my favorite people to go to to help untangle these kinds of

naughty issues of art documenting life.

And as it turns out, I didn't even have to ask her to watch this documentary because

she'd already done it, even before I did.

And like me, I think she watched most of it from in between her fingers.

So, here's my conversation with Parle.

Parle, welcome to Cannonball.

Thank you, Wesley.

I can't believe you here.

...