Director Mark Landsman’s National Enquirer doc is a "Frankenstein story"

These days, The National Enquirer is a right wing propaganda machine that, due to its pretty low circulation, essentially operates as a pro-Trump billboard sitting at eye level in every supermarket checkout line. But while the paper certainly doesn’t have a sterling reputation, it hasn’t always been purely out to sway elderly voters who don’t know any better. As director Mark Landsman found when he was putting together his documentary Scandalous: The Untold Story Of The National Enquirer, the paper grew from gore rag to star tracker to—weirdly enough—doing critical journalistic work that led to O.J. Simpson losing the civil lawsuit filed by the Simpson and Goldman families. It’s an interesting story, especially for those who are interested in the more sensational aspects of celebrity journalism, and one that The A.V. Club sat down with Landsman to talk through earlier this month.