Crime & Parody - Director Will Thwaites

Nearly a decade before Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert came under attack for their political humor, an unknown comedian from Ohio finds himself in even more serious trouble for making fun of the government. Crime & Parody follows the story of Anthony Novak, an amateur comedian who creates a parody Facebook page mocking his local police department. The page is satire, but the police take it very seriously. They raid Anthony’s home, throw him in county jail, and charge him with a felony punishable by up to 18 months in prison. Soon national headlines mushroom and The Onion head writer Mike Gillis authors the satirical publication's first-ever brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of parody. Anthony’s case helps raise questions that continue to grow more urgent: how do you hold the government accountable in a system that punishes those who exercise their First Amendment rights while law enforcement is protected by expanded qualified immunity? Crime & Parody director Will Thwaites joins us for a spirited conversation on the why and how of restricting our basic, constitutionally protected civil rights is not funny, at all.

About the filmmaker - Will Thwaites is a documentary filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. He's worked on projects for Netflix, Amazon, National Geographic, and PBS. Will was a producer on the acclaimed Netflix series: Full Swing and My Next Guest with David Letterman. He started his career at Kartemquin Films (Oscar-nominated producers of Minding the Gap and Hoop Dreams) where he worked on the Emmy Award-winning film, The Homestretch.