NEW YORK – Chris Smith didn’t initially think the 2019 college bribery scandal made for a good documentary subject.
He was editing “Fyre,” the hit Netflix documentary about the music-festival fiasco, when his longtime collaborator, Jon Karmen, suggested another real tale of fraud and spectacle be their next film.
By shifting the focus, Smith’s “Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admission Scandal,” which debuts Wednesday on Netflix, attempts to reorient center stage in a headline-grabbing drama that has already spawned one Lifetime movie.
The documentary, like the scandal, has a dose of Hollywood.
“One of the only people that got back to us was John Vandemoer.”Vandemoer, a Stanford University sailing coach, was the first person sentenced in the scandal.