How HBO’s New Docuseries ‘Telemarketers’ Harnessed the Safdies and Danny McBride for a Wild Story Twenty Years in the Making

If there’s one TV network that never slows down, even in the dog days of August when most are gearing up for a fall reset, it’s HBO. The Idol debates of the early summer have given way to a new show with flashy names like Danny McBride and Josh and Benny Safdie attached. That show is Telemarketers, a truly unconventional, three-part documentary that has the righteous bluster of Michael Moore, the scuzzy cinema verite of the Safdies’ best films, and the scrappy upstart energy of 1999 Eminem.

Telemarketers is an outgrowth of footage from Sam Lipman-Stern, who first started filming as a New Jersey teenager in the early 2000s working as a telemarketer at Civic Development Group, a shadowy company that would employ teens, ex-cons, and addicts to request money on behalf of various organizations, largely state lodges of the Fraternal Order of Police. Lipman-Stern initially started filming in-office antics, but his mission evolved into an effort to get to the bottom of just for whom and what he was raising money. His partner in this investigation is his friend Patrick J. Pespas, a former heroin addict and death metal rocker, who also becomes invested in the exposé.

The result is part gonzo journalism about a nationwide telemarketing operation that has been putting money into police pockets for decades, and partially a portrait of Pespas—earnest, troubled, and determined. Though it began as just videos for YouTube, Lipman-Stern explains that he always had an inkling it would morph into a documentary. “There’s old footage that never came out where it’s Pat and I talking about how our ultimate dream would be getting it on to HBO,” Lipman-Stern says over Zoom. “It all happened very organically. We were all just self-described losers, including myself.”

Lipman-Stern would eventually show footage to his cousin, Adam Bhala Lough, who works for the documentary arm of Rough House Pictures — Danny McBride, Jody Hill, and David Gordon Green’s production shingle. Those clips “blew my mind,” Bhala Lough says. “As a writer, I always look for irony within stories and the irony that a) these ex-cons are raising money for the police and b) this depraved office actually is providing a public service by giving jobs to people who would not be able to make money because of their criminal records— the whole thing was just steeped in irony that I thought was fantastic.”

Bhala Lough showed the material to directors Josh and Benny Safdie, who have made a name for themselves capturing underworlds filled with colorful characters not unlike that of Telemarketers. Though they were too busy to direct it themselves, they came on as producers. “Benny was involved, every day, all day,” Bhala Lough says. “It was a real blessing and Benny especially put his stamp on the material, as you can tell, I’m sure, if you’ve seen their prior work.”