#charles graeber

[in-love-with-movies]

The Good Nurse (2022)

[eddieredmayneargentinablog]

"The Good Nurse" reunion!!

📷 #Repost Charles Graeber on Instagram @charlesgraeber: "Not supposed to do this probably, this isn't the post, but have to say Eddie Redmayne is a remarkable talent and a remarkably generous host, scary and sweet and check him out in Caberet on Broadway- and what a surprise to see Nnamdi backstage! a #thegoodnurse reunion. Thanks to Amy- the real Amy- who dragged me along to a great time! real post later".

[gottdeswill]

[maddie-grove]

Little Book Review: Nonfiction Round-Up (May-December 2022)

Waking the Tiger by Peter A. Levine (1997): a self-help book with a somatic approach to dealing with trauma symptoms. It contained some advice that was useful at my old job. Unfortunately, I was too traumatized from said job to concentrate properly on the audiobook, so I was kind of in a Catch-22.

The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman (2022): A deliciously disconcerting series of essays about the fractured last decade of the twentieth century. It wins the coveted "book I'm most determined to lend to my mom" award.

Yes, I'm Hot in This by Huda Fahmy (2018): a cute collection of comics from Fahmy's Instagram, covering subjects from strangers being stupid about her hijab (hence the title) to lighthearted scenes of domestic life. I found it in a Little Library.

Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson (2022): an exploration of the life and writing career of Beatrice Sparks, author of multiple "real" diaries by troubled teens, through-and-through grifter, and coiner of the immortal phrase "freak wharf." This fucked, y'all. Emerson seamlessly delves into multiple topics of interest--Sparks's hardscrabble youth, the discovery of LSD, the Satanic Panic--with plenty of compassion and humor.

The Good Nurse by Charles Graeber (2013): the true-crime account of Charles Cullen, a Pennsylvania/New Jersey nurse who murdered possibly hundreds of patients by poisoning their IV bags in the late 1980s to early 2000s. The subject matter is shocking, and it's horrifying how the indifference of the large medical systems he worked for kept him from facing consequences other than getting fired for years. The style/organization of the book is kind of pedestrian, though.

Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow (2019): an account of Farrow's efforts to write a story for NBC about the decades-long sexual predation of producer Harvey Weinstein, including NBC's sideways attempts to get him to back off. Farrow's a solid narrative writer, not great, and the book gets less interesting when he strays beyond the inner workings of NBC.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (1968): In her first collection of essays, Didion talks about murder, movies, mental distress, and Sacramento. It's incredibly fresh in some ways (the essay where she talks about raising her daughter away from her extended family) and incredibly dated in others (her incredulity at people who ascribe artistic vision to Meet Me in St. Louis). I genuinely appreciate her ability to make me go "girl, what are you even talking about."

Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh (2020): an illustrated memoir/series of comics, focusing on coping with mental illness and the unexpected loss of a loved one. There are some very funny passages (particularly one involving a troublesome dog), some devastating ones (Brosh's montage of memories of her late younger sister), and some aimless ones.

Monkey Mind by Daniel Smith (2012): part memoir and part general information about anxiety (the science of it, how different people have written about it through history, etc.). It's more interesting as a memoir. I remember that it had some good advice at the end for managing anxiety, but I don't know for the life of me what it was. Still, I feel like I should give him credit for it.

[occamyeggshells]

‘The Good Nurse’ Author Shows Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

Charles Graeber’s book is now a movie and a documentary.

When Charles Graeber first met Charlie Cullen, the prolific serial killer was already in prison. It wasn’t Cullen’s rap sheet that interested Graeber; it was something far stranger. “He was trying to donate a kidney from jail, and I thought that was a really bizarre story,” the author and journalist tells Tudum. “And what was even stranger was that the family members of his victims didn’t want the killer nurse who’d played God with their loved ones playing God from behind bars.” As Graeber dug deeper into the sordid details of the case, he learned that Cullen’s crimes stretched far further than believed — there was more to the story than just one man’s deadly urges. 

Amy Loughren (Jessica Chastain) shares a scene with Detectives Tim Braun (Noah Emmerich) and Danny Baldwin (Nnamdi Asomugha).

How did you first get involved with this story? When I first heard about this very strange story, the story at the time was [that] a mercy killer had been operating in hospitals and somehow gaming the system. And eventually, those hospitals figured it out, caught him, and he was now in jail. Unfortunately, Charlie Cullen wasn’t speaking to anybody at that point. He was really determined to disappear and take that story with him. And the hospitals seemed perfectly happy with that as well. But then he started speaking to me, and we started exchanging letters and then meeting.

And as I got to know him and learn more about him, I discovered that this fairly simple story wasn’t the real story at all. In fact, the opposite was true. He’d been caught over and over again, but never stopped. He’d been allowed to move on from hospital to hospital for 16 years, nine hospitals, a nursing home — each time with neutral or positive references. The experts I spoke to that know this best put the real number of victims somewhere between 300 and 400 people. And that institutional failure was a story that wasn’t being told.

How did Amy Loughren enter the narrative for you? Other people with pieces of this story were also willing to trust me — detectives, priests, some family members, other whistleblowers, the other nurses. The group kept growing. 

Charlie Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) and Amy Loughren (Chastain).

The movie really centers on the relationship between Charlie and Amy. How true to life is that? They were sort of work spouses. They bonded very quickly. Amy’s really a very protective person. She had a childhood of trauma and damage. And she survived that by becoming stronger, tougher and fiercely loyal to her friends. And she thought Charlie was someone who needed protection. Charlie Cullen, as it happens, is a character that over and over again seeks that sort of relationship. And so they fit into each other’s personalities, and they also depended on each other at work. And Amy depended on Charlie to help her as her heart condition worsened. So that relationship really felt true to me in terms of the dynamic, how they worked together, relied on each other and had a sort of gallows humor. 

Charlie faces justice.

What assistance did you offer Eddie Redmayne? Some of my favorite interactions were when Eddie Redmayne came on board, and he had so many questions about Charlie Cullen and what he was really like and what was driving him. But also so much anxiety about playing a psychopath — someone who didn’t have empathy. An actor trying to play someone without empathy is such a challenge. He had so many questions and was such a sponge. He took things I didn’t really remember saying and used them to help him form that character, which is so remarkable. The detectives, I spoke to them after they saw the film for the first time, and they said, ‘That’s him!’ There are certain scenes I could point out specifically where we weren’t sure if maybe they’ve CGI’d something because he was so much like this person in real life. 

There’s also a documentary, Capturing the Killer Nurse, coming out next month. What was your involvement like as executive producer? They’re really doing a different job. The film focuses on a narrow piece of time in the relationship between Charlie and Amy. It focuses also on Amy, the character that we could sympathize with, and the absolute shock of having someone like Charlie come and enter her normal life. The book doesn’t start that way because it starts with Charlie and doesn’t treat him as a monster. I think empathy is the best tool you can have as a storyteller. And so I just went in and tried to describe a young man going through life and making choices. I don’t tell you what he is. I just look at his actions and help you come to that conclusion. 

Amy at work.

What do you hope that your book and the movie and documentary communicate to people about this situation?  There’s never even been a grand jury to examine the role the hospitals played in passing Charlie along, keeping this killing career alive. The detectives, they really wanted a grand jury, and it was denied, on a political level. So their offices and the hospitals certainly didn’t want that. There’s really never been a reckoning, except for in the court of public opinion. But that group of informed, outraged people just grew by however many people have Netflix, go to the theaters or have access to the library or bookstore. Charlie’s in jail. Everyone else on the institution side got raises and promotions on the back of this. They did a good job protecting their institution, but they didn’t do good. And it really makes you question what our health-care system is for, what it’s supposed to do. Is it supposed to be a profit center? Is it for shareholders and board members, or is it for us and for our greater well-being?

I also hope and believe that through all this, there’s going to be an even greater appreciation for the hard work that nurses do, mitigating life and death for minimum wage and working hard at it. We’ve just come through a pandemic crisis, but we also have a nursing crisis right now. The nurses are burned out. Banging pots and pans at a certain hour is a really nice gesture. But I think some greater reckoning and appreciation for what they do is necessary.

This interview has been edited for quality and length.

You can buy Graeber’s book, The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder,through his website. The Good Nurse is streaming on Netflix now. Capturing the Killer Nurse hits Netflix on Nov. 11.

[mugglenet]

Eddie Redmayne will portray a serial killer in a new biopic called “The Good Nurse.”

[365goalsfor365days]

#257: Read “The Good Nurse” by Charles Graeber 

“After his December 2003 arrest, registered nurse Charlie Cullen was quickly dubbed “The Angel of Death” by the media. But Cullen was no mercy killer, nor was he a simple monster. He was a favorite son, husband, beloved father, best friend, and celebrated caregiver. Implicated in the deaths of as many as 300 patients, he was also perhaps the most prolific serial killer in American history. Cullen’s murderous career in the world’s most trusted profession spanned sixteen years and nine hospitals across New Jersey and Pennsylvania. When, in April of 2007, Charles Cullen was marched from his final sentencing in an Allentown, Pennsylvania, courthouse into a waiting police van, it seemed certain that the chilling secrets of his life, career, and capture would disappear with him. Now, in a riveting piece of investigative journalism nearly ten years in the making, journalist Charles Graeber presents the whole story for the first time. Based on hundreds of pages of previously unseen police records, interviews, wire-tap recordings and videotapes, as well as exclusive jailhouse conversations with Cullen himself and the confidential informant who helped bring him down, THE GOOD NURSE weaves an urgent, terrifying tale of murder, friendship, and betrayal. Graeber’s portrait of Cullen depicts a surprisingly intelligent and complicated young man whose promising career was overwhelmed by his compulsion to kill, and whose shy demeanor masked a twisted interior life hidden even to his family and friends. Were it not for the hardboiled, unrelenting work of two former Newark homicide detectives racing to put together the pieces of Cullen’s professional past, and a fellow nurse willing to put everything at risk, including her job and the safety of her children, there’s no telling how many more lives could have been lost. In the tradition of ‘In Cold Blood,’ THE GOOD NURSE does more than chronicle Cullen’s deadly career and the breathless efforts to stop him; it paints an incredibly vivid portrait of madness and offers a penetrating look inside America’s medical system. harrowing and irresistibly paced, this book will make you look at medicine, hospitals, and the people who work in them, in an entirely different way.”

This was such a fascinating book. I’m fascinated by true crime, so of course, I had to read this one. It’s incredible to me that after all that suspicion, the ball was dropped by seemingly everyone. I will never understand what could lead Cullen to murder people with not even a thought of the consequences. What a messed up little mind that man has. the research that went into this book must have taken forever - it is so detailed. This is a great book and anyone interested in true crime should definitely read it.

[eddie-redmayne-italian-blog]

Together again!!

"This was really fun and Eddie Redmayne is really remarkably talented. I don't know how he does that, playing the MC of Death night after night but somehow having time for a quick backstage reunion.See the show."

Source : Charles Graeber, the Good Nurse Author, on IG

IG !!