HBO’s ‘Murder in Glitterball City’ Is Not Your Straightforward True Crime Doc, Directors Tease

“Murder in Glitterball City” may sound like a unique name for a true crime documentary, but the HBO two-parter follows a unique case.

Jamie Carroll was found dead in the basement of a home in Old Louisville, Kentucky, in 2010, and the two suspects — Joey Banis and Jeffrey Mundt — had two opposing stories about who was to blame. It was a story that instantly stuck with doc directors and World of Wonder co-founders Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey when they read it in David Domine’s “A Dark Room in Glitter Ball City.”

“It was such a fascinating book — a little bit ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’ — and not so much that it was true crime, but it was these queer characters. It’s just so complex and that’s what drew us in,” Bailey told TheWrap. “When we read the book, we didn’t know who did it. True crimes normally start with some sort of mystery, but this started with the murder — ‘Was it this one? Was it that one?’ We were just truly intrigued. Sometimes, the victim gets pushed aside, partly because they’re no longer around, but Jamie was such a dynamic person: He was a hairdresser; he was a drag queen … he was a hustler, and we felt some kinship with that and wanted to honor him by telling the story.”

“It’s really easy when you list what he was to be dismissive, as if he was disposable. But for us, he seemed like a survivor and an artist. It was really important to not just make a procedural true crime,” Barbato added. “For us, it was about connecting to all the characters, regardless of the depth of their connection to the story. It is this story of a city and a story of amazing characters, so many of whom we fell in love with. So how do you tell this true crime story, but with heart and humanity? It’s kind of complicated.”

The team behind “RuPaul’s Drag Race” eventually traveled down to Louisville, where they discovered Season 17 star Lexi Love and learned that the disco ball was actually invented in the area around 1907.

“We went there and we fell in love with the city, fell in love with characters. One of our anxieties was we didn’t want to do a straightforward true crime doc,” Barbato continued. “But once we visited Louisville, it became clear how to do it. It’s really a love letter to Louisville and the community. It’s been a very long journey, because it’s such a complicated story.”

“Louisville is this sort of haunted backdrop and, really, what is a ghost story? They often begin with murders hundreds of years ago and then you get the story. This is not a ghost story, but it also is a ghost story,” Bailey explained. “The fact that Old Louisville even exists is because of queer people who saved it from the wrecking ball. An amazing gay community with an awesome legacy, it’s become one of my favorite cities. I hadn’t been there before we started doing this, and we’ve spent a lot of time over the last four years.”

So how exactly do the busy EPs approach telling such diverse stories that could range anywhere from campy competitions to their dozens of documentaries?

“Everything we do is serious, because when you think about it, the true crack cocaine of ‘Drag Race’ is the heart and the humanity,” Bailey said. “So, yes, this is a very, very dark story, but why I think people might connect to it is because of the other stuff, because of the other characters and the humanity and the different layers of what you can take away from it.”

“Murder in Glitterball City” airs Thursday at 8 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.

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