The Perfect Neighbor Is an American Nightmare

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "The Perfect Neighbor Is an American Nightmare"

Cannonball with Wesley Morris
Host: Wesley Morris
Guest: Parul Sagal (NYT Critic)
Date: November 20, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the Netflix documentary "The Perfect Neighbor," which explores the 2023 shooting of Ajika Owens, a young Black mother, by her white neighbor, Susan Lawrence, in Florida. Through intricate analysis and deeply personal reactions, host Wesley Morris and critic Parul Sagal unpack the film’s ethical dilemmas, its use of police body cam footage, portrayals of race, trauma, and community, and how documentary form shapes our understanding of real-life tragedy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Initial Reactions & Reluctance to Watch

• Reluctance Based on Knowing the Story:
  • Morris admits he hesitated to watch the documentary, knowing it would require witnessing the death of a real person.
  • Sagal echoes the reluctance, saying, "I watched it with tremendous reluctance...I still am not sleeping well. Like, I’m still very, very jittery." [03:51]
• Draw for Filmmakers:
  • Sagal was compelled by fellow documentary filmmakers’ insistence that "there are questions in this film that you're going to want to engage with."

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2. Neighborhood Dynamics & Systemic Issues

• Chronic Tensions:
  • The documentary’s primary footage comes from police body cams covering repeated calls from Susan Lawrence regarding neighborhood kids playing outside.
  • Morris, referencing body cam footage: "Susan is calling to say all sorts of things about the kids on her property. The kids are loud. The kids are getting on her nerves." [06:28]
• Perceptions of Authority:
  • Police repeatedly advise children and parents to avoid antagonizing Susan, implicitly making the children responsible for managing her discomfort.
  • Sagal: "The kids are responsible. The kids are like, don’t aggravate the kids…when the police come and speak to the neighbors and specifically to the children…every single cop slips into this reverie: 'I remember when I was a kid.'" [09:07]
• Asymmetry of Danger:
  • Sagal notes, "The potential—it’s so different for Susan…for Susan, despite however unhinged she’s behaving, she’s essentially benign and treated that way." [14:43]
  • Even after displays of threatening or reckless behavior (brandishing a gun, ramming a gate), police approach Susan as fundamentally non-threatening.

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3. The Power of Perspective: Who Are We Identifying With?

• The documentary’s body cam angle roots viewers in the experience and point-of-view of police officers.
• Sagal observes, "We are the camera around their necks, Right? We identify with them." [12:47]
• This forced identification incurs ethical ambiguity: "Whose fear am I identifying with in that moment?" [13:08]

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4. Susan Lawrence’s Performed Victimhood

• Susan is adept at using her perceived vulnerability—her race, gender, and trauma—to draw police attention and sympathy.
• Sagal: "There’s a sense of her own inflated sense of her own weakness, her own vulnerability, her own fear, her own victimhood...And that, to me, I think…shows us very, very clearly these acts that people create and trot out in front of institutions…" [19:29]
• Morris: "This is a white woman who understands the power of her whiteness. And the kids also understand the power of her whiteness because she is called the Karen." [17:33]

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5. Ethical Dilemmas in Documentary Filmmaking

• Exposing Trauma:
  • The film includes the deeply personal moment of Ajika Owens’s children being told of their mother’s death.
  • Sagal struggled ethically: "I don’t know if I am entitled to see. Do I deserve to see this?...Ajika’s mother was very intent on keeping all of this in the movie...She’s invoked the lineage...the mother of Emmett Till." [24:37–25:20]
• Motivations & Memorialization:
  • The documentary is partially advocated as a memorial and a public reckoning, per Ajika’s mother Pamela Diaz, invoking civil rights traditions.

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6. Filmmakers’ Intentions vs. Audience Experience

• Sagal distinguishes between two films: the one the filmmakers think they made (an indictment of systemic failure, a memorial for victims) and the one viewers experience (a potentially more ambiguous narrative, with humanized police and little depth for any character).
• Sagal: "The film that these filmmakers have given us is a bit more wayward than they would like...the kids are a group, Susan is the villain, but we know so little about any of them." [20:19, 40:08]
• The use of police footage, meant as critique, may inadvertently reinforce authority or desensitize to suffering through the "watchability" of body cam storytelling.

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7. Documentary Form and New Ethical Frontiers

• The Double-Edged Sword of Found Footage:
  • The hosts discuss the transformative use of public records and body cams for artistic ends—highlighting both the objectivity, the loss of personal narrative, and the fine line between advocacy and voyeurism.
  • Morris: "The system is the filmmaker here, right? The system is at least the camera operator..." [37:49]
• Limits of Empathy and Identification:
  • Sagal observes how police body cam footage shapes identification, sometimes inverting the subversive intent by mainly humanizing authorities.
• Archival Material and Subversiveness:
  • Sagal: "What’s actually subversive is not that they’re reclaiming and retaking this footage and putting it to other ends, it’s that it’s humanizing the police." [34:30]

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8. Ambiguity, Absence, and What the Film Omits

• Character Depth:
  • The film provides little about Ajika Owens or Susan Lawrence’s backgrounds. Sagal supplements the discussion with research about Susan’s traumatic upbringing.
  • Sagal: "It's not only that it doesn't ask questions of Susan, but we don't really see Ajika. We don’t really see the children really, as specific children." [40:04]
• Unexplored Motivations:
  • The lack of interiority in everyone but Susan leaves the documentary emotionally and ethically fraught. Susan’s trauma is addressed more, which, as Sagal notes, brings in the notion of "the entitlement of her background, the entitlement of the trauma she's endured." [43:01]
• Form as Denial:
  • The filmmakers use the form as plausible deniability, avoiding deeper personal probing under the guise of found footage.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the film’s moral shock:
  "I watched most of it from in between my fingers." — Parul Sagal [00:34]
  "I’m still not sleeping well. Like, I’m still very, very jittery." — Parul Sagal [03:51]

• On body cam vantage:
  "We are the camera around their necks, Right? We identify with them." — Parul Sagal [12:47]

• On victimhood:
  "There’s a sense of her own inflated sense of her own weakness...her own victimhood." — Parul Sagal [19:29]
  "This is a white woman who understands the power of her whiteness." — Wesley Morris [17:33]

• On ethical discomfort:
  "I struggled with the notion of how I would feel as a child having that moment captured in that way and then put on the world’s biggest streaming platform." — Parul Sagal [24:37]

• On documentary objectivity:
  "What was beautiful about documentary is that...it was always nudging me, the ones that I love, into a place of...deeply conditional partial revelations, partial truths, you know, interpretation." — Parul Sagal [37:20]

• On the role of the system as filmmaker:
  "The system is the filmmaker here, right? The system is at least the camera operator." — Wesley Morris [37:49]

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Important Timestamps

• [03:51] Sagal describes her somatic, emotional reaction to viewing the film
• [06:28] Depiction of repeated police calls and community dynamic exposition
• [09:07] Police counseling neighborhood children and shifting responsibility
• [14:43] Analysis of how Susan is treated as benign by law enforcement
• [17:33] Notion of Susan as "the Karen" and her manipulation of racial power dynamics
• [24:37] Discussion around the ethics of showing children's trauma
• [29:07] The police interrogations of Susan Lawrence
• [32:13] The "watchability" of the documentary, and how it is shaped by movie conventions
• [34:30] How the film's use of footage paradoxically humanizes the police
• [40:04] Sagal points out the lack of deeper character exploration
• [43:01] Entitlement of trauma, weaponizing personal history

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Conclusion: The Film’s Enduring Questions

• The episode ends with both critics acknowledging the depth and complexity of "The Perfect Neighbor," and how it raises more questions than it answers—about community, race, documentary ethics, and the effects of capturing real trauma on camera.
• Sagal captures the heart of the ethical dilemma:
  "The lines between art and advocacy, I think, are just very, very useful to see." [43:38]
• Morris concludes:
  "I do feel like this movie is very, very complicated and very deep and raises a lot of questions. And I think that...I’m grateful for those questions." [44:11]

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For listeners, this episode is an intricate exploration of how we witness, process, and make sense of tragedy, and the films that try to capture it.

Transcript

[Eric Kim]

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[Parul Sagal]

Foreign.

[Wesley Morris]

I'm Wesley Morris and this is Cannonball Today. These are the people in your neighborhood, Anytime. Two very different people I love. Tell me I need to watch something. I. I'll probably do it, even if it's something I strongly suspect I'm not going to enjoy watching at all. That is pretty much how I found myself making my way over to Netflix to watch the documentary the Perfect Neighbor. It's about a woman who in 2023, shot and killed the lady who lives across the street in their working class central Florida neighborhood. The shooter, Susan Lawrence, is a middle aged white woman. Her victim, Adjica Owens, is a much younger black woman and the mother of four children. Half the movie is about the events that culminated in Owens murder. The other half is about what happens in the immediate wake of her death. And part of what makes this documentary, I'll say, fascinating is that a lot of the film's footage comes from police body cameras. And the movie's marriage of subject and form raises some moral, ethical and emotional questions that we left me no other choice but to reach out to my friend and colleague, Parul Sagal, one of my favorite critics of anything, period, and definitely one of my favorite people to go to to help untangle these kinds of knotty issues of art documenting life. And as it turns out, I didn't even have to ask her to watch this documentary because she'd already done it even before I did. And like me, I think she watched most of it from in between her fingers. So here is my conversation with Parl. Parl, welcome to Cannonball.

[Parul Sagal]

Thank you, Wesley.

[Wesley Morris]

I can't believe you're here. You were specially requested by the way. I mean, you're always. The carpet's always out for you. But somebody last night was like, when's Pearl coming on?

[Parul Sagal]

And you're like, I have something especially dour and frightening to see if I can conjure her up with.

[Wesley Morris]

I didn't tell him what we were talking about, but okay, let's just, let's begin with just why I at least dragged my feet to watch it. And part of it is, you know, knowing what the story was, that we were gonna have to sit through the death of a person, a person, you know, like a living person in a documentary. That made me uncomfortable. I knew this case. I'd read about it when it happened two years ago and had zero interest. At no point did I say, you know what? I'd love to see an entire movie about what led up to this woman being killed. But here we are with this film, and I'm actually curious. What drew you, of all the things you could have been watching, to watch that?

[Parul Sagal]

No, I watched it with tremendous reluctance. But I kept hearing, especially from my friends who were filmmakers or documentary filmmakers in particular, that I had to see it and not to see it in the sense that here's something that is, you know, a perfect work, although it's been, you know, generating a lot of Oscar excitement and all of that. But they just said that there are questions in this film that you're going to want to engage with, you're going to want to think about. And I saw it, as you say, like, really between my fingers, I think, more specifically, kind of like in a. In a little, like, kind of crouch. And for me, the story of this film, first of all, is just like its somatic effect. I still am not sleeping well. Like, I'm still very, very jittery. I'm still very jumpy. There's so much to say about this film. There's so much to dig into it. And I think that one of the most interesting things, first of all, is how the filmmakers have tried to do this to get us to look at what seems unbearable to watch.

[Wesley Morris]

Well, talk to me about the somatic response that you had to watching it. Because, I mean, I guess, is it the actual circumstances? Because basically, what we're talking about here is fundamentally a community relations situation, right? A neighborhood where the things that typically happen in a neighborhood, at least a functional one, include such things as kids being outside and playing all hours of the day. And that breaks down at some point because somebody in the community, this woman who does not like, you know, we'll start off being very generous. She does not like the sound of these kids playing outside. And she does not like their proximity to her home, which, you know, she's expanded in her mind the property line, so that these kids are playing on her property, so to speak. And what you're watching is an assortment of officers over the course of about a year and a half, talk to the Neighbors on this street about the phone calls that 911 has been getting the sheriff's department from this woman named Susan.

[Susan Lawrence]

I'm having parties with the neighbor's children. They come up to me and just scream like idiots.

[Wesley Morris]

Susan is calling to say all sorts of things about the kids on her property. The kids are loud. The kids are getting on her nerves. The kids are threatening her. The mother of four of the kids, Ajika, is also threatening her. She's concerned for her safety. Her nerves are shredded. At some point, we hear her say, I need to know what I should do.

[Susan Lawrence]

Is there anything I can do with these people? Because they're getting ridiculous. I mean, I don't bug anybody. I'm a single woman. I work from home. You know, I'm peaceful and quiet. I'm like the perfect neighbor.

[Parul Sagal]

It's a very eerie thing. It's almost like we're seeing a stage set, right? All the interactions take place on that street. It's like the curtain rises, and it's like another incident, another call.

[Ajika Owens' Father]

9, 1 1.

[Eric Kim]

What is the address?

[Wesley Morris]

Emergency.

[Susan Lawrence]

I got kids trespassing again. They're leaving all the coins around and just screaming, yelling, just being absolutely not, right?

[Parul Sagal]

We keep coming back to that place, and we keep coming back to familiar people, right? Familiar neighbors will come out. Phyllis, the one sort of incandescent with rage. White woman who lives there and just cannot believe how Susan is talking to the children, right? She's also calling them names. She called them slaves. She told them that the field that they weren't on wasn't the underground railroad. And the officers are coming back repeatedly. You know, they come back and they're like, yeah, we know the situation. We know this woman. We see something of a dynamic emerge between the police and the neighborhood.

[Susan Lawrence]

See, every time I go, I walk.

[Parul Sagal]

Past, she thinks we're trying to steal her truck, go buy her truck.

[Wesley Morris]

We're not even.

[Parul Sagal]

How old are you?

[Wesley Morris]

We're 11, okay?

[Eric Kim]

Yeah.

[Wesley Morris]

Do you even know how to drive? I actually found that fascinating, the. The way in which Susan brings the police and this neighborhood in alignment with each other. And, like, human alignment, right? Not strategic alignment. Although the police are trying to give the kids and the parents advice about how to behave with respect to this person, which is basically, just leave her alone.

[Police Officer]

If she starts screaming at you guys, I want you to go tell an adult, okay? I don't want you to antagonize her, okay? Because what happens is when you guys antagonize her, she can make you guys look bad, and you guys are just out here playing, right?

[Susan Lawrence]

Yeah.

[Parul Sagal]

But they give them advice. But it's very striking, too, because they make them responsible, right?

[Wesley Morris]

Yes, yes.

[Parul Sagal]

The kids are responsible. The kids are like, don't aggravate the kids.

[Wesley Morris]

Don't antagonize.

[Parul Sagal]

Don't antagonize. And you know what's interesting is when the police come and speak to the neighbors and specifically to the children, what do they do? But remember.

[Police Officer]

So I was a kid once. Everyone was a kid once. We're all loud as kids. We like to yell and scream and fight. And so I get it.

[Parul Sagal]

Every. Almost every single cop slips into this reverie.

[Wesley Morris]

I remember when I was a kid.

[Parul Sagal]

I remember doing this. I remember doing worse than what you're doing. There's this way that they're both, you know, kind of seemingly moved by the children and remembering their own childhoods, but not treating the children like children. Right. There's no concern for the fact that she's yelling. Hateful and racist.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes, yes.

[Parul Sagal]

Speech in their direction that she's harassing. Right. There's no. It's very, very striking that it's sort of seen as this, well, unhinged, cranky old lady, you know, who we just. It's best to. It's best not to rile her up.

[Wesley Morris]

Just don't upset her. Right.

[Parul Sagal]

So I think that this movie is very interesting to me because I do think that when I think about it, when I struggle with it, it's with two films. One is the film that I think the documentary filmmakers think they're making.

[Wesley Morris]

Oh, I love this distinction. I love this distinction.

[Parul Sagal]

And then the second one is the film that I'm watching. Right. And I think that as far as I can tell from interviews and all of this, they see the film as indicting the officers in a way that I don't. Right. And that I think that most viewers.

[Wesley Morris]

What's the indictment?

[Parul Sagal]

That there was not more of a sense of sticking up for the kids and being more proactive in protecting the community. Right. But that's not what I think most of us get when we watch the film. Right. And I should say a little bit about the director who's very, very interesting. A woman named Geeta Gandhir, who is Indian American and got her start. I think the first movie she ever.

[Wesley Morris]

Worked on was Malcolm X, Spike Lee's Malcolm X92.

[Parul Sagal]

She was a student at Harvard studying animation. And Spike Lee came to speak, and she just went up to him and said, I want to apprentice with you. I want to work with you. And she got an internship and she worked and edited a slew of his movies, Bamboozled when the Levees Broke. She's just been in the world of telling stories about racial justice and also gender. I think she made a documentary called I'm Evidence about untested rape kits. So she's somebody who really thinks about storytelling and advocacy together. Very, very closely related. And she has a personal connection to this story. You know, it was a relative. Some relatives of hers were very close to Ajika. In fact, I think one of her relatives lived in that house before Ajika did and said, come to this community. Come actually live in this house. This is a great place to raise children.

[Wesley Morris]

And this is like an in law of the filmmaker.

[Parul Sagal]

This is, I think, her sister in law.

[Wesley Morris]

Okay.

[Parul Sagal]

So when she heard of the killing, she went down and they started taking a lot of footage, a lot of interviews, in part not to make a film at first, but to sort of draw attention to the case. And as they were reviewing it, she says, she was like, this is a film. And in interviews, she's very, very clear about wanting to indict the system and saying the system not only failed the community, it failed AJ Failed the children, but it also, in a way, failed Susan. It did not protect her from herself. This is what she says. That's not the film I saw, right? No, that's not the movie I've seen.

[Wesley Morris]

Wait, hold on. I wanna actually come back to the movie we saw.

[Parul Sagal]

Yeah.

[Wesley Morris]

But in order to do that, I wanna sort of spend a little more time in, like, the granular details of, like. I wanna come back to this question of what it is that we are watching law enforcement do.

[Parul Sagal]

Not just watching law enforcement. What are we watching as law enforcement? Yes, we are the camera around their necks, Right? Right. We identify with them. Right? Right. In so many scenes, especially the scenes at night when they go to Susan's house and they've got the flashlight and they're ringing the doorbell, and then they move away to create that birth. Whose fear am I identifying with in that moment, Wesley?

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, right? Yes, yes.

[Parul Sagal]

Who am I being collapsed? Whose consciousness am I being collapsed inside?

[Wesley Morris]

The other thing that I find really notable about this framework that we're talking about and the way you've identified who we're identifying with, just in terms of point of view, is the number of times we hear the police say to Susan, you know what? I know you don't like these kids playing and making all this noise and stuff. I know you think it's obnoxious.

[Parul Sagal]

But I'd rather kids be screaming. Cause they're out here playing and having.

[Susan Lawrence]

Good time than stealing cars and robbing people.

[Wesley Morris]

I'd rather have them doing this than committing crime. I'd rather be talking to you about, like, noise.

[Parul Sagal]

Yeah.

[Wesley Morris]

And I felt like they're like the binary here is that if these kids aren't getting on Susan Lawrence's nerves, they're going to be out in the streets doing something else.

[Parul Sagal]

Yeah.

[Wesley Morris]

There's something about the way that the police talk to the kids where it almost sort of feels like they're future criminals in some way.

[Parul Sagal]

Yeah, of course.

[Wesley Morris]

Or like, criminals, like, there's crime in. Out there waiting for them somewhere.

[Parul Sagal]

Well, there's crime inside them.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Crime inheres to these people. And like, like, just. Just don't aggravate. Don't get to a point where, like, you have to, like, have an incident with this person.

[Parul Sagal]

Right, right, right. And the potential. Obviously it's so different for. For Susan. Right. Because the way that they treat her and interact with her is if there is no potential for danger in her. Right, right. So the children are essentially, as you're saying, potential criminals. Sort of. Kind of something in them is. Is going to emerge that is dangerous and destructive. Right. But for Susan, despite, however unhinged she's behaving, she's essentially benign and treated that way. Right. Even to the point where they describe that she'd been seen brandishing a gun.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes.

[Parul Sagal]

She'd thrown things. She was using racist speech at the children. Right. At no point do the police officers. Does anybody speak to the parents about harassment, about abusing emergency services. At no point does that come up. Right. There's a very odd sort of disturbing interlude where it's revealed where she had gotten her truck stuck behind, like, a locked fence for some reason, like, locked on the property. It's never really explained how that happened. What she was doing there.

[Wesley Morris]

We don't know. But we do know that she used her truck to ram her way out or try to ram her way out. And the guy has called the police. And to be like, you know, she fucked my gate up. Like, y' all need to do something about this. And they trace the car to her address and they show up.

[Parul Sagal]

We're in a minute.

[Police Officer]

Jeez, Sheriff's office.

[Wesley Morris]

And she comes to the door and she's indignant.

[Susan Lawrence]

What do you want?

[Police Officer]

Are you Ms. Susan?

[Susan Lawrence]

Yes, I am.

[Police Officer]

Can you step out here for a second?

[Wesley Morris]

I was asleep. What do you want?

[Police Officer]

Okay.

[Wesley Morris]

It's the first Time in the movie where we understand that something.

[Police Officer]

Hello.

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, it's not the first time we understand it. It's a corroboration of what we have already come to suspect, which is that this person is off.

[Parul Sagal]

Something is ratcheting up in her. Something is starting to happen.

[Susan Lawrence]

And so I panicked. I mean, I really panicked. And I thought I was being trouble. I thought someone was left behind me.

[Police Officer]

Okay, so here's the issue that we're gonna have.

[Parul Sagal]

This person is capable of damage, right? And one of the things the guy says who owns this mysterious lot, we don't even know what it is. He says, there's a number. People call the number if they get locked in. But she didn't.

[Wesley Morris]

You know, she rammed it.

[Parul Sagal]

Yeah. And then we also see that we.

[Wesley Morris]

Know she can call a number. I mean, we.

[Parul Sagal]

Yes, yes. But we also see there, again, that defense of my fear and my perception, my inability to hold my own fear justifies any and everything. You know, there isn't that sense of, like, I can't believe this happened. This is unlike. No, there was a sense of, listen, when I get to this place, I can. You know, I feel entitled to do these things.

[Wesley Morris]

Right. And Susan fully understands. I mean, we can get into, or set aside even what her state of mind is, her mental health. But fundamentally, for my purposes at least, this is a white woman who understands the power of her whiteness. And the kids also understand the power of her whiteness because she is called the Karen.

[Police Officer]

You guys chasing a dog or trying to put a dog into a car or something?

[Susan Lawrence]

No, the Karen called.

[Parul Sagal]

Yeah, the Karen called. Yeah. She sounds.

[Susan Lawrence]

I don't know why she keeps trying to.

[Wesley Morris]

Like, among themselves, they're just living life. They're not a problem. But this woman is problematizing them and understands that one way to lure the attention. Cause I feel like this is part of the dynamic here. The attention of the police is by exploiting the thing that we're talking about, about the crime inside these children, like where no crime is being committed, but the fact of them. The fact of them is a crime.

[Parul Sagal]

The fact of them is a crime. And the fact of her, as she experiences herself is what she regards as her profound vulnerability.

[Wesley Morris]

Victimhood.

[Parul Sagal]

Every time we see her, it's very striking. Not every time, but I noticed how she'll frequently be like, I'm cold. She's just always trying to make herself small in physical discomfort. This is hurting. I have this ailment I'm working on, you know, so there's a sense of her own inflated sense of her own weakness, her own vulnerability, her own fear, her own victimhood. Right. And I think what's interesting about Susan in these moments is that we get to see the variety of moves she has. Right. We see different versions of her.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes.

[Parul Sagal]

And that, to me, I think, you know, when I was sort of processing this film and trying to ask myself, what did I see sitting through this film, which was so hard to watch? And again, it goes back to this idea that the film that these filmmakers have given us slightly. It's a bit more wayward than they would like, you know? And I think that one of the things that it shows us very, very clearly are these that people create and trot out in front of institutions. Right, right, right. And how dramatically we see a Susan who will be protesting. I'm scared of the children or what do you want? I'm indignant. It's nighttime. How dare you bother me. Oh, I'm in trouble. Okay. I'm a little bit cold.

[Wesley Morris]

I'm a child.

[Parul Sagal]

And then I'm a child. But then when that doesn't quite work, then we hear that other voice, a very pragmatic voice happens. Listen, I'd taken some medicines. That's why I didn't want to talk. Now I can talk and I can explain it, and I can make it. Right, right, right.

[Wesley Morris]

You know. Yes, yes.

[Parul Sagal]

So we see the savvy.

[Wesley Morris]

Right. There's the victim, the orchestrator.

[Parul Sagal]

Well, she's managing the police throughout this film in a way that I found very interesting. She's very good at it. She's very, very good at it.

[Wesley Morris]

She's the person who does all the summoning. Yeah, but we should say that the one time to just sort of be. In the. In the event of the film, the one time that the community calls the police on Susan. It's too late.

[Parul Sagal]

Yeah. 911. What is the.

[Wesley Morris]

Boy? As the police are approaching, what we're hearing is and seeing are people on the street waving to the police to come help. And it's really devastating in part because, you know, we know that Adrica Owens has been shot. And you're watching the kids cry for their mother, the neighbors cry for the kids, and the mother, at some point, it's clear that the parent is needed. So they call. They summon the police, summon the father to come to the scene. And then the father is tasked with telling the kids that the mother is dying.

[Parul Sagal]

So you have to see the father be told.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes.

[Parul Sagal]

And he lets out this sort of primal sound.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah.

[Parul Sagal]

Right. This is his Ex. This is the mother of his children. He lets out a sound that. I don't think I've heard something like that on camera. They're full of monsters.

[Wesley Morris]

Not in a documentary. It's rare.

[Parul Sagal]

And in part, also, as you're watching that, you know, we're watching it because there's a police officer following him, and he kind of staggers off and there's somebody watching him. Everything we see, it's because there's a cop standing there, right? And very close. Right? Then we also, as you say, he has to tell the children, today has.

[Ajika Owens' Father]

Been a very bad day. There's something bad has happened. And all y' all seen it. Y' all understand it. Y' all experienced it, right?

[Eric Kim]

Okay.

[Ajika Owens' Father]

Y' all love me.

[Eric Kim]

Okay?

[Ajika Owens' Father]

Y' all love Mom. All right, well, I got some bad news to tell you. Mom is not coming back in.

[Wesley Morris]

And.

[Ajika Owens' Father]

Come, come, come. No, no, don't.

[Wesley Morris]

Come here.

[Ajika Owens' Father]

Come over here. Listen to me. No, no. I know.

[Parul Sagal]

Okay.

[Ajika Owens' Father]

It's okay.

[Parul Sagal]

I know.

[Ajika Owens' Father]

It's okay. I know. I'm sorry.

[Parul Sagal]

Okay.

[Ajika Owens' Father]

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

[Parul Sagal]

I mean, that's something that. I don't know. I was following the sort of conversations online about the ethics of showing that scene of the children hearing that their mother had been killed and how people feel, you know, just. And I don't know, I also really struggled with that. I struggled with, like, this is something that I don't know if I am entitled to see. You know, do I deserve to see this? I really struggled with this. I really struggled with the notion of how I would feel as a child having that moment captured in that way and then put on the world's biggest streaming platform. Right. And the idea about children and informed consent and all this sort of stuff that we think about. Right. Ajika's mother was very intent on keeping all of this in the movie. And the filmmakers and her as they've been sort of doing interviews.

[Wesley Morris]

Her name is Pamela Diaz.

[Parul Sagal]

Pamela Diaz, Right. And she's. One of the things that she said is that she's invoked the lineage, and she said that she thinks about the mother of Emmett Till.

[Wesley Morris]

Mamie Till, sure. Who insisted that her son's bludgeoned corpse be put on display for the world to see at the funeral and then.

[Parul Sagal]

To be photographed and put in magazines, you know, to say, look what. Look what they did to my child. You know, so this is something that also feels so deeply important to consider when you think about a film like this, which is made for a number of Reasons.

[Susan Lawrence]

Right.

[Parul Sagal]

And one of the reasons I think this film was made, as the directors have said, was for the family, you know, and was a way to do something with their grief and to translate their grief into a form of action, a form of memorialization. You know.

[Wesley Morris]

I think we should take a break.

[Parul Sagal]

Okay.

[Wesley Morris]

And when we come back, I want to sort of think through what it means for this memorialization to live on, as you say, the world's biggest streaming platform, but also to come back to this really smart observation that you've made. You've dichotomized this project. And there's the thing that you're talking about, which is what the filmmakers wanted and what Ajika's mother Pam wanted. And then there's the movie that we're watching. So I want to, like, think through, like, the distinction that should be made between those two things and what they amount to.

[Parul Sagal]

And also which film matters in the end.

[Wesley Morris]

Right.

[Parul Sagal]

Do they compete against each other? Right. Right.

[Detective]

All right.

[Wesley Morris]

We're going to take a break. We'll be right.

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[Isabella Rossellini]

What happens when an ancient rose farm in France becomes an open sky laboratory? And how can a cosmetology program in India offer a road to economic empowerment? Hi there.

[Parul Sagal]

Hi.

[Isabella Rossellini]

I'm Isabella Rossellini. And in the latest episode of this Is Not a Beauty podcast from l' Oreal Group, we speak to an organic flower farmer and a beauty school graduate and how beauty shapes business. Listen now on your favorite podcast platform.

[Wesley Morris]

We're back. We're talking about the Perfect Neighbor, streaming on Netflix. A film about a woman who shoots her neighbor. I mean, to be extremely reductive about it, but I also want to, because so far you and I have been talking about the incidents that lead up to this shooting and this woman's death. But I really want to sit with how the movie was made because I think a really surprising thing that happens, at least for me, because, you know, the thing that the movie tells you the minute you sit down to watch it is like, this film is comprised of two years of police body camera footage. What it does not tell you is that you will be spending the back half of this film, basically with Susan and her police interrogation. Two of them. I was astonished by the second interrogation.

[Detective]

Susan, I appreciate you coming back in.

[Wesley Morris]

And talking, because that's the one where the, you know, the detectives kind of. They know what they're going to do at the end of this thing. They're going to basically arrest her and they're asking her questions about whether or not, you know, if we looked at your search history right now, anything kind.

[Detective]

Of research on your Internet history that would show that you've done research on, like, self defense or have you ever heard of the term stand your ground?

[Wesley Morris]

Did we find anything about something like stand your ground or self defense?

[Detective]

Have you ever done any kind of research on that?

[Susan Lawrence]

Yes, when it was mentioned on. Some guy shot someone at a convenience store and they said Stanley Graham now.

[Wesley Morris]

Which she concedes. You know, I have cause. Four, I think. Is it four weeks pass between the shooting, Ajika's death, and this second interrogation?

[Parul Sagal]

Yeah, it's a substantial amount of time. Yeah.

[Detective]

Susan, I think you know the reason why I'm asking that question. You're smart. Okay. And the reason is.

[Susan Lawrence]

Oh, hell, no. No, absolutely. I know what you're thinking. Did I look up the laws so I could do something? No, absolutely.

[Detective]

This is not a situation where you set something up to. Because you were tired of this person. You were tired of the situation that they put you in.

[Wesley Morris]

But kind of went through your first interview at some point, you know, he's like, ma', am, I'm gonna have to place you under arrest. And the most extraordinary thing happens.

[Detective]

Okay, so you're gonna go with this deputy.

[Parul Sagal]

No, I'm not.

[Detective]

You're gonna be booked in.

[Parul Sagal]

No, I'm not.

[Detective]

And fingerprinted.

[Parul Sagal]

No.

[Detective]

They're going to take your pictures, and then you will have an arraignment in the morning.

[Parul Sagal]

I'm not going.

[Wesley Morris]

Sorry. It says no. There's a phone down there. You'll be able to call whoever you need to call right there in booking.

[Susan Lawrence]

I'm not going.

[Wesley Morris]

But, Susan, you. We are. We are going. There's no change in that now. You're. You're under arrest. In fact, we'd probably go ahead and.

[Parul Sagal]

Put handcuffs on her.

[Wesley Morris]

Let's get our Susan cuffed. Stand up.

[Susan Lawrence]

Don't touch me.

[Wesley Morris]

Susan, stand up.

[Detective]

Susan.

[Parul Sagal]

No.

[Wesley Morris]

Listen, it can go one of two ways and go an easy way, or it can go really hard.

[Susan Lawrence]

I'm sorry.

[Wesley Morris]

All I could think was. I have never thought about the Interrogation room as a privileged space before. Yeah, but think about all the people who never get to see one. Never get to see one to plead their case, to explain why they did what they did, to even have the chance to be trapped into saying the wrong thing.

[Parul Sagal]

What do you think they think they're showing us?

[Wesley Morris]

Damn, Pearl, that's my question for you.

[Parul Sagal]

Let's figure it out. Because I.

[Wesley Morris]

I think that one thing that's happening in that room, and this is me as a movie person, sort of thinking about what I'm being. What I'm. What I'm being asked to watch, is separate from the thing that makes it easier to watch it. I think that the moviness of this.

[Parul Sagal]

Thing, Very much so, yes, yes.

[Wesley Morris]

Is what I found to be the most unsettling. This is a very deeply, profoundly watchable movie. I know how to watch this movie.

[Parul Sagal]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Wesley Morris]

I have been trained by the movies to watch this movie.

[Parul Sagal]

The film sort of watches you watching it, right? And sort of can anticipate all these things. But why is it distressing its watchability to you?

[Wesley Morris]

Because it's in complete alignment with the police. Yeah, the police. I mean, you know, because the question with found footage, for me, my sticking point has always been, who is the editor here who has brought these images to us, right?

[Parul Sagal]

You want to know who has assembled it, who has touched it, who has cut it. I mean, this is film. It's also like the idea of working with found footage or found texts and reclaiming them and subverting them is not new, right? You have so many works of history that have to derive from instruments of state surveillance and torture. All of the books of history, right, that have to go in and rely on archives of slavery, for example, are trying to remake something out of deeply barbaric documents, you know, but there is always some kind of consideration about how this is being handled, how this is being put together, how it's being reconstituted. You know, I'm thinking of people like Zediya Hartman, who really thought deeply about what it means to use anything in a state's archive.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes, yes, yes. And the great academic and scholar and author Saidiya Hartman, whose work has essentially been about the sort of almost geneal, like, spiritual, genealogical legacy of the history of this country and how it just.

[Parul Sagal]

Lives in us, and how sometimes these pieces and these scraps from these archives are all we have, and we have to make use of them, but we also have to make use of. Take great pains to explain how they've come into our hands. Their particular Power, what they reify.

[Wesley Morris]

There's an ethics that you have to deploy in the use of these materials.

[Parul Sagal]

Yes. And I think that the queasiness, the discomfort that attends the watching of this film comes from, I think, the filmmakers really deep conviction that they are doing something subversive with this. And I actually don't know if I. I don't know, because I do think that one of the reasons the film has had this kind of purchase on the imagination and seemingly, at least where I'm sitting, galvanized so many people, is because what's actually subversive is not that they're reclaiming and retaking this footage and putting it to other ends, it's that it's humanizing the police. That's what feels subversive to a lot of these viewers. Right. That they're actually these really nice guys. And I'm watching the police come and, you know, walk up to these group of children and, oh, my gosh, they're sympathizing with them. You know, they're muttering that the, you know, the Karen is a psycho. You know, they seem to be on the side of the children and the side of the community. But it's. I don't know, it's. The film does not seem to be entirely in control of what it seems to be unleashing.

[Wesley Morris]

No, no. And I think that, like, this is the best. This is the best you can hope for, right? This is the best case scenario for this footage. This, to me, is a floodgate opening to me. I don't know what happens in the wake of this thing interesting, but what we're talking about, the use of archival anything to make anything old, old, old, old, old. But the use, like filing a FOIA request, a Freedom of Information act request, to get this footage, this body cam footage, and turning that into art and entertainment is. That's new. We're in a new realm here.

[Parul Sagal]

Well, I think Ross said the documentary is going to be in a profoundly different realm. Because one of the things that I've loved about the form is the moment where somebody comes to sit down in front of the camera and kind of adjust themselves. Do you know what I mean? That scene, that's so paradigmatic. And then they begin to speak. And it's kind of like the way that even before they say something, I've already got an attitude towards the classic, like. And then they'll be like, is this my mic on? Is my hair?

[Wesley Morris]

I'm Wesley Morris. I'm a critic at the New York Times.

[Parul Sagal]

Well, it was an Ordinary Tuesday. But that moment of, like, that encounter that we have with someone as they start to narratize their own experience and think that they have the truth and think they know. And so much of documentaries about a bunch of different people sitting together and realizing that that's not what happened, that's not what I knew, that's not the truth. This is it, you know?

[Wesley Morris]

This is it.

[Parul Sagal]

Yeah, go on.

[Wesley Morris]

No, keep going.

[Parul Sagal]

I don't know where I was going.

[Wesley Morris]

Well, it's basically that, like, that. That tension has been removed from this process. Right.

[Parul Sagal]

There's an effort to remove that tension, and there's an effort to replace it with something that feels objective and will be presented to us as objective. Right. So, in fact, what was beautiful about documentary is that, for me at least, it was always nudging me, the ones that I love, into a place of, like, deeply conditional partial revelations, partial truths, you know, interpretation, people still living with what they thought had happened and a sense that they would go on and still have their own other interpretations. Right.

[Wesley Morris]

The complexity of this movie and the reason that I find it fascinating is that you are watching. I mean, the system is the filmmaker here, right? The system is at least the camera operator. The system is part of the filmmaking team. So I am inherently. I don't know if distrust is right, but I. I'm a little queasy.

[Parul Sagal]

Yes. Yeah.

[Wesley Morris]

But.

[Parul Sagal]

But in that. That queasiness, that feeling of skepticism, that feeling of. I don't know if I can trust this or believe this. These are always feelings that I'm grateful to have, and I think you are, too.

[Wesley Morris]

You mean in a work of art or art.

[Parul Sagal]

Absolutely right. Anything that makes you more attentive, that makes you able to hold these sorts of ambiguities. I like, right where I come into where I struggle with this film, not in a productive way, is that this is not the movie that the filmmakers say they made. Right, Right. They made a movie, as they say, that is rooted and embedded in the community where they took a form of technology that is used to surveil and is used to protect police officers. And from that, they have made a film in which, I mean, it's a film, but it's also a fairy tale. Right. In which there is this beautiful multiracial community that is cohesive, that looks after each other and their children. Right. And there is this ogre who lives under the bridge. Right. Who, you know, we don't really think deeply about motivations. We don't really, really. We don't really know very much about anybody in this film, do we. And I think that that moment in the. The moment with the truck, I think is pertinent because it's also one of the few times that we have any other sense of access, of story, about any of the characters, so to speak. You know, that feels a side that we can use to sort of try to understand what has happened. Right. Can I bring in one piece of information that's not in the film?

[Wesley Morris]

Sure.

[Parul Sagal]

I just wanted to. I just. I.

[Wesley Morris]

So you went and dug around.

[Parul Sagal]

I dug around. I dug around. And one of the things that. I just became curious, I mean, because the film itself is so incurious about its characters as people and can use.

[Wesley Morris]

The form as a kind of plausible deniability in that respect.

[Parul Sagal]

Exactly. Right. It's not only that it doesn't ask questions of Susan, but we don't really see. Ajika. We don't really see the children really, as specific children. We see them as a group. Right, right, right. And I understand why that's the case, but I also just became curious about. About the specific sort of personalities and histories behind it. And one of the things. I mean, you can see all of this is online, the trial, the testimonies of Susan's sister also, which is very harrowing, you know, and sort of shares her own story. Their father was a Hungarian immigrant who was in a concentration camp. Sexually and physically abuse both girls from the age of three on. So much. It's so painful. There's so much suffering. But one detail really did stick out to me, which is that the two girls as. And I think it's because it isn't presented as important. The sister says that as children, the two girls were put in charge of the household. They had to cook for the men. They had to do all the cleaning. You know, what they didn't do, they didn't play, you know, and she doesn't say. She doesn't use the word play. She just describes, like, a daily routine that is just backbreaking, you know, And I just think that there's something there about not just her rage where those children are concerned, but a kind of envy.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah.

[Parul Sagal]

A kind of.

[Wesley Morris]

Well, like a failure. Well, I don't know. I mean, she. She probably associates. I don't know. I mean, I don't want to.

[Parul Sagal]

It's hard to get into her head. No, it's hard. It's hard.

[Wesley Morris]

I do think that there's something about. Feeling. That. That freedom that those kids are experiencing is almost a mockery of her trauma.

[Parul Sagal]

Yeah.

[Wesley Morris]

To the Extent that. I mean, none of this is exonerating. It's just.

[Parul Sagal]

None of it is exonerating.

[Wesley Morris]

It's just explanatory in some way.

[Parul Sagal]

It's explanatory, and I think it brings out for me at least this important. This important aspect of the film. Right. Where you talk about Susan weaponizing her gender and race. Right. To call the police as a white woman in danger means something very specific. Right. But in part, she's doing that because she's weaponizing what she considers to be her trauma. And she feels entitled because of that. She feels entitled because what she has endured is great. And what she tells the police officers again and again, the children are threatening me. And listen, I have this history of sexual and domestic abuse. Right. So the entitlement of her background, the entitlement of the trauma she's endured feels salient to me in the story as well.

[Wesley Morris]

You know, I don't enjoy the talking head movie or documentary approach often because it just. It leads you nowhere visually interesting.

[Parul Sagal]

True.

[Wesley Morris]

But what winds up happening as a result in some cases is that you. You run afoul of a lot of ethical concerns in the pursuit of some higher morality. And I think that's where this movie.

[Parul Sagal]

Lives because it seems to both pose and live in these deeply difficult ethical knots.

[Wesley Morris]

Right.

[Parul Sagal]

You know, and so the ones that. The sort of questions that this film is putting in our faces right now about, you know, about intelligence, about art without fingerprints, about what it means to work with this footage, about where our sympathy lies, about the lines between art and advocacy, I think are just very, very useful to see.

[Wesley Morris]

All right. Parle. I don't know if we did it, but I feel. I do feel. I do feel like we. I do feel like this movie is very, very complicated and very deep and raises a lot of questions. And I think that, like.

[Parul Sagal]

And I'm grateful for those questions, we.

[Wesley Morris]

We got to talk about them, which is all I really wanted to do.

[Parul Sagal]

True.

[Wesley Morris]

Thanks.

[Parul Sagal]

Thank you, Wesley.

[Wesley Morris]

This episode of Cannonball was produced by John White, Janelle Anderson, Elissa Dudley and Austin Mitchell. It was edited by Lisa Tobin. Daniel Ramirez engineered the this episode. It was recorded by Matty Masiello. Kyle Grandillo and Nick Pittman. Dan Powell and Diane Wong did our original music. Our theme music, as always, is by Justin Ellington. Bobby Doherty. He took the photo for our show art. Our video team is Brooke Minters and Felice Leon. This episode was filmed by Alfredo Chiarapa, Dave Mayers and Lauren Pruitt. It was edited by Jeremy Rockland and Amy marino. We on YouTube, y'. All watch and subscribe. Thanks for listening. Next week, Closer, Double Fantasy, In Utero, Life After Death. Aliyah. Back to Black. What do these things have in common? You figure it out, you'll know what next week's episode is about. Thanks for listening, everybody. I'll talk to you next week.

[Parul Sagal]

Sam.