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An overwhelmingly vast number of psychic claims should be taken with a healthy dose of salt, and Call Me Miss Cleo aims to be sodium-free. HBO Max’s original documentary does, however, throw a little bit of corn syrup into the mix. It promises viewers an in-depth study on a complicated con game, Psychic Readers Network (Prn), a call-in service which took in billions of dollars from the desperately lonely, and pours out a VH1 Behind the Music-style tale of a fallen celebrity who couldn’t see her fate in the stars.

Call Me Miss Cleo is co-directed by Jennifer Brea and Celia Aniskovich, and they come at it with great empathy, which undercuts the accusations against the prime suspect, and makes the prosecuting investigators look like true believers. Neither is the case, but the ambiguity is only skimmed in the dark pond of corporate malfeasance and community standards. The late middle section,...

If you turned on a television in the late '90s and early 2000s, it was nearly impossible to miss a commercial for the psychic Miss Cleo, but before the FBI finally shut down the fraudulent business, it was a junior Court TV reporter who first discovered the scam.

Fresh out of journalism school, Matt Bean was an eager cub reporter when Miss Cleo, who passed away from colon cancer on Wednesday, was at the height of her psychic network success.

Suspicious of the business, Bean – who now works for People's parent company, Time Inc. – began investigating and got a...

If you turned on a television in the late '90s and early 2000s, it was nearly impossible to miss a commercial for the psychic Miss Cleo, but before the FBI finally shut down the fraudulent business, it was a junior Court TV reporter who first discovered the scam. Fresh out of journalism school, Matt Bean was an eager cub reporter when Miss Cleo, who passed away from colon cancer on Wednesday, was at the height of her psychic network success. Suspicious of the business, Bean began investigating and got a tip that the psychics were actually using a prewritten script,...

Brendan Bragg, Jordana Mollick and Dan Ventresca have joined the literary department at La-based Haven Entertainment. Bragg and Mollick come to Haven from Black Sheep Management & Productions which they founded in 2009 and Ventresca moves from Gersh. Bragg and Mollick are currently in production on Life Partners starring Leighton Meester, Gillian Jacobs and Adam Brody. They’re also producing Beth Schacter’s feature A Virgin Mary starring Abigail Breslin, Addison McQuigg’s Sonata and Steven Feder’s Hooking Up. Ventresca joins Haven as a literary manager. His clients at Gersh included Olympus Has Fallen scribes Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt. Haven Entertainment most recently produced A Band Called Death which won the 24 beats per second Audience Award at SXSW and sold to Drafthouse and the documentary Milius which also screened at SXSW.