TV Show ReviewFilm Festival

TV Show Review: THE BIG CONN: Documentary Sheds Light on Shyster Disability Lawyer [Apple TV Plus, SXSW 2022]

Lazarte Hernandez The Big Conn

The Big Conn Review

The Big Conn (2022) TV Show Review from the 29th Annual South by Southwest Film Festival, a movie written and directed by James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte, starring Eric C. Conn, Jordyn Conn, Sarah Carver, Jennifer Griffith, Ned Pillersdorf, and Damian Paletta.

Eric C. Conn is the quintessential shyster in its purest form.

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This horrifying tale of greed was presented as the first two episodes of a limited series. With respect to investigating the nature of greed, The Big Conn carries particular relevance on the basis of irony. Had “Big Ed” played by the rules, he would still have been a multimillionaire.

The first episode recounts the aptly named Conn with regard to his background and quick rise to  success. Many considered his marketing strategy ingenious, and with good reason. Conn had a flashy public style. Reporters, jurists, prosecutors and defense attorneys alike seem to agree on this singular point. It was right out of the ‘American Dream’ playbook.

Conn was a local who understood the plight of his clients only too well. Like other Appalachian communities, Pikeville, Kentucky suffered economic decline as well as a spike in work-related injuries after the coal mines closed. And here is where he saw his opportunity. His sunny, good-ole-boy affability inspired confidence and promised hope.

And sure enough, Conn delivered. ‘Media saturation’ is the technical term. Ornate (actually, tacky) billboards along every highway and even secondary roads. There were television spots with beautiful women — ‘Conn’s Hotties,’ he called them — in low-cut t-shirts imprinted with his contact information. It was gauche, but it worked. He dubbed himself “Mr. Social Security,” and his reputation that he never lost a disability claim was well deserved by all accounts.

As flashy as Conn was in public, he was equally swanky in his personal life. He ‘lived large,’ as the saying goes, and was determined to share the wealth. In truth, Conn did bring some economic stability to his wide professional purview. Conn enjoyed a hometown hero’s welcome wherever he went. Not too much thought was given as to how Conn wrought his miracles dealing with the bureaucracy, but not to worry; it all had to be legal. Too many checks and balances — someone would surely notice if something wasn’t on the up-and-up.

But someone did notice — some two, actually.

This segues into the second episode, or the second half of the pilot. Two employees at the local Social Security office, Jennifer Griffith and Sarah Carver, began to notice irregularities when it came to the disability hearing schedule. An inordinate number of Conn’s cases were assigned, or intercepted and then reassigned, to a certain Judge David B. Daugherty. The fact that these disability claims were decided favorably in record time, nearly always in minutes instead of months.

When repeated efforts to report these infringements through the proper channels failed these women, owing to their own conscience, they risks their careers and even their own safety. They became whistleblowers. Here the filmmakers bring to the fore an already precarious judiciary gone  wrong for too long.

Conn’s employees, reported to his mother, as manager, who evidently ruled with iron fist, demanding their cult-like loyalty to her son. One female employee enjoyed her work there for the most part, despite the unusual jocularity of her boss. Conn also enjoys reciprocal affection with his daughter, Jordyn, his only child. She describes him as a ‘big kid.’

The Wall Street Journal blew the loudest whistle in the end, and the agencies heard. Hearings were scheduled despite the government shut-down at the time. Conn had wrangled a sentence of house arrest and promptly cut off his monitor and took it on the lam. These episodes contain clips of a manifesto Conn he had written as a fugitive to explain his transgressions. In it, he states the he just used ‘a system that was already broken.’ A crook’s argument to be sure, but also sheds some light on the nugget of truth at the center.

The filmmakers manage to corner Conn outside his office and engage him in a brief interview. This conversation, short as it is, tells a great deal about this man. Relaxed and friendly, his vocal manner has an easy, confidential cadence. It’s not at all difficult to understand how injured or desperate persons might have the misfortune to put their trust in him. But trust they did, and a few paid with their lives.

But there are more episodes to this limited series. Thus far Hernandez and Lazarte dig deeper than the obvious sensationalism of the crime. They also suggest that there may be more to Eric, buried somewhere beneath the smarmy huckster, one who existed before “Mr. Social Security” came to be. Maybe we’ll see more of him, and some deeper insight into the bureaucratic maze that propagated his actions.

Rating: 8/10

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Portrait photo by Shelli Ryan

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David McDonald

David Erasmus McDonald was born in Baltimore into a military family, traveling around the country during his formative years. After a short stint as a film critic for a local paper in the Pacific Northwest and book reviewer, he received an MA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University, mentored by Ross Klavan and Richard Uhlig. Currently he lives in the Hudson Valley, completing the third book of a supernatural trilogy entitled “Shared Blood.”
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