IP Picks🔎: A Pioneering War Correspondent Biopic
➕ Inside the Polly Klaas murder and a forgotten Cold War drama
Welcome to The Optionist. As always, thanks for reading along.
A couple of quick housekeeping notes before we dive into this week’s picks. First, we’ll be coming out early next week so everyone has a chance to read The Optionist before Labor Day weekend hits. Secondly, to coincide to the long weekend, we have a cool special extra — an excerpt from TV writer Patty Lin’s wonderful new memoir, End Credits, about her time working in the business — that we’ll be doing with The Ankler. She had credits anyone would be jealous of — Freaks and Geeks, Friends, Breaking Bad — but found herself constantly unhappy with the work environment. Lin ultimately decided to quit in 2010, when she was still very much in demand. It’s a compellingly told personal story and also one that illuminates the structural and cultural problems in writers rooms across Hollywood that have fueled the strike. It’ll be a fun holiday weekend read.
On to this week’s picks, which include a pair of engrossing books about overlooked female pioneers in journalism and espionage. The full rundown:
A true-crime procedural about the 1993 kidnapping and murder of Polly Klaas.
A drama about the unsung women heroes of the CIA, both the ones that broke barriers early on, and then those who helped catch Osama bin Laden.
A drama about the quixotic 1989 East-West pan-European picnic that led to the fall of the Soviet Union.
A biopic about the first female reporter to win an international reporting Pulitzer Prize.
A true-crime procedural about the theft of German and Polish royal jewels and the police hunt for the gang behind the robbery.
