Two telemarketers go undercover vigilante double agent at their own workplaces to expose a billion-dollar scam? Why, tell me more. Telemarketers is a documentary directed by Adam Bhala Lough and Sam Lipman-Stern, executive-produced by prolific Manhattan-underbelly chroniclers Benny and Josh Safdie, together with Danny McBride. The upcoming HBO three-part series follows two office bros who realize that they are unwittingly scamming on behalf of their bosses and decide to get their lick back. Sam Lipman-Stern is a 14-year-old high-school dropout in the 2000s when he finds employment at a freewheeling telemarketing company that allegedly raises money for charity. It’s populated by all sorts of people that he films on his camcorder in boundless free time — “a motley mix of ex-cons, drug dealers, and veteran telemarketers work the phone lines in an anarchic boiler room filled with booze, drugs, and debauchery, bound by humor and camaraderie,†HBO writes in the synopsis.
Together with his unlikely friend, top salesman Pat Pespas, an adult struggling with addiction, they realize that their employers are only sending 10 to 15 percent of the money they convince people to “donate†to charitable organizations and pocketing the rest following a government investigation. So they do what any work besties would do — become amateur sleuths and eventually make their way to the halls of Congress to expose the telemarketing companies’ greed over a 20-year journey. Just your average Tuesday.
“We’re going into Civic Development Group, and what we do is we call up people and chisel ’em out of money,†Pespas says in the trailer. A title card tells us that this is New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 2003 over footage taken by Lipman-Stern. An on-camera interview with an employee tells us that the vibes of the place are akin to a “big-ass cookout,†as we see footage of someone using a watercooler as some kind of baseball bat and a tiny turtle crawling on those old white PC keyboards. “This is capitalism,†a subject tells the camera. Yeah. Telemarketers premieres August 13 on HBO.