‘McMillions’ Directors James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte On Why It Took 20 Years for This Sensational Story to Be Told

Awards Daily speaks to McMillions directors James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte about taking on Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and whether the cast of crazy characters in their Emmy-nominated documentary series is the truly the main course.

One of the worst disasters in American history is credited with burying the story behind McMillions on HBO, the documentary series that details the fraud behind McDonald’s monopoly game that took place between 1989 and 2001. And yet, the final episode of the series, which aired March 9, 2020, came just before the entire globe went into quarantine from a deadly virus. (This story certainly likes to make an entrance and an exit.)

But despite these catastrophic bookends, it was actually a bit of luck that brought this story to the small screen, when co-director James Lee Hernandez spotted the story on Reddit one night in 2012. Despite some obstacles from the Academy Award-winning screenwriters of Good Will Hunting, Hernandez and co-director Brian Lazarte ended up creating a series that would go on to be the second-most talked about 2020 phenomenon (or maybe third behind Murder Hornets), delivering a compelling Robert Altman-esque crime story about what happens when humans are put into unbelievable situations. For as much as the series hinges on its extraordinary plot, it also revolves around the cast of unforgettable figures, from star-in-the-making Doug Mathews to she-needs-a-reality-show Robin Colombo. Choosing a favorite McMillions character tells you as much about yourself as choosing your favorite Monopoly game piece. (A.J. Glomb strikes me as the iron, probably because I could see him using it as a weapon in a pinch.)

I chatted with Hernandez and Lazarte about why this story was buried for so many years, how Matt Damon and Ben Affleck affected their HBO pitch, and what Rick Dent might have added to the series.

Awards Daily: James, you first spotted this story on Reddit in 2012. Why do you think a story like this got buried? I know 9/11 is blamed, because it happened around that time, but you’d think this would resurface at some point.

James Lee Hernandez: It’s such a crazy thing with that. It definitely is 9/11. There are stories that get buried by things like that and then they resurface at a certain point. If anything was going to get buried, this was next level of burying, (laughs) because it for years 9/11 and the fallout of that dominated the news in general. It was not just the terrorist attack and all of the sudden we were basically going to war on terror to retaliate. That lasted for years and the economy was destroyed because of all of that. When I was looking up things, it was very hard to find any basic information on that [on the McMillions case]. People had done small little articles on it, but no one had any more information than you could just Google out there. So the sensational aspect of the story could really never be unearthed. It was sort of the luck of the draw, me on Reddit that night and being either stubborn enough or dumb enough to continue looking into it.

AD: Since we’re going through a pandemic, what stories are falling through the cracks right now?

JLH: Murder hornets? Remember those? Feels like years ago now. (Laughs)

Brian Lazarte: The thought did cross our minds at one point. Really not a lot is happening because of COVID in some ways. (Laughs)

AD: That’s true. 

BL: Just in terms of people getting out there and doing things. Could we have done this story five or 10 or 15 years ago, closer to the date, in some ways I think the timing just worked out so perfectly, for when this all came about. It was just the right amount of time, there was distance and perspective on it, both from the FBI’s point of view and also from those who participated and claimed tickets and were indicted. This was a drastic stain in their lives. They weren’t really too game to talk about it even now, but they definitely would not have been able or willing to talk about it five or 10 years ago when it was still a little fresher on their minds. Distance does have a way of allowing people to heal and come to terms with accepting things and discuss it in a way that we wouldn’t have had the benefit of 10 or 15 years ago.

AD: Maybe we weren’t ready for this story back then. Especially since right now we’re experiencing this true crime phenomenon.

BL: We definitely looked at this as not your typical true crime story. We discussed it. Is there murder? Is there death? It’s not your typical tragic murder case. It had a great deal of levity and humor to it, and we hadn’t seen that done before in a true crime series, and so that was definitely a little bit of a risk in terms of, could that sustain a longer format? Would people respond well to it? But yeah, we felt strong about it, but we were surprised it worked as well as it did for everyone else.

AD: Two years ago, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck secured the rights to the story. Were you at all concerned about that when making your film? Did that give you a sense of urgency?

JLH: That was such a crazy scenario, because we had been working on this for so long. Brian and I partnered up in the summer of 2017 and we were really about a month or so away from pitching the project ourselves. We had already filmed with Doug Mathews and Mark Devereaux and Chris Graham. We were in communication and had approval from the FBI, setting up times to visit with the winners’ side of everything. Then we get wind that the writer of that article is reaching out to some of our FBI agents. They immediately call us and are like, “Is this person with you?” We were like, no. We talked to our lawyers, and they said, “So many articles come out. It’s better not to be adversarial. The article will come out. Just tell your guys not to say anything.” Because we had the life rights to all of the main people. And then that article comes out and we didn’t realize it was a coordinated effort by a Hollywood producer to have the article come out and to sell the rights to it as a story. We basically crammed all of the work that you would normally do, about a month’s work from Friday to Monday morning, and Brian and I just didn’t sleep and finished the pitch deck and the sizzle and we were able to go pitch it. It felt like we blanked and all of the sudden we were headed out to the South to finish up our interviews in October.

BL: There’s a world where people consume articles, books, movies, TV shows, and documentaries, all based on the same story.

AD: Yeah, totally!

BL: It didn’t feel like there was an immediate rush to beat anybody. We were ready. We’re on this train. Nothing should stop us from completing our journey. And that’s how we approached it.

AD: Wow. I think it paid off. (Laughs)

JLH: Plus, we can say we somehow won a battle with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. (Laughs)

BL: (Laughs)

AD: I know that Rick Dent didn’t participate in the documentary, and I listened to the McMillions podcast where you discussed his reasoning, that he was worried about not getting everything right. Since you both met with him, what do you think he would have added to the series? I often wondered if he was the ying to Doug Mathew’s yang, how they would have played off each other in the interviews.

BL: Rick Dent really is your quintessential stoic character. When we sat with him, it really felt like he was sizing you up. He was very calculated. All of his thoughts and words were thought out in advance. In terms of what he would have added, the ying to yang, we would have loved to have had Doug and Rick go out to breakfast and just talk about this case. That was our dream scenario. We wanted to see that dynamic in action in a lot of ways. And perhaps that would have been more fulfilling than each of their own interviews separately. Rick was there for the facts, and he would have expressed as much, but he also just talked about how he processed material. At the time, everything was so thought out, but he said after he’s done with the case, he just purges it from his mind. When we talked to him and asked him a few things, he said, “You know, that sounds like it probably happened like that. I’d have to go back and look.” It’s hard to say if it would have really added [something]. In fact, his lack of presence in some ways added more, for Doug Mathews’ sake.

AD: I feel like you do know what kind of guy he would be just by the way he’s described. His presence is felt either way, which is interesting. You know, so much of this real-life story I feel like should be plot-driven, but I feel like that’s almost like the subplot. It’s these interesting characters that really make this whole thing pop. How soon into the process of this project did you know that you had some really interesting characters?

JLH: One of the first phone calls I ever had was with Mark Devereaux, and in the middle of the call, Mark said, “Let me get Doug on the phone. He was one of the two case agents on this.” I said, “Yeah, sure. Let’s talk to everybody.” And two seconds into getting into a three-way call with Doug and Mark, my mind was blown. I’m coming out to Jacksonville. When are you guys available? I gotta get out there. And of course meeting Doug for the first time, this guy is gold. He’s a star. Mark Devereaux’s great, Chris Graham’s great. But then when we go out for our larger trip and we start to meet George Chandler, Robin Colombo, and Frank Colombo, and Brian and I would look at each other and go, “We’re going to get a dud at some point, right?” All of these people were so interesting. It was like we cast them to be in this. It was really one of those things where it was a little bit luck and of course a lot of them are from Florida, so you can factor in the Florida scenario I guess.

AD: Do you think this story is as interesting without them? Do they really take it to a new level?

BL: Of course. You can say the same thing for any film. In Back to the Future, Michael J. Fox took over for—I’m blanking on the actor.

AD: Eric Stoltz.

JLH: Eric Stoltz.

BL: Yeah, Eric Stoltz! Characters can change the dynamic of the story so much. There are certain characters in this that probably wouldn’t have changed the story significantly, but yeah, what would this series been if we’d only gotten Rick Dents and not Doug Mathews? It would have taken on a different color. It’s still a fascinating story, but would it have provided all of those ups and downs ad quirky moments and things that really helped us tell the story. It’s such a process because documentaries are a path of discovery in telling the story. You’re writing things to a certain degree, but you’re also writing it based on what you discover. I’d imagine that we would have found a different path to explore this and still—at least I’d like to believe—be crafty enough to pull it off no matter what. But it was so satisfying as we were experiencing each of our interviews and going on this ride. We really had a great time making it. We had a great time meeting everybody. We had a lot of laughs, which we had to hold back in the middle of an interview.

JLH: Some of them we did not. (Laughs)

BL: Some of them we did not. (Laughs) We had people when we were doing the podcast write in, “Why did you leave in Doug Mathews laughing?” It was because deep down it’s so entertaining, and it’s Doug. To not include his laugh would be almost be a disservice to showing him for who he is. And we found it incredibly infectious. Every time he smiled, it made us smile. That’s a good feeling. You talk about plot and story and character—when you have a combination of all three and you’re able to tell a story where in one instance you can laugh and in another you can look things in a serious way and get emotional at times—that’s going to get you thinking and talking about it and make you feel like you’re part of this world in a way, than if we were just stating the facts, you would never have that experience.

AD: I feel like shit really gets real in the third episode where we meet Gloria Brown. She’s probably the most tragic figure in this documentary, and there are a lot of tragic figures. But I feel like the documentary presents her as a sympathetic figure while also making McDonald’s a sympathetic figure, which is unique since a lot of documentaries depict big corporations as evil. How did you tow the line between that tone? Were you worried about taking sides?

JLH: For us, we saw all the sides of this. We always looked at this as life in the grey area, and there isn’t necessarily just one specific way with anything. We tried show all of that. With Gloria, once we heard her story, it blew our minds because we met her for breakfast, she and her sister. Gloria was really trepidatious. She did not want to do anything with this. We wanted to talk to her and say at least listen to what we’re doing. You’re going to be in this; there’s the FBI footage. People are going to talk about you, so at least understand what we’re doing. We met her for breakfast, and the stories she tells in the show, she told us at breakfast. Her sister didn’t even know that story. So getting to hear that from her, it completely flipped what we thought. When you go into this, you think, “Okay, everyone’s a federal criminal. They all knew what was going on and deserved what they got. It’s unfortunate that it happened, but they made decisions that put them in that scenario.” But how many people in Gloria’s scenario wouldn’t do the same thing, thinking this might be her miracle to help her get ahead? We really looked at how we structured the story for the specific episode. It makes her sympathetic, but at the same time, she got herself in that scenario. That decision got her in too deep and made her afraid for herself and her son. It really flipped the idea of what you thought of her in the very beginning of the episode.

And for McDonald’s, they were beyond trepidatious to be in this. (Laughs) Because normally documentaries about them don’t paint them in the best light. We went to their headquarters and met every C-suite person except the CEO before they even agreed to be in this. We told them we’re not trying to vilify you; we’re just presenting the facts, and the facts are you hired a company to do this for you, there was fraud within that company, you guys were blind-sided. Normally corporations would pay money and have people sign NDAs and have the problem go away, but they decided to work with the FBI and do the thing that wasn’t necessarily the right financial or corporate decision, but the best moral decision. We want you guys to make that decision again and work with us, to tell people about that decision that you made and how you were together with them and took down a massive criminal fraud ring.

BL: It’s flipping expectations. Naturally people go into this story thinking, “McDonald’s monopoly fraud. Oh, McDonald’s screwed every customer over.” There’s an expectation that it’s McDonald’s fault, and being able to flip that was something we felt was natural to the story. With Gloria Brown, when you see that footage with her and the FBI, from the FBI’s point of view, you have an impression of who you think that person is. Until you hear her story and your expectation is flipped. And then you hear her point of view in the end and it changes things. Any time you can do that in a documentary or documentary series, you empower the audience to think a little more about your characters and not pass judgment so quickly.

AD: Doug Mathews is the star of this show. People were saying he’s the best character on TV this year. What are you planning with Doug Mathews? I know you do have another project you’re working on with him.

BL: Are we allowed to talk about this?

JLH: It’s somewhat top secret, but let’s just say that Doug’s done a lot in his career and we want to continue investigating his investigations with him.

BL: Chris Graham said in our podcast that you could imagine Doug Mathews if he wasn’t an agent, he’d be selling knives in an infomercial. And we said he could probably do that today. We’re not going to do an infomercial with him selling knives. Although that might be entertaining. Whatever it is, we’ll make sure to figure out a way to get him in a gold suit again.

All six episodes of McMillions are streaming on HBOMaxx.