"That is the David Carr way": Erin Lee Carr on writing fearlessly on grief, addiction and her father

Documentary filmmaker Erin Lee Carr is known for her incisive portraits of complicated, dark subjects: "Mommy Dead and Dearest," the HBO documentary that led the current media avalanche of attention on Munchausen syndrome by proxy victim Gypsy Rose Blanchard's murder of her mother Dee Dee; "Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop" and "I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth Vs. Michelle Carter," both of which, like "Mommy Dead and Dearest," examine the intersections of technology and criminal law; and "At the Heart of Gold," premiering this month at Tribeca Film Festival, about the U.S. gymnastics team sexual abuse survivors whose powerful statements at the sentencing of Dr. Larry Nassar captivated a nation in the midst of reckoning openly with the #MeToo movement. Also present in the book is Erin Carr's own crooked journey through addiction and sobriety — another thing she had in common with her father, who chronicled his own trajectory in the memoir "Night of the Gun" — as she also made her way through launching a journalism career of her own with its own ups and downs, some of which were related to the substance abuse narrative and some which were not. And they're like, "Yeah, not everybody's trapped in your crazy book world." My boyfriend — he's a reporter — and he was like, "Do you think the fact that you were raised by a single dad... Do you think that affects your concept of masculinity or femininity?"