David Kushner & Steven Cantor Launch Podcast Company Faceplant, Debut First Series ‘Crime Waves: Cold Truth’
EXCLUSIVE: Citizen Ashe producer Steven Cantor and journalist David Kushner are diving further into the podcasting world.
The duo have launched podcast company Faceplant and have debuted their first audio series – Crime Waves: Cold Truth.
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Faceplant has been established to launch character-driven serial podcast that are deeply reported with “stranger than fiction” stories.
Crime Waves: Cold Truth, which is produced in association with QCode, is a true-crime series about the murder of cold fusion scientist Eugene Mallove. It launches today.
No Smiling, the nascent podcast company from Sean Cannon, who was behind series including Striped: The Story of the White Stripes, Boyd Holbrook, Evan Mascagni and Heather Schoering, is also producing.
Kushner has written for publications including Rolling Stone, Wired, Outside and Vanity Fair with many of his stories in development for film and TV. He was behind the story that became A24’s Zola, while Peacock docuseries The Battle for Justina Pelletier is based on his Rolling Stone article The Hacker Who Cared Too Much.
He previously produced the Alligator Candy podcast, based on his memoir, for UCP.
Cantor is behind projects including When Claude Got Shot, CNN Films’ Citizen Ashe and directed docs including Loudquietloud: A Film About Pixies. His next film is boating disaster Four Down, based on the book Not Without Hope.
Kushner said, “I’m thrilled to be partnering with Steven Cantor to bring all kinds of amazing true stories to podcasting.”
“David Kushner and I have been friends for decades and we are both thrilled to have found, with the launch of Faceplant, a common ground for collaboration,” added Cantor.
Crime Waves: Cold Truth is a story about one man’s quest to expose the truth, the lengths he would go to save the world, and how his dream caught up with him. The eight-part series is hosted by Kushner and is part of Faceplant’s Crime Waves true crime anthology banner.
Dr. Eugene Mallove believed that a new form of world-changing free energy — cold fusion — was just around the corner. Even when his work was pushed to the fringes, he dreamed of a brighter future. But before Dr. Mallove could usher in that future, he was found dead in the driveway of his childhood home. Everyone had their own ideas of who killed him, and investigators were looking in all the wrong places.
“We live in this world of conspiracy theories right now, and I think that makes the story of Eugene Mallove incredibly relevant,” added Kushner. “It’s all about skepticism, the suppression of science, and, less directly, one of the most pressing issues of our time — energy and climate change.”
Next up for Faceplant in April 2024 is a series about the seedy underworld of the country’s largest renaissance festival. It is also developing series in music, technology and video gaming and are simultaneously developing these titles as scripted remakes.
The company has a first-look deal with QCode, which launched in 2019 by former CAA agent Rob Herting
Kushner is repped by The Gotham Group and Hirsch Wallerstein Hayum Matlof & Fishman and Cantor is represented by Paradigm.
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