In 2018, former Renault and Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn\u2014known as \u201cLe Cost Killer\u201d and credited with turning Nissan around when it was near bankruptcy\u2014was arrested in Japan on allegations of underreporting his salary and misusing company assets. Greg Kelly, a former Nissan executive, was arrested on the same day for helping to conceal Ghosn\u2019s transgressions. Ghosn received bail multiple times and was arrested on four occasions before being confined to strict house arrest. But while his aide Kelly continued to be detained in Japan, Ghosn orchestrated an escape for himself, proclaiming his innocence and arguing that he would not receive a fair trial.<\/p>\n
In late 2019, Ghosn was smuggled to his home country of Lebanon, which has a no-extradition policy with Japan, in a musical equipment box, with the help of Michael Taylor, a former Green Beret, and his son, Peter Taylor. The Taylors returned to the U.S. but were quickly extradited to Japan and arrested. Though Interpol put out a red notice seeking Ghosn\u2019s arrest, he remains a fugitive to this day and has not been in contact with the Taylors since.<\/p>\n
The new Apple TV+ series\u00a0Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn<\/em>\u00a0provides an in-depth presentation of the saga, with interviews featuring Ghosn, his wife, the Taylors, Kelly and more key figures, giving viewers perspectives from every angle and ultimately posing the question: Is Carlos Ghosn a victim or a villain?<\/p>\n \u201cWhen Carlos Ghosn escaped hidden inside the music equipment box, I think most people reading that [news] thought, \u2018This feels like a Hollywood movie,\u2019\u201d said director James Jones. \u201cA few people were chasing the story.\u201d<\/p>\n The Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0reporters published\u00a0Boundless: The Rise, Fall, and Escape of Carlos Ghosn<\/em>\u00a0in 2022, which provided Jones with \u201cthe journalistic foundations of incredible contacts and evidence\u201d to make his own documentary.<\/p>\n While there have been programs about the story before, the Apple TV+ series stands out in that Jones and his team were able to get Ghosn and his wife to participate. \u201cI think they appreciated that we were serious and talking to all the right people,\u201d Jones explains. \u201cWe wanted to shed light on the Japanese hostage justice system and all those things that they felt were important. But they also understood it wasn\u2019t going to be one-sided. It was going to put the tough questions to him as well. I think in those situations, being straight with people [works]. You say, \u2018You\u2019re not going to love everything in this series. But you are your own best advocates. You\u2019re going to like the series a lot more if you can be in it and put your case forward and make the viewer understand what you went through.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Getting to speak with the Taylors proved to be a tad more difficult, as they had been jailed at the initial time of filming. By the time they got out, \u201cthey\u2019d been through a lot,\u201d Jones notes. Throughout his time behind bars, Michael\u2019s team says he got frostbite from an unheated prison and spent a long time in solitary confinement. \u201cThey were probably a bit traumatized by it all. You don\u2019t want to be that journalist showing up when people are exhausted. It\u2019s a really tough thing to manage.\u201d<\/p>\n But Jones did manage, and upon first meeting Michael, the two forged a connection. \u201cI think there was stuff he wanted to get off his chest. It was the same discussion [I had with Ghosn]: \u2018You deserve to have a platform to tell your version of this story. And I would love it to be in our series.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n While the interviews are explosive, they\u2019re not all that sets the tone of the story. Jones utilized lighting and filming methods to set the tone for the saga as well. \u201cWe wanted it to feel high energy but kind of like a noir thriller,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt\u2019s quite dark. The drama re-con is shot, usually, handheld. It\u2019s slightly impressionistic, but hopefully it just feels very alive and dynamic.\u201d<\/p>\n The tone is further set through the music of Scottish band Mogwai, who Jones says has \u201ccomposed music for some of the best soundtracks I\u2019ve ever heard. I\u2019ve always dreamed of working with them.\u201d After hearing the details of the story, the band jumped on the opportunity to participate and \u201cmade an extraordinary soundtrack, which gives the whole thing this epic darkness, as well as being a bit of a romp.\u201d<\/p>\n As the film unravels the various perspectives from Ghosn to the Taylors to Kelly and plenty of others, with the aid of darker shading and Mogwai\u2019s music in the background, \u201cyou\u2019re slightly pushed and pulled in different directions,\u201d Jones says. \u201cThere\u2019s no doubt that there is a conspiracy to take [Ghosn] down in Japan, and the way he was treated in Japanese prison and the whole hostage justice system. To most people, including the United Nations, it does appear kind of cruel and very different from the type of justice you might get in the United States or the United Kingdom.\u201d<\/p>\n After hearing from Ghosn, his wife and others on his side, \u201cparticularly given the nature of the early allegations, which were quite weak, I think you probably feel a lot of sympathy for them,\u201d Jones notes. \u201cThen you might hear about the more serious allegations that were uncovered and start to question whether he really is just purely a victim or whether he has done something wrong. We present both sides from all the different perspectives, and you see the number of lives ruined by this whole thing. You can make up your own mind. It\u2019s a complicated question. It\u2019s certainly not like we landed firmly on one side or the other, and it\u2019s possible he could be both [a victim and a villain].\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately, though, \u201cwe allow him to present his case, and we allow his critics to present theirs,\u201d Jones says. \u201cI think with the best documentaries, different people can watch and take away quite different things.\u201d Viewers can make up their own minds when the docuseries bows on Apple TV+ on August 25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The director of Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn talks about securing interviews with key players of the Carlos Ghosn saga and the importance of sharing all perspectives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1412,"featured_media":20021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,69],"tags":[4859,8109,8110],"class_list":["post-20020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-profiles","category-top-stories","tag-apple-tv","tag-james-jones","tag-wanted-the-escape-of-carlos-ghosn","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\n