I Need to Know Right This Second: Is ‘I Care a Lot’ Based on a True Story?

From Cosmopolitan

Now that you’ve watched Netflix’s latest hit movie I Care a Lot, starring Rosamund Pike, Peter Dinklage, and Dianne Wiest, and you’ve spent a few hours trying to come to terms with your feelings about the ending, you’re probably sitting with your emotions and wondering, Um, wait a sec, was that f*cked-up thrill ride based on a true story?

A quick recap for those of you who had a few too many glasses of wine while watching: The new dark comedy centers on Rosamund’s Marla Grayson, a chic, composed, and sharp-witted woman with a thriving “business” (some might call it a scam) as a court-appointed legal guardian for (often elderly) people who are unable to take care of themselves.

Sounds super sweet and saintlike, right? Not so fast. When Marla says “caring is my job,” she’s not talking about the old folks—she locks them up in nursing homes and residency programs. Nope, Marla’s referring to the legal control of her clients’ wealth and assets, which she claims full autonomy over as soon as the court approves the guardianship. Her caring business is a con, but unfortunately, it’s not technically a crime—defrauding innocent people and auctioning off their assets to enrich yourself is somehow a completely legal loophole of the American system.

For anyone with an elderly relative, a friend, or just a general sense of empathy, the plot is, um, highly disturbing. So you’ll be happy to learn that no, I Care a Lot is *not* based on one specific true story. And Marla Grayson is not a real person. Well, not exactly, anyway. The movie is, however, drawn from numerous real-life guardianship scams that target the wealth and independence of older, vulnerable Americans.

Sadly, these kinds of situations occur far more often than you’d think. Here’s what the movie’s director and writer, J Blakeson, said in a TIFF interview in 2020:

To Blakeson, these stories were “horrifying” but “not uncommon.” So while the film is not based on any one specific true story, Blakeson has no illusions that this type of stuff really does happen in real life. He elaborated on his point of view in a conversation with Collider:

In essence, I Care a Lot exposes how America’s flawed legal guardian system can be manipulated for profit and power in quotidian ways. Marla Grayson is a fictional character, yes, but people like her do exist. Take April Parks, a former Nevada legal guardian who—as the New Yorker reported in 2017—pled guilty to six felonies, including two counts of elder exploitation.

Parks owned a professional guardian company and had hundreds of clients, whom she legally entrapped through court hearings. Parks went to jail but left many of her victims committed to facilities, severely overmedicated, and trapped in the faulty guardianship system forever.

The easy manipulation of the guardianship arrangement is yet another example of the United States legal system failing to protect its citizens.

I Care a Lot reveals the loopholes in America’s conservatorship system and America’s negligent treatment of its senior citizens. Rosamund phrased it perfectly when she accepted the Golden Globe for Best Actress and thanked “America’s broken legal system for making it possible to make stories like this.” CALL ’EM OUT.

You love dissecting movies. So do we. Let’s overanalyze them together.

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