Melissa Broudo

By Melissa Sontag Broudo, Attorney with the Sex Workers Project, Urban Justice Center

At the peak of the scandal that removed Eliot Spitzer from the Governor’s mansion, sex workers remained secondary characters for the mainstream media; papers splashed sultry images across their covers just to boost sales.  Alex Gibney’s documentary, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, continues this same marginalization, missing opportunities to shine a bright light onto legal and social questions around sex work and to delve into a real conversation on the hypocrisy and impact of Spitzer’s actions.

In documenting Spitzer’s downfall after he was revealed to have been patronizing an escort agency, Client 9 focuses on the reactions of political players.  For most, their feelings have nothing to do with their views on prostitution or extramarital sex and everything to do with whether they wanted to see Spitzer fall from political grace. Spitzer’s ouster was long awaited justice to some, while his champions mourned the loss of a political crusader against Wall Street.

While a compelling political narrative, this focus buries another story: Spitzer prosecuted prostitution rings and supported raising the crime of patronizing a prostitute from a B to an A misdemeanor, while violating that same law as a client of the Emperor’s Club. In the film’s interviews, Spitzer compares himself to Greek mythological heroes and speaks proudly of his time busting Wall Street tycoons, but never once addresses the women he patronized or the consequences of his conflicting ...