Murder on HBO

I actually made it all the way through that Phil Spector movie. I expected something that was dramatically exciting — it being Pacino and all — but which would upset me in the way it warped history in an attempt to rehabilitate Spector's rep. What I got: Neither, exactly. I thought it was kinda dull, starting as it did after the murder, ending before the verdict. I mean, Pacino's usually interesting. He was interesting in that movie where Dr. Jack Kevorkian was depicted as an Al Pacino impressionist and he's sort of interesting in this film where Phil Spector is depicted as an Al Pacino impressionist. The man's a great actor in many ways but he's become a bit too Al Pacino to effectively play anyone else. It's too bad Spielberg didn't star him in Lincoln. It would have been fun to see Abe sound and act just like Al Pacino.

The advance press and reviews said the movie distorted reality to try and raise a reasonable doubt that Spector killed Lana Clarkson. It did try…but you know what? I think you could show that movie to an unbiased jury and they'd still say he dunnit. The explanation — that she stuck the gun in her mouth on her own and then pulled the trigger when Spector yelled for her to stop that — sounded absurd before this and it loses even more credibility when you hear Pacino as Spector say it aloud. Yes, of course that's how people die. They go to someone else's house, ask to see their gun and then stick it in their own mouths and pull the trigger. It was just Spector's bad luck that it happened to him — a man with a history of threatening women with guns if they wanted to leave.

Lana Clarkson
Lana Clarkson

Did I miss it or did the film not mention that Lana was found with her purse over her shoulder? You know, like the way women have it when they want to leave? And did the movie not mention that she had a scheduled appearance to sign autographs at a convention the next morning at 11 AM so she couldn't stay too late? I think it's still an open-and-shut case without those but they are key points.

They did mention what the defense thought was Spector's "smoking gun" to prove he hadn't fired the smoking gun. His white suit, they said, was found with almost no blood spatter on it when, if he'd been close enough to pull the trigger, it should have been drenched. In the movie, Spector and his lawyers are certain he will walk if they can do a demonstration of this with dummies in the courtroom or otherwise impress that fact upon the jury…but they don't get to do that. I guess writer-director David Mamet spent so much time on that because he wanted to prove Spector's innocence to people watching his movie but if so, he undermines the value of that as "evidence." There's a scene with the defense team's forensic expert being rehearsed on what he'll say on the stand. He keeps wanting to say that 95% of the time if you shot someone in the mouth, you'd wind up covered with blood. Helen Mirren, playing Spector's most ardent attorney, has to admonish the expert not to admit that 5% of the time, you wouldn't be covered.

So much for that as solid proof Spector didn't do it.

The film is not only an ugly case for Spector's innocence, it's a bad case for it. Over and over, we hear that he's being prosecuted because he's rich and famous and the proof that happens is…what? Spector wasn't that famous except maybe in his own mind. A jury could easily be selected of folks who'd never heard of him. There's no history of suspected murderers being indicted because they were celebrities. There is a long history of police in the Los Angeles area giving preferential treatment to celebrities and they sure waited a long time before indicting a man that everyone knew was probably guilty from the moment the crime was reported. And even if somehow, rich/famous folks are more likely to be prosecuted when suspicious murders happen around them, the "famous" disadvantage gets offset by the "rich" advantage. They can hire legal Dream Teams — the best money can buy.

I'm going to get off this because I doubt many folks reading this who care about this case think Spector was railroaded. I was just kind of amazed — and in a sense, relieved — that even slanting the facts to prove the guy innocent didn't prove him innocent. And I was amazed that the film was such a waste of time as drama. About all I learned was that Phil Spector does a decent impression of Al Pacino.