Saturday, June 19, 2004

Happy Anniversary

Larry King had a "tenth anniversary" broadcast tonight about the O.J. Simpson case, chatting with members of the victims' families and some of the officers who investigated the case. At one point, Tom Lange, who was one of the latter, said this...

One thing of interest that hasn't come out that also should have during the trial is another bit of evidence that wasn't introduced, and that was the fact that Nicole had reported her house keys stolen some ten days before this ever happened... she said, "I think O.J. has the keys." Well after the chase, guess what we find in his pocket? The keys.

I followed the case more closely than I now like to admit, and I read all the books, though not Lange's. I never heard that.

Lange didn't explain why this was never introduced in the trial but I can guess. The prosecution made a decision to omit all discussion of the famous slow-speed Bronco chase. There were a number of incriminating elements to it but the prosecutors apparently feared Simpson's lawyers could spin some aspects of it to drum up sympathy for the guy, and they figured they had more than enough evidence without it. That might have made sense at some level but...jeez. He had her stolen keys in his possession? That's a heck of an incriminating fact to throw away.

Yeah, I know: You don't care about this any more. I don't either, most of the time. Now and then, I have lapses...

• Posted at 11:56 PM · LINK

Large Oops!

Someone screwed up. Sundance Channel was supposed to run the 1970 movie, The Projectionist, this morning. And right there on the TiVo listing, it says that it's that movie, starring Chuck McCann, Rodney Dangerfield and Ina Balin. But if you were sharper than some of us, you'd have noticed it gave the running time as 20 minutes, which is not the length of that great movie. Turns out, what they actually ran was a short film from 2002 that happened to have the same title. We are not happy.

Fortunately, you can purchase what I think is the right version from the folks at Amazon by clicking this link. At least, they give the running time for the DVD as 85 minutes, which is correct. If you're unfamiliar with this clever film, you might want to take the gamble that the one they're selling is the one with Chuck and Rodney. It's the story of a nerdy projectionist and it utilizes clips from old films and...well, you kind of have to see it to understand what the filmmakers had in mind. And I'll be talking about it and many other things when I interview Chuck on Friday afternoon at the Comic-Con International.

• Posted at 9:08 AM · LINK

Spy Guys

The other day, I gave you a link to a page with a small online video of one of the new Mountain Dew "Spy Vs. Spy" commercials. Here's a link to a page with large online videos of two of them, plus photos from the spots and a link to this article which will tell you more about them.

• Posted at 1:53 AM · LINK