At Saturday night's screening of "To Die For," Joyce Maynard introduced the screen version of her novel with the comment, "I'm glad the movie is opening this week ... I wrote this before O.J. and Joey Buttafuoco and Lorena Bobbitt and all their friends ... This movie is about all of that." I relaxed in my seat and waited to see the next "Pulp Fiction." I expected a clever screen play offering insightful critique on our sometimes bizarre modern culture.
The audience certainly viewed a clever screenplay, but it wasn't the next "Pulp Fiction." As disturbing as some of the scenes were in "Pulp Fiction," the film was humorous because it was based on good dialogue in what came across as extraordinary situations. "To Die For" did have good dialogue. The film was fast-paced and edited brilliantly. It was also profoundly disturbing.
The movie traces the life of Suzanne Stone, a young woman who derives all her value from television. She believes she is destined to be on national television and will do anything to accomplish her goal. When she decides that her husband stands in the way of her path to glory, she seduces a young teenage admirer and instructs him and his two friends to kill her husband. At the end of the movie, Suzanne Stone's young lover is in jail and she is basking in the goal of the cameras and controversy. We get the impression that the jury decided that the beautiful Suzanne was innocent of manslaughter. Outrageous, right?
The murder of Stone's husband was probably supposed to be an extraordinary situation. When Maynard wrote her book it might have been extraordinary. After all, how likely is it that a beautiful young women would derive all her dreams and goals from television, decide that she was destined for a prime time anchor slot, and convince three young, impressionable teenagers to kill her husband who stands in the way of destiny? Even more outrageous, how could any jury acquit this woman under the burden of what appeared to be conclusive evidence that she had a very pivotal role in the murder?
Before last week, I would have said that any jury would convict Suzanne Stone because most juries uphold the law and would not be influenced by beauty or wealth -- or race. But as I stood in Collis Common Ground on Tuesday and heard the Simpson verdict, I was genuinely shocked. The evidence presented by the state left little reasonable doubt that Simpson was the murderer of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Some suggest that such a well-paid defense could not be defeated. Others blame race relations. Both factor into the decision.
In one of my American history classes here, we watched a section of the civil rights documentary, "Eyes on the Prize," in which an all-white jury acquitted a white man accused of killing a black man and dumping his body in a nearby river. The evidence left no other reasonable conclusion than that the white man killed the black man. But the jury ignored the law and acquitted the defendant. The Menendez case ended similarly. Whether for reasons of wealth, race or distrust of the judicial system, those juries predetermined a certain outcome and ignored the law.
The day after the Simpson verdict, the Wall Street Journal ran an excellent article detailing the many times that juries ignored the burden of evidence and made a decision that would dictate the outcome that they wanted to see. Best put in an editorial by Theodore Oslon, an assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration, "Criminal trials are becoming indistinguishable from Roman circuses or Anglo-Saxon trials by ordeal. Defendants become objects around whom an entertainment event is constructed with little expectation of rational results." Do not be so naive to think this description holds true only for Simpson and the Menendez brothers. This basic characteristic of our criminal justice system is the reason why your average white-collar criminal pays wardrobe and jury consultants before he dares stand trial. It is also the reason for the preponderance of black men on death row.
Someone suggested to me that the Simpson trial reminded her of a movie. "Think about it," she said, "The white Bronco taking him to trial, the white truck bringing him home." The conclusion of "To Die For" was more gratifying than the conclusion of the Simpson trial. The father of Stone's husband uses his Mafia connections to arrange for her death and her body's disposal in a frozen river. Cut to the husband's sister. The sister, a figure skater, has offered several deprecatory comments about her sister-in-law throughout the film. Maybe it was because Suzanne suggested that if she wanted to improve her skating career, she should consult a plastic surgeon and get those things taken off her face. Suzanne's sister-in-law gleefully skates over the frozen river as the credits role.
Personally, I wouldn't be surprised at such a Hollywood ending for O.J. Simpson. But it will never bring back Nicole and Ronald Goldman. The victims have been forgotten. By the end of "To Die For," the audience had forgotten about the killing and felt a certain satisfaction in seeing Stone's face float beneath the ice. A few applauded as the sister skated over the river. Perhaps the film presented such a profoundly stunning commentary that it is repulsive in its truth. If so, it accomplished its purpose because I was indeed repulsed. If so, let it be praised by critics. But don't expect me to laugh at Maynard's story or Buck Henry's screenplay any more than I laughed at the pictures of Nicole Brown Simpson's bloody, beaten face in the years of "happiness" with her husband.
