BEFORE: It's the last day of March, and thanks to doubling up once in March, and twice in January, I'm three movies ahead of the count. So really, if I'm three short in June, as I'm now expecting to be, everything should really even itself out in a couple of months. I'm not even going to stress out that my chain between Mother's Day and Father's Day is three films short - it doesn't matter. I can take it easy the first three weeks of June and watch six films instead of seven, who even knows if the movie theaters will be open then, or if we'll all still be streaming everything?
Anyway, here are my format stats for March, and I've just realized that between Academy screeners and the corona virus, I have not been inside a movie theater all year so far, the last movie I saw on the big screen was "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" and now that feels like five years ago, but it was just in December. Here's how March broke down:
15 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): "Home Again", "Rent", "In Good Company", "A Good Woman", "Book Club", "The Proposal", "Definitely Maybe", "Dean", "Darling Companion", "Morning Glory", "Life as a House", "Men in Black: International", "Leap!", "The Spy Who Dumped Me", "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood"
9 Movies watched on cable (not saved): "Just Like Heaven", "Just a Kiss", "Tomb Raider", "Tolkien", "The Kid Who Would Be King", "Johnny English Strikes Again", "Ferdinand", "You Don't Know Jack", "Phil Spector"
4 watched on Netflix: "Set It Up", "Opening Night", "Marriage Story", "Murder Mystery"
3 watched on Academy screeners: "Bombshell", "Uncut Gems", "Ad Astra"
1 watched on Amazon Prime: "Late Night"
32 TOTAL
Wow, cable's really made a big comeback, 24 films out of 32, that's 75%! Still I managed to clear a few films from my Netflix queue in the home stretch of the romance chain, and only needed to supplement with three screeners to make the last week or so of March connections. And two of those were available On Demand, "Uncut Gems" and "Ad Astra", but they would have cost me $5.99 each, and money's tight right now. I just filed for unemployment today, for the first time ever, after 30 years of working in the film business. But if I can't leave the house, I've been ordered by the government to stay home because my job is "non-essential" (umm, thanks for that, I think?) so what the heck else was I supposed to do, but go on the dole? With both animation studios I work at essentially closed, and having done all the work I can do from home, I had to get furloughed from both part-time office jobs. Should I run out and get some job delivering stuff, or working in Amazon's warehouse? I hear those workers are threatening to go out on strike, so I think the best thing to do is collect some benefits for a month and see how quickly NYC is able to recover without my help. I'm not proud of this, but my hands are sort of tied.
Al Pacino carries over again from "You Don't Know Jack". And now I realize I've got a bit of a thematic progression of sorts here, from Charles Manson to Dr. Kevorkian to Phil Spector. Right? Crazy cult killer to rational mercy killer to famous accused killer.
THE PLOT: A drama centered on the relationship between Phil Spector and defense attorney Linda Kenney Baden while the music business legend was on trial for the murder of Lana Clarkson.
AFTER: Wow, it's been a long time since I've seen a film with Helen Mirren in it, almost two years, I think - and now here come four of them in a row. That's just how these things work, name any actor and a Movie Year could have five or six of their films, then the next year, nothing.
Before watching this, I'll admit that I knew very little about the Phil Spector murder case - this film definitely has a motivation for focusing on certain details, and by telling the story from the point of view of his defense team in his (first) murder case, it sure feels like someone, writer or director, wants the public to draw the conclusion that he is innocent. We are shown repeatedly that blood spatter from the gunshot was noticeably absent from Spector's clothing, indicating that he was nowhere near the victim, Lana Clarkson, when the gun was fired into her mouth. Ballistics tests (which ultimately were not demonstrated in the courtroom) show that someone holding the gun in someone's mouth would likely end up covered in blood and brain matter, and Spector's clothing only had a few tiny drops of blood on it, more consistent with someone who was ten feet away, and then reacting in a defensive manner to a gunshot in the same room. So logically we're supposed to believe his version of events, which stated that he entered this room of his house, where Ms. Clarkson was holding a gun in her own mouth, and while he yelled for her to not shoot, she shot herself. Another test supposedly conducted by the legal team with volunteers, asked to place a fake gun in their own mouths, would, when suddenly yelled at, be likely to try to remove the gun from their mouths, only to have the gun's sights catch on their teeth, forcing them to accidentally pull the (fake) trigger.
It all seems to constitute a valid defense, only there are still lingering questions, plus we are not able to hear the victim's versions of events, only one person who was there is able to disclose what happened. Why was she putting the gun in her mouth in the first place? Did she think that would turn Spector on? Did she know the gun was loaded? If she did shoot herself, was that intentional, or an accident, was she indeed distracted by Spector as the tests conveniently suggest, or did something else happen? It's only when we've eliminated all of the other possibilities that we can arrive at a certainty, however improbable, right? I just don't know if the defense got us there - but it turns out that there was enough doubt to not convict Spector the first time, instead the case was deemed a mistrial with a hung jury. On the retrial, Spector was convicted of murder and is still serving 19 years to life, eligible for parole in 2025.
Then we have the other women who claim they were threatened by Spector before, also with guns. That doesn't mean the same thing happened between him and Clarkson, I'll admit, but it does demonstrate a pattern of behavior. While this HBO movie doesn't claim to be "based on a true story", it does depict several notable things, including footage of Spector (Pacino as Spector) threatening musicians in a recording session with a gun, and firing two shots into the ceiling when angered. Then there's ex-wife Ronnie Spector's testimony of being abused by her husband, and his general reputation as an (admitted) hot-tempered individual. So I'm really on the fence here, forensic evidence seems to suggest one thing, while reputation a little common sense says another.
His reputation also suggests he was a genius producer, from the Ronettes and the Crystals and Darlene Love to "River Deep, Mountain High" for Ike and Tina Turner and "Unchained Melody" and "You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin'" for the Righteous Brothers. And for all the grief that Beatles fans have thrown his way for adding his Wall of Sound techniques to "Let it Be", who's to say the Beatles would have even been able to finish that album without him, since they were constantly fighting at the time? And if he did such a bad job with it, why did George Harrison work with him soon after on "All Things Must Pass", and John Lennon did the same with the "Imagine" album? None of this has anything to do with his personal life, or whether he's guilty or innocent of murder, I understand - but with any famous person, how do you balance the professional career and the personal life if it seems at all dicey? As with Michael Jackson, R. Kelly and many others, sometimes it's hard to know.
The theory that jurors would be sympathetic to Spector because of his fame was essentially negated by the fact that many millennials wouldn't even know what a phonograph record is. Another school of thought, however, is that jurors might not favor the next celebrity on trial after the O.J. Simpson trial didn't convict him, and take their dissatisfaction with the system out on Spector. And while it might have been a good idea for Spector to take the stand in his own defense, a mock trial apparently also showed how close to the edge he tended to be, and just a minor insult from a prosecutor could set him off on a loud diatribe, which would have made him look unhinged - so therefore he was not called to the stand by his own lawyers. And bringing up evidence about Clarkson's depression and those strange videos she made (imitating Little Richard while in blackface) were not used in court either, because that would have been a form of victim-blaming, which Spector's lawyer didn't want to do. Ultimately a jury delivers a verdict based only on what gets admitted in court, and the movie depicts much more than that, so the audience can easily draw a different conclusion.
There's a lot to take in here - there's no question about whether Spector was eccentric, demanding and ego-driven, but a murderer? Now, I'm not so sure.
Also starring Helen Mirren (last seen in "Collateral Beauty"), Jeffrey Tambor (last seen in "The Last Laugh"), John Pirruccello (last seen in "Secret in Their Eyes"), Chiwetel Ejiofor (last heard in "Sherlock Gnomes"), Rebecca Pidgeon (last seen in "Bird Box"), James Tolkan (last seen in "Back in Time"), David Aaron Baker (last seen in "The Irishman"), Matt Malloy (last seen in "Morning Glory"), Dominic Hoffman, Philip Martin, Clara Mamet, Natalia Nogulich, Matthew Rauch (last seen in "No Reservations"), Linda Miller, George Aguilar, Yolonda Ross.
RATING: 5 out of 10 focus groups
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