One Foote in the Grave
I’ve got some Idol to watch and some Rilo Kiley to listen to, so I’ll be brief. While Ed McMahon rots his way to his 86th birthday, the dormant death game is livening up, thanks to Paul Harvey and, today, playwright/screenwriter Horton Foote, the man who adapted Harper Lee’s legendary novel into a legendary film (arguably the greatest film adaptation of a great American novel). Foote was 92 and not on my deathlist, so his death would not be particularly interesting, except for its arrival on the heels of To Kill a Mockingbird director Robert Mulligan, whose death went grossly underreported back in December. Could a Harper Lee death later this year secure a novelist-screenwriter-director trifecta? I guess we’ll never really know until we climb inside her orthopedic shoes and walk around in them.
Hey, while I’m on the death game topic, I would like to point out that we’re into March now, and not one of my thirty 2009 deathlist hopefuls has died. This is the first time since 2002 that I didn’t score at least one kill in the first two months of the year: I got Nedra Volz in 2003, Jack Paar in 2004, Philip Johnson in 2005, Lou Rawls in 2006, Art Buchwald in 2007, and Earl Butz in 2008. Anybody who knows me (and pity those who don’t if they’re reading this entry) knows that the success and prosperity of my deathlist (and celebrity death in general) is inextricably linked to my personal success and prosperity. And since, from a personal contentment standpoint, 2009 is looking to be my worst year since 2006, so may I be sitting on my worst deathlist since 2006’s shameful two-name showing (Rawls and P.W. Botha, if you’re curious). I took some risks on this year’s deathlist (like omitting Swayze and Kennedy) and, like the risks I’ve taken in the somewhat more mature facets of life, I doubt they’ll pay off. (And I’ll note right here that I did initially list Ed McMahon, but in a fit of impulsivity, bumped him for Merle Haggard. Fuck.)
Course, this could be a quirk of the death game itself. Of the Top 50 names on 2009 Stiffs.com ballots, only one (former Attorney General Griffin Bell) has thus far bitten the dust. Expand that to the top 100, and you’re still only at three, adding Ricardo Montalban and Paul Harvey. In short, January and February have produced few major celebrity deaths, and even fewer predictable ones.
Hopefully, this weekend, I’ll get to what the hell happened to my 2008 wrap-up (here’s a hint: it won’t materialize in any notable fashion), if I’m not blogging about the aforementioned McMahon error or the first all-white Top 12 in American Idol history (which is looking increasingly possible).
Drew Peterson wishes you a Happy Valentine’s Day!
If Drew Peterson was a movie villain, he’d rank among the legendary and the complex, on par with Hannibal Lechter and Keyser Soze. But he is real, or at least tabloid-TV real. He has repeatedly, shamelessly, and often compellingly capitalized on a very real tragedy, however. And because he is so obviously a sociopathic narcissist, the court of public opinion has already convicted him as a murderer as well (which, let’s be honest, he probably is). If he’s never brought to trial, he may have gotten away with the perfect crime, not once, but twice (special thanks go to his police department buddies), and he will continually flaunt this, under the unconvincing guise of insisting innocence. Unlike, say, Scott Peterson (and how weird that Drew named his daughter Lacy?!?) or Casey Anthony, Drew Peterson is an expert media manipulator: an alarmingly detached, inappropriately avuncular camerahog, who has parlayed tragedy (a tragedy he may very well have created) into celebrity. He is as much showman as psycho. Ruthlessly toying with your treasured concept of reasonable doubt, he knows that, deep down inside, despite all ostensible evidence, you don’t know if he’s guilty, but he does. He is almost joyously fucking with America, and we keep coming back for more. His antics, while morally reprehensible, are consistently watchable—when this man is on camera, it is tough to look away.
Take this interview from Friday’s TODAY show (bumped to the second hour due to some pesky plane crash that killed 49 people instead of two), with 55-year-old Drew and his 24-year-old new fiancee, potential wife number five and potential victim number three, who called off the engagement just last week, and quickly returned to the fray once Drew no doubt upped the fame-and-fortune ante. (Not for nothing is this her first television interview.) You’ll stay for all seven unsettling minutes, because bad humanity often translates to great television.
Not since the Laredo compound have I seen a young woman make such believable autonomous statements. Note that the betrothed couple’s hands are more clenched than locked, and Drew is watching, almost coaching, her every response with a fixed, penetrating, easily enraged gaze. The interview plays more like abducted and abductor rather than future husband and wife: the gun to her head is palpable. If this was a movie, this scene would be artfully chilling. But it’s not a movie, it only plays like one—and that makes it more chilling than even the most artful of cinematic thrillers. Welcome to the 21st Century!
Happy Valentine’s Day! If these two crazy kids can find each other, then how the fuck are you single? (And if you are single, please e-mail me, as I am spending Valentine’s Day blogging about Drew Peterson.)
