As a film starring Al Pacino and Helen Mirren claims Phil Spector is innocent of murder, the victim's friends plead: 'Don't make this killer a hero'
By
Alison Boshoff
Last updated at 9:30 AM on 12th August 2011
On the New York set of Dame Helen Mirren’s latest movie, there is uncompromising security this week.
An army of jittery gauleiters triple-checks even the crew members’ credentials before letting them near. Bit-part players and extras have to be shadowed at all times by studio-vetted minders.
The reason: a pressure group is trying to persuade the redoubtable Dame Helen and her co-star, Al Pacino, to pull out of the film they are making which suggests that the music producer Phil Spector was wrongly convicted of the murder of B-movie actress Lana Clarkson in 2009.
Uncanny: Al Pacino as Phil Spector in the film (left) and the music producer during his murder trial (right)
So far, they have had no luck. Dame Helen has told them, ‘I’m in it. I’m staying in it. I’m not dropping out’. This in the face of threats that she may be blackballed when it comes to future acting award nominations.
Pacino, who plays Spector in a gloriously wild Afro wig, simply gave one of his trademark deeply contemptuous stares, according to insiders, lit a cigar and went back to reading the paper.
The pressure group does claim some success, however. Dame Helen’s role as Spector’s plain-speaking lawyer, Linda Kenney Baden, was to have been played by Bette Midler. But soon after the protests started, she withdrew, citing a back injury.
The campaigners, who call themselves the Friends Of Lana Clarkson, are being led by a powerful Hollywood agent, Edward Lozzi, who says the film is ‘an insensitive attempt to portray the loathsome, lying, gun-abusing convicted murderer Spector with some kind of sympathy’.
Victim: Lana Clarkson was shot dead
The as yet untitled film is the brainchild of writer David Mamet, who is no stranger to controversy on sexual, religious or political issues. However, even he may have been shocked at the gross offence this latest project has caused.
Spector, 71, a strutting dandy oddball with a fondness for wigs and guns, picked up Clarkson at a bar in 2003. At 3am the two of them were driven to his chateau-style home in Los Angeles for a nightcap.
A couple of hours later his chauffeur heard a ‘popping’ sound from within the mansion. Spector emerged distressed, and apparently exclaiming: ‘I think I killed somebody.’
Miss Clarkson was found dead, seated in the hallway. Her handbag was over her shoulder, as if she were preparing to leave, and a gun was under her chair. It had gone off in her mouth, scattering her teeth across the floor.
Spector is serving 19 years for the killing. An appeal against his conviction was rejected earlier this year — his lawyers however say that he will fight on, and add that he is ‘very focused’ on the objective of being released.
Their theory is that Clarkson, depressed at turning 40 and seeking some kind of notoriety, chose to kill herself in his foyer.
You may think this unlikely given that the trial heard evidence from numerous women that Spector was in the habit of holding them at gunpoint and demanding sexual favours.
However Mamet’s contention is that Spector — famous for creating the ‘Wall of Sound’ production technique and for classics such as Be My Baby — is innocent.
Insists Mamet, ‘I don’t think he’s guilty. There is reasonable doubt and he should never have been convicted. Whether he did it or not, we’ll never know but if he’d just been a regular citizen, they never would have indicted him. The jury just didn’t like him.’
Prosecutor Alan Jackson has no time at all for this assertion. ‘The true injustice was suffered by Lana Clarkson, and continues to be suffered by her family and those who love and miss her’, he says.
When Mamet’s script was taken up by the Home Box Office network, Lozzi — acting on behalf of 50 of Clarkson’s friends — fired off a letter protesting at ‘a valentine for a convicted murderer’.
He added, ‘It is so wrong and so insensitive in so many ways to the people who knew and loved her. We are requesting that Mr. Mamet have the good sense and courtesy to write a factual and entertaining film concerning the facts. He does not need to rewrite history so soon.’
Controversial: Helen Mirren as the lawyer on set (left) and the real Linda Kenny Baden (right)
Speaking to Mr Lozzi it is clear that the group will do all they can to make sure that the project causes an almighty stink. Their efforts to persuade Pacino and Dame Helen to ‘examine your conscience’ have been stonewalled, so now they are examining other options.
They plan to discredit the film and anyone who acts in it, and are also calling upon other actors and crew members to join the protest. Lozzi tells me that members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences — who determine the Oscars — will be asked to make sure it will not be nominated for a single award.
Lozzi says: ‘We will run a campaign against this movie just as we did against the Denzel Washington film The Hurricane. We may even picket.
‘Lana Clarkson was a wonderful person, an innocent person. There are a lot of people in Los Angeles who adored her and still remember her. She was an old school beauty and her trademark was to wear gloves and leopard print.
‘If that film suggests that she took her own life, not only will it be absurd but it will also backfire on David Mamet. There are manipulative people who like to rock the boat and Mamet is one of them.’
Spector has spent a great chunk of his estimated £60 million fortune on legal fees, and his appeals won’t stop until he is free from prison, where he is held in the hospital wing, such is his frailty.
He has been struggling with manic depression and insomnia for the past 30 years and was deeply eccentric and a virtual recluse before his incarceration.
His second wife Ronnie has said he would sit for days trying to get his hairpieces to look natural, and refused to leave the house if the effect was not to his liking.
The many hairstyles of Phil Spector: The music mogul wore a variety of wigs throughout his trial
Bare reality: Police mugshots reveal balding Spector without his wigs
He met Lana Clarkson in 2003, on a night out in Los Angeles. Their assignation went horribly awry. When police arrived, Spector ignored their command to take his hands out of his pockets, so they blasted him twice with a Taser stun gun and bound him hand and foot.
In an affidavit, a policeman says that Spector told them at the time: ‘I didn’t mean to shoot her. It was an accident.’ Later, he changed his story, saying that Lana had killed herself by mistake while fooling around with the gun. Spector was released on $1 million bail, secured by OJ Simpson’s lawyer, Robert Shapiro, and in the four years that followed, he was allowed to remain at liberty.
In a final bizarre act, he picked up a girlfriend, Rachelle Short, a model 40 years his junior, and married her just before his trial. They were wed in the foyer where Lana died, and she is currently living in the house.
Spector himself never gave evidence but in depositions he claimed he didn’t remember the names of his doctor, his psychiatrist, the chauffeur who drove him that night, or the prescription drugs he was taking at the time.
He says he didn’t realise that he possessed any guns, even though ten were found at his home and he has a long history of using firearms.
Some who have worked with Spector would concur that he is not merely eccentric but is actually mentally disturbed — and prone to explosive losses of temper.
Spector had 'an intolerable devotion to guns' and would change weapons to match his outfits
The singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, who was threatened at gunpoint by Spector, spoke of his ‘megalomania and insanity’. He added that Spector had ‘an intolerable devotion to guns’ and would change weapons to match his outfits up to four times a day.
Spector even let off a round during the recording of John Lennon’s Rock ‘n’ Roll album. Lennon taunted him about his wife Ronnie leaving him; Spector drew his gun, raised it above his head and fired.
Lennon deadpanned: ‘Listen, Phil, if you’re going to kill me, kill me. But don’t f*** with my ears. I need ’em.’
Spector was unpopular at school, but became a chart star in his teens thanks to the single he wrote, To Know Him Is To Love Him. Before he was 20 his musical genius had made him a millionaire, but he said that he had no friends at all, only lawyers and bodyguards.
He emerged into adulthood insecure, troubled by insomnia and explosive losses of control. He was ruthless in his business dealings and occasionally terrifying in his personal ones.
His mental state worsened after River Deep, Mountain High, the song he considered his masterpiece, was a U.S. chart flop when first released in 1966. Threatened by the success of The Beatles, he descended into paranoia as the Seventies dawned. Always an oddball, Spector became a recluse.
In her book, Be My Baby, his former wife Ronnie says Spector was suffocatingly possessive: he never wanted her to leave the house, and kept the curtains drawn.
New wife Rachelle Spector says she does not recognise any of the many stories about her husband, whom she characterises as sweet natured. She regularly visits him at Corcoran State prison, in California.
Her last publicist, Hal Lifson, no longer works with her and calls her ‘bonkers.’ He added that her behaviour had isolated Spector further from those who might support him.
In spite of all the evidence of Spector’s guilt, Lozzi and the Friends Of Lana Clarkson are scared that the Mamet film might present a powerful case for his innocence.
So will the screen support of two Oscar winners — Mirren and Pacino — give this strange story one final twist … and turn public opinion back in favour of the most eccentric man in pop?
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2025045/Phil-Spector-movie-Al-Pacino-Helen-Mirren-film-makes-killer-hero-victims-friends-say.html#ixzz1UpQf4fUN
