American Crime Story 1.01: “From the Ashes of Tragedy”
American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson opens provocatively with a montage retelling the Rodney King beating and Los Angeles riots. The sequence is prescient -- after all the handheld video of the beating feels, if anything, more relevant now, in light of the recent publicity given to and awareness of police-involved shootings in cities as disparate as Ferguson and Baltimore. With visceral effectiveness, it both sets the tone for the racial context in which the O.J. Simpson murder trial unfolded and indicates the story Ryan Murphy is seeking to tell. In a case where detail is everything, the show is much more interested in trying to tell a larger cultural story.
The story wastes no time in drawing out the underlining tensions and politics at the heart of the case: the steely determination of Marcia Clark, the racial politics between Johnnie Cochran and Chris Darden, and the slick opportunism of Robert Shapiro, all elevated by the performances given. The entire viewing experience I thought was enhanced by the cinematography -- lots of pan shots peering into the Rockingham and Bundy scenes, across Robert Kardashian’s home, through the District Attorney’s office. It gives the sensation of being in the inner corridors of power.
The series premiere takes place over the first five days of the saga, a crucial period of time about which much has been revealed both during and since the trial. There are a number of good recaps (The A.V. Club, Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, among others) sizing up the performances, themes, and plot.
But as an unabashed O.J. trial junkie, I am just as much interested in what details the writers included and excluded as I am in the production. Here, then, are a few things that came to mind.
Loose Ends at Rockingham on the Night of the Murders
Brian “Kato” Kaelin, the world’s most famous houseguest, was mocked for his nitpicking overview of the first episode for New York Daily News. However, one of his more substantive points is that the first shot at the Rockingham scene is Allan Park, Simpson’s limo driver on the night of the murders, waiting right outside to take him to the airport. What is important about the fact that Park was actually at the foot of the driveway talking to Kaelin is that when Kaelin was helping to load Simpson’s luggage into the limo. Simpson brusquely told him not to touch a small black bag, which was never seen again.
Stylistically, I found it interesting that the writers show Simpson talking during the limo ride about his first encounter with a celebrity, Willie Mays, which, in the mythology of O.J. Simpson’s biography, has been imbued with significant meaning, coming as it did at a time when Simpson was going down a wrong path in the projects of Potrero Hill. I had not heard that conversation happened anywhere in any of the accounts and sure sounds apocryphal. I would like to note that Simpson was reportedly energetic and asked for the air conditioner to turned up all the way and limo windows rolled down on a summer night.
Before boarding the plane, Simpson also asked Kaelin, as he testified, to set the burglar alarm for his house that night, which he never asked of him before. What always struck me as odd about that alarm (and I am not alone in this, apparently) was that Arnelle Simpson, Simpson’s adult daughter who was living in a guesthouse at the time, testified that she took the police officers who first arrived through the front door so that she could turn off the alarm. In fact, the detectives who were with her at the time -- as well as Kaelin -- all testified that Arnelle led them into the house through the back and that no alarm went off. Who was in the house between the time Kaelin set the alarm and the time Arnelle led the detectives into the home? Why was there a fresh load of wet laundry in the washing machine when Simpson’s housekeeper had not been there all weekend?
What did Kato Kaelin know? The show highlights his poorly rehearsed attempt to invoke the Fifth Amendment on the stand before the grand jury in a highly amusing sequence. Kaelin, of course, was cornered by Simpson, Kardashian, and Weitzman, among others, in the 24 hours following the murders. It has been rumored that Kaelin told Grant Cramer, with whom he stayed after the murders, a vastly different story than the one he would tell on the stand.
Kato Kaelin is one of the more intriguing characters in the case. While I was watching last night, a friend texted to me ask why he was even staying in Simpson’s guesthouse in the first place. I explained that he originally lived in a guesthouse at Nicole’s post-divorce home (on Gretna Green) but that when she moved to the smaller condo on South Bundy, there was no guesthouse and Kaelin was to stay in a guest room. Simpson objected to Kaelin staying in her house and instead offered him a guesthouse. The key detail there is that Kaelin was paying Nicole rent, and babysitting. Simpson offered him a rent-free set-up, as well as the bragging rights to say he was staying at Simpson’s home. (Suffice it to say, this is hardly a unique arrangement, however unusual.) Kaelin accepted. His relationship with Nicole, and her friends, never recovered, and in her final months, she reported to friends she would see Kaelin while she was out, at restaurants and clubs. At the very least, freeloading-aspiring-actor Kaelin would have had to have got the money for that somewhere. Kaelin may not have been paying rent but I tend to think there was more to his arrangement, and relationship, with Simpson than has been made public.
"I’ve had some dreams of killing her” -- O.J. Simpson to Ron Shipp, 6/13/94
Sheila Weller’s Raging Heart, which was published during the trial and with the participation of Nicole Brown Simpson’s family and many of O.J. and Nicole’s friends, begins with the account of a man “whom we will call Leo,” who was in Simpson’s bedroom the night after the murders and to whom Simpson had asked how long it takes DNA results to come back and confessed that the detectives who had questioned him that day had wanted him to take a lie detector but that he did not want to because, “I have had some dreams of killing her.” According to the psychiatric and legal experts Weller conferred with, Simpson’s assertion was an effort to fashion an explanation should he fail a lie-detector test.
As became clear, “Leo” was Ron Shipp, a former LAPD officer, who was privy to many of the unseemly details of the Simpson marriage (including the scope of the 1989 beating) and whose testimony for the prosecution became a Rorschach test of racial attitudes in the case, an exemplar of how whites and blacks could see something so differently. He was, also, a relative of Johnnie Cochran -- not that it stopped defense attorney Carl Douglas from tearing him apart under cross-examination or the defense from asking Simpson’s sisters, mother, and older daughter on the stand whether Shipp was under the influence that evening. (The defense essentially claimed that Shipp was a drunk who was never alone with Simpson that night.)
It was not revealed until after the criminal trial that on the Tuesday after the murders, and the day after Simpson’s purported conversation with Shipp, as shown in American Crime Story, that Robert Kardashian and Robert Shapiro escorted Simpson to a lie-detector test, which he failed with a negative-24.
The Robert Kardashian Question
Why did O.J. Simpson and Robert Kardashian personally drive to the airport to retrieve the golf clubs in the days following the murders and preceding Nicole’s funeral?
The pilot was effective in many ways in drawing out the complicated role Robert Kardashian had in the whole saga, and yet there were a few things I was surprised not to see. For example, Robert Kardashian, rather famously, was filmed walking off the Rockingham estate on June 13 following Simpson’s return with a Louis Vuitton garment bag, which was loaded into a car driven by Simpson’s faithful assistant, Cathy Randa (who previously worked for Kardashian), and was never seen again.
For reasons I will save for another post, I have always been a little incredulous about the fact that Kardashian is considered to be a kind of moral conscience to the case. What did Robert Kardashian know? American Tragedy, which was written by James Willwerth and Lawrence Schiller with Kardashian’s uncredited assistance, included the poignant detail that Kardashian did not appreciate that Simpson was the main suspect until he returned to the Rockingham estate on June 13 and saw that the police had gone through the plumbing of Simpson’s bathroom. (It also includes the surreal scene of Kardashian, Simpson, Randa, Simpson’s business manager Skip Taft, and his attorney Howard Weitzman watching coverage of the case in Simpson’s office after leaving the police station on June 13.)
I tend to think Kardashian knew much more about Simpson’s culpability then he ever made public before he died. Of everyone involved with the case, he was perhaps the most skillful media operator after the acquittal, skillfully distancing himself from Simpson and explicating his doubts while not apologizing for his loyalty throughout or betraying what his knowledge of the situation was..
While American Crime Story does not show the skillful way Simpson and Kardashian misdirected the feeding frenzy outside Rockingham, it does show how Simpson hid out at Kardashian’s Encino home, with his longtime girlfriend Paula Barbieri and children, in the week before he was arrested. I did find it odd that Simpson and Barbieri are shown sleeping in Kim Kardashian’s bedroom because it is known that they were sleeping in a guest suite. That Simpson tried to kill himself in there was first reported in American Tragedy, which goes on to show Kardashian and Simpson surrealistically walking around the property as Simpson looks for a place to blow his brains out.
One detail about those few days which still sticks out is Dominick Dunne’s assertion in Vanity Fair that the sounds of Simpson and Barbieri’s “lovemaking in Robert Kardashian’s house on the night before Nicole’s funeral, according to an inside source, woke up the household.” (That had to have come from Kardashian’s fiancee at the time, Denice Halicki.)
On Simpson’s First Two Lawyers: Howard Weitzman and Robert Shapiro
One revealing aspect of the case that "From Ashes to Tragedy” sort of glosses over is the transfer of power in Simpson’s legal representation that first week. Howard Weitzman, Simpson’s longtime lawyer, who had represented him against the charges filed in connection to the 1989 beating, was naturally at the Rockingham scene the morning after the murders and represented Simpson for roughly the first day-and-a-half of that case. In that time, Weitzman allowed Simpson to talk to Detectives Lange and Vannatter while he absented himself, even getting lunch at the time, and then later claiming that the detectives said they would only talk to Simpson without an attorney present.
As Jeffrey Toobin reported in The Run of His Life, and as was heard in last night’s episode, the district attorney’s office considered the interview a “fiasco” because the detectives failed to press Simpson on any of his evasions. Even more damaging, the detectives gave up a considerable amount of information about the status of their investigation -- including the extent of the evidence that had been collected -- in return.
What did Howard Weitzman know? According to Kardashian, Weitzman told him he thought Simpson was guilty at one point during the trial.
It has been said that Weitzman recommended Robert Shapiro, whose reputation at the time was primarily that of a plea-bargainer, to Simpson. And that may be true to an extent but it was TV executive Roger King who first got in touch with Simpson’s camp, strongly recommending they hire Shapiro. King, who barely knew Simpson, also got in touch with Shapiro, who knew Simpson casually. What could possibly have motivated such unsolicited advice?
And speaking of unsolicited advice, Erik Menendez, who was initially in the cell next to Simpson when he was first jailed, advised him to fire Shapiro. (Allegedly Menendez’s words were: “Don’t ever believe Bob Shapiro is going to get you a deal, because he isn’t.”)
As was reported in American Tragedy, Kardashian followed up with King later in the summer, assuming that his interest in the defense would mean he would be interested in providing financial support as well. What Kardashian found was that King was open to an arrangement ... in which the Simpson defense give full behind-the-scenes access to Inside Edition, a TV tabloid news show he produced, in exchange for $5 million.
Those were the circumstances under which Shapiro, who led the defense team through the end of 1994 and was a leading (if marginalized) lawyer through the trial, was hired. In addition to being breathtaking, I think it just goes to show how pervasive and mercenary the media could be in stakes as high as the Simpson trial.
Scenes From Nicole Brown Simpson’s Funeral
There are so many riveting details about Nicole Brown Simpson’s funeral that I am kind of surprised the writers elided most of them and included a gratuitous Kardashians reference to boot.
For example, a character can be heard wondering, in reference to Robert Shapiro’s presence, who brings their lawyer to a funeral. In fact, Shapiro questioned Nicole’s mother, Juditha Brown, as they stood over her casket, about the timeline of the night of the murders. (Brown had originally claimed she called Mezzaluna, where she dined with her daughter and family the night of the murders, about her missing glasses at a quarter to 11 rather than a quarter to 10. Obviously, had the former been true it would have been significantly helpful for the defense’s timeline.)
There are other unsettling details, as Sheila Weller draws out in her gripping book on the Simpson marriage, Raging Heart:
Simpson broke down crying to Juditha Brown about how he loved Nicole “too much”
Simpson’s adult son, Jason, erratically bolted from the funeral and had to be calmed down (Jason, by the way, once took a baseball bat to the life-sized statue of O.J. Simpson at his estate)
After the funeral Al Cowlings acted as a decoy for Simpson to elude the press, with the assistance of an off-duty police officer
Kato Kaelin couldn’t look any of Nicole’s friends in the eye.
The exchange between Kris Jenner (a wonderfully evocative Selma Blair) and Faye Resnick (Connie Britton) gives only a taste of the tension underlying the funeral. Resnick’s knowing drawl in saying, “She was terrified of him” lingers.
I am of two minds when it comes to the storytelling angle Ryan Murphy and company are undertaking here. On the one hand, there is plenty to be mined from the racial controversy and politics that enveloped the Simpson trial but on the other, the exploitation of race is still incredibly ironic given the circumstances in the Simpson case, the unique confluence of larger-than-life personalities and explosive relationships looms large over the trial and the media. How the show assimilates all this is what I will be most intrigued in watching.
“We have tickets to the premiere of I Love Trouble.” -- Linell Shapiro
The show admirably and effectively highlights the racial dimensions the trial would take on in the media by showing how Dennis Schatzman, the publisher of the black weekly Los Angeles Sentinel, immediately focused in on Simpson’s handcuffing and un-handcuffing upon his return to Rockingham, which, as Jeffrey Toobin illustrated in The Run of His Life, when contrasted with the infamous TIME cover, shows just how much race, by nature, was going to be a factor in what followed.
I had read the phone message Sydney Simpson left on her mother’s answering machine the morning after the murders. I was not ready to hear it.
Here’s some more information about the Taylor case that Cochran and Darden argued over. (Courtney B. Vance likely merits an Emmy for his delivery of “Choose a side” alone.)
