Studio 54 · Celebrity Rape Allegations · Dylan Howard
Plus: Confusion between various Rs
the true crime that's worth your time
Ryan Murphy is one busy guy. First, there’s the trailer for (Monica Lewinsky-produced, because that’s how you do it, Stillwater) Impeachment: American Crime Story. I’m not going to “review” the trailer, because we don’t have to do traffic-mongering plays like that, but I’ll say two things: 1) it feels very The Good Fight-ish, am I being silly? And 2) my blood ran cold when Clive Owen (as Bill Clinton) smiled.
I have a weird feeling that this series, like many other true-crime adaptations and documentaries, might bring Clinton’s undeniable misdeeds into the public consciousness in a way that few of us — including, perhaps, Murphy — might be expecting. To that point, I wonder if Murphy would have pushed this show forward if Hillary Clinton (Edie Falco, in the ACH version) had been elected president in 2016. There’s a potential for present-day fallout here that I suspect has the Clinton family quite anxious! I guess we’ll see if my unsubstantiated sensations bear out on September 7, when the show premieres on FX. What’s your take, based on that brief peek into the show?
Murphy also announced two spin-off series last weekend, one of which has a true crime edge: per Deadline, Murphy will also helm American Sports Story and American Love Story for FX. Of course, Love Story is a bummer in that it’s about the reportedly troubled marriage of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, which ended in (non-domestic) tragedy.
Sports is equally uplifting, as it’s going to be about accused murderer/NFL star Aaron Hernandez. Based on the podcast Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc., it “explores the connections of the disparate strands of his identity, his family, his career, his suicide, and their legacy in sports and American culture.” I’m already looking forward to Murphy’s American Pets Story (about the real Old Yeller, voiced by Matt Bomer) and American Cupcake Story (the cupcakes are filled with cyanide and are prepared by Evan Peters). jk, these are not real shows. Yet.
Finally, once it’s done with Impeachment, ACS will move on to disco. Entertainment Tonight does an able job of FX press-release rewrite, reporting that Studio 54: American Crime Story is currently in development. That means we don’t have a lot of details yet on the specific crimes at the club — true, founders Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell did go down for tax fraud (Obama pardoned Schrager right before he peaced out in 2017; Rubell died in 1989), but those seem like the least thrilling transgressions at the legendary bar. Now, here’s a photo of the pair, who could be ably played by any of the similar-looking members of Murphy’s repertory stable. Just not Mike Myers again, please. — EB
Three famous men have been accused of sexual assault in recent days. “Only three?” you all respond, which, I know. But here are the headlines:
Horatio Sanz groomed, sexually assaulted underage fan at ‘SNL’ party: lawsuit [Page Six]
According to a civil suit filed in Manhattan last Thursday (you can read it in full here), the plaintiff was 15 when she met Sanz, who was then 31. When she was 16, “Sanz exchanged messages with [the teen] and steered conversations to discuss sex, sexual experiences, sexual activities, sexual fantasies, masturbation,” the lawsuit claims. At an SNL party that same year, “Plaintiff sat with Jimmy Fallon and others in a VIP area, ordered and consumed a Budweiser beer in the presence of NBC/SNL employees.” The suit claims Sanz assaulted her, in front of witnesses, at a similar party the year following. A spokesperson for Sanz denies the claim, and reps for NBC (SNL is also named in the suit) have declined to comment.
Bob Dylan Sexually Abused a 12-Year-Old in 1965, New Lawsuit Alleges [Vice]
This civil suit was filed a day after the Sanz claims, but in the same court: per Vice, it went down “just before the closure of the ‘lookback window’ created by the Child Victims Act.” If like me, you weren’t sure what that means, here’s NY1’s explanation of the statute of limitations deadline, which prompted a “flood” of new cases before the Aug. 14 time limit. [“Law firms have been advertising around this expiration date relentlessly during local live sports.” — SDB] In this case, the alleged abuse happened in April and May of 1965, when Dylan “exploited his status as a musician to provide J.C. with alcohol and drugs and sexually abuse her multiple times,” the suit reads. According to the Post, a Dylan spokesperson says, “This 56-year-old claim is untrue and will be vigorously defended.”
Joel Kinnaman Under Investigation for Alleged Rape After Being Granted Restraining Order From Model [E Online]
A spokesperson for the Swedish Prosecution Authority didn’t name Kinnaman’s accuser, saying only that “The prosecutor got the case today and has hardly been able to look at it. She has said there is a need for further investigative matters before she can make a decision.” According to the AV Club, which sourced much of its report from a Kinnaman Instagram post (above), the actor claims that he filed a restraining order against a woman with whom he’d has two consensual sexual encounters in 2018, and that she threatened him with false claims in the years following. The woman in question tells People that that she never “threatened or asked for money,” and via Instagram has posted conversations (in Swedish, so I’m out of my depth here) she claims were with Kinnaman and his representatives that admit culpability. — EB
I’m not going to package this as “the lighter side” of anything, but, still, did I laugh? Yes, I did.
Thanks to Best Evidence subscriber Tara Ariano for tagging us in on this one. Crumb was the plaintiff in the highest-profile suit he’s been involved in (against Amazon, so hard to blame him), but as Tara noted, Crumb certainly has his own baggage, saying in (pre #MeToo) 2011 that “All it takes is a few people who overreact to [the depictions of women in his cartoons] to show up and cause unpleasantness. I have a lot of anxiety about having to confront some angry sexual-assault crisis group.” And there’s this. — EB
Dylan Howard falls up, and Dean Baquet gets cast. Two major media figures from the height of the #MeToo movement made headlines in recent days, one as a disgraced figure seeking a second act and the other as a thrilling bit of casting. So I’m lumping the items together, because why not.
First, we have Howard, one of the villains of Rowan Farrow’s Catch and Kill as the editor of the National Enquirer (he killed “stories about Donald Trump’s affairs during his presidential campaign, helped Harvey Weinstein dig up dirt on his accusers and, in Jeff Bezos’ telling, threatened the Amazon owner with blackmail,” as the NYT puts it). Reporter Rachel Abrams paints a wild portrait of Howard’s attempted comeback, beginning with a party Ferragamo — the folks behind my favorite belt and my least-comfortable shoes — threw for Grazia USA, the Howard-run publishing company behind a new Hamptons-related fashion mag.
Let’s read a snip:
Maer Roshan, the editor of Los Angeles Magazine and the former editor of Radar, which Mr. Howard took over in 2009 and transformed into something more akin to the gossip site TMZ, was among those in the media who were incredulous at Mr. Howard’s attempted comeback.
How “does this dude come back with this glossy magazine and roster of A-list advertisers?” he wondered.
Since leaving American Media when his contract expired on March 31, 2020, Mr. Howard has acquired the website for OK Magazine, as well as Radar Online. Both were formerly owned by American Media.
Mr. Howard has also continued a sideline he started in 2018 as an author of true-crime books for Skyhorse, which is distributed by Simon & Schuster. Working in collaboration with other authors, but with his name receiving top billing, he has come out with more than half a dozen books, including, “Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” “Covid-19: The Greatest Cover-Up in History” and “Diana: Case Solved.”
The whole story of this latest white man failing up is worth a read. (Sarah’s review of Howard’s Natalie Wood podcast is here.)
As Erik Wemple noted back in 2019, while Farrow’s Weinstein investigations were crushed by the suspect at NBC, similar reporting “flourished under the leadership of New York Times executives.” The result of that NYT support was She Said, a book by Times scribes Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey.
That book is set for dramatic adaptation, as I believe we’ve discussed in the past, but the telling will be a meta one: Twohey and Kantor will be in the film (played by Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan, respectively), as will NYT Executive Editor Dean Baquet, who Wemple nodded to in his side-by-side comparison of NBC and the NYT’s approach to the Weinstein case.
According to Variety, now She Said has found its Baquet in Andre Braugher, which is good because I like Andre Braugher, and also because in my opinion, Braugher has exactly what it takes to capture what longtime Post editor/lifetime professional rival* Marty Baron once called “an energizing charisma, and a way of inspiring people.” In a lot of ways, Baquet is almost a perfect mix of Captain Holt and Frank Pembleton, so I’m a little mad I didn’t think of this one myself. And now I gotta watch this again, don’t I?
*Politico’s The Not-So-Bitter Rivalry of Dean Baquet and Marty Baron is a great media-nerd read, but is true-crimeless, I’m afraid. — EB
And now, art fraud. After that block of sexual assault stuff, I’d like to leave you with Air Mail’s The Lady Vanishes, on “a millennial, private-jet-hopping grifter” named Angela Gulbenkian, who for years now has faced allegations of fraud over a sculpture of a gourd. It’s a delicious morsel of a yarn; here’s a bite:
The saga began in 2017, when Mathieu Ticolat, a Hong Kong–based art adviser, shelled out almost $1.3 million for a giant, 179-pound spotted-yellow-pumpkin sculpture by the artist Yayoi Kusama. Gulbenkian, who describes herself on Instagram as an art collector and name-drops the Gulbenkian Private Art Collection in her bio, took the money and claimed she would arrange the purchase from a Singapore-based company called Artseen.
But instead of paying the sellers, and delivering the pumpkin to the buyers, Gulbenkian simply pocketed the cash—“and went on a vast shopping spree to Harrods, to Watches of Knightsbridge, to Agent Provocateur, chartering private jets and going to all the party spots,” says Chris Marinello of Art Recovery International, who was hired by Ticolat to track down the missing cash.
This is a clear “why hasn’t this been adapted yet,” and even though Gulbenkian is German, I’m already proposing Rebel Wilson for her role. You can see it, right? — EB
Wednesday on Best Evidence: Dream (or nightmare) podcasts, up for discussion!
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