"an american crime"

seen it a couple of times now in the showtime loop. don't remember hearing a peep about this amazing 2007 flick starring the always-wonderful catherine keener and incredible ellen page.

am i incredibly late to this dance? have others seen it and been left as disturbed as i was? ???

 

I could barely watch it. It's so disturbing, which is why not many people have seen it. It didn't have much of a theatrical run or much pub at the time it came out.

 

I thought this would be about wanting to bang my son's girlfriend.

 

i understand why completely. but if you can handle the horrific subject matter -- based on a true story -- the performances are riveting.

but i can certainly imagine mrs. shockey changing the channel after about 20 minutes or so. and it seems to air on showtime late at night or in the wee hours.

 

fetch me a beer, newbie.

 

Sure, as long as you promise not to give it to your son's girlfriend.

 

dick. thanks so very much for helping me to move on from that regrettable thread.

 

: ;D ??? :-\ : 8)

 

Lol

 

I haven't seen the movie, and I'm not sure I can sit through it. For those who don't know, it's based on a gruesome case in Indianapolis in the mid-1960s, where a creepy lady got all these kids to torture one girl to death. Fascinating story, but not someone you'd necessarily want to watch. Here is the back story:

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/young/likens/2.html

I went to high school with the movie's director, Tommy O'Haver. When we were juniors in high school, Gertrude Baniszewski, the creepy lady at the center of this, was granted parole. I remember Tom (he was just Tom then) being fascinated with the case, although a lot of us who weren't around for the original trial were.

Maybe Tommy can do An American Crime II, based on Tony Kiritsis, who attached a shotgun to the neck of his mortgage broker and paraded him around downtown Indianapolis on live TV in 1977. Certainly, there's a tale that would resonate these days. That Kiritsis was found not guilty by reason of insanity is one of the reasons why laws across the country changed from the prosecution having to prove the defendant was sane to the defense having to prove its client was not.

http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~nstanton/Kiritsis.html

This photo of the incident by a UPI freelancer won a Pulitzer:

 

Bob,

I took Evidence from one of the prosecutors in the Kiritsis case and he acknowledged they there were overconfident - after all, the entire state saw him do it - and didn't think their strategy through. They told the jury, "The mortgage broker was always fair to Kiritsis" and the defense conceded the point and used it to argue that only an insane man would do that to someone who treated him so well. The prosecutors treated like him he was rational, which only made him appear more irrational.

 

Pope:

Thanks for your take. Really, Kiritsis would make a great movie. I worked at UPI in Indianapolis in 1990, and I recall the bureau chief saying sometimes Kiritsis would call to rant about something (a UPI freelancer took that Pulitzer photo, so maybe the guy felt a connection to us.)

By the way, the house depicted in An American Crime was only knocked down THIS YEAR. Being the site of a notorious crime didn't get it knocked over, but years of being a crack and hooker den finally did.