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CINEMA SEEN - "Jury Doo Dooed" By William Margold I learned a VERY frightening lesson a few weeks ago. Faithful readers of this column might remember that I had been grousing about having to perform my "civic duty" by being subjected to the rigors of going through the first stages of Jury Service down at the Los Angeles County Court House on Temple. The end result of that extremely exasperating day was that, although I'm not really a drinking man, I headed my fairly reliable VW van through the uncomfortably warm late October afternoon "smaze" (a miserable breath-torturing amalgam of smog and haze) immediately toward Lucy's El Adobe on Melrose, where I numbly ordered "tequila on the rocks"--- to which the amused waitress responded, "you mean a Margarita?"---and I nodded, dimly remembering that my beloved Viper had said "the best way to get the most alcoholic effect from a Margarita is to have it served on the rocks, not all crushed up." And there it sat in front me, the BIG round glass, all frosty, and delectably bristling with a ring of coarse salt, tempting me to "kill the pain" by taking a sip. Well...I didn't sip...I gulped...and gulped...and gulped...and the miserable hours that had "driven me to drink" began to blur. But not enough...! For those of you used to how I can always (somehow!) manage to create an entire Cinema Seen page by magically blending one of my real life adventures with a reel world production, I must admit that the fact that RUNAWAY JURY, the 20th Century Fox film featured on this page, being released the Friday before my own dealings with the world of juries, even surprised me as far as coincidences go. (It should be noted here, that I have dealt with juries, as both a defendant, and a witness for both the defense and the prosecution, many times during my Adult Entertainment Industry career, but I've never had the misfortune to be placed in a situation where I might become one of "12 Angry Men." Well at least now I know where the "angry" came from.) But let's deal with the film here, first. The overly convoluted (dare I say, rather contrived) film, directed with limited tension by Gary Felder, is based on one of John Grisham's books, and plays out like a protracted version of TV's "The Practice"---which is one of my favorites shows, although it can be very uneven. What the movie does have going for it is an absolutely hissable villain turn by Gene Hackman (that scoffing laugh of his is grotesquely gleeful, and had me crackling along with him like a demented hyena, which might be redundant), whose role as a "Jury Consultant" reeks of contempt toward the judicial system as well as the human race. BUT after enduring my day in the "hatchery" (which I will explain later on), my sentiments about certain processes that are supposedly designed to protect us, are just about as bitter as those of Rankin Fitch (Hackman's character). Dustin Hoffman is woefully proper as the underdog lawyer pitted against Hackman's malevolent machinations, and as the film's publicity department is quick to point out, this is the first time that the old roommates (Robert Duvall rounded out the menage of struggling young actors) from New York in the 1950's, have ever appeared opposite each other in a scene. Sardonically, it takes place in a courthouse bathroom, which I suspect might have been bigger than their apartment was in NYC, and Hackman eats Hoffman up. Meanwhile, John Cusack and Rachel Weisz hold their own, and each other, although if I didn't lose track of just who Weisz is really playing, then it somewhat sordidly appears that Cusack partakes of both sides of the sisterly coin---with the head no longer around, the tail is still available. Finally, the perpetual scene-stealer Bruce McGill, whose career has extended from the legendary D-Day in "Animal House" through magnetic creations on both TV (the opening moments in the first episode of "Gideon's Crossing") and film (his very brief intensity was the highlight of "The Insider"), brings a playful air to the rather dour proceedings. And speaking of dour, it's time to discuss what drove me to drink. Hopefully most of you have been subjected to a trip to the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park. I sort of grew up there, or at least it seemed that way, because as far back as the mid-50's, I always went to the museum before any football game at The Memorial Coliseum. And somehow, although it was never really different, I always managed to wind-up in a dismally lit room that had a big chicken incubator that was loaded with eggs that were in the various process of being hatched. And for some reason, I would stand there, inanely mesmerized by the sight of chicks resolutely struggling to break free of their shells. And it never failed that for all of Mother Nature's Wonder, the floor of the incubator/hatchery was always littered with the tragic limp bodies of those chicks who had worked so hard to be born that they had overexerted themselves to death in the process. And that's exactly how I felt, trapped in the Jury Selection Room on the 11th Floor of the Court Building on Temple Street on a miserable Monday in mid-October. OK, so there weren't any dead creatures laying around, but talk about your clucking nitwits. The amount of hot air expended in the room that torturous day could have relaunced The Hindenburg. Throughout the single dullest day of my life, quite a number of the baby chickens, I mean people, were "randomly selected" to be placed in jury pools in various courtrooms. It was the most perverse game of Bingo I've ever participated in. Thankfully, my name was never called. Finally, after what felt like a week but really only amounted to a little over eight hours, we were excused "for at least a year." And I was on my way to Lucy's. From now on, if anyone ever dares to mutter something about how wonderful it is to be tried by a "jury of one's peers," I'm going to demand that they prove the people deciding my fate are fit (in mind or body) to be my "peer." You've got be kidding!!! I've seen what passes for the baby chickens, I mean people (poor boobs, who are either fearful of being fined a ridiculous amount for refusing to show up, or those who are SO bored with their own empty lives that they are desperate to feel important by fucking around with a stranger's future), who choose between "Guilty and Not Guilty" up close and personal, and you'd be a lot better off putting your legal fate in a roll of the dice, or how the final crystals of ice are shaped at the bottom of a drained-to-the-very-last-drop-of-painkilling-pleasure Margarita glass. end NOTE: Originally published in L.A. Xpress, Nov. 6, 2003. |