While the prospect of seeing Al Pacino and Helen Mirren in the upcoming HBO David Mamet film about the murder trial of music producer Phil Spector may give film fans reason to celebrate, friends of Lana Clarkson, the actress who Spector was convicted of killing, have made their intentions clear: they have no plans on seeing it, according to reports from The BBC and The New York Post.
The movie, starring Pacino focuses on his relationship with his defense lawyer, Linda Kenney Baden, played by Mirren. The group against the film say it's too sympathetic towards Spector's defense case.
"To see that this film was going to be made was a slap in the face," Edward Lozzi, Clarkson's former publicist said. "We were so happy Phil Spector was in prison."
According to Lozzi, the film strongly suggests Clarkson killed herself because she was depressed that she had turned 40.
"This is the first trial of Phil Spector when he is first accused of this heinous crime," Pacino said. "It's all new to him in terms of the media - their reaction to it - and his introduction to Linda... And it's their relationship, in the course of their preparation for the trial."
"David [Mamet] sees this story in a more mythological way than as a documentary or docudrama," Mirren said. "It's certainly not a docudrama. We are not saying, 'This is what happened, and this is what didn't happen.' We are not saying that. It's a mythological story more than anything. I think whenever you have as extreme a personality as Phil Spector was with the kind of history that he had, he is already vilified. He is made into a monster before any trial begins, so I think that was very much the case with Phil Spector, and it does happen in other cases."
"Like any dramatist, you're just basically a thief, and you take things that you've thought, and things that you've heard, and things that you've seen, and try to apply some structure to them, so that what you're doing is kind of like a psychiatrist - you take these dreams which are seemingly random, and re-order them so that they make dramatic sense," Mamet said.
"Phil Spector" premieres on HBO on March 24 at 9 p.m.
