Dr Cyril Wecht and Dawna Kaufmann: Exclusive Interview on Book Final Exams
The Guardian Liberty Voice has the privilege of an exclusive interview with Dr. Cyril Wecht MD. JD. and Dawna Kaufmann. They have written three true crime novels together and their latest is Final Exams from Ann Rule Presents.
Despite the name change, All Good Things is a fictionalised account of property tycoon Robert Durst who killed his next-door neighbour while he was living incognito as a mute woman. Proving that truth is indeed stranger than fiction, Durst’s wife disappeared mysteriously over 31 years ago and the only other person who might have known what really happened to her wound up dead after receiving a 9mm gunshot to the head.
Execution style.
Directed by Andrew Jarecki who has a fascination with Durst’s case and history, All Good Things is a slow movie. Its languid pacing is overshadowed by a sense of discord from the start of the film. The movie changes Durst’s name to the ironic moniker of Marks, this overly obvious ironic name change is just a few of the films problems. Such as relying on cliché’s and stereotypes to tell the story.
The Plot:
David Marks (Ryan Gosling) meets Katie (Kirsten Dunst) one of his father’s tenants when she complains of a leaky kitchen sink. He stops by, at his father’s insistence, to see if he can fix it. They are immediately attracted to one another and strike up a relationship. It’s a case of opposites attracting with Marks’ family is in the higher stratosphere of the monied gentry and Katie’s in solid middle class. After some growing pains, they marry and David turns his back on the family business. Their wedded bliss is short-lived, however, and after some interference from ‘poppa’ Marks (Frank Langella) they move back into the family fold. Their troubles begin almost immediately.
The Cast:
| Ryan Gosling | … | ||
| Kirsten Dunst | … | ||
| Frank Langella | … |
Sanford Marks
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| Lily Rabe | … |
Deborah Lehrman
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| Philip Baker Hall | … |
Malvern Bump
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*Cast courtesy of IMDb.*
The Device:
Money can buy you anything and what you see is definitely not what you get.
The Twist:
There is no real twist here at all. Ryan Gosling as David Marks makes it apparent from his first appearance on-screen that there is something wrong with this character, hence, it comes as no surprise when we find out what he’s really like.
The Story:
As mentioned in the opening paragraph, Marks is based on the real-life story of Robert Durst. Durst’s first wife disappeared and has not been seen since. The only person who may have known anything about the disappearance (Susan Berman aka Deborah Lehrman in the film) was dispatched with a bullet as soon as a Prosecuting Attorney got in touch with her. Durst took to living as a woman (who was mute) and he murdered an elderly neighbour claiming self-defence,
The Characters:
David Marks looks and acts slightly off kilter from frame one. He’s obviously got some hidden issues that would probably be better off left alone. I’ve never been a huge fan of Gosling’s, but, he is a more than capable actor. In this film he delivers but the movies pacing and perhaps the “filler” plot let him and Dunst down a bit. All the actors gave good solid performances and delivered characters who were believable and flawed. Unfortunately, as in any film that is based on true events, a lot of things for the film had to be “filled in” and therefore felt contrived.
The Verdict:
Although the script does a pretty good job of filling in the blanks, as it were, the pacing of the action lets everything down. I’m not saying that it needed to race towards the finish line, but it needed a shot of adrenaline administered here and there to pick up the flow. It is oddly compelling to watch. I could not stop viewing it even when I got frustrated at some of the events and their dipped in molasses recounting.
I’d have to give this film a 3.5 out of 5 stars for Dunst’s performance and that of Frank Langella. With an honourable mention to Lily Rabe as Deborah Lerhman and the delightful Philip Baker Hall. It is not a film that I’d care to watch twice and once I’d checked out the “true” story the film was based on; I felt that ,quite possibly, the real events probably overshadowed this celluloid re-telling.
Don’t break a leg rushing to see this one.
*And a quick word of thanks to Kevin over at Claratsi for giving me the “bump” I needed to finally watch this film. You can check out his blog by clicking on the link above!*
When I picked this book up at my local Library, I did so because the title rang a bell. Not the Tokyo Hostess part alone but the prefacing statement above the title: The Shocking True Story… bit. It rang a bell because it was not too long ago that a young English girl who had gone to Japan as an English teacher had been discovered murdered in a tub of sand on an apartment balcony. *In fact it was March 2007* When the news reported this event they mentioned that this was not the first time that this had happened. They also mentioned a name, Lucie Blackman in connection with this “current” event.
This also sparked a bit of recognition. Not because of her disappearance and death, but because of the controversy of her father taking money from her killer; one Joji Obara, a rich Korean immigrant son whose family fortune allowed him to offer huge sums of money to his victims and their families.
Intrigued, I checked the book out and brought it home.
Tokyo Hostess is Clare Campbell’s coverage not only of the events leading up to the deaths of Carita Ridgway and Lucie Blackman but it also contains an in-depth look at the “hostess” trade in Japan and its role in replacing the geisha in modern times but with much more of a risk.
The book looks at the promises made by the Hostess trade to prospective employees and how they emphasise how safe it is and how easy it is. They repeatedly assure the young gaijin (non-Japanese) women that sex is not part of the job. They are not prostitutes. Some Hostess’s in the past have had sex with their clients, but, it is a money losing proposition.
The whole Hostess mythos works on the Japanese male’s sense of harmless fantasy. The men (mostly salary workers and mostly married) will come into a Hostess club for the female company of a pretty girl who waits on him exclusively. Pouring his drinks; lighting his cigarettes; laughing at his jokes and appearing to hang on his every word, the hostess gives the promise of this becoming a love affair. But it is a love affair that cannot happen, because once reality hits (in the form of sex) the fantasy is over and the male will move on to another hostess at another club.
But on the fantasy side of this little “harmless” arrangement, the men are all fixated on gaijin women; the curvier the better.
Clare Campbell takes us into the sordid underbelly of Japan’s “entertainment” districts. She shows us the hierarchy of the Hostess trade and its first cousin the sex trade. She interviews “retired” and current hostesses to find out how the whole thing works and what the rules are.
She also tells Lucie and Carita’s stories and the events that led to their deaths. She spoke to the families; the survivors of the horrible phone call, the inept police enquiry and the subsequent trial and publicity. She has also documented the Japanese legal authority’s xenophobic attitude towards gaijin crime (unless it is a gaijin who has done something to a Japanese citizen) and how political pressure was needed to resolve the problems of moving the case forward.
The fact that Joji Obara had been abducting and raping girls for years (not just gaijin) was well documented by the thousands of videos he’d made and had stored at his various homes. This is the only area that the book has not been able to go into any depth. Obara is still a mystery figure. He was the Japanese born son of Korean immigrants who were fabulously wealthy. A spoiled but popular young man who apparently could not have sex “normally” with a body that could move or feel anything; a fact that caused his weird sexual fantasies to spiral out of control. Aided by his money, he then began his ‘Play’ as he called it, only getting caught when he killed Lucie Blackman.
This book is an interesting read made more so because it gives the reader an insight into the Japanese social culture and their conception of foreign (gaijin) visitors to their shores. It also takes a look at the sexual mores of the country and how “harmless” fantasy is accepted as an everyday staple of life. I would recommend reading this book if you want to see how the judicial system works in Japan on a sophomoric level; if you want something more in-depth you’ll have to look elsewhere.
But Clare Campbell has done an excellent job of showing how “international” crime works and affects different people’s lives and just how difficult it can be to find justice in a country that is not your own.
Published in 2008 the long title of the book is: Cannibals True Stories Of The Horrifying Killers Who Feast On Human Flesh. As if the actual short title of cannibals was not descriptive enough.
“With over thirty years experience of earning a living in the slipstream, Jimmy Lee Shreeve has written half-a-dozen books, run a successful internet-based business, written advertising copy, self-publicized, re-invented and re-launched himself, and generally blagged his way through it all.
He also writes as Doktor Snake and Dr. Hash. His books include How To Be Famous, Hash Brownies, Blood Rites, Cannibals, Doktor Snake’s Voodoo Spellbook, and Human Sacrifice.
Jimmy’s byline and work has appeared in over a thousand newspapers, magazines and online media all over the world…”
The rest of the “about” section also goes on to say he’s been on television and radio.
Shreeve has a writing style slightly reminiscent of John Dunning (not John Dunning the detective novelist) who wrote 12 books on murders across the globe. His style was of a tongue in cheek nature in order to soften the subject matter.
While Mr Shreeve is not so prolific with his writing he does specialize in the more macabre stories out there with titles like Dr Snakes Vodoo Spell Book Vol 1 & 2 and Human Sacrifice. His titles alone evoke a type of tabloid like feeling that is reminiscent of the National Enquirer newspaper which specialized in stories like, “Elvis is alive and living in the back of my car” and “Family watches in horror as rats eat baby.”
To give Shreeve credit, he has done his homework and dug up some pretty gruesome tales that he shares with the curious reader. From Andrei Chikatilov (the butcher of Rostov) and Albert Fish right back to Albert Packer and Sawney Beane, he writes about the well-known and lesser known cannibals who have gotten their 15 minutes of fame (or infamy) for snacking on their fellow-man.
Admittedly, all these stories can be found on the internet and probably any library or book store in the true crime section. But he does cover each case well and give the narrative his own personal touch. He has researched enough that he was able to give background to Armin Weiwes, *If the name doesn’t ring a bell his story might. He got a “willing” volunteer via the internet to drop around so Armin could kill him and eat him.* background that I had certainly never seen before.
As a “True Crime” book, Shreeve doesn’t have the wry touch of Colin Wilson or even Dunning, although as I said before, his writing style is similar. The book is informative (and let’s face it), gory and shocking.
I cannot vouch for the rest of the stories in his book, but in his recounting of the Jeffrey Dahmer he leaves out the fact that local police actually brought one of Dahmer’s intended victims back to him thinking it was a lovers tiff between two gay men. They took the man (who could not speak very good English) to his death.
I don’t know why Shreeve left this bit of “colour” out of the story but it made me wonder what else he had omitted. Still the book is a fairly good account of cannibals and their “motives.” He also purports to have been part of an exorcism that “cured” a cannibal that he had corresponded with over a period of time.
In keeping with that theme he also discusses the issue of demon possession and/or Devil worship playing a part in the cannibalistic acts of these deviant criminals. He also brings a brief history of cannibalism into play and writes about people who have studied it as a cultural background for a lot of modern societies.
Cannibals include a lot of different cases and the thread that Shreeve uses to tie them all together is the premise of demon possession. I’m not sure I buy that but it made for some interesting theories.
I picked this book up mainly out of curiosity. No one has really stepped into the late John Dunning’s shoes, although Colin Wilson does come close (interestingly enough it was the friendship between Wilson and Dunning that caused the later to actually publish his collection of stories) even if he did not focus on the more bizarre crimes that Dunning covered.
I used to have quite a large personal collection of “true crime” books that I kept for research purposes. I still have them but Shreeve’s book will not be one that I’ll be rushing out to buy. It’s a short (at 256 pages) curiosity and doesn’t really include too much in the way of more information.
I would say take a moment to read it if a) you are of strong stomach; and b) your knowledge of cannibal criminals is quite sparse. Otherwise you’d do well to stick to the mainstream non-fiction writers such as Colin Wilson.
Bon appétit.
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