Monster Mush: Lyle & Erik Return to TV

*½ out of ****

At this point, what on earth can you say about Ryan Murphy? His output includes some of the worst television I’ve ever seen (Glee), some interesting failures (Scream Queens), and some remarkable work as well (Nip/Tuck, The Normal Heart, and the first season of American Crime Story). All, excepting The Normal Heart (a beautiful, gripping adaptation of Larry Kramer’s landmark play), are salacious, transgressive, exploitative, and vulgar—sometimes all at once.

With Dahmer-Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, he and co-creator Ian Brennan fashioned something unique: a factual, well-made miniseries that I wouldn’t ever want to watch again and which I think should not have been made. At this point, one must wonder why Murphy is attracted to these subject matters. He feeds a sick public sick material that ends up not revealing anything about human nature, but instead trots out grotesquerie and the freaks we’ve come to (for some reason) adore in the age of True Crime podcasts, docuseries, and YouTube videos.

With the second installment of Monster (Murphy pioneered the modern anthology series with American Horror Story), he has turned to Lyle and Erik Menendez, the brothers who are in prison without the possibility of parole for murdering their parents in cold blood in the late 1980s. I have watched the entire thing and I cannot understand its raison d’être or its point-of-view.

Somehow, with the Dahmer series (which should have been a movie focusing solely on Niecy Nash’s character’s perspective), a brilliant patchwork was created from multiple writers and multiple directors. Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story suffers from the same revolving door of behind-the-scenes staff. There is absolutely no clear through-line, no distinct interpretation, no reason for the audience to continue from episode to episode and, ultimately, no reason to watch it except out of sociological interest.

It has been so long since the Menendez trials, which were eventually overshadowed by the O. J. case (giving us one very clever scene late in the series), one wonders why go back to this material at all. There is no one to like, no one to root for, no one to learn from. With Dahmer, somehow, we got the full picture of one of the most fascinating serial killers of the 20th century and even came the closest we could to an understanding of him. With Lyle and Erik, two spoiled, rich, Bel-Air kids, we find no reason to even revisit them.

The back-and-forth plot shows the many varied narratives given in the trial—focusing on the alleged sexual abuse of the boys by José Menendez (Javier Bardem). We begin with the soft-spoken Erik (Cooper Koch) feeling guilty and end with the sense he was just as culpable as Lyle (Nicholas Alexander Chavez), who is portrayed throughout as a raging sociopath. We have endless scenes with their attorney Leslie Abramson (Ari Gaynor) defending the indefensible. It’s like an extended episode of Forensic Files on coke and with no resolution.

It is the very sloppily constructed arc of the miniseries that is most to blame. The show’s strongest episodes are directed by Carl Franklin and written by Brennan in collaboration either with Murphy or David McMillan. But with the fifth episode, “The Hurt Man,” which has been the most highly praised (God knows why), we have one single shot—Abramson’s back turned to us as Erik recites his “story” (which we have already heard before) played by an emotionless Koch. After that, the show never really recovers and then, you remember it wasn’t that good to start with.

Comparisons could be made to the rich, jaded characters in the early novels of Bret Easton Ellis, such as Less Than Zero. They dine at the fanciest restaurants, have zero personality, and commit unspeakable crimes all in a dull monotone. This somehow works on the page, but when translated to the dramatic medium, falls flat. The two leads are playing utterly obnoxious (not to mention cold-blooded) human beings. Why would we want to suffer through nine episodes with them? And why nine? Was there even enough material to stretch this out into a miniseries in the first place?

The most controversial aspect of the show has been the insinuation that Lyle and Erik were in an incestuous relationship with each other. From every viewpoint, this seems ridiculous, and the father’s sexual abuse was never proven despite testimonies for and against. We leave the series thinking that José and “Kitty” (a wasted Chloë Sevigny) are actually pretty good people despite some evidence to the contrary—victims of California life in the ‘80s with its promiscuous sex, ever-flowing booze, and little lines of white powder on glass tabletops. But, given all that has come before, I don’t know what to believe about any of the characters. Worse, I could care less.

The series’ one saving grace is a magnificent performance by Nathan Lane playing the journalist Dominick Dunne. How he makes high art out of a series of repetitive scenes is beyond me. Lane is a genius. More and more, Murphy is not. He is simply a voyeur, creating show upon show of cameras panning up and down gorgeous bodies—that is, when they’re not being eviscerated.

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story

Netflix

Javier Bardem as José Menendez

Chloë Sevigny as Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez

Cooper Koch as Erik Menendez

Nicholas Alexander Chavez as Lyle Menendez

Ari Gaynor as Leslie Abramson

Nathan Lane as Dominick Dunne

Vicki Lawrence as Leigh

Created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan

Directed by Carl Franklin, Paris Barclay, Michael Uppendahl, Max Winkler, and Ian Brennan

Produced by Lou Eyrich, Todd Kubrak, Todd Nenninger, Reilly Smith, Peggy Tachdjian, and Danielle Wang

Written by Ryan Murphy, Ian Brennan, David McMillan, Reilly Smith, and Todd Kubrak

Music by Julia and Thomas Newman

Photographed by Jason McCormick and Barry Baz Idoine

Edited by Franzis Muller, Julia Franklin, Franklin Peterson, Peggy Tachdjian, and Danielle Wang

Mia Farrow and the Me Too Misfire

Note: This is not meant to be a criticism of the entirety of the Me Too movement, but one story of those who exploited it for opportunistic gain.

In 2003, I was interning in New York and got the opportunity to be a Production Assistant (glorified gopher) on a reading of a new play James Lapine was writing and directing for the Long Wharf Theatre called Fran’s Bed. It was not his best work, but the gig was an opportunity to work for a cast I truly admired and attending rehearsals at Lincoln Center in between running to delis and ordering Chinese food.

The star of the play was Mia Farrow, the actress famous for Rosemary’s Baby and a slew of Woody Allen movies in the 1980s. Ms. Farrow was an odd duck. Even the Dramaturg at Long Wharf admitted she was not a good actress in the traditional sense, but she definitely has something interesting about her. As a person, she was aloof, often seemed dazed, and not of this planet.

At the end of the first day of rehearsal, I was asked if I would ride shotgun in her car and help her get out of the parking deck. This is where I discovered how out-of-touch with reality celebrities are. She couldn’t follow the gigantic, large white arrows directing her out of a parking deck. I was amused, but coming from the South, also disappointed in how little walking-around sense this well-known actress had.

I was living in Connecticut with my girlfriend’s family and taking the train in every day. A few days after the parking lot debacle, the Stage Manager called and asked if I wouldn’t mind driving Ms. Farrow into the city as we were both residing in the same state. I outright refused—not just because I wouldn’t drive in New York if my life depended on it but because of an awkward, chilling incident I observed during rehearsals shortly beforehand.

I had walked into the rehearsal room and Ms. Farrow was talking about child sexual abuse to the other actors—one of her many pet projects of activism. At the time, I knew almost nothing about her claims against her former lover and their daughter Dylan, but I had read enough about false allegations in such cases to know what Mia was saying was utter nonsense.

She was in the middle of a sentence that ended, “You know, even if nothing happened, I still think it’s our responsibility to believe the children.” The rest of the actors—among them Harris Yulin, Kali Rocha, and Veanne Cox (fabulous actors)—looked at her with complete disbelief. Mia kept looking at them for a nod or any kind of recognition that she was right, but none came except a few muffled comments and shameless head-nods.

Then, I did some research into the “incident” with Dylan. When looking at the big picture, outside of and long before the Me Too movement, the case seemed pretty open and shut. Allen had appeared on television showing a card Mia had sent with rusty nails poking all through it and told stories of her saying to him, “I’ll do everything I can to ruin you” after she was jilted by Allen in favor of Mia and Andre Previn’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi.

Mia was pretty shrewd about how she went about trying to destroy Allen’s career. The early ‘90s saw the tail end of a rash of false allegations by coached children that began in Kern County, California, peaked with the McMartin trial in California, and finally fizzled out with Frank Fuster’s case, one of many Janet Reno botched in her pathetic legal career.

Dylan was interviewed by the top experts in the country and, while the judge tried to make a name for himself by saying unkind words about Mr. Allen, the experts walked away believing Dylan had trouble differentiating between fantasy and reality (as is the case with children) and that she was coached by Ms. Farrow into telling lies. Years later, when an HBO documentary favoring Mia’s side came out, the evidence of this was on display for everyone, though the activist filmmakers desperately tried to prove something happened when nothing did—except for the fact that Dylan was most certainly abused—but by Mia, not by Woody.

Mia’s parenting life—the number of adoptees matching only those of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s litter of international orphans—is full of abuse, leaving many of her adopted children dead from suicide or drug overdose. This was detailed by one of the children, Moses, in a revealing defense of Woody. In fact, many have defended Woody, but in this day and age, they have gone unheard. Allen’s career was finally ruined by Mia in the wake of #metoo along with help her attention-seeking “journalist” son Ronan and Dylan who now believes the lie (much like some of the children from the McMartin case). Allen’s 2020 memoir, Apropos of Nothing, was cancelled by its original publisher and his latest film, his 50th, Coup de Chance, was filmed in French and premiered in Europe, where he is still rightfully respected as one of the master filmmakers of our age.

The Me Too movement, for all the good it did, was a shit-show of Trial by Media—a method of persecution that never achieves true justice. To even criticize the “movement” in the early days meant you lost friends (I certainly did). Everything became black and white with no grey allowed. Plenty of celebrities whose careers shouldn’t have been derailed—including comedian Louis CK (whose misdeeds were technically consensual) and actors Timothy Hutton, Dustin Hoffman, and Kevin Spacey. But Allen’s derailment is the most egregious. It was an opportunistic moment for the Farrows, who consistently claim Allen has tons of industry power when, in fact, Allen’s movies are never blockbusters, and he has always worked outside of the Hollywood dream factory.

Allen is the maker of the masterpieces Love and Death, Interiors, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, September, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Everyone Says I Love You, and Match Point. But it is possible now he will never be remembered for them. Instead, he will be remembered for a lie orchestrated by a miserable woman who was only ever good in the films he cast her in (in much the same way Uma Thurman tends to only shine in films by Quentin Tarantino). While he is still working, he lurks in the shadows. People will only remember his fondness for younger women and somehow tie that to the notion he must be a pedophile (a leap of cognitive dissonance if there ever was one). People will not remember how he has written some of the best roles for women in movie history and portrays them with the greatest of respect. They will remember a creep who doesn’t exist.

To me, Mia’s ridiculous words that day at Lincoln Center were an admission she had made it all up. I regret ever being in her presence and I will never stop watching Woody Allen movies. His books (including the brilliant Side Effects), films, and early stand-up comedy make up some of the best writing America has produced. A true genius and one of the most prolific filmmakers of our day, what he did with Soon-Yi may be distasteful to most of us but, for Mia, it was a reason to quash an innocent man and kill a distinguished career.

Her actions reveal the worst of Me Too, a noble experiment in thought, but tragically flawed in execution.

Dear Woody—keep working as long as you can. There are those of us who will never leave you.

On Learning and Teaching

Early on, I was a poor learner. I really was. The sort who liked to have books around me but couldn’t get through them. It wasn’t the teachers’ fault. Perhaps I was too socially conscious to pay attention to being educated as a kid. I knew how to read, but didn’t have much attention span for reading comprehension. As an almost all right-brained person, math and science were beyond me. The sinking feeling of getting my first F on a Math test has never left me to this day. So, when did I become an avid reader and writer?

Part of what helped was acting in plays in drama school. Plays were certainly shorter to read than novels and I had to memorize my words. Early on, actually, I memorized the entire play—everyone else’s lines and mine—to make sure I truly comprehended it. This was, perhaps, the first time I learned to read.

Then, in my 10th, 11th, and 12th grade years, I finally learned to read with utility. 10th grade’s World Literature introduced me to writers I still read today—Raymond Carver, Chinua Achebe, Joseph Conrad, and others. 11th grade American literature turned me onto Native American myths, great American poetry (particularly of the Harlem Renaissance), and novels like The Grapes of Wrath (which was the first book to make me cry). 12th grade English Lit. deepened my appreciation for poetry, though I preferred American novels. This period was the second time I learned to read.

I learned to read all over again when I was working on my second Bachelor’s in preparation to become a secondary education teacher. I was introduced to James Joyce’s Ulysses and much more complicated works. By the time I took my praxis test to become certified, I aced a test that focused exclusively on Transcendentalist Literature, which I hate but apparently know a lot about.

I learned to read even deeper in Seminary, reading Scripture in depth. It was my third reading of the full Bible. But, this time, I read the sixty-six books in their proper context (time and place). Today, I can read and internalize pretty much anything. But it was a long road to hoe. I have finally became a serious (and almost professional) student. But not all students who have mastered material should teach. I learned that the hard way.

In a period of malaise after college, I was trying to find a career path that would still allow me to write. Someone said, “You know so much—you should teach.” Worst. Advice. Ever. However, it just so happened that a Theatre Arts teacher position was opening up in the Birmingham metro area and the person leaving the job knew me and could give me a recommendation. Still, he told me I would stop writing if I took the gig. I brushed this off, but he turned out to know what he was talking about. From 2009-2014, I wrote little original work—composing work mainly for teenage actors, some of which were was successful, but not quite as fulfilling as my earlier work between 2002-2008.

All in all, my teaching career lasted four and a half years. The first three were spent as the Artistic Director of a high school theatre company. I was no disciplinarian and most of the games and activities I’d learned in drama school were lost to time and filling up ridiculous “block” scheduling (an hour and a half) was very difficult. Rehearsing and producing plays after school, however, was the good stuff. In those years, I mounted eleven full productions and a workshop reading. We did the usual things—participated in festivals, conferences, contests—but we had a family of actors of techies who loved to put on shows.

GREASE

I never wanted to be a director. To me, it is the most thankless job in the theatrical world. I see it as the work of an interpretive rather than creative artist. So, my choices were very commercial—at least for the first two years. By choosing to direct Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey’s Grease for my first Spring musical, I never found myself short of male actors after. Grease has most likely been the way many people find interest in the theatre. This many years after its’ initial productions and the glitzy big screen version, it is still a perennial classic while it has all the intelligence of a rotting tooth in an empty head. The mainstage show for the second year was Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s Little Shop of Horrors, another musical that always entices audiences.

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

The first two years were good. I was voted Co-Advisor to the Arts Education director for the school district, I was nominated for the feeder pattern Teacher of the Year, and I had bonded with a group of marvelous kids who I felt like all I had to do was open the doors and turn on the lights and let them do their magic.

A DOLL'S HOUSE

In Year 2, the more advanced students were selected to act in a “Classics Unit,” where we mounted my translation of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (which was my first work to be published professionally), Cry of the Native Children (my Pocahontas play), and Mark Medoff’s Children of a Lesser God. We also broke some ground in producing a Neil LaBute short play (an unusual choice for a high school).

CRY OF THE NATIVE CHILDREN

But that third year was a mess. Shortly after the year began, a massive rain resulted in the Auditorium being flooded. Without a second drainage unit on top of the building, we walked into the place, looking up to see a massive hole in the ceiling. The force of the drop wrenched bolted seats from their spots and sent them spilling to the far corners of the large space. We had to do our Fall show at another high school, our one-act night in the classroom, and our Spring musical in the Auditorium Lobby. Also, the Administration began to show their true faces.

The orchestra pit in wreckage.

The third year for any public-school teacher is a major test. No matter what great things I had done before—how much money the shows made, the laudatory exclamations of parents and teachers—if they hire you back for the first day of your fourth year, you are tenured, and they can’t get rid of you. That year, the Philistine, pig-ignorant principal scoured all my work for mistakes and didn’t even attend the two last productions. The writing was on the wall. Not only do teachers who become administrators become, in my opinion, evil “yes-people,” but they treat teachers much the way they do the students—as if they were morons. I never once felt like a professional in my teaching years.

So, the ball finally dropped. Just as I thought I was going to make it, they hand-delivered my letter laying me off. I can still feel that chill that went up my arm as I held the envelope. After I left, two of my students dropped out of high school. Those who were not doing well in academics or did not fit in with athletics found the theatre a place they could call home. When they didn’t have it, they gave up on educating themselves. I don’t think this had anything to do with me. It all had to do with what we had built together as a department.

While the county I worked for claimed no one was blackballed if they were not tenured, we were. Certainly, I was. I knew there was no hope of being hired in the same county, so I looked elsewhere and ended up in the state’s capitol, Montgomery, working in what we would call inner-city, failing schools. I taught Drama and Speech for one year and then English for another semester (In Alabama, Theatre is not classified as an Art certification, but part of the Language Arts). The situations at these last two schools where I worked were so bad, I regularly had panic attacks, and I don’t know how I survived as long as I did.

With a Master’s in Religion, I still hope to teach community college someday. I think I could handle that. But never a four-year institution with all these radical kids bullying professors. It would have to be close to home (or online) and in a more rural setting.

But teachers are born, not made. There are some souls meant to do it. For me, it would only ever be something on the side. If your heart isn’t in it, there’s no point. I always loved my kids, but everything else—it’s for the birds. People talk about the lousy pay, but that’s the least of it—standardized tests, dealing with parents who are either helicopter moms or seldom involved in their children’s lives, the censorship of art—pick your poison. If it’s for the birds, perhaps they can find a bird to do it, but the school hallway is not a hall I will walk down again.