At one point in the HBO movie, she asks the shady Terry Harper (Beau Bridges): "How much would it cost to have somebody put down?" Later, Terry discusses options. "Do you want to do the mother? Do you want to do the daughter or do you want both of them?" And he asks: "Now, are you wanting 'em dead, or just injured, disabled, maimed, to disappear?"
Ultimately, Holloway tells him she can afford only the $2,500 it would cost to kill the mother.
Hunter's speech at times is so slurred and twangy that she can't be understood, and her fidgety, uneven performance as the miserable, obsessively smothering Wanda is sometimes mannered almost to distraction. It's Bridges as lumbering, beer-guzzling Terry Harper and Swoosie Kurtz as Terry's disturbed wife, Marla (who keeps seeing "little furry things on the wall"), who virtually steal the movie. Their wall-banging clashes in their mobile home are funnier than most sitcoms.
Yet a strong case can be made that a real-life story about a mother accused of wanting to kill another mother is no sitcom. And when parts of it are played that way, a line has been crossed that shouldn't have been crossed. What's next, "Amy Fisher: The Comedy"? The bombing of Hiroshima with a cast of sumo wrestlers?
If the ratings for HBO's movie are strong, how many more positively true adventures are on the horizon?
Theater of the Absurd II: Center stage are dingy, boys-will-be-boys teen-age members of Lakewood's notorious Spur Posse, and controlling the curtain are those usual suspects, insects in the media who scurry to stories relating to sex like roaches to sugar.
Accused of instigating acts of violence and sexual coercion against teen-age girls, these arrogant little Spur Posse jerks have become such a hot media ticket that ABC's "Home Show" agreed to pay three of them an unprecedented $1,000 each for an appearance last week. At least one member was driven to and from the Hollywood-based show in a white limo supplied by ABC.
Whether the charges are true or false, the message being conveyed in public statements by members of the Spur Posse and their parents is that females who are pushed around and exploited by males are getting only what they deserve. Surrounded by all flirty young things in short skirts, what's a healthy young boy to do?
The moral here is that animals will be animals and media will be media, and when the two get together, an airhead can walk away with a swelled head and a grand.
