Chapo Trap House - 446 - Reversal of Alan (8/17/20)

Episode Date: August 18, 2020

We review the 1990 Barbet Schroeder film “Reversal of Fortune,” covering Alan Dershowitz’s representation of Danish vampire Claus von Bülow after he is accused of murdering his wife. Needless to say this depiction of Dershowitz raises a few eyebrows 30 years down the line. Keep your eyes on twitch.tv/chapotraphouse this Tuesday and Wednesday for coverage of the DNC.

He defied public opinion. When I married Sonny, she was the most beautiful divorcee in the world and one of the wealthiest. You marry me for my money, then you demand to work. You're the prince of perversion. Flaunted the privileges of his wife's money. I'm involved with someone who falls beyond the parameters of our agreements. Well, that must be better for you than what you've had to put up with. Until his own family accused him of trying to kill her. Now, a world-renowned Harvard lawyer.

I should tell you that I have the greatest respect for the intelligence and integrity of the Jewish people. I'm not a hired gun. I gotta feel there's some moral or constitutional issue at stake. But I'm absolutely innocent. And a team of law students. We have to completely obliterate every single aspect of the state's case. Or the only ones who believe in him. Klaus is a scapegoat. He's obviously guilty of something pretty despicable, insolent.

Because almost everyone else believes... My lady's not diabetic. ...that anyone with so much to gain... You do have one thing in your favor. Everybody hates you. Oh, that's a start. ...must have something to hide. In Europe, a gentleman is given the opportunity to end things properly. You're a very strange man.

You have no idea. Glenn Close. Jeremy Irons. I'm not afraid of them. They're the chip for where they may. Ron Silver. That's what an innocent man would say. I know. Reversal of fortune.

The mysterious case of Klaus von Bülow. And the story that shocked a nation. Hello, everybody. It's Choppo. Back again, coming at you this week. It's me, Matt and Felix talking to you right now. And, you know, for this week's episode, we are going to take a break from the drudgery of politics, the election, Kamala, the convention.

I'm sure we'll be, you know, covering all those things in the near future, but we decided to take a breather for you this week and talk about a movie that we all watched together. And this is an interesting Choppo film series, because, I don't know, it would be sort of like, in my opinion, up there with Eyes Wide Shut in a movie that's very interesting and, let's just say, throbbing eye emoji to watch, certainly in light of recent events and everything we know now,

but it's also a movie that I regard as genuinely good and directed by and starring people, I think, turned in quite a good and interesting film. However, the film in question is known, is called Reversal of Fortune, but it would be better known as The Alan Dershowitz Story. I really, so this was my idea. I've been on a recent kick of self-improvement and education.

I'm currently reading two books, but to pad the knowledge, I'm just reading the random Wikipedia's for movies I haven't seen. One of those Wikipedia's I stumbled upon was Reversal of Fortune. Knowing about the class of I'm Gula O'Kids, I was like, hey, this is a friend of the show, good old Alan, why don't we do this? I actually, you know, watching this movie, you can't help but feel a little forlorn.

They don't make movies like this. Movies with a mid to low budget that are, like, pretty exciting, dialogue-driven, and the hero is a hideous Jewish man. So this is Reversal of Fortune. Yeah, all the hideous Jews got plastic surgery at home. Reversal of Fortune made in 1990 starring Ron Silver, as Alan Dershowitz, Jeremy Irons as Klaus von Bülow,

who would go on to win the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Klaus von Bülow, and Glenn Close as the dearly departed Sonny von Bülow, or rather, she is in a persistive vegetative state throughout the entire film, except in flashbacks, that had the narration for the whole movie. And, of course, this is based on Alan Dershowitz's book of the same name, Reversal of Fortune.

This was produced by Alan Dershowitz's son, Ilan Dershowitz, and written by Nicholas Kazan, son of Ilya Kazan. So there's a lot of interesting creators and threads that have come together in this movie, none more interesting to me than the director, Barbe Shroeder, who is, you know, I've always loved his films. He's directed one of my other favorite films of all time,

Barfly, the Mickey Rourke Charles Bacowski film, which I would highly recommend. But he's also directed a number of, sort of, like, kind of like 90s, sort of like erotic thrillers, like single white female, and then, like, more recently he did that movie with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Gosling called Murder by Numbers. And he's sort of like a director that straddles,

works for higher and more, like, artistic stuff. Like, I think he didn't win the Palm of the Oricon for Barfly. But also, crucially, for this movie and my understanding of it and, like, the case I'm going to make for it, he is also the director of two absolutely fabulous documentaries that I would highly recommend watching. The first and most important of them is called General Idi Amin Dada,

like a self-portrait or an autobiography or something. It's a movie he made that is a documentary about Idi Amin when he was in charge of Uganda. And essentially he sold the movie to Idi Amin as a kind of, like, heroic self-portrait and was given access to his cabinet meetings, day-to-day life, and all of these, sort of, like, contrived events and sort of, I guess, I don't know,

whistle-stop tours of the country where people would cheer him and applaud him. And he would, there's a scene where he goes along the riverboat. They're on a boat going down the river and he's looking at crocodiles and he's like, see, even the crocodiles know me. They all like me. And it is a insane film.

It is bizarre because it is, like, this completely unfiltered look at a, you know, a fucking madman. Just a quick note about the Idi Amin movie. He released two versions of it. One was released in Uganda. And then there was a director's cut from everywhere else in the world. Idi Amin asked Momar Gaddafi

to send his personal agents in Britain to watch the film and write a full transcript of its contents. As soon as he found out what the director's cut included, which made it pretty clear that, you know, this was, you know, presented essentially as the diary of a madman, Idi Amin rounded up 200 French citizens in Uganda and confined them into a hotel which he surrounded by the Ugandan army,

giving each of them Barbé Schroeder's home telephone number to call him and explain that their release was conditional on Schrodinger recutting and re-releasing the movie to Idi Amin's wishes, which he eventually then did do. And then when after Amin fell from power, he restored the original cut. But the point is, like, he's playing with them the ego of this, like, this powerful lunatic

and, you know, evil madman to sort of, like, you know, flatter his ego to be just, like, essentially put a camera in front of him and be like, you know, tell us, like, tell us how great you are. And if you give someone, like, the complete full reign to present themselves as they think is a heroic portrait, what you get is often the most revealing and chilling aspects about their personality.

The second of which is another very good documentary called Terror's Advocate, which is a movie that came out, I think, in around 2004 that is a very long feature about, like, the life and career of a man named Jacques Vergès, who is a French attorney who represented in the 70s like Carlos de Jackal, a lot of the Beider-Meinhof terrorists, many of the Algerian bombers and terrorists,

and then eventually and most famously the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie when he was extradited back to France to face a trial for his war crimes committed during the occupation of Lyon. But, I mean, again, like, he's a very slippery figure. He's like, you know, there's just, there's a lot going on. And again, he gives his subject free reign to present a portrait of themselves

that they think is flattering. And there's many, like, there's just so many different subtexts and in all of his films there is always an undercurrent of, like, coldness and perversity to everything. So, keeping that in mind, how do we view this film, Reversal of Fortune, which is based on Alan Dershowitz's book, of which Alan Dershowitz is the main character

and essentially hero of the movie. But why I like Reversal of Fortune so much is that there is that surface-level reading, but I read into it a second layer that cuts back, like, it cuts against the surface interpretation of it, where essentially Alan Dershowitz is the villain of this movie. And that, like, the heroic self-portrait that comes across in this movie is very strange.

And it gets stranger given what we know of Alan Dershowitz now and his current public persona. Gentlemen, what do you think of that? I could see that. I think there are a few key moments and a few, especially lines of dialogue that are very interesting knowing what we know now about Dershowitz. I don't know.

I fear it may be confirmation bias, however. It's true. It's true, yeah. I mean, it is hard. You could make a movie about Alan Dershowitz and really try to make it a worshipful picture of judicial heroism and still have people watch it and go, actually, this is about how this guy is a complete scumbag and pervert

because of just how grotesque his whole thing is. It's unavoidable. It's his vibe. He's got a bad vibe. It's unavoidable. There is the mark of the pervert on Professor Dershowitz. Yeah, he's just got a stench of perve wafting off of him at all times. So, I mean, for those who don't know,

this case is really what made Alan Dershowitz. I think probably more than anything brought him into the national consciousness. This was before the OJ case and certainly before any of the things that we've discussed on this show. But essentially, the Klaus von Bülow case involved this guy who was convicted of killing his wife.

He was this very old European weirdo. His dad was a Danish Nazi collaborator during World War II. It took place during 1980. It was this thing that became a media sensation. It was a big trial of this guy. Everyone thought, you look at him, you hear him talk and you're like, oh, guilty. This guy absolutely killed his wife.

And what he revolved around is two separate incidences separated by about a year, the first one in 1979 and then the second, the fatal one in 1980, of his wife, Sunny, slipping into a coma essentially while he was in bed next to her and not telling anyone about it until the first time she was revived and then the second time, definitely not.

And then her children from her first marriage to the Count von Ausberg, von... Imagine eight fucking names together of European royalty. These people come from. Started their own, had a private investigator and their own attorney look into the case because they basically always suspected

that he was the kind of guy that would definitely kill their mom for her money. And then he was convicted of this. And of course, the movie is about how Klaus von Bülow retains the services of Alan Dershowitz for his appeal. And that appeal, of course, ends up working very famously. And Klaus von Bülow got a second trial in which he was acquitted.

And this was like the first big case of a career defined in large part for Alan Dershowitz of helping very wealthy men murder their wives. I mean, maybe he did murder her, or maybe he didn't. The movie leaves it very ambiguous, and so does the book itself. But based on the merits of the case, he got this guy out of a 30-year jail stretch.

So you want to just start, like, sort of go through the movie as it plays out? Yeah. All right. So, like I said, it begins with this, like, you know, the von Bülow family. Like, they're in Westport, Newport, Rhode Island. Like, it's just they live in, like, astonishing wealth.

And, like, you know, I've sort of set up the beginning. Like, it begins after Klaus von Bülow, played by Jeremy Irons, has been convicted of murdering his wife. He then reaches out to Alan Dershowitz, who is introduced in one of the funniest scenes maybe ever portrayed in a film. The first we see of Alan Dershowitz, again, played by a fellow Hollywood conservative, Ron Silver,

which is another very interesting angle to this, because, like, Ron Silver became, like, the go-to, like, after 9-11, like, right-wing Hollywood guy, who was just like, yeah, 9-11, I used to be a liberal, but 9-11 changed everything. And now we have to, you know, wage war on Islam, which, you know, does mirror Dershowitz's views to an uncanny degree.

But Dershowitz is interviewed in his driveway in cut-off jeans and converse high tops, just hooping by himself. Just like, he's doing the dribble, he's doing the style where, like, instead of dribbling between your legs to do a crossover, he dribbles between his legs by lifting up one leg to pass the ball under it,

and just sort of, like, you know, do fake pull-up jump shots and stuff like that, bouncing around in his driveway. That scene actually did, I think, I think it is the one that early kind of establishes the theory that you're making about the counter-reading, because the very first image we get of him is playing basketball by himself.

Couldn't get a friend to post up against him, just playing horse as one man trying to dribble between his legs. I had a different reading of that scene, and at first I thought that, like, oh, they're making fun of this character by saying he has no friends. But I thought, the other reading of it is,

who does he talk to right after he's done making his and one mixtape against himself? His son. That means his son was in the house. He was later shown to also love basketball as much as Alan, at least. And that means that there was a conscious choice by Alan to be like, no, I'm not playing with my son.

I'm hooping alone. Which shows him to be... The bad doors, even... He loves solo outdoors. Even weirder, even weirder, with your college-age son being like, hey, dad, do you want to play a quick game? No.

Okay, what are you doing with the ball? I don't know what you're doing. A bizarre man. And then also, it's established early on in the film that, like, the other case that Dersh is working on, you know, pro bono, is the case of these two, these two, like, black kids in Alabama

who were on death row, because they helped break their father out of prison and, in the commission of it, their dad killed someone, and then they were convicted of that same murder and they're facing the electric chair in Alabama. And it's established that, you know, he's this crusading Harvard professor who's taking on their appeal, pro bono,

and it's like, you know, that's what he's really working and dedicated on. In the end titles in the movie, they do let you know that those two people were still on death row, at least as far as when the movie was released. And Klaus von Bülow, of course, was walking around the Upper East Side

doing whatever the fuck it is that he... Klaus von Bülow died, like, very recently. Like, he died at, like, 92. So, and then he gets a call, and, like, his son's like, oh, this guy says he's Klaus von Bülow, and he's like, no, I don't want to tell you, it's probably the media or whatever.

And he gets on the phone and he's like, oh, it is Klaus von Bülow. And Klaus is like, hey, like, I want you to come to New York and, you know, I want you to consider taking on my case. So, you know, Durst travels to the Upper East Side and, you know, walks into Bülow's, like, you know, amazing Fifth Avenue apartment. And one of the first things

Jeremy Irons says to him, is he says, you know, first things first, I just would like to let you know that I have always loved and respected the integrity of the Jewish people. Well, that is what both of you say to me before and after your recording. And, you know, like, obviously, like, you know,

this case was already very highly publicized, and, like, you know, his name was synonymous with wife killer, like an obviously guilty guy, who, you know, like, his conviction was based around, like, like an insulin needle, that was, you know, found in a bag

he owned, and the idea is that, like, he injected his wife with insulin to cause this coma that she went into that basically, you know, put her into a persistive vegetative state. And, you know, so he started breaking it down to him, and what Durst says to von Bülow is, like, look,

I'm not a hired gun. Like, if I take on a case, like, I'm a professor, like, I'm not just a lawyer, like, I'm putting out my shingle here. Like, if I take on a case, it's because I need a strong moral reason. I need to like you in some way. And I think, like, I read that this is, like,

his strong moral reason is, like, oh, here's another guy who's killed his wife. I mean, like I said, we've... We've joked about it before on the show, but Google Alan Dershowitz's first wife, it is very much its own reversal of fortune story about, like, maybe, maybe not,

I don't know, like, I mean, she did kill herself, and then, like, he made it very impossible to find out anything about her or look into that, and, like, of course, his first marriage is not mentioned even once in this movie. Or it is obliquely later

in a way that is, I think, the most telling point in the movie. But, like, the fact is that, like, the movie doesn't mention at all Alan Dershowitz's tragic first marriage, and he's just, like, oh, I need a strong, compelling reason to defend you or take on your appeal, Mr. Von Bülow, and then it's just, like,

well, he's a guy accused of killing his wife, basically. It's beginning to add up in my mind. Another interesting facet of the movie they were watching, when we were watching it, is, like, you know, it takes place in the 80s, and, like, the motivation here is that

on his own, Klaus Von Bülow is worth about a million dollars, but his wife, Sonny, and her family is worth 14 million dollars. So we're talking about someone who's worth 14 million dollars, and the fucking, like, the wealth and splendor that they live in

was, like, kind of inconceivable to me for, like, that amount of money. Like, the mansion in Newport, the sailboats, the apartment on the Upper East Side, the other house in fucking Westchester. Like, I was just, like, wow, this is what being a millionaire in the 80s was like. And we were sort of talking about, like, this was sort of, like, a

pre-billionaire era in America of, like, the way, like, of what wealth was and what wealth could get you. Yeah, Matt pointed out there were very few billionaires in the country at this time. There was the Hunts, the basses, uh, Rockefeller descendants,

uh, Henry Kravitz, Carl Eacon, other sort of corporate raiders, but it wasn't. No, like, people just didn't have that back then. The flip side of that, though, as we saw in the movie, was the activities that the Yvon Bulo family

did were awful. We have a way higher standard of living than them. You know what they did? In their 20,000-square-foot mansion, they would watch Robinson Caruso on a 12-inch TV in a cold room. There was no point in being a millionaire

really until about, I'd say, 1999. And you know what? The lack of heating in their fucking mansion becomes a crucial part of this of this murder story as well. Yeah. How fucking cold it is in Sonny and Klaus' bedroom is like an integral part of whether this was a

suicide, an accident, or a murder. I will say that's not an 80s thing. That's a cultural thing. One of my friends in Minnesota they're very wealthy wasps, and their house was so cold that they would just, like, keep

butter outside on the kitchen counter. It was just as good as keeping it in the refrigerator. And I was like, you just leave butter out? He's like, yeah, what? Is your house so hot that you can't leave butter out? You're supposed to leave butter out, Felix. No, you're not.

There used to be a thing. You buy all the butter dish and it's because you leave butter out because it's in the fridge. You can't fucking spread it. I don't want to spread cold butter on a kitchen counter. That seems insane. I think you're wrong.

No, it's true. We're having our own version of the culture clash between Fagentos and the fuck. William Vompeolo and Felix Dershowitz. Well, you can't handle butter one way or the other. What difference does it make to you? I literally just had a butter

inclusive lunch. I'm going to watch you drink a milkshake and see what happens. I think I would have a good time. That's what I think would happen. And so, like I said, the movie does sort of play up this kind of I wouldn't say

unlikely friendship between these two guys, but, like, you know, I think they are, like, somewhat boys by the end of the movie. But, like, yeah, this culture clash between, you know, like the sort of, like, the wild-haired, liberal, crusading Jewish attorney played by Dershowitz

and Klaus von Bülow, who's, like, a fucking a fucking alien who comes from, like, just, like, a world that is just, like, so different than not just, like, Jewish-American life, but, like, Americans in general. Like, the world of fucking, like, wealth and gentility he comes from. And also,

in one of their first or second meetings, it also becomes clear that while he was living in London, Klaus von Bülow was rumored to have murdered his own mother and aunt. And the way that he puts it, he's like, yes, there

were rumors that I killed my aunt. Yes. And then also rumored. Yes, my name in German means woman killer. Fine. Yeah, you got me. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I won woman murderer of the year

in 1973. Yeah, if you really want to fucking know. And also rumors that he's a necrophiliac, as well. I mean, a cold fish, this guy, really straight. And, like, again, I have to stress

how fucking uncanny Jeremy Irons is in this role. Like, he pushes the Jeremy Irons thing to, like, as far as it can fucking go. And his, like, his icy sort of, like, perverted, like, there's just, like, undercurrent of, like I said, something very

both refined, but also completely perverse about him. And, like, he just has these little lines where he says to, like, Alan, it's like, we are all captains of our own souls. And then, like, he's, like, just smoking and, like, always smoking cigarettes, which also becomes

a big part, I think, of his motivation. We'll explain that later in the movie. So, like, it becomes for Dershowitz, like, you know, this dilemma. Like, you know, here's a juicy case, but, like, is there anything here? You know, should I stake my reputation on this? And he's talking to his son.

And he says, he says, you know, it reminds me of my Hitler dream. And we're like, okay. What? What's the Hitler dream? And he goes, yeah. You know, like, Hitler, he comes in my office, and he says, you know, I need

a lawyer. And I have to think to myself, do I take the case, or do I kill him? And then, like, he's just, like, yeah, I would take the case, and then I would kill him. But, like, you know, this is what he's looking for here. You know, like, this is the terms in which he's thinking of Klaus von Bielow,

but also very telling about his own psyche. So then, like, so he agrees to take the case. And then he begins assembling, like, his team of law students about, like, you know, how they're going to go out after this appeal. You know, like, you know, like, this is our project. This is what we're going to do.

And then there's a scene where one of them, one of his law students, played by Felicity Huffman, like, you know, in the room just sort of, like, stands up in protest. And she's like, you know what? I think this is bullshit. Like, this guy's guilty. He's, like, a rich guy. Like, you know, like, why are you helping this rich guy?

Like, he's been tried. He's been convicted. Like, why, like, you know, we're supposed to be, like, you know, crusading legal advocates for the underprivileged and, you know, not people like Klaus von Bülow, who are, like, you know, rich perverts who have murdered their wife and probably

also their mother, aunt, and Christ knows who else. And, well, if you add the whole family, and let's just, the whole Nazi collaborator angle, like, he's just, like, look, this is gross and I don't want to be a part of it. And then Ron Silver playing Dershowitz, like, you know, gives her, you know, he fucking

reads her to shit. And he's just, like, you know, maybe this isn't just as simple as your, like, you know, your personal bullshit moral conundrum. Like, I got on this case because I'm pissed off. I'm pissed off because the family brought in a private prosecutor and private investigators,

unacceptable, unacceptable. And if we let them get away with this, then, like, the rich, in the future, the rich are going to be completely exempt from the law and order and they're just going to have their own prosecutors and they're going to decide what evidence they give over to their state. Again, very, very interesting,

very interesting in watching this film in 2020 thinking about Alan Dershowitz. And then, of course, you know, he completely wins her over and, you know, he says, and then, like, he also makes a big point about, like, you know, like, the system, like, well, I'm a lawyer and, like,

why I fight for, like, you know, the system is for the one innocent person out there who's wrongfully accused. And then he goes into this whole thing about being, like, okay, you know, imagine you get divorced tomorrow. And then, like, you're accused of molesting your son. It happens all the time.

It happens all the time. Everyone's looking at you. Even the mailman won't look at you. Everyone flees from you. Everyone thinks you're guilty. Your lawyer is the one person you have in your corner when you're falsely accused of molesting your son in a divorce proceeding. And he just says, it happens all the time.

Very interesting scene. The first of many interesting scenes happens all the time. That was a big one. Private, bring in a private lawyer, a private prosecutor.

Also interesting, when you know about the legal warfare between David Boyz, how do I pronounce that name? Yeah, David Boyz, yeah. Okay, it's like John Boyz. John Boyz's son, David. And Alan, concerning the Epstein case.

Just imagine, you're just a kid from Brooklyn. You're just a kid from Tony Island. You're a math teacher. You're just, you're a nobody. And then out of nowhere, everyone turns against you. I'm the one guy who's going to help you in your appeal. Yeah, imagine you're just a simple man

who lives in Palm Beach. Going on, and then like, you know, as they begin to look into the case, it becomes more and more clear that Sonny von Bülow, as played by Glenn Close, was also a true piece of work who was, you know, just she would take something, she would smoke

packs of cigarettes a day and pop something like 30 aspirin at a time, or like, she was just like, she was just popping aspirin in pills of every kind all day long. And she describes her daily routine, which is like, get up at nine, like have a light breakfast,

go shopping, and then being back in bed by three, of which she'll stay in bed for the rest of the day, eating chocolates and smoking cigarettes, even though she was hypoglycemic. So there's like, all of these other things that point that like, this woman could have dropped dead at any fucking moment, regardless

of what her husband did or didn't do. Like, she's a very unwell person. I, um, okay, I had your reading on Sonny von Bülow that she's a real piece of work before I saw the scene with TV and then when I saw their shitty TV and the only other thing they can do

for fun is like, yeah, read a book on land surveying practices with 1700s. It's like, why wouldn't you just try to kill yourself with candy and barbiturates? She's right. Uh, yeah, no, and like, oh yeah, there's also that she took 24 laxatives

a day as well, and wouldn't let anyone in her bathroom, which of course would. The lady loved the shit, what? Well, that's what they found in her body, too. She probably left, she probably, she probably left like really thin, elegant loaves. That's what they teach you in European finishing school.

Like calligraphy. Yeah, they were like, they were like little cigarillos. So yeah, like, and you know, but as it goes on and like, you know, like Dershowitz gets more and more involved in the case and he keeps telling Klaus over and over again, don't tell me your story. Like, I don't want

to hear your side of the story. Like, that's the worst thing a client can do for a defense attorney because the more you tell me, like, the more I'm constricted to the defense that I can make on your behalf. So like, you know, like, tell me the bare minimum. I don't want to hear your side of the events because then I'm locked into a defense that I might not be

confident about. But as it goes on, he begins to sort of convince himself that like, I actually do think he's innocent and I do think he maybe was framed or set up by his stepchildren and their prosecutor and or private investigator. Or like they were looking for a way to get

rid of him and not vice versa. And then it becomes this thing about like, you know, can I stake my reputation on this man that I don't understand? Or that I have questions about in some way. And, you know, like his whole thing are like, he's saying, like, you know,

my clients are the people I care about, which again, OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Epstein. These are his, these are his friends, you know, like he said, I take a case when I get pissed off. And that's, I guess, that's why he took Jeffrey

Epstein's case is because this is a guy I care about and I'm pissed off that he's being railroaded by like overzealous prosecution. Yeah, the politically power lobby of 13 year olds is coming for this man. And then also

what's her name? Annabel Shiora also is in this movie and she plays like one of his former students who's their own attorney and they've had a prior romantic relationship and he brings her on board the team and she's like, I want this just to be strictly professional, Alan. That part of the movie probably

pissed me off than anything else. If I, if I fully believe Bambula was guilty and they just like sort of bought us way out of it, it would be less innervating than Alan Dershowitz dating Annabel Shiora. Like just like one of the hottest actresses ever

and just like really, really Tony's, you're talking the freaking Tony's and she sees a guy with like clown hair who's like, I didn't kill my wife and she's like, I, god damn it, I still love you.

Like that angered me deeply. Yeah, there's a scene where they have an argument, you know, over, over a legal issue or a question of strategy in the case and he's sort of abrading her, banging the drum. He's like, you know I, I know this is a Brady violation but we can't argue it on a technicality

blah, blah, blah. And then she just goes Alan, you always have to have the last word, don't you? And again, so it's like, yup, that's our Alan. He needs to have the last word. That's why he's still on TV every fucking night instead of just, I don't know, going away or shutting the fuck up. He's still

on Hannity every night going, like I've never not worn a bathing suit when I was little St. James. That's like there's literally just, it's like a segment in Tucker's show now. It's like John Stewart's moment of said, like, alright it's the last 10 minutes of the show, you know what that means. And then there's just a side swipe

and Al Dershowitz is already talking and he's like, and there's another thing if somebody, if somebody is wearing a fingernail paint, it's not like their hand is touching you. Virginia, Jeffrey you painted your nails. It's like Andy Rooney on

60 Minutes. And now Alan Dershowitz and it's like Alan's quarter. He's like you know what grinds my gears folks? Yeah. Les Wexner. Look at that guy. I love the day that, the day that

they picked Kamala as Joe's writing mate and like, there were like 100,000 posts about it, like four against by MAGA people by Biden people, by Keaha people. And then just like it's like the heat waves in the background of the universe. Alan Dershowitz

was in the middle of a 40 tweet long thread where he's like, I challenge Les Wexner to prove that I've ever French kissed anyone but my wife. And it's like, thank you Alan. That was awesome.

Another cool aspect of this movie is like, and a lot of it unfolds in flashbacks as like, as Klaus and other people tell their version of the events leading up to like I said, the one near death experience of Sunny and then the second fatal one

both involving her just like fucking like her body like curled up in her bathroom after like 12 hours of being ignored by Klaus and being told no, we don't need to get her a doctor and they're like, well, why not? He said, Sunny detested doctors

and then there was one because they both both these events happened on or around Christmas and he was just like Sunny always loved Christmas it was the most important part because she loved giving more than anything and she didn't usually drink but on these occasions she got fucking

sourced off 13 glasses of eggnog as someone who normally doesn't drink and is hypoglycemic and then she like, you know, they they help her like stagger into the bedroom and she's just like, I can walk on my own don't touch me

get me a Scotch and water and 15 aspirin to take and then of course Klaus does it for her and Dersh is just like well, if he was in this state like why did you get her another drink and he just goes the thing you have to understand about Sunny is that she always got what she wanted

and then like what you really think is just like there's the tensions in their relationship between Klaus and Sunny are about, you know, Klaus is basically open infidelities with the daughter of one of their friends who's like a much younger soap opera actress

who's been openly carrying on an affair with for a while and then like he broke things off with her and then like prior to the final fatal incident she had delivered, returned to him all of the love letters that he wrote her to their house but not

addressed to him so that Sunny found them and read them all and you know like even knowing about the affair is one thing but like you know reading about it is another but then like the real source of tension and the bizarre one is that it's revealed that like Klaus kept pushing

to get a job like that's all he wanted was to go back into like he had worked for Getty John Paul Getty in London and he wanted to get back into the oil business as a lawyer which would involve him spending some time away from the house and then she's just like she doesn't understand why, she's like

you don't need to work, this is just your ego, like your fragile masculinity can't handle it, like you know why do you need a job like you want to leave me or like all this she's very like protective, she's very afraid of him seeking employment or like having a

career or doing anything you know like as European nobility and the thing we kind of like read into this is that essentially all Klaus von Bülow wanted was a different room to smoke cigarettes in every day and not do anything because this is what he does

in the whole movie is just he's smoking cigarettes in different rooms he's walking, he's bringing pills and fucking ice cream Sundays to sunny like while she's in bed all day and smoking cigarettes that's what he does and I think like yeah this is what being a rich person

was like until about 1999 you just wanted another place to go to smoke cigarettes and look out a window and that's what having a job is if you're like from royalty or like old European nobility yeah it'd be funny if you'd been like I want to manage a

Popeyes yeah really until 1999 that's when they invented DVDs and bass jumping and all that and rich people got into that stuff yeah that was all you could do you would just smoke cigarettes in a room with other

like former Papsburg princes or whatever and do legal busy work and talk on a rotary phone I had a lot of sympathy for the von Vuelo character perhaps he was a product of his own environment and that's why he got into wife killing

you can only smoke so many Benson and Hedges in so many rooms and there's also these moments where like he very much toys with and likes his celebrity even if it's a negative celebrity about being a fucking wife murderer like the first meeting

he has with Dershowitz he like he takes him to lunch at Delmonico's and explains that you know I've always had a table here but I've never had this table like the right at the front like one of the best tables in the house and he's like ever since this unpleasantness I always get sat here because now I'm a

celebrity and he said in Europe it's all about class but in America it's about celebrity and like his no-to-writer notoriousness is his celebrity it's like it's getting his ticket punched in America in a way that even his wealth and title in class doesn't really

mean shit in this country but as soon as he started getting his name in the press it's like you know the wife killer he's getting seated at the best tables and he has this certain cachet and he has this perverse way of joking about it and playing with it like there's a scene where they all go out to this like Chinese restaurant

von Vuelo is like meets with Dershowitz and his full team like his whole team of like legal students and investigators and lawyers who are working on the case for the first time and they all sit down to dinner and as an icebreaker Klaus goes what do you

get the wife who has everything a shot of insulin and they're all just like okay alright and he's just like just a bit of a humor just some light humor to spice things up here

ever I have a new exciting announcement since killing my wife I've gotten a lot of exciting opportunities I'm now a writer for Bojack Horseman to convert very humbled I've noticed a lot of

people have been retweeting my old tweets from 2012 where I say I can't wait to kill my wife these are this was the comedy of the day but I've learned grown also I did a thing I killed a new wife

oh and also like he has the mistress who's the daughter of their friend and then he breaks things up with her and then by the time Dershowitz comes to his Upper East Side apartment he has a new Paramore played by Christine Bronsky who's like this ridiculous

fucking stereotype of an Upper East Side wasp and she's just like I met Sonny after the trial and it's been a whirlwind romance and I've dedicated myself to his legal defense and I'm the one who said I told him immediately hire the Jew Klaus

get the Jew from Harvard Klaus but yeah like so it just goes on the more Dershowitz the more he stakes on this case and like while he's doing the case there are scenes of him being on the phone with

the death row inmates that he was originally like dedicating his life to that again I don't know what the movie's implying but like based on what it seems like he seems like he's almost completely forgotten about them except when they call him like please I don't want to die and he's like listen you're not gonna die we'll take the

Supreme Court by the way what do we have on the insulin do you run the test on those needles or whatever Dershowitz has shown to just be working by himself on those two kids's case whereas when it comes to von Bielow he has 20 people living in his house working around the clock

on it the only thing he does for the kids is like there's one on the phone they call him and he's like come on don't cry he says to them at one point he says so he says to them when he's on the phone with him at one point he says like he's like David this will be

a lot easier for me if you don't cry it's like yeah he's like a week away from the electric chair or something but he's like of course you know von Bielow's legal fees are of course all paying for his very noble pro bono work so like Dershowitz realized he's taking more and more of his

professional reputation and life on for some reason believing Klaus von Bielow even though the famous line in the movie it's hard to trust someone you don't understand and he goes you're a very strange

man Mr. von Bielow as he's getting into his like Rolls Royce he just sort of like peers out from the window and goes you have no idea you know it's very hard to trust someone you don't understand you're a very strange man you have no idea

and it's just like I said like the movie is always like is always playing with this like this this sense of moral ambiguity on both of the characters and the audience is there and it doesn't really provide for you like a big like you know courtroom moment where like you know

on the witness stand or like you know like they triumph for like they get the smoking gun that shows that this was all a setup and he really was innocent but you know I mean like in the case like you know it does show that the original the original conviction of him sort of similar to the OJ case

like you know regardless of innocence or guilt was very improperly handled to the point of like maybe even corruption um but like okay so let's get to the what I think is is the most fucking like jaw dropping like eyes out of your head moment in this movie

that looking back on it is again pretty fucking pretty fucking tight so there's a scene where like Alan is he sort of like he's feeling down he feels like they're probably going to lose the case and he's sort of like bent over and he's like I don't

want to do and he's talking to the Rhode Island council that they've hired to like have standing in front of the Rhode Island Supreme Court and he says to him it's like you know you know why everyone's so fascinated with this case you know what's really going on here it's because deep down inside

every single man has fantasized about killing their wife just like Klaus every single man has thought of a way that they could kill when they wanted to kill their wife and thought of a way they could get away with it

and that's why everyone i.e. me is so invested in this case and it's sort of similar like when he told when he tells the law student like imagine your your husband divorces you and accuses you of molesting your son it happens all the time

it's the same thing with this is like yeah literally every single man has tried to concoct a scenario where they could surreptitiously kill their wife and make it look like she fell into a coma or died of natural causes yeah that's the thing is

they kind of want to kill their wife it's like no they have paced the number of yards it's going to take them to have to like walk and turn around so they can plausibly have an alibi or whatever the hell like that's the whole different thing yeah that is a crime of passion but something you spend years

thinking about and waiting for the perfect opportunity to do so which it kind of seems like Klaus von Bülow did with these two different fucking comas that his wife fell into and like knowing her all of her medical conditions and like you know and then like I guess the movie

eventually implies is that it's like it's very likely that Sunny von Bülow tried to kill herself and that's what did her in but it is also equally likely that Klaus knew that and had an opportunity to save her or call an ambulance or essentially

like allowed her to kill herself or put her in a situation in which that was an inevitable outcome and that all he would have to do was simply look the other way for her to die like that's essentially the case that the movie makes another great line

that Alan says about this case about Klaus von Bülow is like well you know everyone was like well you know why did he act so guilty after the second coma and Alan says any man would feel guilty if their wife was suicidal Google Alan Dershowitz's

first wife on that one folks any man would feel guilty if other people thought his wife was suicidal so basically you know they make their appeal to the Rhode Island Supreme Court and they persevere the case is overturned and it is

later revealed that the notes that the private prosecutor took regarding what they gave to the prosecution vastly differed from like the story that was told in court about nobody the issue of the insulin needle was concocted after the fact

or it was not mentioned or discovered in their initial investigation of it it was a sort of like after the fact legal justification that was given pre-made to the prosecution despite evidence essentially being manufactured or like a chain of custody or whose insulin needle it was

or how and why it was found it was tainted and like I said he was acquitted in his second trial so they win and there's a scene where Dershowitz is back in class teaching and he goes there's someone he's giving his little homespun legal stuff

and he goes they call it the death penalty but it is not a penalty you are out of the game and then he goes listen the law is a cudgel it's not a rapier I am not a rapier

why did you pick that sword Alan there's an epi cutlass broadsword yeah scalpel scalpel would be good the law is not a rapier

and I just imagine Alan Dershowitz going on Tucker like I just want to be clear I am not a rapier the law is not a wife killius what's that Alan? oh it was a Roman sword and then you know so he wins essentially

the fortunes of Klaus von Bielow are reversed he gets away with maybe killing his wife or maybe he wasn't an innocent man that you know would have been sent to jail for 30 years not having killed his wife but you know

the last moment that they talk together like you know Jeremy Irons is like this is great news Alan you know just next time maybe we can get lunch and just be grand I would love it if we I would love to play cradle with you and you know before he gets on

his like you know the private elevator to leave his upper east side house he turns to him and he says you know Klaus one thing he's like you know this was legally this wasn't an important victory morally you're on your own and that's kind of like the final statement of the film and its ambiguity about

you know the role of a lawyer the role of Alan Dershowitz and like how we're supposed to feel about Klaus von Bielow is that like maybe like on the surface like as a lawyer like it did have merit and he was right to get off but like morally we're all on our own

like truly like the only the only real law is what we can live with ourselves and if we get away with it you know so he like he says morally Klaus you're on your own but also kind of a reflection on Alan Dershowitz himself morally you're on your own Alan

well that morally on your own was interesting because he was basically saying like I'm not going to hang out with you after this case is done because I know what the legal reading is but I know what morally like it's too fucked up so what was

different about Jeffrey Epstein because Alan hung out with him a lot yeah a lot a lot all the time they would be in each other's top eight on my space they're in the interling in those uh those twitter

I mean honestly like I think the difference is is like well one Epstein had a fuckload more money than Klaus von Bielow or any of his families ever did Klaus may have been awesome like pro level at killing your wife but you don't get LeBron money for that sport yet but also like Epstein

was a guy who was like you know a Jewish kid from Brooklyn almost like and who didn't he wore sweatsuits everywhere like he would he dressed like a bum and like you know was sort of like you know also never graduated college and shit I don't know maybe it was

easier to hang out with Epstein than it was with Bielow because like Alan says to Bielow like you know it's hard to trust someone that you don't understand well and I think he did I think he did understand Jeffrey very well okay so that's why um

that's why like Bohemian Grove is so beautiful why the Clintons should be lauded for their international child sacrifice thing because usually when people sacrifice children to mollock and fuck them and do all these occult ceremonies they just stick to their own race

like Epstein he's doing with Dershowitz allegedly the UK parliament they're only doing it with each other with only other Anglos I assume it's that way in every other country and culture but Bohemian Grove brings in people from all around the world

to do it and that is the message of this movie that if you're going to sacrifice children and kill your wife you should do it it should be with a progressive stack it should be with everyone and that's how we'll truly overcome all our differences and that is yeah we need to in we need to

let the the meritocratic strivers of the of the ethnic groups be intermingled with our our wasp traditional ruling class so that the system can strengthen itself over time rather than become

inbred and brittle and like again like you know thinking about like his relation to Epstein it's just like yeah all all these people are like yeah Klaus von Buell is a fucking weirdo like dude like yeah like I guess I'll take I guess you know yeah I'll work on his case but yeah I don't want to hang out with him

but then you think of like all these people that were like won over by Epstein like was he any less fucking insane and bizarre or like the rumors about him what's that got to do with Epstein Epstein like von Buell was just like a weird European

vampire he's just yeah one of those people you mean real life who's like was your dad Dracula what the fuck dude but Epstein was just like a dumbass and that's like all relatable like he would just yeah like a it's a really dumb guy thing to do to be like I'm gonna get

the best scientist and you get like Steven Pinker yeah yeah and B you get all the best scientists you're like yo can I what if I made a clone of myself and he became a police officer it's like

he was a fucking dolt that's the coolest thing like about this whole thing is that Epstein was just like I guess you would say clever but like as intellectually just very dull and the like

we were actually talking about this after the movie how Matt pointed out there were only like four billionaires in America during the 80s Epstein's thing this shows clever not intellectual saying in the 80s that he only managed

the money of billionaires which limited him to like seven clients you know yeah no I mean an interesting tale an interesting tale if you are considering getting into the sport of wife-killing definitely

watch this movie I like this scene at the very end where Klaus von Buhl is going he's like I'm gonna move to London because they have more favorable laws for wife-killing but he goes to a

Bodangle and he's on the front page of the post being sold at the Bodega and he's like could I have two packs of pedophile mentfalls or like whatever Dracula's smoke and the woman's like yeah here you go and he goes oh and

could I have a needle of insulin and she looks at him like what the fuck and he gestures to the picture of himself on the front page of the post and she's like he's like ah just kidding I killed my wife bye

his intensely unsettling little like thin-lipped smile and nod of the head to this like this clerk lady who's just sort of like what two packs of Benson and Hedges and a shot of insulin

you know and then he's just like yep that's me on the paper but yeah I I do have to say I wish they still made movies like this they don't make movies like this or Michael they don't make like or even high tier like Michael Clay legal thrillers that are like of a medium budget anymore

it sucks man it's ass like the only movies we get are like a movie about a comedian where like I don't know you fucking his wife has imposter syndrome or Marvel movies there should be

just make a movie about Alan like make a Alexander Payne movie about Alan Dershowitz now and the other thing I was thinking about is like all these scenarios that Dershowitz in the movie sketches out about how you know our legal system is for the one innocent person who

everyone else has decided is like the most evil scum imaginable and they've been abandoned by their friends family the public the media they've been ostracized and you know if you're the innocent person or even if you're not in that situation like our legal system is such that like everybody deserves a defense

and like your lawyer is the only person who will truly be in your corner in that situation and I was just thinking that in light of those articles that came out like a year ago that wasn't even about Dershowitz's connection to Epstein they were just about his relentless shilling for Donald Trump and the impeachment

case and his like going on Fox News all the time to like make some spurious legal argument in defense of Donald Trump and it was just all about how like he was like a profile like how he featured about him about how no one is friends with him and Martha's vineyard anymore and I was just wondering like

like what like were they friends with you like after they knew about all this fucking like Epstein shit too dude and apparently he was like a notorious horn dog on Martha's Vineyard too and like would walk around on the beach with like a boner out like all the time I don't know I didn't know that

you never know I read that yeah was Martha's vineyard hard for me hmm let me see I was 78 years old my name is Alan Dershowitz I was 5'4 wore a bathrobe at all times and had the word hetto instead of a mouth both my parents are Jeffrey Epstein long story

God just a hard on that's pretty impressive at his age was he a blue chew customer I don't know but like I just like like I said like I think the film is interesting in and of itself like I wouldn't really call it a legal thriller it's really more of a procedural but like

I think what the movie is really about is this kind of state of of moral uncertainty and ambiguity that we all live in like and that like it comes to form a trial like can never really be resolved by any case like if you like the more you look at like any case or really investigate it like

the less sure you are about anything and like that you can never really be and then Glenn Close's narration of the movie is like you know by the end it's like it's never really 100% totally resolved what happened to her but like in her sort of from beyond the grave narrations he says like

you know like this is the bed I am in and I will always be in you now know like all that you ever will know and you never will until you're where I am right now and that's kind of like the final statement on it and I thought it was like it was a very interesting procedural

like I said that is shot through with these very like I think we're like slightly subversive and perverse sort of flourishes in this portrayal of these two men Alan Dershowitz and Klaus von Bülow that I think come from Barbesh Roder's sensibility that I think

you can sort of draw out of his other film like his uvra, his canon of war but like also just like Dershowitz is now basically in the position that Klaus von Bülow was in the 80s like his name is about a shit

he thinks he's cool, he's a celebrity everyone likes him but yeah like his name is now synonymous with I'll just be as charitable as possible and say going way out of his way to defend his friend the serial pedophile

human trafficker and like he was, as we've discussed many times was intimately involved in crafting the plea deal that like kept him out of doing any real jail time the first time he fucking got arrested for this shit because there was a very serious legal principle of why he chose him as a client

because those are the only clients he chooses yeah no, I recommend everyone watch this for themselves through the lens of today but then also like think about like after von Bülow like his next most famous thing was the fucking

OJ case which is like kind of like maybe even more a clear cut example of helping a rich guy kill his wife but again if you look at that actual case like the prosecution did in the end the cops completely fucked it up and like you may, you know

you could have made a case like if you were on that jury to acquit based on how badly the fucking like they handled the evidence and like all the witnesses they used like you know they created that reasonable doubt for what you know let's be honest here was almost certainly a guilty man but Alan Dershowitz

you know like the celebrity that came from it like the feeling of of doing the impossible but again it always like again standing up for the principle over like you know you're immediate moral judgment it does seem a pattern forming here

of finding that important legal principle to make a stand on on behalf of guys that kill their wives or sex traffic children or have driven an earlier wife to suicide maybe perhaps allegedly doing you love and you'll never work a day in your life that is very true

that is a great post script for this movie there we go we will be back to covering the ins and outs of politics in these upcoming conventions which I think the democratic convention can start today gentlemen I believe we're going to try to do

twitch coverage of the convention tomorrow or ongoing this week yes I think we can go ahead and announce that I will figure out some way to get us all wired in and watching all those beautiful zoom speeches and clowning over them yeah so hopefully we'll be

tune in with us tomorrow at some point we'll be watching the democratic convention all week long on twitch Tuesday and Wednesday 9 to 11 are the times that we're going in there we got to see Cassage, we got to see Biden we got to see Dr. Joe his wife Dr. Joe Biden give her a speech

wonderful yeah um yeah no John Kasich will be giving a full hot meal for his speech I'm very excited for the man he should just get out he should just get out there on tender vitals finally he should just get out there and do mukbang stuff on zoom

just eat a whole gigantic chicken which that's what we want to see from Kasich yeah but look at his face when they brought up that pasta fizzle I still remember it so so happy like in that scene in the groundhog day when Bill Murray tries to help the hobo and he's at the diner

and he passes him over his his soup and his eyes just turn into fucking quarters we'll be back like I said covering the convention and our regularly regularly scheduled breakdown of all the janks in the ins and outs of this presidential

election and American politics and culture but until then check out Barbay Schroeder's reversal of fortunes starring Ron Silver, Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close for an interesting film and certainly an eye-opening one in light of recent events considering

concerning its main character the Dersh until next time gentlemen bye bye two packs of bomb tissues this anything else yes a vial of insult you