Three Semi-Cheers for ‘Cheerleading- Murdering Mom’

After all the tabloid stories and an ABC movie on the same topic, the Wanda Holloway-Plots-Murder-to-Advance-Her-Daughter’s-Cheerleading-Career story needs more television time the way Cyrano needs more nose.

Nevertheless, coming to the screen is “The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleading-Murdering Mom,” a comical, bulbous schnoz of a movie offering evidence anew of TV’s crime gluttony and HBO’s intent to redefine at least some docudrama as farce.

Heady from last month’s ratings success of “Barbarians at the Gate,” its facetious account of the leveraged buyout of corporate giant R.J.R. Nabisco, HBO follows up at 8 p.m. Saturday with a black-comedy version of a case in which Holloway allegedly hoped to gain a spot on the high school cheerleading squad for her 13-year-old daughter, Shanna, by having the mother of a rival killed.

“The things you do for your children,” quips Holloway (Holly Hunter), now awaiting a new trial after her conviction and 15-year sentence for murder solicitation were tossed out on a technicality.

If last year’s lowly “Willing to Kill: The Texas Cheerleader Story” on ABC rated no pompons, HBO’s “The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleading-Murdering Mom” is a tailor-made hoot for Michael Ritchie, a director especially noted for movies that depict the dark side of competition (“Downhill Racer,” “Smile,” “The Candidate”).

Just as “Barbarians at the Gate” scriptwriter Larry Gelbart is best known for writing such comedies as “Tootsie” and TV’s “MASH,” so has Ritchie been associated mainly with comedies. And he comes through here with a movie that, especially in its second half, is highly amusing.

Although TV docudramas have been fibbing for years, HBO is now providing an added twist in some instances by dropping even the pretense of truthfulness, in effect using skilled comedy writing to legitimize lying. Laughter is seductive, and no one is saying the world will somehow be significantly deprived by not knowing the full truth about this case. Yet entertainment aside, this trend of entrusting docudramas to specialists in humor is dangerous, suggesting that it’s acceptable to overtly twist facts in the name of fun.

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Meanwhile, Ritchie and scriptwriter Jane Anderson not only present Channelview, Tex., homemaker Holloway as a worst-case metaphor for all fanatically pushy parents of junior athletes and performers, but also extend their indictment to the disgusting media predation generated by this case. The media slam is done self-mockingly, for the Hollywood frenzy over story rights depicted here is one in which the producers of this film themselves greedily and aggressively took part.

In fact, greed is the story’s subtext, something the movie treats hilariously as the various figures in the case revel in their five minutes of fame, taking meetings, doing lunches and negotiating deals for their stories. Divorced from Wanda, Shanna’s sleazy father, Tony Harper (Gregg Henry), searches for a lawyer to “help me get a good deal on the movie rights.” Later, he’s on the phone trying to sell family pictures to a tabloid for $1,000 each. “OK, $500. Plus I can give you insight as to the nature of my ex-wife. Plus, I can get you access to my daughter, Shanna, my son, Shane, and my brother, Terry.”

Then Shanna (Frankie Ingrassia) accuses her father of selling her rights. “Mom said you’re stealing my story.”

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Later, scriptwriter Anderson surfaces in her own movie as herself, informing Verna Heath (Elizabeth Ruscio), the woman Holloway allegedly targeted, that Hunter may be hired to play Wanda. “She’s not right,” Verna replies. Still later, Tony Harper worries that ABC’s movie will be classier than HBO’s, telling Anderson that he heard the ABC version was “going to be real, wasn’t going to be exploitative, nothin’ like that.”

Anderson replies: “Never believe what a writer tells you.” Or everything in a docudrama.

Yet much of this one is very funny. And even many of the indisputable facts of this case need no embellishment to read like the punch line to a joke. Holloway stands accused of seeking the murder of Heath, a neighbor whose popular daughter, Amber, appeared to have a lock on the cheerleading position wanted by Shanna. The criminal charge arose from conversations Holloway had with her former brother-in-law, Terry Harper, in which she asked him to put out a contract on Verna, in hopes that losing her mother would make Amber too distraught to compete for the cheerleading squad. Holloway was unaware that Harper was taping their talks for authorities.

When confronted by authorities, she claimed she hadn’t been serious. However, although she laughed and giggled a lot on the actual tapes, Holloway sounded very serious.

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.