‘Perfect’ Case of Stooping for the Ratings

Hear that familiar sound? It’s CBS and Fox dancing on JonBenet Ramsey’s grave.

There are sequences in “Perfect Murder, Perfect Town” that capsulize the hypocrisy of this CBS two-parter that begins tumultuously but is ultimately as labored, repetitious and noxious as the 38 months of media helium pumped into the unsolved slaying of 6-year-old JonBenet.

Several of these depict the mindless, teeming media swarms drawn to Boulder, Colo., as if CBS hadn’t now joined them by creating and airing this gratuitously swollen recap based on a book by Lawrence Schiller, who produced and directed “Perfect Murder, Perfect Town.”

Other sequences dwell on a simulation of JonBenet’s stiff body as if she were a slab of meat being sacrificed on the altar of the Nielsen ratings. One of these is Schiller’s slow ascending shot across her underpants to her face that is every bit as leering as the male barflies in another scene getting their jollies from TV footage of the rouged-up victim performing in a kiddie beauty pageant.

You’d like to think of viewers being above all of this. Never underestimate the public taste for the tawdry, however. With more than 22 million Americans watching fortune-hunting Darva Conger win the sweaty hand of Rick Rockwell in last week’s multimillionaire fiasco on Fox, imagine how many will be panting for “Perfect Murder, Perfect Town.”

The February ratings sweeps have brought a double dose of JonBenet, in fact, this one following Fox’s recent one-hour quickie, “Getting Away With Murder: The JonBenet Ramsey Story,” whose red-herring scenarios and hazily defined composite characters were filmed in a mannered style pirouetting toward cliched melodrama. Never trust a film whose deep throat cop makes secret night calls to a reporter in plain view from a lit phone booth on the street.

Fox’s account at least had brevity in its favor. No such luck with “Perfect Murder, Perfect Town,” which extends a media fixation on this case that is just boggling: Who killed JonBenet? Why don’t we know who killed JonBenet? When will we know who killed JonBenet? Will we ever know who killed JonBenet? Why won’t we ever know who killed JonBenet?

Those five questions alone are enough to titillate MSNBC and “Dateline NBC” the rest of the year, to say nothing of CNN’s “Larry King, Live,” where the likes of Gerry Spence and Alan Dershowitz are called upon to mull topics ranging from JonBenet to Jockey shorts.

Although the JonBenet case long ago assumed an epic life of its own, peeling back the fat layers of coverage to its core is a primer in media excess. The slaying’s exotic nature surely made it newsworthy, but hardly to this extent, with all too many in the media embracing it because the Ramseys were rich, white and had home movie footage of pretty JonBenet performing--footage that TV could use ad nauseam to wallpaper stories about the killing all the way into the 21st century.

If news is the first draft of history, however, “Perfect Murder, Perfect Town” is the first scribbling of the notes, because this case remains a work in slow progress, offering many more ambiguities than revelations. (Indeed, JonBenet’s parents will be giving their first in-depth network news interview on “20/20 Friday” March 17; see Morning Report on F2 for details.)

“Perfect Murder, Perfect Town” has going for it strong work by Marg Helgenberger as JonBenet’s mother, Patsy, that is heroic given the overwrought environment in which she operates. It also finds room, in flashbacks, to contrast JonBenet the child with the sexualized miniature adult of pageant pictures from which TV coverage has rarely strayed, as if John and Patsy Ramsey kept their blond daughter always curled and costumed.

Otherwise, this is just one more cynical effort to profit from a story whose ending chapters have not been written following a Boulder grand jury’s decision last year not to indict the Ramseys for the murder of their daughter. You might say that CBS is now breaking old news.

It’s 5:52 a.m. Dec. 26, 1996, when Boulder police get a frantic call from Patsy to report JonBenet missing and a note demanding $118,000 in ransom. She is hysterical, John (Ronny Cox) more composed, as close friends drop by to give support, the police lose control of the crime scene and case almost immediately, and hours later JonBenet’s father finds her body in the basement.

What soon follows are dueling anonymous leaks to the media, on the one side from Dist. Atty. Alex Hunter (Ken Howard), and on the other from Police Cmdr. John Eller (Murphy Guyer) and Det. Steve Thomas (Scott Cohen), who believe obsessively that at least one of the Ramseys strangled their daughter.

The temporary beneficiary from this D.A./cops warfare is Jeff Shapiro (Sean Whalen) of that notorious tabloid, the Globe, a smarmy, dishonest scavenger of a reporter whose persuasive powers here are incompatible with his depiction as an insect.

About the only sincere and admirable participant in this botched investigation turns out to be Lou Smit (Kris Kristofferson), a retired homicide detective who reviews the case for the D.A.’s office and concludes that the Ramseys are innocent.

It’s a point of view that all too rarely emerged in the mostly speculative media accounts that have dogged this case since its inception. And will resonate louder than ever now that JonBenet again has been enlisted posthumously in the cause of ratings.

But enough of that, and on to that other 6-year-old of media note, Elian Gonzalez.

* “Perfect Murder, Perfect Town” can be seen at 9 p.m. Sunday and Wednesday on CBS. The network has rated it TV-14-DL (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14 with special advisories for suggestive dialogue and coarse language).

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be contacted via e-mail at calendar.letters@latimes.com.