Hollywood on Hollywood
AH, THE manifold blessings of living in Southern California.
Especially this one: If you’re going to “go Hollywood,” you don’t have to go very far.
For Ronald Zonen, it was a really short trip -- just down Highway 101 from Santa Barbara, to Universal Studios. A quick ride, if it hadn’t been for that legal SigAlert he ran into.
Zonen is a deputy D.A. in Santa Barbara County, where he’s spent about half a dozen years prosecuting a murder case whose particulars rattled even blase L.A.: suburban thuggery by white San Fernando Valley kids -- Little League pals turned drug buddies -- who kidnapped and machine-gunned a blameless 15-year-old boy in the summer of 2000, supposedly because of his half-brother’s $200 drug debt.
There’s one more reason that everyone went ape over this story. The accused ringleader bears a name destined for acclaim or notoriety: Jesse James Hollywood. If his name had been Oscar Schmub, you’d be reading a column about the state’s bonded indebtedness instead of one about crime and cinema.
Naturally, Hollywood -- the industry -- came knocking, and Zonen answered as if it were a mating call. He shared, for free, case records, even confidential files, with producer Nick Cassavetes for a Universal film called “Alpha Dog.” Now, just as Jesse James Hollywood heads to trial, prosecutor Zonen has been booted off the murder case at the behest of the defense. Appeals court judges sympathized with Zonen’s “zeal” in hoping that a movie would smoke out the fugitive Hollywood, on the lam for nearly five years. But, the judges found, Zonen’s actions “allowed ‘show business’ to cast an unseemly shadow over this case. The prosecution of criminal cases and entertainment enterprises are best kept separate.” A nice Hallmark sentiment. But it’s like trying to fight gravity.
The Hollywood bug is especially catching in close quarters like Southern California. Zonen was second chair in the Michael Jackson child-molestation case, which was led by Santa Barbara County Dist. Atty. Tom Sneddon. Through that whole messy matter, Sneddon seemed to show up on TV more often than Jack McCoy. Another Santa Barbara deputy D.A., Joyce Dudley, was bumped from a case for writing a self-published novel that was rather too much like the alleged date-rape she was prosecuting.
We’re dealing with “deal creep” here. Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi co-wrote “Helter Skelter” a decent interval of years after he put Charles Manson away. A couple of decades later, O.J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark signed a book deal half the size of Pope John Paul II’s, just one month after her office lost the case. Zonen made his movie deal while the case was still open.
Some movie mogul once said that he got more ideas from a 5-cent newspaper -- with its accounts of crime and punishment -- than from a stable of studio writers. And what principal on a big case hasn’t mused, “Who’d play me in the movie of this?” Every trial becomes an audition -- for the story, and maybe for the lawyers. (Every trial lawyer has actor’s DNA. Just watch the arguments to that 12-person audience called a jury.)
Even non-lawyers know the remark by some British legal whiz that justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. Yes, but at the Cineplex? Why not at the Cineplex?
Let’s not just put up with Hollywood justice, let’s make it pay for itself. Every time a new crop of California lawyers gets sworn in, the courts could let talent agents from CAA and ICM set up shop and sign them all up as they come out the door. That way, every hot case would already be a package deal, with money -- gross points, action-figure licensing and all -- going to cover the costs of the case. Trial by jury -- and by box office.
In 2005, two months after “Alpha Dog” screened at Sundance, the law found the real-life fugitive in a Brazilian surf town, with no help from the movie.
The film itself ended up a fugitive -- from reality. Places and names were changed. Jesse James Hollywood was rechristened “Johnny Truelove.” Cassavetes, according to the appeals court, told Zonen that he was “not interested in making a 90-minute version of ‘America’s Most Wanted.’ ”
Alas for Zonen -- who had asked only that he be played by someone “very handsome” -- the prosecutor was cast as a woman, Courtney Cox Arquette. And all the courtroom scenes wound up on the cutting-room floor anyway.
That’s show biz, counselor.
