Phil Noir: If He Did It

Despite this, I predict Spector will get a hung jury. I base this on the accumulated doubt planted in jurors’ minds by the testimony of the more convincing paid defense experts, coupled with a reluctance to send a near septuagenarian to prison for what would probably be the rest of his life. There’s also the memory of Robert Blake, whose guilt seemed even less ambiguous than Spector’s, yet who was completely acquitted in 2005 of murdering his wife. I could be wrong — the overwhelming consensus in the press gallery is that Spector will be found guilty — but, as the old saw has it, it only takes one holdout to hang a jury.

“L.A. ISN’T KNOWN FOR THEATER,” prosecution witness Nick Terzian stated Monday. Terzian was Clarkson’s agent for ads and commercials but had never known his client was cast in a 99-seat-theater production of Brentwood Blondes — from which she was fired before its opening. It pained me, as a theater critic, to hear this, but Terzian was correct. Despite the dozens of stage productions performing here on any given weekend, they remain mostly invisible to the public, for whom Los Angeles is all about film and TV. The Spector trial has been called the town’s biggest theater ticket, but it is Bruce Cutler’s starring role in a reality TV show called Jury Duty that has kept the defendant’s former lead attorney away for much of the trial. Cutler still says he will participate in closing arguments, but that seems about as far-fetched as the defense’s “accidental suicide” theory. And now Vanity Fair’s venerable Dominick Dunne, who’s been covering the trial since day one, tells me he will appear in two episodes of the TV cop show The Closer — as Dominick Dunne.

No wonder the biggest witness buzz this past week concerned Transformers director Michael Bay, who’d been called by prosecutors to deny Punkin Pie’s previous testimony that he had snubbed Pie’s best friend, Lana Clarkson, at a party weeks before the actress’s death. Bay’s testimony was fairly boring, however, and after the director stepped down, the trial’s theatricality went with him. The haggling among journalists for the pool-reporter credential and the schlep up to the castle provided the week’s remaining drama. Now the only theater to look forward to will be a possible appearance of defense superstar criminalist Dr. Henry Lee and Devra Robitaille, another woman who claims Spector menaced her with a gun. As the trial participants enter what defense attorney Brad Brunon ruefully calls “the twilight of our days,” the court has become a reality TV show, but without a sense of reality.