By David in TN
Wednesday, May 9, 2018 at 3:30:00 P.M. EDT
On Thursday night, May 10, at 9 p.m. ET, A&E has the season finale of Marcia Clark's TV show, Failing Upward. Oops! I mean Marcia Clark Investigates the First 48 Hours.
This episode features the Billionaire Boys Club. Along with the Menendez brothers, it signified 80's Yuppie Greed.
The so-called Billionaire Boys Club was a group of Los Angeles 20-somethings from wealthy families under the spell of Joe Hunt, who claimed to be an "investment genius." It became a ponzi scheme with Hunt paying off old investors with money taken from newer investors.
a failed novelist,...
To keep it going, Hunt ended up killing two people, hoping for a big payoff. The first one was a Beverly Hills con artist named Ron Levin. Hunt and his partner in crime, Jim Pittman, a black small-time crook who joined the BBC as a bodyguard, killed Levin in his apartment and hid the body in Soledad Canyon.
Ron Levin's body was never found.
Hunt then hatched a scheme to kill a Iranian expatriate and get his money through the dead man's son. Hunt and his minions bungled the crime and the Iranian had no money, anyway.
Hunt's partner Pittman had a separate trial in 1985. In the first vote, the jury was 11-1 for conviction. A black woman held out. On the next ballot, the other black female on the Santa Monica jury joined her and the jury hung.
Pittman eventually got off.
Hunt was convicted of Levin's murder and is still in prison.
and a failed TV host. How much additional, profitable crap must her benefactors sell, in order to offset what they pay her, and how many talented people have been screwed, because there was nothing left to pay for talent?
N.S.: It looks like Clark stalks her review pages at Amazon, and attacks her critics.
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Knowing your field doesn't a good writer make
Review by Jane Myers Perrine
April 18, 2012
I have to admit, I read the first 1/4 and found it so poorly written that I skipped ahead to the last 1/3. Don't feel I missed a great deal. I also have to admit that I found the ending pretty good although the ending with the pimped car was silly, like the Price Is Right. What I disliked about the beginng was the prologue that seemed out of place and so general as to NOT increase suspense but made me wonder, "What does this have to do with anything?" Get right to the story. Then when the ADA thinks back to a conversation with her just murdered friend, she remembers a conversation that doesn't fit and could have been summed up in a sentence. We already know this was a good guy and they were friends and spent a lot of time together. This flashback is the mistake of a new author. IMHO, if Jane Nobody had written the novel, it would never have been published. The book needed a really good editor but I fear both agent and editor were blinded by $$$ and didn't want to insult the talent.
By Readalot 6 years ago
Having read your other reviews, I am left with one question: since this is not an old woman's desperate romance fantasy, why on earth did you bother to review it? By the way, believe it or not, literary criticism is a skill - not a God given talent, a skill, one you lack. The beginning, by the way, is called a Prologue. The epilogue is at the end. Your assertion that the pimped car was silly, is an opinion, not valid criticism. I thought it was fun. See? Our opinions cancel each other out. I found your confusion confusing... I think that this kind of plot is too complicated for you. You should continue to share your opinions about books whose major complication is which eye the hunky Fabio-type uses to cast his long, want filled gazes out of. And your assertion at the end is just gratuitously mean for no reason. And like everything else, you've said, is wrong. If Jane Nobody wrote this... it would have never been published... for some one so ignorant, not stupid, they're different things Jane, you assert a great deal about the publishing business. You're very simply wrong there too. You know though, as your name is Jane I have to assume that you're Jane Nobody... and it is true that if you Jane Nobody had written a book it wouldn't have gotten published. Because you are petty, untalented, unfocused, lack charisma, taste, and charm and apparently manners. You weren't born Jane Nobody, you made yourself that.
By Nicholas Stix
Such sour grapes must come from the author! You've got no class, and an awfully thin skin, Ms. Clark.
Look at the huge blood smear on the left pants leg of Ron Goldman. Someone tried to castrate Ron. Wonder who that was?
ReplyDeletePittman in the movie about the Billionaires Club was called Frank Booker.
ReplyDeleteIt was the father of the Persian "billionaire" who was killed in the movie rather than Levin?
Anonymous 3:44 PM EDT,
ReplyDeleteIn the movie and real life, both Ron Levin and Hedayat Eslaminia were killed by Hunt and his partners in crime. Levin's body was not found, Eslaminia's was. They changed most of the names in the 1987 NBC TV movie you referred to.
As for Marcia Clark's show, half of it was commercials. A lot was left out, little about the 1987 Santa Monica trial, nothing on the 1988 San Mateo trial. A few sentences on Hunt's 1992 San Mateo trial.
Clark interviewed Jim Pittman's attorney. Aside from being unprepared, she didn't do her homework. Pittman's attorney claimed he got a "hung jury 10-2 in favor of acquittal" in the first trial. The exact opposite of reality. It was 10-2 for CONVICTION in the first trial with two black females holding out.
Funny how the "brilliant prosecutor and legal expert" Marcia Clark let that slip by.
In the second trial of Pittman, the jury did indeed feel sorry for him and hung again. Poor, poor black man mixed up with these white rich kids. After the charges were pleaded down to time served, Pittman went on A Current Affair and boasted about killing Ron Levin: "They can't try me again," Pittman gloated.
Pittman's attorney was mildly chagrined at this: "Well I didn't think he was wholly innocent."