Sauvage préméditation

During my time working in Hollywood, this was the one made for television movie I worked on. I was the post-production supervisor. I had worked for Helios Productions with Brad Wigor and Joe Maurer several times on CBS Schoolbreak specials and they had asked me to take this job on, manning the office in Beverly Hills while they were on location in Atlanta where the film was shot.

The film was edited entirely on film, only going to tape later from the finished print. The old film editing style was quickly being replaced by tape and computers so this was a thrill to work one last time on film.

One of my memories from this film include being assigned to coordinate a meeting in New York between Howard Rollins and producer Brad Wigor. We really wanted Howard to take the part of the bad cop but he was not sure if he wanted to take it. I remember getting Howard on the phone on the day that he had learned of a close friends death. He was very upset. He talked and I listened for a good long while. I'll never forget his voice and the fear he had. In the end, the meeting was arranged and Howard took the part. He was an excellent actor and really turned in a fine performance in this film.

I also cherish meeting both Ronny Cox and Elizabeth Montgomery during the ADR sessions. Ronny had just made an album in Nashville of country music. As a fellow musician, we talked about music and my planned relocation to Nashville. Ms. Montgomery was a class act. She arrived early for her session and she and I had a nice chat in the studio while we waited for the session to begin. I was thrilled to meet her and will never forget her interest and kindness.

As a final footnote, this idea was brought to Helios by our production secretary Joannie Cuff. She had grown up in the Buffalo, NY area and knew of the story. Brad and Joe secured the rights and the movie was made. Joannie was given the well deserved title of Associate Producer for her efforts.

Michael Killen

I am actually trying to get a copy of this TV Movie as it was about my Vietnam bunk buddy Edward Beaufort-Cutner who is no serving 25-50 years in Livingston Correctional Facility in NY. Oddly, he committed the crime in 1988, when I was a prison warden in Nebraska. I have been trying to find him for 40 years and just did so yesterday. I am calling the prison today to see if I can contact him. I am a writer and may want to do the rest of the story into a feature film. What is also odd is he was denied parole for his initial hearing May 12, 2014, which is my birthday. We both got out of the military and finished criminal justice studies and ended up running private security and investigation companies.

I finally found a copy of this movie available on-line for a mere $8.49 and will be able to watch it next week to start researching "the rest of this story."

After carefully watching this movie with my wife this week (2-10-16), I believe there is "the rest of the story" to be told here. I have been corresponding with the convicted perpetrator to this crime, along with his family, for the purpose of reconnecting 50+ years from Vietnam, and looking for ways he can get a fair parole hearing. I realize there was considerable circumstantial evidence that was pieced together to convict him, but the act is totally out of character for him. Although all his parole success prediction factors are good-excellent (age, prior criminal history,attitudes, prison conduct record and program participation, education, family support employ-ability, soundness of parole plan, etc.), his main obstacle of the court record and movie rendition of the execution-style intentional murder attempts and the vicious image those shootings represent in the jury's and parole board's mind. They may think he needs to serve 36 of the 50 years which would put him at 82 years old. While Sirhan-Sirhan and Charlie Manson should never be released, it is probably time for Eddie Beaufort.

This movie, though it looked a little boring, actually turned out to be really good. It's about a woman named Gayle Wolfer who sells houses. One day, when she is showing a man a house, the man makes Gayle and the people who live in the house get down on the floor. He ties them up, you know the deal. Then he shoots Gayle about three times. Luckily, she survives, and is determined to find out who the person who wanted to kill her is and where he is at. One day, when she and Bob Sprague are at the county fair, she sees someone and recognizes him as the man who tried to kill her, but hardly anyone believes her. So she goes to a trial in court. This movie may seem like just one of those normal good guy/bad guy movies but it's actually really good, especially the acting.

Where may I find a DVD? I lo e Elizabeth Montgomery. She is one of my favorite actresses.

Elizabeth Montgomery as a real estate agent is robbed and shot while showing a house. She later spots the guy, Howard Rollins, at a fairground, where he's a volunteer mounted police officer. She reports him to the police, he's arrested and convicted, and is now serving a long sentence in Attica.

It's hard to know how to assess this movie. Not because of the execution, which is routine, and not because of the acting. The principals -- Montgomery, Rollins, and Foxworth are fine. In fact Montgomery looks rather better than "fine" despite her age and impending terminal illness.

It's that the movie seems to be self contradictory. It wants to assure us that justice has been carried out but what we are shown leaves us with too many doubts.

It is all shown from the victim's point of view, which is okay in itself, except that we must realize that the living victim (this is based on a real incident) is liable to have a bit more weight when it comes to shaping the material than is the convicted black criminal who is now somebody's bitch upstate. We don't get to hear very much from Rollins.

Could Montgomery have been mistaken when she just happened to spot Rollins astride his horse at the fair? Well, she is absolutely certain. But another woman who was a witness says that Rollins resembles the perpetrator, but "on a scale of 10, he's a 7 or 8." (How do you measure something like "reasonable doubt"? What's the scale, and where's the threshold?) And why did Montgomery, having stumbled across the perp by accident and having immediately identified him to her own satisfaction, wait around until the next day to inform the police over a casual lunch about the event?

The trial itself doesn't seem to resolve any of these issues. Montgomery identifies Rollins' voice through a closed door but that's a notoriously poor means of identification. Out of three speakers in the line up, she had one chance in three of guessing Rollins even if he'd been innocent. Rollins may or may not have had some connection with drugs. But he's well spoken and is a prosperous upright citizen. He runs a security business that protects dozens of shopping centers, he goes to church regularly, has a family (which we don't get to see), is a part-time volunteer policeman with a good military record, has never had any run-ins with the law, and spends time working for United Way or something. No physical evidence links Rollins to the crime. Why should a paragon of citizenship like this rob someone of a couple of thousand dollars and shoot people unnecessarily?

On the other hand, why should someone in Elizabeth Montgomery's position lie? An interesting question, to which there are several reasonable replies. One is that she may not have been lying. After all a considerable time had passed since the crime. Maybe she was just mistaken.

Another answer, far more conjectural, is that she was acting out a fantasy of victimhood. There seem to be two favorite human fantasies -- the conquering hero and the suffering victim. The former is mostly a male fantasy and the second a feminine one. I don't mean to sound in any way anti-feminist about this. A moment's thought will do to support the idea. Who watches The Action Movie Channel more -- men or women? And for which gender is Lifetime Movies for Women designed? I just watched "With Murder in Mind" on the Lifetime Movies channel. During one of the commercial breaks, an ad asked the audience, "Who would you like to play YOU in a movie about YOUR life????" (The informant's choice was Angelina Jolie. She'd be my choice too but it would be a different kind of movie.)

In a way, this is a movie about the life of Elizabeth Montgomery's character's life and she plays the role of victim to the hilt. After her partial recovery from her wounds she becomes a demanding nervous wreck. She gets to drink too much. She doesn't have to work. She calls 911 every time a car pulls into the driveway. She makes a general nuisance of herself and at the same time gets people to feel sorry for her, which is having your cake and eating it too. Then she gets to be the central figure in a dramatic trial. She winds up seeing someone sent away for a long time based on her testimony and her moral authority as an innocent victim (which she undoubtedly was).

And now there's even a MOVIE about her life -- and she is played by Elizabeth Montgomery! Now, all of that constitutes a lot of reward, which Freud dismissed too easily as unimportant "secondary gains." But Freud was a psychologist, not a sociologist, and he probably never saw a movie in his life. And he certainly never heard of Andy Warhol.

I don't mean to say that the Montgomery character was a fraud, that she dreamed the whole thing up in order to become famous. Lots of times we do things without knowing the real reasons why we're doing them. But I do mean that although she was certain Rollins was the man, I wasn't convinced. And I suspect the writers and producers must have felt ambivalent about the justice of the conviction too, because they seem to hint that the whole case may have been a terrible mistake.

Sometimes it's good to be the suffering victim. I think I might enjoy having a painless and not-disfiguring temporary illness so that a doctor could examine me and tell me, "Spend the next three years in bed. And be sure to drink plenty of fluids."