John Malkovich, Ben Stiller… When Hollywood paid the Menendez brothers

Before Ryan Murphy's series, Lyle and Erik Menendez have already inspired films, series or sketches in Hollywood.

Whether we like the series or not “true crimes” by Ryan Murphy (and Ian Brennan), we cannot take away from the creator ofAmerican Crime Story its ambition to offer the public the opportunity to revisit sordid news items in the most complete way possible.

At the house of Firstwe didn't get as attached to the second season of Monsters dedicated to the Menendez brothers than to his shows The People vs. OJ Simpson, The Assassination of Gianni Versace And Monsters – The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Repetitive and designed in such a way that it is up to the public to form its own opinion on the guilt of Lyle and Erik Menendez, with shocking stories that contradict each other, it seemed to us less restrained than its predecessors, who all had (at least) one strong point of view to develop: recounting the shortcomings of the media coverage of trials for O.J.paint the portrait of a compulsive liar to Versace and talk about the flaws of the police, the ambient racism and homophobia and give voice to the victims to Dahmer.

Dahmer, on Netflix: The true crime that wants to kill all true crimes [critique]

With this story of young brothers having murdered their parents, we find a little bit of all these elements: very bloody murders, possibly lying accused, two trials followed live on television, victims who are no longer there to defend themselves … With additional reflections on sexual violence against children.

Among all the elements mentioned during its nine episodes, the last two emphasize the change in the public's feelings about this affair. If the spectators had been able to become attached to the two brothers and believe in their trauma after the revelation of the crimes, during the course of the first trial, public opinion gradually shifted. To illustrate this change, in episode 8 a Saturday Night Live sketch with John Malkovich as Erik and Rob Schneider as Lyle is mentioned very quickly. Between two names of Hollywood stars who could, according to the two brothers, play them in the cinema.

The SNL sketch (1993)

The sketch dates right from the moment when the Court TV channel decided to broadcast the trial of the Menendez brothers live. It is intended as a rehearsal gag in which the announcer, played by Myke Myers, presents the two suspects as liars and crybabies. Here they invent two other brothers, Danny and Jose Menendez Jr., who answer the lawyers' questions to try to determine if they really exist. Then follow attempts to demonstrate that it is in fact Lyle and Erik disguised as Danny and Jose Jr. Faced with the insistence of their interlocutors, each time they end up bursting into tears.

Monster, season 2: the Menendez brothers are less strong than Dahmer (review)

This sketch, completely ignoring the seriousness of the trial's revelations, perfectly illustrates the idea that during its high-profile coverage, public opinion changed, and people no longer believed Erik and Lyle's defense Menendez. A gag that can be shocking today with its lack of empathy.

Its creators are not the only ones to have “paid” this case of the Menendez brothers.

Trippedby Ben Stiller (1996)

Three years after the trial, Ben Stiller also seized on this scandal to make a parody of it in his film Tripped. Not so much to “make fun” of the two brothers, for once, but more to denounce the over-media coverage of their trial. Like that of OJ Simpson, it was an ideal way to point out the enormous attention given to terrible news stories, rebroadcast endlessly on the news channels and “consumed” with the family as some form of entertainment. Here, it is not two brothers who murdered their parents, but a young man who killed his twin brother, and who sees his sad story being the subject of an over-publicized trial, therefore, but also monopolized by Hollywood, which immediately produces a cracking action film with Eric Roberts.

Developed in the background throughout its comedy denouncing the overconsumption of television, the reference hits the mark, but beware of spoilers: its outcome coincides with that of the film.

Monster: the “real” Menendez brother furious with the Netflix series

Law and Order: the Menendez affair

In 2017, a series derived from Law & Order was designed around the Menendez affair. Without being strictly speaking a parody – it even leaned more towards the arguments of Lyle and Erik Menendez, it was thought of as a “response” to the first season of American Crime Story. Despite a solid cast (Eddie Falco from The Sopranos as a lawyer, Anthony Edwards from Urgences as a judge…), she did not conquer Première by falling too often into one-upmanship. Here is our review published when it arrived on 13e rue in France, at the beginning of 2018. It is now available on DVD.

Dick Wolf's response to American Crime Story by Ryan Murphy is a laugh-out-loud wig festival, not very Law and Order.

Positioned by Dick Wolf as the latest spin-off of his tireless franchise Law and Order, The Menendez Brothers nonetheless accepts its nature as plagiarism. Better than Waco Or The Murders of Tupac and The Notorious Bigit testifies to the eagerness with which the chains threw themselves on the prestigious reconstructions of famous crimes after the success of The People Vs OJ Simpson (first season of American Crime Story).

Good old Dick is not short of air; The chosen case (the shotgun murder of their parents by the Menendez twins, in their Beverly Hills villa) took place a few blocks away and predates the Simpson case by only a few years, overlapping some of the same themes (emerging culture of fame) and protagonists (hello Judge Ito and Prosecutor Garcetti). Like Sarah Paulson in American Crime StoryEddie Falco wears a permanent wig which becomes the symbolic image of the trial…

Where Ryan Murphy's anthology disguised itself as a sensational soap to probe the country's racial history, TMB keeps only the shaggy soap, addicted to its own titillation and indifferent to the context. A series not “taken from crimes that hit the headlines”as the Dick Wolf tradition demands, but which peels back the chronicle, refusing satire (it is everywhere!) in favor of tabloid reporting, and delivering the most grotesque and sordid facts with papal seriousness. It's not easy to get passionate about all this, but it's also impossible to look away. Somehow, a good definition of Trash TV.

Note that the Menendez affair has not stopped making noise: the two brothers have rebelled against the series which, according to them, depicts a story that is far from the truth. Between two responses from the creators or actors of the show, Netflix is ​​already teasing the broadcast of a documentary to accompany the release of its successful series, as had already been done for Dahmeramong others.

The Monster actors take their turn responding to the Menendez brothers