Intermission: Scripting in Crayon
I’d just like, again, to pause here and consider the so-called script that Erik and Cignarelli wrote. I haven’t read it (must see if it’s available online) but from what I understand it’s a very bland, boring, cliched and predictable story. Guy finds out he’s due a huge inheritance and kills his parents. Nothing much happens. He gets caught and dies with a smile on his face. Meh. Why did the two of them think Hollywood would be falling over themselves to produce that rubbish? Why would anyone be interested? Why would anyone watch such unimaginative trash? I suppose it goes back to the super-ego of any Menendez, all of whom believed implicitly in the superiority of their family and who could not conceive that anything that came out of them could not be gold. Erik probably thought they (more he; I would imagine he thought he was the creative brains behind a script I could have crapped out) had written
The Great Gatsby or something, and expected a bidding war.
That’s him, and that would not be a surprising way for a Menendez to view his own work. It was his, so therefore must be of tremendous value. It could not possibly be bad. But what about Craig Cignarelli? Unless he was as much a narcissist as his friend, he must have known that the script was garbage. He can’t seriously have thought that they screenplay they put together was anything better than something any Hollywood hack or even student in his bedsit could bang out, and equally worthless? Was he relying on the contacts Erik had through his father, to get them a deal? Did he think the Menendez name would be enough to get them signed up, despite the peurile nature of the story? Or was he just carried away on perhaps the wave of Erik’s enthusiasm and conviction that they were going to hit it big?
In the end, the pathetic script of “Friends” was destined not even to play a small part in the trial of its co-author for murder, as it was excluded by the judge, so it’s hardly even a footnote in the history of the Menendez murders. It was of course praised by Kitty, but then, Erik could have wiped his arse with a piece of typing paper and presented it to his mother as a script and she most likely would have gushed about how great it was. Till he shot her dead, of course. I wonder what Jose would have made of it? Would he have seen in the amateurish scrawl the warning, a foreboding of his own grisly death? Or would he just have dismissed it, as he did almost everything his younger son did, contempt in his eyes?
Back to the trial anyway.
Cignarelli proved a difficult witness for Abramson, so used to being in control, to keep in check. To some extent she must have felt like a cowboy trying to keep a wild stallion from bucking and bolting, using all her skill to calm him down. But Cignarelli did not want to calm down. He also did not intend to be told what he could and could not say, and when he brought up a reference to the Billionaire Boys Club murder, almost ten years prior, she did not want her boys linked with that scandal and asked for his testimony to be stricken from the record, which Judge Weisberg agreed with. He told the jury to disregard Cignarelli’s comments.
Now this has always confused me. How can you ignore or disregard something you’ve heard but have been told not factor into your decision when deliberating in the jury room? Of course, you’re not supposed to let it influence you, but if you hear a defendant say, for instance, that he hated dogs and the case was an animal cruelty case (for example) how hard would it be not to let that play on your mind and even subconsciously take it into account when discussing the case with your fellow jurors? I mean, it’s not like people have delete buttons where you can literally forget what you’ve been told just because a judge says so. I believe I would find it hard to disregard any testimony I was told to, once I had heard it, and I also believe that this jury kept that in mind, despite the judge’s instructions to the contrary.
Cignarelli was able to drop a bombshell - well, it would have been one if the brothers had denied the killings, which they had initially but had now admitted to, placing all their emphasis on why they had done it. He said about two weeks after the murders Erik had told him how it had been done, and then made some cryptic remark about all great leaders having no parents, or some nonsense that he had to quickly backtrack on and try to explain. There was no mention of any abuse, which might seem strange, as these two were the closest friends could be really, and you would imagine they would have shared everything. If Erik could talk to anyone, other than his older brother, surely it would have been Craig Cignarelli?
But then, another friend of the brothers was about to blow a serious hole in the prosecution’s case.