Exbibit A, Take Two
"The most pacifistic people in the world said they came out of this movie and wanted to kill somebody"One can only assume Oliver Stone has come to regret the comment he made to the New York Times in 1996, concerning his controversial film Natural Born Killers. Currently, it has been implicated in over a dozen murders. There were the young French lovers, Parisian suburbanites who led police on a car chase, resulting in five deaths. Of course, there were murders stateside as well. A teenaged Texan accused of decapitating a 13-year old girl. A Georgia youth who allegedly murdered an 82-year Floridian with a shotgun and shouted, "I'm a natural born killer" to the television cameras. Then there was the homicidal Utah teen who went so far as to mimic Natural Born Killers antihero Mickey Knox's sartorical style, complete with tinted granny-style sunglasses and shaven skull.None of these, however, has received the same press as the tale of Sarah Edmondson and Benjamin Darras, a couple who spent the evening of March 5, 1995 dropping acid and watching the film repeatedly. Nineteen and eighteen years old, respectively, the two went for a lengthy drive the next morning in Edmondson's Nissan Maxima, making two
Both came from families with alcoholic patriarchs who committed suicide. Heavenly Creatures tells the true story of two New Zealand schoolgirls, Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, fellow misfits. Good guys? There are none to be found in Stone's vision. On the first occasion, they succeeded; Darras shot Bill Savage, a Mississippi businessman, twice in the head and left with Savage's wallet. Oliver Stone's rebuttal, initially published in L. Was Stone irresponsible in releasing a film that evidently holds so much influence over so many? Of course he was. Weekly, naturally dismisses such notions. These suits have asked a slippery question: are artists responsible if their works incite violence?At least one high-profile attorney seems to think so. " When Darras and Edmondson met, they found in each other a co-conspirator. " Still, he thinks a future ruling on copycat murders resulting from violent films is possible. Having shared misfortunes, they fell in love, exhilarated to find another who understood. "In fact, Byers did not die for several more years, and before she succumbed to cancer, she and her family filed lawsuits against Warner Bros. Noting that Darras and Edmondson had no history of violence, he suggested that the teens were acting, at least partly, under the influence of the film. Perhaps in his drug-addled mind, Darras saw Mickey Knox as his own white-trash messiah, drawing parallels between the fictional character and himself. He contends that artists are scapegoated simply for documenting their reality; muzzling them would amount to killing the messenger.
Common topics in this essay:
Darras Edmondson,
Born Killers,
Killers Currently,
Juliet Hulme,
Ultimately Stone,
Jack Scagnetti,
Sarah Mickey,
Oliver Stone,
Benjamin Darras,
Firm Questionable,
natural born,
natural born killers,
born killers,
darras edmondson,
john grisham,
mickey mallory,
novelist john,
novelist john grisham,
oliver stone,
store edmondson,
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Acceptance Essays
