Entertainment
Column: When it comes to Vili Fualaau, 'May December' wants to have its cake and eat it too
As the critically acclaimed “May December” heads toward what will no doubt be a multiple-nomination awards season, director Todd Haynes and screenwriter Samy Burch find themselves on the receiving end of one of the questions their film asks: What do filmmakers owe the people who inspire the stories they tell, particularly when those stories involve abuse or exploitation?
“May December” follows Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), an actor, as she visits the home of Gracie (Julianne Moore) and Joe (Charles Melton), an infamous couple who began an intimate “relationship” when Gracie was in her 30s and Joe was 13. Gracie was convicted of rape and spent several years in jail, but they eventually married; they have three children, and live with as much privacy as their small town will allow. Elizabeth has been cast to play Gracie in a film and wants to spend time with them as research.
Though certain details have been changed and the main storyline is fiction, “May December” is obviously and admittedly inspired by the headline-generating scandal of Mary Kay Letourneau, who raped and then eventually married her former sixth-grade student Vili Fualaau. Indeed, some of the dialogue was drawn directly from interviews given by the couple over the years.
This week Fualaau, who divorced Letourneau in 2017 but was with her until her death in 2020, expressed unhappiness with the film, and the fact — ironically, given the film’s narrative — that no one had consulted him while making it.
“If they had reached out to me, we could have worked together on a masterpiece. Instead, they chose to do a ripoff of my original story,” he told the Hollywood Reporter. “I’m offended by the entire project and the lack of respect given to me — who lived through a real story and is still living it.”
This is not a good look for “May December,” which Burch described in these pages as a “satire of the industry and the vampiric nature of playing real people who are alive,” but neither the filmmakers’ decision not to involve Fualaau nor his unhappiness is unusual.
When working with historical or well-publicized material, writers and filmmakers often decide that the story they want to tell will not benefit from consulting or informing those who inspired it. Even when it comes to biopics, which “May December” certainly is not.
“Maestro” may have been made with the full participation and well-publicized blessings of Leonard Bernstein’s children, but Sean Durkin, who made “The Iron Claw,” another awards contender this year, did not reach out to the surviving Von Erich brother, Kevin, until after he had written the script detailing the famous wrestling family’s story, which, for dramatic purposes, omitted one of the brothers entirely. Kevin Von Erich (played by Zac Efron in the film) has said he understands the omission but pushed back against the depiction of his father, Fritz (Holt McCallany).
Inevitably, any film or television series made about or inspired by actual events is going to make someone, somewhere, deeply unhappy.
Vili Fualaau, center, in 1998.
(John Froschauer / Associated Press)
The late, great Olivia de Havilland famously sued, at age 100, Ryan Murphy for his profane and gossipy depiction of her in “Feud: Bette and Joan.” Football star Michael Oher, who earlier this year accused the Tuohy family of cutting him out of money earned by their participation in “The Blind Side,” took issue early on with the film’s depiction of him as “dumb.” Amanda Knox has repeatedly called out cinematic versions of her story — she was wrongly convicted of murder in Italy and imprisoned for four years before being exonerated — particularly the Matt Damon-starring film “Stillwater,” in which the Knox-inspired lead was actually guilty.
More recently, almost every living historical figure depicted in HBO’s “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” disparaged its accuracy, and friends and supporters of the British royal family recently pressured Netflix to add a “this is a fictionalized dramatization” disclaimer to “The Crown.”
De Havilland lost her suit (and her attempt to take it to the Supreme Court); laws regarding free speech offer wide protections to fiction and fictionalized accounts, with good reason — without an acceptance of literary license, some of the best, most powerful films, series and novels would not exist.
But if writers and directors do not have a legal obligation to the public figures at the center of their stories, do they have a moral one? Not every public-figure inspiration is created equal; there is a difference between the queen of England and a man who is known for marrying the woman who raped him when he was a child.
In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the effect that true crime stories, however fictionalized, can have on the people involved. For instance, films coming off #MeToo have stressed the importance of respecting survivors’ experiences, and Ryan Murphy’s “Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” was criticized for re-traumatizing the families of Dahmers victims.
No one would compare “May December” with “Dahmer” or even “Stillwater” — as Haynes and Burch have said repeatedly, the Letourneau/Fualaau relationship was a springboard, not a blueprint — but there is no reading of that story, from the initial crime to the subsequent salacious publicity around their eventual marriage, in which Fualaau is not a victim. No matter how sincere and fine a re-imagining of his life might be, the decision not to involve him in some way is, at the very least, troubling.
Especially since the film directly addresses the exploitation of Hollywood adaptations. In “May December,” Elizabeth’s encounters with Joe seem to offer, at first, hope of deliverance. She sees what the young man, still very much in thrall to Grace, does not: that the “relationship” began when Joe was too young to consent to it and continued when he was still too young to understand what it would cost him.
But Elizabeth uses Joe as well — her “research” extends to having sex with him and then all but shoving him out the door. As far as the Elizabeth character, rich with “creative-process” narcissism, embodies Hollywood, “May December” portrays our thirst for retelling sensational events as destructive. Glimpsed at the end, the film Elizabeth is working on appears far from high art, adding insult to injury.
The power of “May December” comes from Grace and Elizabeth’s relentless battle for, if not truth, then narrative control. Indeed, the only “good” major character in the film is Joe, who is depicted, tragically, as something of a hapless bystander in his own life.
Which, given the decision not to involve Fualaau, feels uncomfortably as if the filmmakers were trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Yes, the people who inspire “based on real events” films and series we love are often unhappy with the cinematic results. But, as with the renewed discomfort over “The Blind Side,” Fualaau’s words feel more poignant, and important, than, say, Magic Johnson refusing to watch “Winning Time” or Judi Dench protesting the inaccuracies of “The Crown.”
Unlike the Lakers or the royal family or Olivia de Havilland, Fualaau is not a public figure beyond the one thing the world knows about him; like Knox and, to a lesser extent, Oher, he was pushed into the public eye when he was young, vulnerable and a victim of circumstance, which in Fualaau’s case meant the victim of a crime.
Mary Kay Letourneau in court in 1998.
(Alan Berner / AP)
There is, as Knox recently pointed out in a lengthy social media thread reacting to Fualaau’s comments, no legal way for public figures to control the way they are used in fiction. Again, for very good reason. Writers and artists use familiar figures as cultural touchstones to tell all sorts of stories, many of which have little to do with the actual people or events that inspired them, and audiences are expected, reasonably, to understand this.
Some of these stories will be good, some bad, a few great; historians will make lists of corrections, critics will express outrage or appreciation, and we can all discuss the complicated nature of fact, fiction, myth, memory and storytelling, which is always a good thing.
But sometimes, it is worth remembering that at the center of those touchstones are real people who, often through no intention of their own, watched helplessly as their stories became public domain.
This is one of those times.
Movie Reviews
Movie Review: A real-life ’70s hostage drama crackles in Gus Van Sant’s ‘Dead Man’s Wire’
It plays a little loose with facts but the righteous rage of “Dog Day Afternoon” is present enough in Gus Van Sant’s “Dead Man’s Wire,” a based-on-a-true-tale hostage thriller that’s as deeply 1970s as it is contemporary.
In February 1977, Tony Kiritsis walked into the Meridian Mortgage Company in downtown Indianapolis and took one of its executives, Dick Hall, hostage. Kiritsis held a sawed-off shotgun to the back of Hall’s head and draped a wire around his neck that connected to the gun. If he moved too much, he would die.
The subsequent standoff moved to Kiritsis’ apartment and eventually concluded in a live televised news conference. The whole ordeal received some renewed attention in a 2022 podcast dramatization starring Jon Hamm.
But in “Dead Man’s Wire,” starring Bill Skarsgård as Kiritsis, these events are vividly brought to life by Van Sant. It’s been seven years since Van Sant directed, following 2018’s “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot,” and one of the prevailing takeaways of his new film is that that’s too long of a break for a filmmaker of Van Sant’s caliber.
Working from a script by Austin Kolodney, the filmmaker of “My Own Private Idaho” and “Good Will Hunting” turns “Dead Man’s Wire” into not a period-piece time capsule but a bracingly relevant drama of outrage and inequality. Tony feels aggrieved by his mortgage company over a land deal the bank, he claims, blocked. We’re never given many specifics, but at the same time, there’s little doubt in “Dead Man’s Wire” that Tony’s cause is just. His means might be desperate and abhorrent, but the movie is very definitely on his side.
That’s owed significantly to Skarsgård, who gives one of his finest and least adorned performances. While best known for films like “It,” “The Crow” and “Nosferatu,” here Skarsgård has little more than some green polyester and a very ’70s mustache to alter his looks. The straightforward, jittery intensity of his performance propels “Dead Man’s Wire.”
Yet Van Sant’s film aspires to be a larger ensemble drama, which it only partially succeeds at. Tony’s plight is far from a solitary one, as numerous threads suggest in Kolodney’s fast-paced script. First and foremost is Colman Domingo as a local DJ named Fred Temple. (If ever there were an actor suited, with a smooth baritone, to play a ’70s radio DJ, it’s Domingo.) Tony, a fan, calls Fred to air his demands. But it’s not just a media outlet for him. Fred touts himself as “the voice of the people.”
Something similar could be said of Tony, who rapidly emerges as a kind of folk hero. As much as he tortures his hostage (a very good Dacre Montgomery), he’s kind to the police officers surrounding him. And as he and Dick spend more time together, Dick emerges as a kind of victim, himself. It’s his father’s bank, and when Tony gets M.L. Hall (Al Pacino) on the phone, he sounds painfully insensitive, sooner ready to sacrifice his son than acknowledge any wrongdoing.
Pacino’s presence in “Dead Man’s Wire” is a nod to “Dog Day Afternoon,” a movie that may be far better — but, then again, that’s true of most films in comparison to Sidney Lumet’s unsurpassed 1975 classic. Still, Van Sant’s film bears some of the same rage and disillusionment with the meatgrinder of capitalism as “Dog Day.”
There’s also a telling, if not entirely successful subplot of a local TV news reporter (Myha’la) struggling against stereotypes. Even when she gets the goods on the unspooling news story, the way her producer says to “chop it up” and put it on air makes it clear: Whatever Tony is rebelling against, it’s him, not his plight, that will be served up on a prime-time plate.
It doesn’t take recent similar cases of national fascination, such as Luigi Mangione, charged with killing a healthcare executive, to see contemporary echoes of Kiritsis’ tale. The real story is more complicated and less metaphor-ready, of course, than the movie, which detracts some from the film’s gritty sense of verisimilitude. Staying closer to the truth might have produced a more dynamic movie.
But “Dead Man’s Wire” still works. In the film, Tony’s demands are $5 million and an apology. It’s clear the latter means more to him than the money. The tragedy in “Dead Man’s Wire” is just how elusive “I’m sorry” can be.
“Dead Man’s Wire,” a Row K Entertainment release, is rated R for language throughout. Running time: 105 minutes. Three stars out of four.
In a bid for greater user engagement, Walt Disney Co. will introduce vertical videos to its Disney+ app over the next year, a company executive said Wednesday.
The move is part of the Burbank media and entertainment company’s effort to encourage more frequent app usage, particularly on smartphones.
“We know that mobile is an incredible opportunity to turn Disney+ into a true daily destination for fans,” Erin Teague, executive vice president of product management, said during an onstage presentation in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. “All of the short-form Disney content you want, all in one unified app.”
Teague said the company will evolve that capability over time to determine new formats, categories and content types.
Disney’s presentation also touched on its interest in artificial intelligence. Last month, San Francisco startup OpenAI said it had reached a licensing deal with Disney to use more than 200 of the company’s popular characters in its text-to-video tool, Sora. Under the terms of that deal, users will be able to write prompts that generate short videos featuring Disney characters and use ChatGPT images to create those characters’ visages. Some of those Sora-generated videos will be shown on Disney+, though the companies said the deal did not include talent likenesses or voices.
Disney also said it would invest $1 billion into the AI company.
Part of Disney’s move toward AI is to appeal to young Gen Alpha viewers, who are more comfortable with AI and “expect to interact with entertainment” instead of simply watching stories on the screen, Teague said.
“AI is an accelerator,” she said. “It’s why collaborations with partners like OpenAI are absolutely crucial. We want to empower a new generation of fandom that is more interactive and immersive, while also respecting human creativity and protecting user safety.”
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Is This Thing On?
Cinematic stories of disintegrating marriages are fairly commonplace—and often depressing emotional endurance tests, besides—so it’s interesting to see co-writer/director Bradley Cooper take this variation on the theme in a fresher direction. The unhappy couple in this place is Alex and Tess Novak (Will Arnett and Laura Dern), who decide matter-of-factly to separate. Then Alex impulsively decides to get up on stage at an open-mic comedy night, and starts turning their relationship issues into material. The premise would seem to suggest an uneven balance towards Alex’s perspective, but the script is just as interested in Tess—a former Olympic-level volleyball player who retired to focus on motherhood—searching for her own purpose. And the narrative takes a provocative twist when their individual sparks of renewed happiness lead them towards something resembling an affair with their own spouse. The screenplay faces a challenge common to movies about comedians in that Alex’s material, even once he’s supposed to be actively working on it, isn’t particularly good, and Cooper isn’t particularly restrained in his own supporting performance as the comic-relief buddy character (who is called “Balls,” if that provides any hints). Yet the two lead performances are terrific—particularly Dern, who nails complex facial expressions upon her first encounter with Alex’s act—as Cooper and company turn this narrative into an exploration of how it can seem that you’ve fallen out of love with your partner, when what you’ve really fallen out of love with is the rest of your life. Available Jan. 9 in theaters. (R)
JANUARY SPECIAL SCREENINGS
KRCL’s Music Meets Movies: Dig! XX @ Brewvies: As part of a farewell to Sundance, Brewvies/KRCL’s regular Music Meets Movies series presents the extended 20th anniversary edition of the 2004 Sundance documentary about the rivalry between the Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre as they chart different music-biz paths. The screening takes place at Brewvies (677 S. 200 West) on Jan. 8 @ 7:30 p.m., $10 at the door or 2-for-1 with KRCL shirt. brewvies.com
Trent Harris weekend @ SLFS: Utah’s own Trent Harris has charted a singular course as an independent filmmaker, and you can catch two of his most (in)famous works at Salt Lake Film Society. In 1991’s Rubin & Ed, two mismatched souls—one an eccentric, isolated young man (Crispin Glover), the other a middle-aged financial scammer—wind up on a comedic road trip through the Utah desert; 1995’s Plan 10 from Outer Space turns Mormon theology into a crazy science-fiction parody. Get a double dose of uncut Trent Harris weirdness on Friday, Jan. 9, with Rubin & Ed at 7 p.m. and Plan 10 from Outer Space at 9 p.m. Tickets are $13.75 for each screening. slfs.org
Rob Reiner retrospective @ Brewvies Sunday Brunch: Last month’s tragic passing of actor/director Rob Reiner reminded people of his extraordinary work, particularly his first handful of features. Brewvies’ regular “Sunday Brunch” series showcases three of these films this month with This Is Spinal Tap (Jan. 11), The Princess Bride (Jan. 18) and Stand By Me (Jan. 25). All screenings are free with no reservations, on a first-come first-served basis, at noon each day. brewvies.com
David Lynch retrospective @ SLFS: It’s been a year since the passing of groundbreaking artist David Lynch, and Salt Lake Film Society’s Broadway Centre Cinemas marks the occasion with some of his greatest filmed work. In addition to theatrical features Eraserhead (Jan. 11), Inland Empire (Jan. 11), Mulholland Dr. (Jan. 12), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Jan. 14), Blue Velvet (Jan. 19) and Lost Highway (Jan. 19), you can experience the entirety of 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return on the big screen in two-episode blocs Jan. 16 – 18. The programming also includes the 2016 documentary David Lynch: The Art Life. slfs.org
Death by Numbers @ Utah Film Center: Directed by Kim A. Snyder (the 2025 Sundance feature documentary The Librarians), this 2024 Oscar-nominated documentary short focuses on Sam Fuentes, survivor of a school shooting who attempts to process her experience through poetry. This special screening features a live Q&A with Terri Gilfillan and Nancy Farrar-Halden of Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah, with Zoom participation by Sam Fuentes. The screening on Wednesday, Jan. 14 at 7 p.m. at Utah Film Center (375 W. 400 North) is free with registration at the website.
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