A MAN on trial for kidnap and murder with the name Jesse James Hollywood is trying to block the release of an “inflammatory” film starring Justin Timberlake about his case.
Mr Hollywood claims that Alpha Dog, co-starring Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone, will prejudice his death-penalty trial for the kidnapping and murder of a California teenager over a drug debt.
The alleged drug dealer is also asking that the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s office be removed from the case for co-operating with the film-maker, Nick Cassavetes.
“We are considering different types of legal action to prevent the film being distributed,” James Blatt, Mr Hollywood’s lawyer, told The Times. “Any defence team would have a legitimate concern that the movie, which depicts Mr Hollywood in a very negative light, would have an effect on selecting a fair and impartial jury.”
At 20 Mr Hollywood became one of the youngest suspects on the FBI’s most wanted list when he disappeared after the August 2000 killing of 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz.
Markowitz was grabbed from the street near his home in the San Fernando Valley, outside Los Angeles. His body was found three days later buried near a hiking trail. According to prosecutors the teenager was abducted because of a feud between his older half-brother and Mr Hollywood’s gang over a $1,200 drug debt.
They say that Mr Hollywood ordered him killed when he learnt from his lawyer that kidnapping for extortion carried a possible life sentence. While Mr Hollywood was on the run, four other youths were jailed for their roles in the crime — including the convicted gunman, who is on death row.
Mr Hollywood’s cult-like status among southern California’s aimless “Valley kids” attracted Cassavetes, the son of the director John Cassavetes and the actress Gena Rowlands. Cassavetes approached Ronald Zonen, the Deputy District Attorney in Santa Barbara, for assistance. The prosecutor( handed over his notes on the four previous prosecutions as well as police and probation reports, crime photo graphs and a psychological report on the gunman, Ryan Hoyt.
The film follows Mr Zonen’s theory of the case, but the names have been changed on legal advice. Mr Hollywood becomes Johnny Truelove, played by Emile Hirsch; his father is portrayed by Willis; and his sidekick by Timberlake. Stone plays Mr Markowitz’s mother. The $13 million (£7 million) production had finished filming when Mr Hollywood was captured last March in a beach town in Brazil. Cassavetes was forced to rework the plot, with Johnny Truelove being arrested in Bolivia.
The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. The trade paper Variety dismissed it as “standard-issue tabloid fare pimped out as a serious true-crime saga”. New Line Cinema originally scheduled the film’s opening for next month, but it has been pushed back until later in the spring.
Mr Blatt, who has seen Alpha Dog, is trying to prevent its nationwide release before the trial, around the end of the year. “This is the District Attorney’s version of events,” he said. “Not only that, the District Attorney is in the credits. Lastly, the District Attorney will be in the documentary section of the DVD explaining his theories of the case.”
Mr Zonen said: “There was no misconduct in assisting Nick Cassavetes in making a movie that would reasonably assist law enforcement in apprehending a fugitive indicted for the murder of a child,” he wrote in a court filing. He noted that any juror who has seen the film could be barred from the case. Cassavetes is confident that First Amendment protections against “prior restraint” will prevent Mr Hollywood blocking the film.
