From: Jasper
Date: 6/22/03
Time: 6:16:31 PM
Remote Name: 68.73.192.254
Miss Marple,
I watched Murder in Greenwich again for connections between the shoes Fuhrman’s character wore and the ones in The Twilight Zone’s “Dead Man’s Shoes” (’62) and The New Twilight Zone’s “Dead Woman’s Shoes” (’85). Both shows are about a ghost that takes over the body of someone who puts on their expensive, distinctive shoes.
I wanted to test my thesis that the Bundy killer’s idea for using men’s Bruno Magli’s (expensive and distinctive) came from moves and TV shows in which a dead woman’s shoes (Nicole’s Bruno Magli’s and the Wicked Witch of the East’s magic slippers in the Wizard of Oz) played a key part. It could work only if the men’s shoes and the women’s shoes were interchangeable and definitely linked to Christopher Meloni’s shoes in Murder in Greenwich. Meloni, as Fuhrman in Murder in Greenwich, had a recurring role as a convicted killer in the HBO television series OZ. The ghost of the dead woman in Dead Woman’s shoes, calls herself the Wicked Witch of the East.
Murder in Greenwich features the ghost of a murder victim. Her shoes and the killer’s shoes have nothing literally to do with Fuhrman’s but he figuratively puts himself in their shoes to “solve” the crime. Any question about that literal and figurative merger disappears with STEVEN Weeks’ figurative line about Fuhrman putting himself in his critic’s shoes and Fuhrman’s literal answer that he can’t afford their shoes.
Meloni as Fuhrman wears three distinguishable kinds of shoes; black street shoes like the ones he wore in the pointing finger photo, brown cowboy boots, and blue and white Nike running shoes. All three of them are closely associated with shoes in Dead Woman’s Shoes. You wouldn’t think Fuhrman’s cowboy boots had anything to do with the shoes of the dead woman in The New Twilight Zone until you see them in close-up immediately after you see a close up of a woman’s shoes and realize that the dead woman’s shoes and his cowboy boots have pointed toes and higher heels than regular shoes. The men’s Bruno Magli’s were boots. In Murder in Brentwood, Fuhrman called them loafers.
In Dead Man’s Shoes, the murder victim’s distinctive shoes are loafers. They appear to have rubber soles with some kind of tread pattern and a crisp border running around the edges like the bloody shoeprints on Bundy. You see the soles of the shoes several times. The actor playing the character who puts himself in those shoes is Warren STEVENs.
When I read your post about the “dream sequence” in Murder in Greenwich (which, incidentally, has much in common with MICHAEL Caine in Jack The Ripper and CHRISTOPHER Walkin in The Dead Zone) I watched that scene again. As you noted, Fuhrman wasn’t pointing but when you examine that sequence closely you will find more cues to the pointing finger photo than you saw the first time. Watch the photographer behind CHRISTOPHER Meloni as Fuhrman. Note were he is standing when the second flash goes off. Now look at Fuhrman’s shoes. They look like the ones he wore in the photo. But that’s not the big thing. Go back to the scene of a shoe steeping in blood. Fuhrman has us set up to “see” a close similarity to the Bruno Magli’s. In reality they look more like the shoes his character wears in the dream sequence. –Jasper