Clair and Rob

The Resurrected is a movie version of H. P. Lovecraft’s short story “The Case of .Charles Dexter Ward” starring John Terry, Chris Sarandon and Jane Sibbett. It tells you exactly where some scenes and combinations of scenes in Mark Fuhrman’s Murder in Greenwich movie come from. Those scenes also tell you how his imagination works and why I was not surprised to see the references to one eye in Murder in Greenwich, particularly the eye of the camera (which orients the viewer’s point of view), the Eye-of Providence and the one-eyed Jack of Hearts.

The character of Raymond, the thug from Hong Kong with the bad eye, could have been inserted in The Resurrected as an allusion to Lovecraft’s “I AM PROVIDENCE” line from a letters he wrote that was put on a headstone in his honor 30 years after he died.  . If so, it was unnecessary because the protagonist in the movie, as opposed to the protagonist in Lovecraft’s story, is a private investigator – a private eye. The thing you have to keep in mind, from the standpoint of how any of this relates to the image of O.J. as a batterer when you look at “Raymond’s” face is that Raymond is a character in a screenplay. When you look at his face, you are looking at an actor on the job. The “bad eye” effect was accomplished with theatrical makeup.

If you study enough Fuhrman stories you see the same patterns of taking large chunks of movie scenes, leaving in place some elements that compose them and altering others while imagining very little.

He stretches things and contracts them. He turns things upside down, downside up, inside out and outside in. Women become men or men become women, dark becomes light or light becomes dark, left and right are reversed, etc. He barrows major elements from one scene and inserts them in another. Sometimes he gives you a leather glove in place of a leather purse, a necktie in place of a necklace or a woman’s shoe instead of a man’s. He layers scenes from several movies on top of each other. Then he superimposes dialogue that seems to apply only to his story until hear the dialog in a movie that tells you he just paraphrased a line from that movie to fit his story.

With Fuhrman you learn to look for variety in literal and figurative things being reversed or something distinctive about an item in the reference scene turning into something else with the same distinctive characteristic in the same relative place in Fuhrman’s work. Where you don’t get the same materials you get the same basic shapes. When you don’t get it in the foreground, look in the background.

To get the full measure of what Fuhrman did in his movie and what the killer did on Bundy to provide him with the photo ops inside the killing cage you have to know a little more than what Fuhrman tells you.

For instance:

In the Murder in Greenwich scene where “Rob Mathers” sits on the same side of the table with his mother playing cards, you need to know that the real person Fuhrman calls Rob Mathers was Edward Hammond You need to know that the reference scenes are from The Manchurian Candidate (’62), the 1957-63 Leave it to Beaver TV series and The Resurrected.  

The Manchurian Candidate’s Queen of Diamonds influence on the Murder in Greenwich scene with the young Rob Mathers playing a card game with his mother comes through loud and clear with the wine glass in front of Rob’s mother and the milk and cookies in front of Rob. Leave it to Beaver with Hugh Beaumont as Ward and Jerry Mathers as Beaver makes a no-brainer of James Beaumont’s role as the older “Rob Mathers” in Murder in Greenwich. The paragraph below from Chapter 16 of The Smoking Gun 3 tells you enough of what was taken from The Resurrected to leave no doubt of the source.

The closer you look at the details in the mirrored images of Clare and older Rob screen shots, the more you’ll see. You see Jane Sibbett as Mrs. Clair Ward in The Resurrected (’92). You see her constantly fiddling with her diamond ring and giving a little toss of her hands as assent for detective John March to record their session with a pocket tape recorder. You see James Beaumont as the adult Rob Mathers fiddling with his ring finger and giving a little toss of his hands as assent for Steve Weeks to record Mark Fuhrman’s interview with him. In Leave it to Beaver, Hough Beaumont is Beaver’s father Ward.

Mathers’ connection to his screenplay mother gets reinforced when Weeks knocks over a portrait on his desk of a woman who looks much like his mother. The link to Fuhrman in his den with three copies of Murder in Brentwood stacked on his desk gets reinforced when Mathers says to Fuhrman, “So, you’re an author now.” Fuhrman replies, “I wrote a book about my involvement with the Simpson trial; it sold." The rings on Clair's finger that she keeps playing with is a diamond ring. You will find her hat in a combination of hats on the Queen of Diamonds, Queen of Spades and the one-eyed Jacks playing cards. You will find the Jack of Hearts in the young Rob Mathers, the Jack of Spades in the older Rob Mathers (James Beaumont) and two more one-eyed Jacks in Fuhrman and Weeks.

There is also a touch of Brad Dourif playing Solitaire in Eyes of Laura Mars. What you need to know here is  that Rob Mathers gives you the letters you need to spell Roberts and Brad Dourif’s full given name is Bradford. Brad Roberts’ given name is Bradford.

 –Jasper