Review: "Face Value: The Marla Hanson Story" (1991)

The hottest thing in American popular culture today isn't superhero movies -- it's hours-long true crime podcasts, documentaries, and TV series.

In the last few years, tabloid scandals from the past about Jeffrey Dahmer, Andrew Cunan, Robert Chambers, OJ, and many others (more recently, the Menendez Brothers) have become massive hits in various multi-episode formats. And all of them seem to be about tabloid stories from the late 20th century.

But before the era of streaming and podcasts, where hours and hours could be devoted to telling these trashy tales, such stories would become network TV movies -- and instead of waiting years, these "ripped from the headlines" events became hastily-made, two-hour flicks. 

One such story that, as far as I know, has yet to become a 21st-century multi-hour podcast/documentary/streaming series is about the June 1986 attack of Marla Hanson.

A Missouri-transplant and aspiring model, Marla Hanson was living in a Manhattan apartment, attending glamorous parties, pursuing romance, living the NYC dream, until one day her landlord, who was obsessed with her, slashed her face, ending her modeling dreams. It was a big, scary story about obsession, beauty, and the "face value" of human worth. Her attackers were eventually sentenced to prison, but not until she was, in her words, badly treated by the criminal justice system. 

And this is why the 1991 TV-movie about the incident was called Face Value: The Marla Hanson Story.

This movie falls squarely into the now gone-and-forgotten sensationalist TV-movie with bad writing, bad acting, bad production values, and bad music. It's amazing to think anything this low-rent would get made today but, thirty-odd years ago, this was the stuff that millions of people watched when the big network TV hits went on hiatus.

There are, however, a few interesting things about this movie that make it worth watching (you can see the trailer and full movie below).

First, it's a real-NYC movie that, in its ways, captures the allure and danger of the late 20th century, pre-911 city. 

Second, the cast.

Marla Hanson is played by an actress named Cheryl Pollack, who "had a moment" in the early 1990s. She was in the 1990 movie Pump Up the Volume, a memorable episode of Quantum Leap, and later on was on another show called The Heights. She continued to pop up in TV shows throughout the 1990s until, it appears, she left acting. 

Marla's landlord/slasher was played by an odd-looking, odd-sounding actor named Kirk Baltz. And ironically, the very next year, he'd make movie history as the victim of a fictional slashing -- he's the guy who played the cop who memorably got his ear cut-off in Quentin Tarantino's directorial-debut Reservoir Dogs (while "Stuck in the Middle With You" played in the background). It must have been ironic for him to go, within a year or so, from playing a slasher in a totally forgettable TV movie to playing the most famous slashing victim in movie history -- and in a cinematic classic.

Then there's Marla's love interest. He's played by a very handsome actor named Dale Midkiff. His career caught fire in the 1980s when he played Elvis in a TV-mini-series, and then was in the 1989 hit movie Pet Semetary. But big screen stardom elluded him and it was back to TV. Not long after making this Marla Hanson TV movie, Dale starred in a very silly but massively entertaining show called Time Trax. It was about a cop from the year 2193 who is sent back in time to 1993 to find criminals who escaped from his time, hiding out the past, and sending them back to the future -- and justice. After Quantum Leap, it was my favorite time-travel show ever (although nowhere as good as QL), and he was really good in it. It only ran for two-years but it was fun to watch (interestingly, Time Trax premiered on January 20th, 1993, the same day that Bill Clinton became president).

As for Marla Hanson, after this horrible incident, she appears to have gone on and lived a nice quiet life. She married, had a child, worked briefly as a screenwirter, and seems to have had no interest in having a public profile in the almost 40-years after she was thrust into the headlines. And good for her! 

These days the network TV movie seems to be a thing of the past. But this movie capture an era of TV, and NYC, that seems both far in the past and very familiar. 

Jenny Was ... Remembered

In the mid-1980s there was a scandal in NYC when a handsome, dissolute young man named Robert Chambers killed a young woman named Jennifer Levin in Central Park (during what, he called, rough sex gone awry). 

It was one of those tabloid sagas -- known as the "Preppy Killer" -- that, decades later, was turned into a multi-part true crime documentary. I won't recount the whole sad tale here -- I blogged about it back in 2007 when Chambers, a mere four years out of prison, was rearrested and eventually sentenced to another heavy prison term for drug running. 

Chambers was released last year and is living somewhere upstate. Lord knows what he's doing but, so long as he stays out of trouble, that's probably the best thing for him.

However, bad people, as we know, can inspire great art. I didn't know until just recently that the "Preppy Killer" case inspired an early song by the band The Killers (no pun intended) called "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine." It's a really great song although it's far darker than I ever realized -- told, frighteningly enough, from the killer's perspective. 

Obviously a great song won't bring back Jennifer Levin or the erase her family's pain but it's a reminder that, sometimes, out of pain and sadness and tragedy something beautiful and meaninful and lasting can be created. 

New York Gritty

True crime documentaries and podcasts have become a booming business in the last few years -- especially taking decades-old tabloid stories and turning them into a docu-dramas that go below the surface of, and tell more of the story about, once-screeching headlines. These series also try to provide a broader perspective of the times and places these stories occurred in -- and how they relate (or don't) to the present day's evolved sensibilities.

New York City has had numerous tabloid stories over the years and now, courtesy of the TV show Inside Edition, there's a YouTube channel dedicated to them called New York Gritty. 

Some of these stories are very well known -- the deaths of John Lennon and Sid & Nancy, Robert Chambers, Bernie Goetz, and the late Mr NYC interviewee Michael Alig; others, like the Rikers Island Art Heist or a murder at the Met Museum, are less well-known.

It's fun to check-out these old NYC stories if you want to remember what the city used to be like -- and how the events of yesteryear were just as crazy (if not more so) than anything else going on today. 

Met Steps

Recently the wife and I have been watching the true crime docu-series about the 1986 Central Park "preppy murder" of Jennifer Levin by the handsome psychopath Robert Chambers. Like OJ or Lorena Bobbitt, it's been fascinating for us to see a tabloid story from our youth (actually, more like our childhoods) revisited in-depth with a new, more "woke" perspective. 

My main takeaway is this: Jennifer Levin was a great lady whose only flaw was that she was attracted to a total and complete loser who only had his looks and literally nothing else going on his life. If he wasn't handsome, no one would have paid this guy one moment of attention. But he was "hot" and for this reason and no other, chicks dug him. Jennifer dug him. And for that she died. 

What's even scarier for me is that this murder happened just blocks away from where I went to elementary school at the time. And it happened right behind one of my favorite places in the who city -- the Met. 

So it was weird watching this series about this horrible crime that happened behind the Met while reading this cheery story about native New Yorkers and their love for the steps at the Met, a place where lots of New Yorkers and visitors like to hang out, make out, talk, and just generally congregate -- a sort of Washington Square Park North. It's a story of literal darkness and light, beauty and horror, the twin identities of NYC.

I've never spent a lot of time on the Met Steps myself but I used to skateboard around them as a kid -- and I remember my mom telling me once, "Oh, it's a big pick up area." 

Good thing I'm married. And not a handsome psychopath (more like an un-handsome neurotic).

1986 Redux

In the first year of this blog, I wrote about Robert Chambers -- the notorious "preppy murderer" who strangled a woman named Jennifer Levin to death one night in Central Park in 1986.

Before Lorena Bobbit, before OJ, before #MeToo, this was the big scandal that provoked the subject of violence towards women into the American conversation. The whole story was grotesque and sad. It was also an example of how men, especially handsome white men, who had committed horrific violence towards women (in this case, actual murder), got shockingly sympathetic treatment in the media and culture while the female victim became largely forgotten. 

Chambers even claimed -- like so many predators do -- that he was the real victim in this case!  He said that the slime petite Levin had actually tried to rape the massive, statuesque Chambers and that he was only acting in self-defence -- and some morons actually bought this BS. Chambers did some time, got out of jail, promptly became a drug dealer, and went back to prison. He's there now -- gone but not totally forgotten.

Now this case is the subject of an upcoming true-crime documentary -- revisiting 30+ year old scandals and stories seems to be all the rage these days. However, I'm curious to see how this case will be handled from a 2019 perspective -- and hopefully we'll learn less about Robert and more about Jennifer.

Talking about 1986, the final episode of The Deuce aired last night -- it ends in 1986 and then jumps ahead to 2019, showing in dramatic detail how Times Square and the city transformed in the 33-year interim but is still haunted by ghosts of the past. 

1986 is a year I remember well -- I turned 10, debuted in The Nutcracker at City Ballet, went away to sleep away camp for the first time, visited England with my mom, and saw the Aerosmith/Run DMC "Walk This Way" video for the first time. I was blissfully naive about things like the Chambers chase at the time -- and wish I still was.

Classic Mr NYC

Two legendary New Yorkers just died -- Robert Morgenhhau and Paul Krassner.

Morgenthau, the longtime Manhattan DA, who prosecuted numerous high-profile cases (Bernie Goetz, Robert Chambers, Joel Steinberg, the Central Park 5, and many others) and, unlike many prosecutors today, also went hard after white collar and corporate crime. He was a child of great privilege who committed his life to public service, serving in WWII and a US Attorney before becoming DA in 1975. Famously, he was hanging out with then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy on November 22, 1963 when they together learned of JFK's assassination. He was 99 years old.

The other passing was Paul Krassner, the legendary satirist and social activist, founder of the satirical magazine The Realist and a brilliant mind. Krassner was a leader of the 1960s counter-culture, a member of Ken Kesey's Yippies, and a friend to people like Lenny Bruce. He knew everyone, went everywhere, wrote about and did everything, and lived an amazing, culturally-rich life. He was 87.

Even better, Paul Krassner was kind enough to do an interview for this blog in April, 2018 (just last year!). He was funny, kind, and told us many interesting things about his long life and career -- including being responsible for having abortion legalized in New York State before Roe v. Wade. He was a real original, an NYC legend, and it's a huge honor to have done one of his last (if not his very last) interviews. At the end of the interview I asked him how he would like to be remembered. He replied: "Laughter from the satire I felt urged to share on Earth."

Paul, you will be remembered thus. RIP. 

Robert Chambers: New York's Favorite Criminal

Egads, it's deja vu all over again: the "Preppy Killer" Robert Chambers is back in the news. This time he's accused to running a drug ring out of the Upper East Side flat he shared with his lady friend. If you're a tabloid junkie, then you've heard of Senor Chambers: in August 1986 this handsome psychopath strangled an eighteen-year old Manhattan prep school girl to death in Central Park (right behind the Met). He claimed "rough sex" made him do it but the jury didn't buy it. He copped to a manslaughter beef and spent fifteen years in jail. (This story was the OJ/Monica/Natalee Holloway story of its day, replete with teenagers, sex, drugs, murder, and very stylish clothes. Thankfully MSNBC and Fox New didn't exist then so we were spared the 24/7 coverage.) Chambers got out in 2003, vowed to go straight, and obviously failed miserably. Looks like he's headed back to the pokie for life.

What to say? This story makes for great TV. After all, with a war going on, the environment headed to catastrophe and nearly 50 million people without health care, isn't it nice to take a roll in the tabloid muck once in a while?

Mr NYC's opinion: this is all very sad. Chambers is clearly a hardcore drug addict and simply cannot change. He's one of those people genetically incapable of not breaking the law. The fact that he's made it to age forty-one is probably an achievement for him. And doubtless when he does leave this earth, we'll hear all about it.

'Preppy Killer' Pleads Not Guilty in Drug Case