Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 12, 1990 TAG: 9005120471
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PATRICIA BRENNAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"How does it start?" asked the man who wrote the story.
It begins with the murder of your - well, Gus Bailey's - daughter. Not the murder, actually. You see Becky Bailey going into her apartment, and you see the boyfriend she rejected eyeing an open window. In the next scene the police detective is knocking on Gus's door to tell him she is dead.
"That's not the way the book starts," he said finally, after a long silence. "There's nothing in it about the murder itself."
But, of course, there is oh-so-much in it about the murder, and the revenge that was never Dunne's.
There are two stories in Dominick Dunne's tattle-tale "People Like Us." One is about very, very rich New Yorkers written by a small, well-mannered man who has attended their parties and listened so earnestly.
The book was on the best-seller list before its official publication date in 1988, due somewhat to advance hysteria generated by Women's Wear Daily's preview - including passages - of his first draft. The rich and well-born were afraid that Dunne had used their self-indulgent babblings as grist for his writing mill.
And then there is another story about the murder of Gus Bailey's daughter that has certain parallels to Dunne's own life.
Sunday and Monday nights on NBC (at 9 p.m. on Channel 10 in the Roanoke viewing area), Dunne's mirror of the very good life and his subplot, about murder and revenge, comes to Everyman's living room. An unpretentious white wine may be suitable accompaniment.
Fans of the book will find whole passages taken from Dunne's novel, including lines that the former movie producer obviously added for fun: Novelist Nestor Calder tells writer Gus Bailey, "They don't make movies of books anymore, Gus, they make miniseries."
Close readers also will also note small changes: redheaded Ruby Nolte Renthal is a brunette, played by Connie Sellecca, and the blue sequined dress that earned her sneers at her first New York party is now red. The Renthals have moved to Manhattan from Chicago, not Cleveland, and Elias, as played by Dennis Farina, is more appealing than the obese man Dunne described. So much for carping.
Like the book, "People Like Us" follows writer Gus Bailey (Ben Gazzara), a Hollywood writer who has become the confidant of the New York social set, as he sets about avenging the strangulation of his daughter.
It also follows former stewardess Ruby Nolte Renthal and her billionaire husband Elias as they climb their way into New York society. Eventually, the story lines merge.
The book concentrates more on the social scene, with dozens of characters based closely on real-life New Yorkers. Not all of them make it to the small screen.
Among those who do are Ezzie Fenwick, who looks a great deal like Truman Capote, and hostess Maisie Verdurin, counterpart to salon-keeper Alice Mason. They are played by Paul Williams and Beatrice Straight. Their favorite Manhattan restaurant, Clarence's, is patterned after Mortimer's.
There are sterling performances by some veterans: Jean Simmons plays the wheelchair-bound Peach, based on Dunne's ex-wife Lenny, who suffers from multiple sclerosis. Eva Marie Saint does a stunning job as haughty social arbiter Lil Altemus, mother of Justine (Teri Polo), whose marriage to and eventual divorce from television anchorman Bernard Slatkin (Robert Desiderio) supplies the mini-series' romantic interest.
Altemus's son, Hubie (Gary Frank), supplies the pathos. Always close to his sister Justine, he vehemently dislikes his other well-born relatives, the Van Degans, because they do not tolerate his rather discreet gay lifestyle. When he's dying of AIDS, his mother tells people he has cancer, brings him a bag full of magazines that contains a suspicious full vial of capsules and cannot bring herself to kiss him even on his deathbed.
But by focusing first on the death of Bailey's daughter, "People Like Us" - the miniseries - makes a departure from Dominick Dunne's own life.
Dunne's daughter, Dominique, was strangled by her former boyfriend, a Hollywood chef, outside a Hollywood restaurant in 1982. The killer got off with a light sentence - just under two years, Dunne said, and he is already free - as did Francis "Lefty" Flynt in Dunne's story.
Dunne is quick to explain that whereas Gus Bailey tracks down his daughter's killer with vengeance, eventually shooting him, that actually did not happen. "As a novelist, I could create a situation where I could do what I couldn't do in life," he said.
In the book and miniseries, Bailey is a recovered alcoholic who attends meetings of a support group for parents of murdered children. Dunne, 63, does the same.
While he admits to "a private pain" he has carried since the death of Dominique, "I don't want to have one of those lives where you're so embittered that the flow of your own life stops and the flow of your other children's lives stops (he is also the father of actor Griffin Dunne). That's very counterproductive."
Instead, he is on the board of the National Victims Center "in which we try to change the laws so that the rights of the victims will equate with the rights of the criminals. This man who killed my daughter turned out to have a record of assaults against women, and none of that was allowed to come out in the trial.
"There was a woman . . . who came forward (to testify that he had beaten her - Ruby Renthal in the miniseries) but her evidence was ruled inadmissible. That's a very important element. That was the pattern of behavior for the man, and the jury never knew that. They (attorneys, witnesses) are allowed to say anything about the victim, and the victim has no rights.
"I'm asked to speak a lot at the support groups. I've got a name, and I am very often called in to families who are going through something. That helps me. That's a constructive thing to do."
by CNB