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Winona Ryder goes on trial for shoplifting.

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TASTE COMMENTARY

BY ANDREW BREITBART
Friday, November 1, 2002 12:01 a.m.

LOS ANGELES--Hot on the heels of Anna Nicole's serialized flameout on E!, the Hollywood criminal court division is in the middle of launching two new reality-show hybrids: Winona Ryder in a closed-circuit, real-life remake of "To Catch a Thief" and, as a possible midseason replacement, Robert Blake reprising his career-making performance from "In Cold Blood."

Ms. Ryder's trial is being met with equal parts Schadenfreude and ambivalence by Angelenos. Sure, we would like to finally see a celebrity, and an A-list one at that, receive a punishment befitting her crime--an allegedly felonious $5,560.40 designer shoplifting spree at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. And this trial interprets "a jury of one's peers" literally: Former Sony head Peter Guber is one of the dozen citizens who will now deliberate Ms. Ryder's fate. (When he and Jon Peters got their walking papers in 1995, Sony took a $3.2 billion quarterly write-off.) But after a decade of Hollywood show trials--from O.J. Simpson to Robert Downey Jr., with his revolving-door detox-retox--it's hard to imagine justice being served.

As for Mr. Blake, best known as TV detective Baretta (or, to younger viewers, as the grown-up Batboy in David Lynch's freakfest "Lost Highway"), who knows? His sub-B-and-sliding celebrity status may prove a ratings sieve, even if he is found guilty of murdering his marriage-of-inconvenience bride, Bonny Lee Bakley. Not to mention that Mr. Blake, at 69, is too old to serve a sentence carrying any commensurate punitive weight.

Even so, the oh-so-Jenny Jones nature of the crime--a grifter-wife, a bitter husband, a hit outside a cheesy Italian restaurant in the Valley--does offer certain viewer attractions. And it presents a stellar opportunity for a new kind of courtroom tactic: the Little Rascals Defense. Are all those former child actors destined to suffer tragic fates? Stay tuned . . .

How did we get so cynical? Well, there is a tradition out here of defying common sense and common decency, and justice too. Long before Puff Daddy, for instance, there was Rough Fatty. In 1921, the silent-film superstar Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle stood trial and, after two deadlocked juries, was acquitted of the rape and manslaughter of a 25-year-old starlet, the alleged details of which crime we would now term a "rough sex encounter." Conviction in the court of public opinion made certain the millionaire comic died an impoverished drunk.

In 1932, MGM starlet Jean Harlow escaped persistent rumors of foul play in the .38-caliber dispatch of her husband, Paul Bern, Irving Thalberg's literary man, when his death was ruled a suicide--even though Thalberg and studio publicist Howard Strickling beat the police to the scene by 2 1/2 hours. And 50 years before Johnnie Cochran Jr. manipulated a majority black jury to find O.J. Simpson innocent by reason of racial conspiracy, Errol Flynn's legal counsel put the leading man on the witness stand to refute statutory rape charges before an all-female jury. His summary acquittal and enhanced swashbuckler's image led to the coining of the term "in like Flynn," a mantra of consequence-free action.

More recently, best actress/racial pathfinder Halle Berry served no jail time for a February 2000 hit-and-run accident in which the driver of the other vehicle suffered a broken wrist. Ingénue and "Scream II" actress Rebecca Gayheart plea-bargained a sentence of three years probation, a $2,800 fine and 750 hours of community service for striking and killing the nine-year-old son of Mexican immigrants with a Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Even octogenarian Harry Morgan, Col. Potter on "M*A*S*H," had spousal abuse charges against him dropped, though his 70-year-old wife was found bloody and bruised by police at their Los Angeles home in July 1996. No wonder many Americans see celebrity justice as synonymous with applied privilege.

Particularly galling are those celebrities who exploit star-struck jurisprudence in the service of their own pet causes or progressive agendas: Angelenos can no sooner settle in for a satisfying low-speed freeway chase on the local news before they're interrupted by "West Wing" Clinton manqué Martin Sheen or hemp-swathed Woody Harrelson shutting down some nuclear power plant or engaging in some act of civil disobedience to provoke a meaningless arrest--only to make prearranged bail in time for their 8 p.m. table reservations at Morton's.

At least some of this can be attributed to Hollywood's status as a company town. With big investments in overgrown children--the proverbial "high school with money"--it makes sense that nothing operates on the level. For studio heads, that has often meant leveraging the press, cultivating in-house intelligence or persuading a constabulary and judiciary to look the other way. That was the sentiment behind Columbia head Harry Cohn's admonition to young bucks William Holden and Glenn Ford: "If you must get in trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont."

And it led to world-class fixers like Fred Otash, the "private eye to the stars" in the 1950s and 1960s, who could unearth any dirt for a price and rebury it more securely for an even bigger price. The modern heir of this fine tradition is the celebrity lawyer. Pliers of this lucrative trade include Johnnie Cochran (Simpson, Combs), Harland Braun (Blake, Harry Morgan), Howard Weitzman (Simpson, John DeLorean), Robert Shapiro (Simpson, Tina Sinatra, Johnny Carson, Christian Brando, Rod Stewart) and Mark Geragos (Ryder, Downey). Mr. Geragos in particular has perfected the media strategy of client-as-victim: Who can forget Whitewater actress (and Geragos client) Susan McDougal, "Joan of Arkansas," with her "woe is me" arias on "Larry King Live"?

Hence, Winona Ryder misses a court date after having her arm broken by overzealous TV cameramen; by the time she does show up, her sling is mysteriously on the wrong arm. Cut to: Ms. Ryder hosts "Saturday Night Live's" 27th season finale in May, in which she makes light of her legal bind. Next she appears on the June cover of W Magazine wearing a "Free Winona" T-shirt--as postmodern a move as we've seen since the (alleged) death of Andy Kaufman.

Get the picture? Winona Ryder is no more a danger to society than Goldie Hawn--just edgier. The upshot: After this show trial has ended, watch for Ms. Ryder in a public service announcement warning youth of the dangers of smuggling Dolce & Gabbana in a backpack.

Perhaps Hollywood knows what it's doing after all: The undue and invasive publicity that attends these trials may just ensure a heartier, more dedicated breed of celebrity in the future. Only those willing to endure the probing of media proctoscopy and the airing of dungy laundry will bother to apply for celebrity status in the first place. As Greta Garbo says in "Ninotchka" about the original Moscow show trials: "There will soon be fewer but better Russians."

Mr. Breitbart, with journalist Mark Ebner, is the author of the forthcoming "Hollywood, Interrupted" (Wiley).

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