November 18, 2014
Source: Shutterstock
Unfortunately for An Open Secret‘s claims to veracity, after Egan sued his alleged abusers, he was forced to back off “after prior inconsistent statements emerged (he also was scolded by a judge for lying in court).”
However, the film also addresses similar accusations made by Corey Feldman and other real and would-be child actors. Are they all delusional, or perhaps still hungry for the fame and cash that got away?
Surely we all intuit that Hollywood”that seductively strange Day of the Locust-land”is “built-on-an-Indian-burial-ground” level accursed. Something sinister has been, and is, going on down there: Satan worship. The Black Dahlia. Hookers “cut to look like movie stars …”
That nagging sensation metastasized into the mass hysteria that fueled Hollywood’s first scandal: the death of would-be starlet Virginia Rappe in 1921. And that very same vague, intuitive yet overwhelming conviction convicted once-beloved comedian Fatty Arbuckle of rape and murder in the court of public opinion, even though he was tried an astonishing three times”and acquitted.
I don”t dare speculate which character Bryan Singer really plays in this latest drama. Fatty Arbuckle? Or Sesame Street‘s Kevin Clash?
Or is it Roman Polanski?
I can”t help noting, however, that Amy Berg seems awfully fixated on the subject of youth in peril. Her previous, much-lauded documentary Deliver Us from Evil was about”you”ll never guess”perverted Catholic priests. We didn”t need another movie about the West Memphis Three, but damned if she didn”t make one anyhow. A doc about polygamous heretical Mormons and their underage brides is in the works. And Berg’s first fictional effort, Every Secret Thing, is about two girls who murder a baby.
And none of that is exploitative or obsessive or twisted in the slightest, of course.
