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Blogging SpectorOur revels now are ended.

By Timothy Noah
Updated Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2007, at 6:17 PM ET

(Continued from page 4)

Another possible cause of suicide was disputed by Transformers director Michael Bay, for whom Clarkson performed in two commercials. According to the testimony of Elizabeth Irene "Punkin Pie" Laughlin (see "Kato Kaelin, Eat Your Heart Out," below) Bay snubbed Clarkson at a party mere days before her death, prompting Clarkson to weep and rage and declare, "I hate this town and I hate the people in it and I don't want to be here anymore." But when the prosecution called Bay to the stand, he insisted that he did no such thing. Bay elaborated further in his Web log, calling Punkin Pie a "whack job" and "a disgusting piece of shit," opining that Spector "looks like a creepy murderer," and reiterating, "I never saw Lana at this party." This last is actually consistent with Punkin Pie's testimony (from the context it's clear she knew only that Clarkson believed Bay had snubbed her), and anyway, it's in the nature of snubbing that it's often unconscious (e.g., when you "look through" somebody there's a decent chance you literally aren't seeing her). Even so, the snub theory is a nonstarter. I'll admit that it conveys a certain dramatic flair; one thinks of John O'Hara's Appointment in Samarra, which begins with Julian English tossing a highball into rich Harry Reilly's Irish face and ends with English taking the inexorable last step from social suicide in Gibbsbille, Pa., to actual suicide. But the conceit that cocktail-party humilitation kills isn't remotely plausible here. If show-biz snubs (perceived or actual) routinely led to suicide, then Hollywood Boulevard would be piled higher than its lampposts with the corpses of has-beens and also-rans.

Tomorrow the jurors go on a field trip to the Spector mansion. We're approaching the end.

Who Is Raul Julia-Levy?
July 19, 6:45 p.m. ET

How could I forget? In describing the noirish gallery of witnesses and aspiring witnesses for Philip Spector's defense (see below), I neglected to mention:

Raul Julia-Levy. Claims to be the son of Raul Julia, the stage and screen actor best remembered for his campy performances as Gomez in the Addams Family movies. I say "claims to be" because Julia's widow, former Broadway dancer Merel Poloway, has disputed that Julia-Levy is Raul Julia's son. Julia-Levy (according to Spector's lawyers) is the former lover of Lana Clarkson, and he is prepared to testify that shortly before her death, Clarkson was despondent.

On Julia-Levy's MySpace page, he writes that he was raised in Mexico by his grandfather, "clothing tycoon Abraham Levy (Levi-Strauss), who died when Julia-Levy
was 16." This is a little puzzling, because Levi Strauss & Co. wasn't founded by one guy named Levy and another guy named Strauss. It was founded (in 1853) by a guy named Levi Strauss who later took on as partner another guy named Jacob Davis. Julia-Levy continues:

Known as the Howard Hughes of Mexico, Julia-Levy remains much more than a film and television actor. He is an entrepreneur, humanitarian and philanthropist, and remains very active in the political and socio-economic concerns of his country.

The Spector prosecution is seeking to block Julia-Levy's testimony because of what it calls his "long and varied history of run-ins with law enforcement." These include, the prosecution says, being charged with: drunk driving; drug possession with intent to sell; domestic violence; child cruelty; sexual assault; and multiple allegations of providing false identification. (The prosecution says Julia-Levy has six aliases.) According to an L.A. County Sheriff's Department investigation cited by the Los Angeles Times, Julia-Levy has used fake Social Security numbers and has claimed, falsely, to have attended Harvard and the University of Southern California.

Judge Fidler is considering whether to allow Julia-Levy to testify. I'll be inconsolable if Fidler says no.

Kato Kaelin, Eat Your Heart Out
July 18, 7:15 p.m. ET

It's been nearly a month, dear reader, since last my last dispatch. Forgive me. I've been distracted by other projects, and to be honest, since the prosecution rested its case this trial has been less than riveting. The Spector defense is not scoring many points. As they say in Hollywood, the story sags in the second half. That's a shame, because the defense has introduced a wonderful rogue's gallery of L.A. noir types. Let's meet three of them.

John Barons. The bald and goateed author of Brentwood Blondes, in which Lana Clarkson was set to play Marilyn Monroe. Barons hired her, he told the court, because she knew Roger Corman, the legendary producer of low-budget potboilers—one of which, Barbarian Queen (1985), scored Clarkson her biggest screen success. Barons hoped that Corman would come see the play. But Clarkson "was not a great talent," and her behavior was erratic, so he ended up firing her in Jan. 2003. That was three months before Clarkson's death. "I can't help but wonder," Barons has written, "what Lana's performance might have been. What if any impact it may [sic] have made on future events?"

Brentwood Blondes, according to the play's Web site,

explores the possible existance [sic] of an afterworld containing blonde glamour girls who have been killed by famous men. One by one, they arrive. First, the goddess Marilyn—she worthy of one name instant recognition. Then there's sultry Sharon Tate, spawned from the hyper-glam 60's. Next is Nicole, Nicole Brown, of the Simpsons, that Nicole Brown. She captured the heart of a modern day Othello.

Hold the phone. Marilyn Monroe, killed by a famous man? The woman committed suicide by swallowing a bottleful of Nembutal. Not so, according to Barons. Joseph Kennedy Sr. did the deed, presumably so she wouldn't blab about her affair with his son, President John F. Kennedy. On cross-examination the prosecution pointed out repeatedly that this is not the consensus view. Barons has since rewritten Brentwood Blondes to add Clarkson herself as a character, "since her life mirrored her characters so closely." That would seem to suggest that Barons, despite being a witness for the defense, thinks that Phil Spector killed Clarkson. When asked about this, Barons was noncommittal: "I don't know what happened."

Elizabeth Irene "Punkin Pie" Laughlin. Self-described best friend of Lana Clarkson. In a 2000 profile of Punkin Pie, the Los Angeles Weekly's Christine Pelisek wrote,

If you saw Almost Famous, the Cameron Crowe movie about his days as a teen writer for Rolling Stone, you may have wondered whatever happened to Penny Lane, the free-spirited groupie memorably portrayed by Kate Hudson, last seen in the film boarding a plane for Morocco. Well, you might think of Penny Lane as having grown up to be Punkin Pie, a groupie-turned-club-promoter. …

Punkin told the jury that two weeks before Clarkson's death, Clarkson got snubbed at a party by Michael Bay (producer of Armageddon and Pearl Harbor and director of the current Transformers) even though Clarkson had once done a Mercedes-Benz commercial for him:

She said, "Michael Bay just dissed me, didn't know who I was." She was crying and upset and she said, "I'm really sick of these people and this town. I hate this town and I hate the people in it and I don't want to be here anymore."

The following week, Punkin Pie testified, Clarkson told her, "I don't want to live anymore. I don't want to be in this town. I want to end it."

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
Photograph of Phil Spector by Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images.
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