Ben Stiller’s Menendez Brothers Parody Offered an Early Critique of True-Crime Obsession
Ryan Murphy’s latest attempt to turn real-life crimes into television gold is Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story which, despite being called out on social media for some pretty glaring inaccuracies, has been attracting a lot of eyeballs. Why? Because people love horrific murders thats why — just as long as they’re on TV, or in podcasts, or celebrated on a series of collectible trading cards.
It’s pretty wild that we’re living in a time when the phrase “Based on the Horrifying True Events” is a major selling point in trailers.
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But this isn’t the first time that the Menendez brothers, who were famously convicted of murdering their parents in 1996, have inspired a work of fiction. One of the first narrative allusions to the case was in a movie that came out just two weeks before the Menendez brothers were sentenced: The Cable Guy. Come to think of it, the Ben Stiller-directed Jim Carrey vehicle may have actually offered a more ruminative take on the case’s cultural significance than the Netflix drama.
While by no means the focus of the film, which is about a random sad sack who ends up being stalked by a TV-obsessed loner, there is an ever-present subplot in The Cable Guy involving a highly-publicized criminal trial that’s being closely followed by absolutely everybody. The case involves former child star Sam Sweet, who’s accused of murdering his twin brother Stan (both of whom were played by Stiller).
The case plays out in the background of several scenes, before ultimately playing into film’s climax. As the entire country is perversely glued to their TVs, awaiting the jury’s verdict (including a family of five who are eating dinner while watching coverage of the homicide trial), Carrey’s character Chip plunges onto a satellite dish, disrupting the broadcast.
The film’s message may not have been subtle, but it was no doubt necessary. The Sam Sweet trial was clearly inspired by the Menendez case, with a soupçon of O.J. Simpson thrown into the mix, but the satirical target clearly wasn’t the Menendezes, it was us.
People have always been fascinated with true crime, but the ‘90s really cranked that obsession up to 11, thanks to Court TV. The live coverage of the Menendez trial,which began in 1993, was still a novel innovation for viewers, and resulted “in a nationwide media frenzy.” It put Court TV “on the map” and “changed the way true crime is consumed.” In 1995, the Simpson trial only exacerbated our cultural true-crime saturation, virtually allowing the public into the courtroom itself, and turning an abject tragedy into a veritable soap opera.
Producer and uncredited screenwriter Judd Apatow noted that The Cable Guy was being prepped while the Simpson trial was still happening, and he himself was “obsessed” with the Menendez case. “I didn’t miss a second of the Mendendez trial,” Apatow revealed, quickly adding, “I wasn’t working a lot at that time.”
The Cable Guy was a pretty severe condemnation of commercializing tragedy, even suggesting that a TV movie about the case could come out before a verdict had even been decided. Which seems pretty hard to bel–
No, wait, they actually did that with O.J. Simpson and the Menendez brothers.
The Cable Guy’s critique has only become more relevant as time has passed. Except for the part about people needing cable, of course.
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