He Produced the first episode.

The People vs OJ Simpson: American Crime Story
 

It's a great production. Here's a couple of reviews.



http://www.rogerebert.com/demanders/...-vs-oj-simpson

FASCINATING DRAMA OF "THE PEOPLE VS. OJ SIMPSON: AMERICAN CRIME STORY”
by Brian Tallerico


The OJ Simpson case was the first such event we watched live on television. I’m old enough to remember where I was when Simpson took flight in that white Bronco, and where I was when the verdict came down. In between, there was a parade of characters straight out of central casting, from the legal players like Bob Shapiro and Marcia Clark to the fringe personalities like Kato Kaelin. The world really could not get enough of this story. It changed the way we process news, as networks like CNN devoted days of programming to the story of the sports hero-turned-murder suspect. It really had a little bit of everything from the tawdry to the racially sensitive. It felt like the Simpson case sparked so many conversations about everything, from racial profiling to the privileges of the rich to spousal abuse. The actual victims of the crime even became bit players in the story.

There have been TV movies about OJ, but the case now gets its biggest production ever with FX’s “The People vs. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story,” a star-studded mini-series from Ryan Murphy, the man behind “American Horror Story” and “Glee.” Is Murphy just exploiting this true story for soap opera escapism or is he using it to comment on how much the OJ case still has to say about its era and even its impact on today?

Can both be true?

Even for those of us who can remember many of the details of the OJ case, “American Crime Story” has some remarkable behind-the-scenes details to offer. In some of its best moments, it plays out like a procedural, offering insight you may not have heard from the source material in The Run of His Life: The People vs. OJ Simpson by Jeffery Toobin. I forgot exactly what went down when OJ decided to flee in the Bronco on that fateful day, not remembering how even the people close to him presumed he had killed himself. I forgot exactly how each attorney on both sides got involved or that Chris Darden was brought on really as a racial response to Johnnie Cochran coming aboard the other side. The historical details of “American Crime Story” are fascinating in that they show a larger-than-life case grew into what it became by the time the trial began.

Before then, Murphy and his brilliant writers, Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski (who are the perfect scribes for this piece having penned “Ed Wood,” “The Man on the Moon” and “The People v. Larry Flynt”) set the stage by giving us a prologue of the L.A. riots only two years earlier and then diving right into the case. Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman’s bodies are found. OJ Simpson (Cuba Gooding Jr.) is immediately a suspect, and it’s not long before Marcia Clark (Sarah Paulson) and Gil Garcetti (Bruce Greenwood) are ready to arrest him. Before he comes in, Simpson gets the counsel of two men who would become pillars of his legal dream team, Robert Shapiro (John Travolta) and Robert Kardashian (David Schwimmer). F. Lee Bailey (Nathan Lee) and Cochran (Courtney B. Vance) would come later. We also get a lot of the bit players, including Faye Resnick (Connie Britton), Kris Jenner (Selma Blair) and, of course, Kato (Billy Magnussen). Rob Morrow will show up later as Barry Scheck and Sterling K. Brown will play Christopher Darden in this brilliantly-cast piece.

There’s not a single weak link in the ensemble.

At its best, “American Crime Story” walks a razor-thin line of tawdry and genuine. Ryan Murphy will never lose his high degree of showmanship, such as playing “I Shall Be Released” as Simpson flees or “Mama Said Knock You Out” after the "Not Guilty" plea, but he directs most of the performance in a lower, more genuine register. Schwimmer plays Kardashian as a man honestly concerned about a friend and unaware of the fame about to come down upon him. Travolta chews the scenery, but Shapiro was always a larger than life character, so it feels genuine. And Paulson is perfectly grounded as Clark. As for Gooding, OJ remains something of a mystery at the center of “American Crime Story,” given numerous chances to actually confess to people who would still defend him but steadfast in proclaiming his innocence.

Alexander and Karaszewski have delivered a drama that’s both as soapy as you’d expect from the man who created “Nip/Tuck” and surprisingly genuine as historical document. There’s not a lot of artistic license, at least in the four episodes I’ve seen compared to what I know of the case, although there is an interesting aspect provided the writers by history (such as knowing what fame would do the Kardashians). Overall, this is not a piece designed to “expose” the truth behind the OJ Simpson case. It’s more about how exposed the case was in the first place. It’s also just flat-out entertaining television, filled with strong performances from top to bottom and razor-sharp writing.

As “American Horror Story” seems to be winding down its cultural relevance, “American Crime Story” can take the baton and run.



http://www.ew.com/article/2016/02/02...tory-ew-review


Early in The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, Marcia Clark (Sarah Paulson) asks about a concept that will soon change her life: “Optics? What are optics?” She’s being sarcastic, and the no-dummy deputy district attorney thinks she understands the politics of appearance, but she has no idea. As she prosecutes the “trial of the century” before a worldwide audience, she finds a rock-solid case shredded by superior, savvier opponents with their cunning framing of fact and narrative. And as she becomes a celebrity, she finds herself judged by self-styled experts and armchair jurists for the way she executes her job, the way she represents her gender, the way she wears her hair. “I’m just not a public person,” she says during the inevitable meltdown. This was 1995. Can you imagine what Twitter would have done to her? Actually, you can.

American Crime Story is a meticulously crafted, powerfully resonant docudrama that crackles with timely issues—race, sexism, privilege, celebrity, broken justice, media manipulation, and more. It’s a creation myth for an era obsessed with true crime and swamped in truthiness. It even explains the Kardashians. Based on Jeffrey Toobin’s book The Run of His Life, the inaugural season of American Crime Story is a triumphant TV debut for writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, so brilliant at biopics (The People vs. Larry Flynt), and a rousing affirmation of the anthology form pioneered by exec producers Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk (American Horror Story).

Contextualized by the police brutality against Rodney King in 1991 and the L.A. riots of 1992, the 10-episode series begins with the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson, ex-wife of NFL great O.J. Simpson (Cuba Gooding Jr.), and Ronald Goldman in 1994, and turns well-trod history into incredible entertainment. The storytelling digs deep into iconic moments and delights in telling details.

We go inside the Bronco during O.J.’s slow-speed flight from police. Legal strategies are illuminated, particularly Team Simpson’s controversial decision to “play the race card,” and the relationships are richly explored. Robert Kardashian’s (David Schwimmer) protective, idol-worshippy friendship with Simpson is heartbreaking. Clark’s rapport with Christopher Darden (Sterling K. Brown) is increasingly moving. The struggle between attorneys Robert Shapiro (John Travolta) and Johnnie Cochran (Courtney B. Vance)—for control, for credit, for the cameras—is as gross as it is engrossing. The victims get lost in the drama—but how appropriate.

Aside from Travolta’s upstaging eyebrows, the actors wow with empathy and nuance. Gooding’s Simpson is a man unhinged by his sudden fall from grace and privilege—a well-played perspective that works regardless of the final verdict. Paulson makes Clark a sympathetic hero without sanding off her edges. Vance’s Cochran rivets with charisma and complexity. We hate him for fogging the jury—and us—with specious skepticism and counternarrative, but we always understand his righteous rationalizations.

An enthralling recollection of a tragic mess with a long legacy, The People v. O.J. Simpson fits our moment like a glove.

A


http://youtu.be/v0qzDpr3xqs

WTF....No Tim Meadows?

I'll pass...

Bet OJ has CTE.

http://tricountysentry.com/blog/o-j-...-bennet-omalu/


In leading expert Dr. Bennet Omalu’s mind, there is little doubt that disgraced football star O.J. Simpson is suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative brain disease linked to repetitive head trauma, such as that incurred by football players over a career on the gridiron.

Omalu, who first discovered CTE in the brain of NFL player Mike Webster after his 2002 death, recently told People Magazine that he would “bet [his] medical license [on] that” diagnosis, based both on Simpson’s “profile” and the size of his head.

Simpson, who was charged with the murder of his ex-wife and her friend in 1994 before being acquitted the next year, famously has an usually large head — so large, in fact, that he had to get custom-made helmets throughout his tenure in the NFL.

“[And] if you have a bigger head, that means your head is heavier,” Omalu reasoned. “That means the momentum of your impact would be bigger. It’s basic physics.”

As CTE is only diagnosable in the dead, no one will know whether Omalu’s “bet” is correct for the foreseeable future. But, for those who watched firsthand as Simpson unraveled over the years, Omalu’s words certainly ring true.

Reliving this parade of idiocy anew is lunacy.

I'm hooked.

I lived through this crap, there's no way I'm watching a dramatization of it. GTFO

watching 2.

crazy watching this all over again.

Still hate Johnny Cocheran.

I was too young to remember all the details. After reading back and watching this, it's unfathomable to me he got off

Dude, the day the day the verdict was announced, I was on the Universal lot with, I don't know, 200-1,000 people.

In all sincerity, the only person that was shocked was me.

I'm not even joking.

much like Steven Avery, hard to say what was planted and fabricated and not.
I think OJ likely did it, though the theory about his eldest son could hold water too.

So everyone else thought he was not guilty too? I wonder if that was LA, everyone else here thought he was guilty.


I liked Ep 2 that showed the Kardashian kids spelling their last name. They may have been able to then, but not now.

ROFL

Dane's experience is curious to me too.

Yeah, everyone thought he was framed by Furman and the LA PD, which was quite corrupt at the time.

Rodney King, rumors of massive corruption which were later detailed in the Rampart scandal, etc.

It seemed like no one, regardless of race or color, trusted the LAPD at the time.

There was some speculation that the verdict was payback for the Rodney King trial but I don't think that was ever confirmed by the jurors.