When Truth is Stranger than Fiction

We have a special guest today on the OUTFIT: crime fiction author Michael Harvey, whose third novel, THE THIRD RAIL, will be out this week. Along with THE CHICAGO WAY and THE FIFTH FLOOR, this novel features Chicago PI, Michael Kelly, and is based on the 1977 L accident in downtown Chicago as well as a 1993 Pentagon report on terrorism at home. But what you might not know about Michael is that he's a journalist and documentary film-maker who has won several Emmys and was nominated for an Academy Award. Today he posts about his current film project. Click here for more about Michael, his books, and his documentaries.




Michael's words: I am currently working on a story about a man who was sentenced to sixty years for a crime he didn’t commit. Below is a summary of the facts. I have changed the names because the project is not yet finished. For the rest of the story, you’ll have to wait until we finish shooting.


A man named Paul is sitting in his living room when he hears a knock at the door. He gets up and squeezes a look through the peephole. There’s a woman on his stoop. She identifies herself as a police officer and asks if she could talk to him. Paul is forty-three years old. White. No criminal record. Never even been inside a cop shop. Paul opens the door. Four cops tackle him, roll him onto his back and cuff him on his living room floor. Two minutes later, Paul is in the back of a cruiser. And the shit begins to roll.

Paul is brought into a room and told he’s going to be put in a lineup. What for? There’s been a woman raped. An anonymous tipster told police Paul’s the guy. He asks for a lawyer. The police tell him they’ll get him one. But the lineup first.

Paul is placed in one lineup. Then, a second. On the other side of the glass is a victim named Louise. Three months earlier, she’d been raped repeatedly in her home over the course of several hours. Louise tells police her attacker wore a mask. But Louise got a glimpse of his face. And so, the lineup.

Louise is scared. Louise is nervous. Louise is angry. She looks through the glass at the faces. The first time, she’s unsure. Police take her outside and talk to her. The second time, she’s certain. Paul raped her. The more she looks at him, the more certain she becomes. Paul raped her. And she wants him punished.

Police charge Paul with multiple counts of sexual battery. He’s denied bail, given a public defender and stuck in a county holding cell. In the cell with Paul is a man named Danny. He’s looking at a third felony conviction and possible life sentence when a detective pulls him out of the cell. Danny is offered the “deal of a lifetime”. If he testifies against Paul, Danny walks with a slap on the wrist. Danny’s all for it, but tells police he doesn’t know any details about the crime...because Paul didn’t tell him anything. Not a problem. According to Danny, the detective slides a police report across the table. Plenty of details in there. Then, according to Danny, he’s allowed to meet with the victim...so Danny can make sure he’s got it all straight. Danny takes the stand, points at Paul and gives the jury chapter and verse about how Paul raped Louise. It’s all a lie. Told by Danny and allegedly orchestrated by law enforcement. Taken together with Louise’s mistaken ID, and the lack of any forensic testing of the evidence, Paul doesn’t have a chance. After a trial that lasts less than a week, he’s convicted and sentenced to sixty years in prison.

Four months after sitting in his living room and hearing a knock on his door, Paul finds himself on a bus, hands cuffed to a belly chain. The bus turns a corner and Paul gets a first look at his new home -- a maximum security lockup where society houses its rapists and murderers. Once inside, Paul is told to strip and run through a delousing shower. Then he gets his prison uniform and bed linens. Paul stands at the top of a small ramp that leads into the main cell block. His hands and arms shake. His legs are like water. He’s crying, but barely aware of it. A female correctional officer reads out the charges. Fifteen counts of rape? They’re going to have fun with you. Paul tells the woman he’s innocent. She laughs and pushes him down the ramp. The noise builds. And then he’s in the house.

The cell block itself is five stories high and filled with four hundred inmates. Paul walks the main drag, holding his prison blues. Inmates love it. They yell at the fresh meat, tell him the many ways they’re going to shank him, rape him and otherwise own him. Paul climbs five flights to his cell and sits on his bunk. His neighbor next door pounds on the wall and screams at him. Paul listens to the noise, and wonders what happens next. He’s never been inside any sort of prison, never mind a max lockup. He’s got no money, no connections, no skills, no way to defend himself. Paul’s sentence is sixty years, but his life might be better measured in days. Maybe minutes.

That first night he rips his bed sheet into strips and prepares to hang himself. Something stops him. Maybe it’s the lies that put him there. Maybe it’s the truth that only he knows. Whatever the reason, Paul decides to walk a different road. The police have buried him. Society has washed its hands and walked away. But Paul is still alive. Doing another man’s time. And unwilling to hand over his life for a crime he didn’t commit. Instead, he decides to fight. And that’s where the story gets fun.

Soylent Green is made out of people!

by Marcus Sakey

Not too long ago, I saw Soylent Green for the first time. It’s one of those iconic films that I’d somehow missed, probably at least partly because I was familiar with the catch phrase and figured it might be a one-trick movie.

It’s an interesting film. Dated, certainly—my friend Michael has a great line about how that happens with sci-fi, that “Nothing ages like the future”—and the film's misogyny is a little too hard-edge to write off as satirical. The basic premise is that the future is a pretty bleak, overcrowded place, with the masses barely kept alive by the miracle food Soylent Green, which, yes, is made of people.

What I found most interesting, though, is the way it treated suicide. Because the world is a teeming mass of humanity, the government encourages suicide, especially as people get older. There are advertisements for suicide centers, clinics that promise a smooth transition into death.

This being a story, of course one of the main characters ends up going to one. And as a savvy viewer, what I was expecting was the bait-and-switch: I figured that the moment he entered the clinic, he’d be handcuffed and lock-stepped, screaming, to the futuristic equivalent of a concentration camp shower. The problem with dystopia fiction is that it often pulls from the same bag of tricks.

What was interesting, though, is that I was completely wrong. The character was asked about his favorite colors, his favorite music. He was led to a gracious room where he lay down on a comfortable platform bed. Soft orange lighting—his favorite—filled the room, and a sunset screened on the wall. Two beautiful, serene people came in and stood holding his hands. Classical music swelled as he drifted painlessly away.

And then they made him into food.

The reason I bring it up, in this wildly odd post, is that it struck me as interesting how different my 2009 reaction was than the one I imagine was felt in 1973. The film is supposed to be a warning sign, a story about the future we should avoid at all costs.

Personally? It’s okay by me.

I’ve never understood our culture’s view of suicide. It has never made sense to me that ending your life with dignity and at a time of your choosing is anything but noble. Yes, it needs to be done with consideration for others, to be done in a way that doesn’t traumatize everyone dealing with the aftermath. But to me, suicide is as much a right as the decision to procreate. Why do I owe it to the world to linger on past the point where I enjoy life, or, worse, past the point where I can even be said to be myself? Some people are scared of heights; I’m petrified of dementia.

As for the eating people part, I’m not religious. I believe what’s left behind is meat. In reality our bodies are probably better used as organ donations than Thanksgiving dinner, but once you’re gone, I don't think you should get much say in what use the continuing world finds for you.

But besides my personal feelings about death, I also think it’s interesting the way the culture has changed. I doubt people seeing the film today would be shocked. That’s partly because other stories have tread the same ground. But I think it’s also a shift in the way we think. And for my money, a positive one.

What do you think? Should suicide be a right? Or is it a reprehensible act? If you’ve seen the film, how did you feel about those aspects? Do you feel differently now than you did then?

Two Perfect Things

by Marcus Sakey

I had a whole other post planned for today. But in the last week I've discovered two works of surpassing beauty, and I decided I'd rather write about them.

The first is a free online game called Auditorium, and when you're done reading, I urge you to take a couple of moments to check it out, even if you think you don't like computer games.

I discovered this last week in a column written by my brother Matt Sakey, a respected industry columnist, occasional guest here, and owner of the review website Four Fat Chicks. I intended only to check it out as context for Matt's article. But when I clicked "Play" I was captivated.

I'm not going to tell you much about the game itself, because part of the joy is in the discovery. What I will say is that it is a gorgeous experience, one that manages to simultaneously engage a number of different parts of the brain: problem-solving, aesthetic, emotional. The half an hour I played was the magic part of that day.

Click here to try it. You'll need your speakers turned on. Don't look for instructions--there's a reason they aren't there.

The second recommendation is for a film, Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler. I'm a big fan of Aronofsky's work; I love the way he tells a story, the way he uses the whole breadth of the medium to engage the viewer. The intersection of ontological puzzles and commercial thrills in Pi was remarkable; after watching Requiem for a Dream, I just wanted to crawl in bed and have someone hold me; The Fountain had its flaws, but it was so lushly beautiful on an emotional scale, so grand in its intent, that they were easily overlooked.

The latest is his most accessible film, the story of a professional wrestler who was at the top of the sport, performing in sold-out stadiums--but that was 20 years ago, and now he works small fights in VFW halls to a crowd of a hundred. His body is shattered, his life is a mess, he lives in his van when he's locked out of his trailer, but he keeps coming back, weekend after weekend, because, well...watch the movie.

Besides this being an absolutely stunning piece of film-making, it also features one of the finest performances I've ever seen. Mickey Rourke completely submerges himself in the character. In a role that would be so easy to overplay, he keeps it subtle, expressing himself as much through his physicality as through his words. He quite simply becomes Randy "The Ram."

It's not a happy movie--none of Aronofsky's work is--but it has its moments of triumph and beauty, and I haven't been able to stop thinking of it since I caught it last week.

So there you go, two things that blew me away recently. Now, my requests to you. First, if you check either of these out, pop back here and gimme a post to let me know what you thought.

And second, if you have time, post about something that moved you recently. I don't care if it's a book or a song or a painting or a sunset or a recipe or a sports car. I'd just love to hear about it.