Trying real-life murder cases is easy. Writing TV dramatizations of real-life murder cases is hard-at least judging from a close analysis of several drafts of screenwriter Stephen Harrigan's script for The O.J. Simpson Story. The Fox made-for-TV movie (to be broadcast after the Simpson jury has been chosen), starring Bobby Hosea (China Beach) as O.J. Simpson, Jessica Tuck (One Life to Live) as Simpson's murdered ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Bruce Weitz (Hill Street Blues) as Simpson's defense attorney Robert Shapiro, is based on the events surrounding Simpson's apprehension in the violent deaths of Nicole and Ronald Goldman. But while the dramatization can't match the drama of the original (how could it? Shakespeare couldn't have invented that car chase), Harrigan has managed to piece together a script that blends known fact with invented dialogue. The result is a work in which tiny phrase changes from revision to revision signify giant leaps of literary invention.
The writer structures the two-hour drama beginning with O.J.'s flight to Chicago on the night of the murders, ending five days later with his surrender following the now-famous car chase in the white Ford Bronco. He also dramatizes earlier events in O.J.'s life by including flashbacks during Simpson's client-to-counsel consultation with Shapiro: a meeting between the teenage O.J. and his sports hero, Willie Mays; his first encounter with Marguerite Whitley (a girlfriend stolen from his loyal childhood friend, A.C. Cowlings), who would become his first wife; his developing relationship with Nicole and its violent dissolution; his changing, stormy moods.
The theatrics are there-but where is Brian ''Kato'' Kaelin? The professional houseguest is missing from the third draft, but makes it into the fourth, where he and Simpson open the first act with this:
O.J. (grabbing his carry-on bag): I'll get it. Kato: O.J., did you feel an earthquake or something? O.J.: An earthquake? No. Kato: I heard a thump like there was some kind of prowler or something. By the fifth draft, Kato's speculation about earthquakes has changed to an innocuous interest in pool privileges. O.J.: If you use the Jacuzzi while I'm gone, be sure and turn it off. Kato: Uh, sure. Have a good trip, O.J.
The post-interrogation encounter between Shapiro and his famous client also required fine-tuning. In draft three, Shapiro makes this florid made-for-TV speech:
They want you, O.J. This is the District Attorney's make-or-break case. He lost Rodney King, he lost Menendez, he is not going to let it happen again. I want you to have one thought very clear in your mind: Los Angeles is very close to anarchy. The DA needs a high-profile win or he might as well close up shop. This isn't just a murder case, O.J. It's history.
In draft four, Shapiro's rhetorical leap from the DA's case to the terrors of anarchy is smoothed out:
He is not going to let it happen again. He needs a high-profile win, but he's going to be very careful. If he arrests one of the best-known African- American men in the country and he doesn't have the goods, this city is going to go up in flames again. I want you to have one thought very clear in your mind: They're out to get you big-time.
By the fifth draft, Shapiro's speech is tighter and calmer, less incendiary:
He is not going to let it happen again. I want you to have one thought very clear in your mind: They're out to get you big-time.
Along the way, Harrigan fleshes out the character of Marguerite, and adds more about how O.J. met Nicole. As a civics lesson on the rights of the accused, he also adds a recitation of the right-to-remain-silent Miranda warning.
But most important-from a dramatic point of view-each draft brings Cowlings' personality further out from the shadows, intensifying the role of the perpetual second banana to strengthen the psychological differences and ; symbiosis between the two friends. Indeed, the most affecting character in O.J. may well turn out to be A.C., played by David Roberson (White Men Can't Jump)-who is portrayed as a figure of pathos who had followed doggedly after his more famous buddy since the two were teenagers together in San Francisco. In good times, A.C. boasts about his friend's prowess to some flirtatious young women:
Cowlings: Guy comes up to tackle him, the Juice does a little okey-doke, and in one twenty-fourth of a second he's changed direction and is out of there. Scientific fact. O.J.: That's the whole secret. Keep going forward without losing momentum. You lose momentum, they got you. Later, in bad times-particularly during the Bronco incident-A.C. becomes positively poetic: O.J.: I'm losing ground here, A.C. Cowlings: You've been losing momentum for a long time, Juice. You just didn't notice because nobody wanted to stop cheering.
In such a fashion, O.J. Simpson the man becomes O.J. Simpson the TV subject. In life, meanwhile, the TV subject remains a man on trial for murder. Revisions, for him, are out of the question.*
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