the Hitcher: truth is stranger than fiction

[CptStern]

ok not talking about crappy remake "the hitcher" but rather the old cult classic version with Rutger Hauer ..well it seems the guy who wrote the screenplay is even more bizarre than anything in the movie:

(taken from somewhere else)

In May 2000, screenwriter Eric Red was involved in a minor fender-bender on Wilshire in West Los Angeles ... (Reds Jeep Cherokee hit a car in front of him) and when the guy in the car ahead walked back to (Reds Jeep), he saw Red slumped over the wheel, but staring straight ahead, his eyes open wide. Then the car started to move.

Slowly, the Jeep pushed the other car out of the intersection until it jacknifed into oncoming traffic -- his girlfriend screaming in the front seat all the while.

At the last second, Red's Jeep slipped off the back bumper and his tires found traction, jumpstarting him from 15 to 50 mph in a matter of seconds, and he crashed through a bus shelter, through the plate glass windows of a pool hall, and against the giant mahogany bar 20 feet inside, killing two people who were pinned against the bar and injuring 20. Then, when everyone was trying to rock the jeep back off his victims, Red wandered off, picked up a shard of glass, and slit his throat.

That's when the weird part really began.

Red went immediately into the hospital on suicide watch, stayed out of the paper, and nine months later, LAPD announced they were dropping all charges -- it turns out, due to a neurological condition which caused him to pass out at the wheel.

That would have been the end of it, except that the family of one of the victims was all lawyers, and they pursued him through the courts for five years before winning a million-dollar judgment. But in a monumental bit of reporting, Cullum documents every twist and turn -- including the similarities between the accident and his own films and unproduced screenplays, and the script he wrote after the fact making fun of the whole thing.

It's not a tale for the faint-hearted.

And here's a tidbit you won't find in the story: When being admitted to UCLA hospital hours after the accident, Red insisted on being registered under the name Mario Kan.

Mario Kan is an anagram for "I RAN AMOK."

http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/death-race-2000/12382/


:O

 

[CyberPitz]

That is pretty....creepy..
*shudder*