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GAZETTE STAFF / NEW� YORK CITY THE LEVY CASE: LIFE IMITATES ART? The mystery surrounding the disappearance of Chandra Levy is in many ways similar to1987's No Way Out, a film about a political cover-up,which features Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman.by Ernest Barteldes There are some stories that we see in the news that sound so incredibly absurd that they seem to have come out of some extremely creative screenplay writer's mind - the kind of thing that would be more likely to be seen in a Hollywood picture of some kind. Back in 1962, Frank Sinatra starred in "The Manchurian Candidate" (directed by John Frankenheimer). The film's frightening, daring, and far-fetched plot, from a screenplay written by George Axelrod, was based on Richard Condon's 1959 novel of the same name. The plot involved a group of Korean War POWs that were brainwashed by Russian and Chinese communists who were plotting against the United States. One of them(played by Laurence Harvey), is a pawn in the hands of a communist organization led by his own mother(Angela Lansbury, who was nominated for an Academy Award for that part), who triggers him into assassinating a number of people of importance - including a potential Democratic Presidential candidate. The film was so controversial then that Sinatra asked for backing from then President Kennedy to assure its release. A year later, Kennedy was shot by a "lone nut"(theories of Lee Harvey Oswald being programmed to kill were greatly believed then and still are now). "Old Blue Eyes", who owned the rights to the film, was so distraught by the assassination that he blocked the film and made it unavailable to the general public for the next 25 years. The Manchurian Candidate was re-released in 1988. We now have the case of Chandra Levy, a former intern with rep Gary Condit who mysteriously disappeared, leaving no trace of her whereabouts when, according to friends, she was about to divulge "great news"? (as of this writing, there are no news about her whereabouts). We have a powerful politician who completely denied any romantic involvement with the girl until there was too much evidence against him. We have his camp who will do everything to protect his reputation,and finally there is the representative's wife who suddenly decides to travel to Washington - something she rarely did. It has been hard for anyone not to follow the case in the local papers, since this has been the press' latest obsession since the execution of Timothy McVeigh. In the last few days, it has been impossible for me not to notice a bitter resemblance with this story and yet another film. The flick in question is No Way Out, a 1987 film (directed by Roger Donaldson) which was based on a novel by Kenneth Fearing's , The Big Clock. In that piece of fiction, Gene Hackman played a very possessive married politician, Secretary of Defense David Bryce, who, like the real-life Condit, had a hot affair with Susan Atwell (Sean Young). Kevin Costner (in one of his earliest roles) is Tom Farrel, a Naval Intelligence officer who meets Susan and they start getting busy from the first moment. Bryce discovers her involvement with another man and accidentally kills her while trying to find out who his rival might be. Bryce then recalls that Farrel, his face hidden by darkness, saw him enter Susan's home. Bryce, in panic, goes after his aide, Scott Prichard(Will Patton, in a great acting moment) a power-obsessed gay man , who has a damage control idea to cover-up and protect Bryce: try to locate Susan's lover (the only person who can link Susan to Bryce) by conducting a classified search and frame the man with the murder , automatically clearing Bryce of any possible damage. The excuse for the manhunt is a seemingly far-fetched CIA theory (even the players admit to it: in a line of dialogue, Bryce calls the idea "The CIA's Wet Dream")that there was a Russian mole inside Naval Intelligence (remember, those were still the Cold War days), a mysterious man smuggled into the United States in a tender age and, passing as an American citizen, infiltrates into the highest ranks of the U.S. government. The person in charge with the investigation is Bryce's intelligence liaison: Commander Farrel, who has to beat the clock to prove that Bryce was the murderer before his own investigating team finds out the commander was Susan Atwell's lover. In the meantime, he has to avoid Prichard's rage, who will stop at nothing to save his boss - the whole point of the search is to kill anyone who could relate Bryce with the late Susan Atwell. The plot is breathtaking, and full of twists and turns all the way into the unexpected surprise ending. With the film in mind, let us speculate on the Condit/Levy case story for a moment What if Mr. Condit (although he has not been considered a suspect) was somehow - directly or indirectly involved with Ms. Levy's probable demise (as of this writing, Washington police has already given up hope of finding her alive) and everyone around him is using his political power to cover everything up and save his sorry reputation? Unfortunately, the Levy case is no movie (at least not yet). The real-life plot is unfolding before our eyes. Will the real guilty party pay or will someone be framed for somebody else's crime? Only time will tell. Ernest Barteldes is a English and Portuguese language teacher resident on Staten Island. He is also a freelance writer, and he has contributed regularly to The Staten Island Advance, The Staten Island Register, The Greenwich Village Gazette, Brazzil(in Los Angeles), The Downtown Express, Entertainment Today, Gaytoday, and has also written articles(in Portuguese) for numerous Brazilian publications. In addition to that, he is a musician with with Beatles Cover band Plastic Sole. |
