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Monday, August 16, 2004 --
1:00 PM
The witness, who played a supporting role in the victim's film and
helped out with crew duties when he wasn't on-screen, was interviewed
at the Yoknapatawpha County Sheriff's Office. The interview was conducted
by Detectives Armstrong and Murphy and was
recorded on a portable videotape recorder with the witness' knowledge
and consent.
- TA = Detective T. Armstrong
- SM = Detective S. Murphy
- JM = Johnny McPhail
SM: For the record, please state your name, age, address and
occupation.
JM: Johnny McPhail. I'm 62 years old. I live at 110 Pearidge Road,
and I'm an accountant by profession.
TA: Now, Johnny, We're hoping you can shed some light on this thing
for us. So we're just gonna start from the beginning. Tell us how
you met Corwin Fitz.
JM: I first met him when he first came to town at Murff's. He
usually sat around getting drunk, as I remember it. He had him a
little stool on the corner. He was always bitchin'
and moanin'. I tried to talk to him a couple of times, but basically all I could
get out of him was how he was a natural born killer, but I didn't pay
much attention to that. I thought he was just a drunk. We thought he
was a bit off his rocker, but then some other fellas got to talkin'
to him, and it turned out he was just into the movies. He liked the
movies, and I did too, so occasionally we talked about movies. He hadn't
been to too many new ones, but he liked the classics. He turned me on
to some wild stuff like Kurosawa and who's that old boy... Errol
Morris, I think. Those are some filmmakers he liked, and I watched some
of their movies, even invited him over a time or two. But, boy, he was
really obnoxious back then. He'd get on a tear and just start spillin'
his heart out about how his woman left him, how his friends wanted to
kill him, how nobody believed he would amount to anything, how his parents
thought he was a failure. Finally, old Marshall Pidgin told him to get
out and not to come back cause he was spoilin' the atmosphere. Fellas
in there tryin' to watch the ballgame or shoot some pool, and he'd
flop all over the damn pool table, bawlin' like a little kid. That's
the last I heard from him until he came out in the papers sayin'
he was makin' a movie. That was a good while later, and we all
had thought he'd left town and were glad to think so. But then I saw
his picture in the paper and got a hold of him. I'm always up for
reading a script or givin it a go actin'.
SM: When was it that you contacted him about the movie?
JM: I believe it was in March. It was just after that article
came out in Oxford Town, and I remember readin' it and thinking, "Yeah, I know this kid. He sounds like he means business now. Maybe he
got himself some help and laid off all the drinking." So I gave him a
call and we set up a meeting.
SM: How did he seem when you met with him?
JM: He seemed fine, smart. Much more in control than his days at Murff's.
He even looked healthier. I asked him about the turnaround and he talked
to me for a while. Told me he'd rented a place out in the county
and isolated himself, forced himself to live alone. He had written this
big movie script he was all excited about, and he had a copy
with him. He let me take one home, and I read it. I thought it was a
great story, about this guy who gets in all kind of weird situations
with this bunch of rowdy friends, and then he meets this girl, who's
like his salvation, and before you know it, he's cured from crazy
living, but it's too late. You see, that's what he kept talking
about. That's what he was so scared of. What if it's too late.
How long does it take a man to turn around and act right?
TA: Did you get the feeling he'd done anything wrong?
JM: Well, he was pretty quiet about his past. Whenever I tried to talk
with him about it -- you know, like buddies -- he'd clam up and say
the past is all over with. The future is where we need to be. The future
is where the money is, he'd say. So I don't know. If that
script was autobiographical at all -- and I somehow think it was -- then
maybe he had done some bad things. It was a pretty violent movie, and
there was a lot of special effects and action scenes, it looked like
to me. But he had it figured out how we was gonna do it. He was on cue,
for real. He had a system in his head. He'd been reading all kinds
of acting books. We talked about some ideas. He was really open to hearing
my side of it. He told me this was gonna be like boot camp, and we were
gonna stay together until we had a movie or we ended up killing each
other. That's funny now, I just remembered that he said that. I
tell you, I really believed in the kid. I thought this was gonna be my
big chance, man. You ever meet a young kid like that who you know just
has it in him? Just an enormous talent, and, boy, did he have the fire
in him. I tell you, it was contagious.
SM: How many times did you talk to him before you agreed to do the movie?
JM: Gosh, we must've talked every day for about two weeks. I'm
talking, he would sit down and turn the clock away and we'd talk
sometimes for hours it seemed like. Just gettin' the system in
our mind.
TA: What was his system?
JM: Well, it's a little hard
to explain, but essentially it was staying in character all the time,
like
24 hours a day. You live the part. He was a big fan of documentaries, and
he thought it would just make it look more real. In fact, one time he got to showing us
snuff films out there -- people blowin' their brains out -- it
didn't bother me too much, but some of those
little Ole Miss coeds threw a fit. That's when things kinda started getting a little tough,
I thought. I didn't know what was gonna happen there.
TA: Let's not get too far ahead. How long was this all going to
take?
JM: Oh, he figured he could shoot it all in about a month, month and
a half.
SM: And you were willing to give up that much time? Was he paying you?
JM: He paid us some, not a lot. He said he'd cut us in on the profits.
I think what enticed everybody most was him, though. He just seemed
to have something magic surrounding him. Like he could do no wrong. He
made a lot of sense. He said, even if the movie didn't win a ton
of Oscars or didn't make make 1,000 times its budget, it would
get us noticed because it was a strong enough story, a strong enough
experiment in filmmaking to get us some attention. And he promised if
we could endure it, we would become better actors than we'd ever
imagined. So that's why I did it. I wanted to be an actor so bad.
You just can't imagine what a price I have to pay every morning
when I wake up and go to the office, against my every desire. Against
what I am.
TA: Johnny, I'm sure I can imagine.
JM: Then imagine this kid, he was like a genie in a bottle. He was offering
me a chance out of that, and I believed in him with all my heart. And
my wife did too. I brought him over to the house for dinner one night.
She met him and loved him. She knew how much it all meant to me.
SM: Now, when did you report to the set?
JM: May 10th, I believe it was.
TA: Okay. Was there anything unusual to you at first?
JM: No, it was actually better than I imagined. He said it would be
like boot camp, but it was actually more like Club Med. Man, there was
all kinds of food to eat, all kinds of movies to watch. It was a cool
place, this lodge he had us set up in. The first day on the set, he just
talked to us about what we were gonna be doin'. We read through
the script and got our shooting schedules.
TA: When did you notice things
had gone awry on the set?
JM: Corwin was kind of grumpy
there for a while. We shot for about two weeks or so and got some
real good stuff, but he kinda got a little grumpy toward the end of
that. He never showed us any of the film, but somethin' wasn't
sittin' right with him. So I noticed it then, but I tell you,
the one day he for sure blew up was when this gal showed up at the
lodge wantin' to audition for a part. We were all downstairs
just hangin' out in the living room, except for Corwin, who was
up in his office, when this girl just busts in. She's wearin'
this silver outfit, real skimpy, with a feather boa and her hair was
streaked with colors. She did this monologue that was just fantastic,
walking around commenting on everybody. I mean she was making stuff
up off the top of her head that was just great. After this big to-do
she demands to see the director, and he's standing up on the
second floor balcony there watchin' her. Well, all of a sudden,
he fires off a couple of shots -- they were blanks, always blanks -- and
the next thing you know, he leaps down from the balcony, nearly crushes
Macy on the sofa, and chases this girl all the way down the road.
He comes back a few minutes later and we're all like, "Corwin,
what the hell is goin' on?" And he comes back with this big tirade
about how none of us are takin' this film seriously. He storms
off into his office there upstairs and don't come out 'til the
next day.
SM: Did the girl ever come back?
JM: Why, hell no. I'm sure she like to've had a heart attack. Wouldn't you, some nutso
chasin' you through the country shootin' his pistola at you? She probably cleared a trail straight
through Panola County.
SM: Did she ever say her name?
JM: Said she was Helen Troy. I had dreams about that girl. She was good.
TA: C'mon, Johnny. That was her real name? Helen
Troy?
JM: All I know is that's what she said her name was. Not like
any of us got a chance to talk to her or anything.
SM: Okay. What about Katrina Brook? Did Fitz ever abuse her?
JM: Now I'm not one to normally say this, but he acted like the biggest
chauvinist around her. I swear to God, about the only way he abused
her is by being an a****** to her on the set. He spit at her, called
her names, just tore her up in front of everybody. Tried to make her
seem like a whore. He'd embarrass her by saying stuff in front of
everybody like, "Yeah, you weren't acting last night
when I had you..." you know what. Just being crude. It was kind of
funny actually. She was a bit stuck up, if you ask me.
TA: How about Macy Lamar?
JM: He kept her locked up in her room a good bit. She was a nuisance to him, always storming on
the set and throwing s*** at him like old lettuce and mud. Just gettin'
him back for all the hell he put her through, I reckon. I tried not
to get too involved in their personal business. I tell you, one
thing I saw was the fistfight that broke out on camera--
SM: This was with...?
JM: Billy. Him and Billy went
round and round. Let the cameras roll while they duked it out. Yeah,
Billy didn't put up with a bunch of junk. He just got madder and
madder the longer the movie dragged on. One day they just came to blows.
I don't even remember what it was about. Had something to do
with drugs, I think. They were both pretty doped up a lot of the time.
Hell, all them kids were. Never understood it.
SM: Where did they get it?
JM: They had it with them. I
know Billy was always smokin' or poppin' something.
SM: What about Flamé?
JM: Yep. Corwin smacked him
around a bit too. But hell, Flamé loved it. Flamé is one strange
fella. I tell you what, if there's one son of a b**** on that
set crazy enough to murder Corwin, it's that little bugger. He
was nasty. Just a weird, rotten little kid.
SM: Did Flamé ever threaten
him?
JM: No, not that I recall. He
would just retreat into his character. That's the one thing you
can say for him -- he was probably the best actor we had. I guess that's
why he had the lead role. That boy could act his ass off. Never quit actin'.
TA: What about old Woolworth?
Was he behavin' himself?
JM: Now when have you ever known
Dave to behave himself?
TA: Hah, that's a fair point. Was Dave in
on the punishment?
JM: I think he was just having
a blast. He had a small role and didn't get in anybody's
way. Corwin didn't really have much reason to crawl his ass,
other than him just lurkin' around all the time. I think Dave
kinda made him nervous. Hell, he made me nervous. He's got a
wild look in his eye, you know?
TA: What do you make of Montenado?
JM: He's a machine. Corwin
was the only one who knew how to work him. I couldn't ever get
a read on him. I don't even think he had a personality. He's
the son of a b**** who tied me up and tossed me around, damn near
starved me. It was Corwin's idea of method acting. I had a death
scene, and he wanted me half dead so I could do it right. I tried
to do it with make-up, but Corwin kept yellin' at me, told me
I wasn't making it stick. So he had that old boy rough me up
a bit.
TA: What made you stay? Why
take that kind of abuse? We've listened to the phone messages
you left your wife, and clearly you were having a good time there
at first. But I know things weren't going well for you as the
holidays approached and then after the new year. Why did you stay
on?
JM: You know, he had me fooled
for so long. He told me I -- well, my character -- was becoming the moral
center of the film. But the more I got into my character, the more
I understood him, and I knew this was no moral center for any movie
but a f***** up one. So I expressed my frustration with the character
and with the way the story was going. He was handing me rewrites every
morning, and my character was becoming more and more awful. I just
couldn't live this guy's life like Corwin wanted me to.
So we talked about it, and he pretty much just went flaky on me. I
mean, he was talking about killing himself if I left. He told me that,
he said, "Johnny, if you go, that's it. I'm puttin'
a bullet in my head." I was tempted to say, "You go right ahead.
You're freakin' me out, boy." But I couldn't rightly
live with that on my conscience, now could I?
TA: I don't reckon so.
JM: Hell naw, I couldn't. Then I'd be as bad as Kenny, my character.
SM: How could you respect Fitz
after he'd done that to you?
JM: 'Cause, it was a damn fine
scene when it was all said and done. He wouldn't never let me
see it, but I could tell, you know. I could just tell that it was
good. And I hope somebody finds those reels, 'cause I did some damn
good acting in that movie. I think in the end, that was why I stayed
on. 'Cause that boy made me the best I've ever been. I ain't
never been good at nothin' like the acting I did in that film.
TA: Johnny, tell us where you were on the morning of the shooting.
JM: I was in my bed, fast asleep.
My room was just off the living room there on the first floor. The
second one, right next to Katrina.
SM: Did you hear the gunshots?
JM: Yeah, I heard 'em. But I barely noticed them. Went right back to sleep. There was guns
going off all the time, at all hours. Corwin liked to shoot them.
They figure very strongly in the script too. So gunfire didn't
surprise me. Now, when I heard Katrina screamin' upstairs, and all
those stompin' feet above me, that's when I realized something
might be wrong. So I get up and go out into the living room, and Katrina
is screaming bloody murder. I think it was Dave who told me that Corwin was dead.
TA: Didn't Flamé cause a disturbance that morning?
JM: Yeah, he was laughing his head off and running off at
the mouth like a nut. Montenado had him in Corwin's room and
wouldn't let him out -- I don't know why -- but it was makin' ol'
Brett even crazier than usual.
SM: Did Flamé confess to killing Fitz?
JM: No, he wasn't makin' no kind of sense. Only when the
first cop got there did he start talkin' about how he killed Corwin.
That cop went into the bathroom, I guess to get a look at Corwin,
and Brett managed to get away from Alsace and went barreling
downstairs, still laughing and ranting like a maniac. It got so loud and
annoying that I had to tackle his ass and make him shut up. He finally got free from under me and ran outside.
That's when the second one of y'all drove up, and he kept him from
running off.
SM: Was that unusual behavior for Flamé?
JM: Everything that guy does is unusual compared to normal
folks. But for him, running around acting crazy in one way or another
was pretty typical.
TA: All right, Johnny, I think we've heard enough for the time being. Anything else,
we'll
give you a call.
JM: Sure thing, Ted. You know where to find me
Interview ends -- 2:11 PM |
