We're Going to Cover That In Phase 2

Newsday printed a cover that read “Welcome to Lawn Guyland” at the height of the Amy Fisher affair and I still am in love with that pronunciation – it helps me get peole to say Long Island the “correct” way. The Freeport Motel/Boatel, where she and Joey had a few of their illicit trysts, is around the corner from my grandparents’ house so whenever I visit them, I think of that magical time in LI history. It turns out the infamous trio have agreed to appear in TV reunion. I guess that since there were 3 different TV movies on the same night about this story, I’m not surprised that their reunion is televised – anything for a buck, eh?

After the jump, read the full text of a NY Times article about those movies.

Via Neu

Amy Fisher Story a Surprise Smash In 3 TV Movies

By BILL CARTER (NYT) 922 words

Published: January 5, 1993

Surpassing the expectations of network officials, each of the three made-for-television movies based on the Amy Fisher case and broadcast in the last week was a stunning success, and two of the three are likely to emerge as the most popular television movies of the season.

The NBC movie, which was broadcast on Dec. 28, had a 19.1 rating and was the highest-rated television movie of the season so far. The ABC movie, broadcast Sunday night, had a 19.4 in the overnight ratings and may top the NBC version’s when final figures are released today. The CBS movie, shown on Sunday at the same time as ABC’s, had a 15.8 overnight rating and is likely to be about the seventh-highest-rated movie of the season. (Each national ratings point represents 931,000 homes; overnight ratings are only from the top 28 cities, and each point represents 462,634 homes).

The average rating for a network show is about 12.

Executives from each network acknowledged yesterday that they were shocked by the strong showing for all three Amy Fisher movies, each of which told the story of how she shot the wife of the man she said was her lover. “I was stunned,” said Ruth Slawson, the senior vice president of movies for NBC. “I don’t know anyone in the business who wasn’t stunned.”

Never before had two television movies on the same subject competed head to head, and no subject had ever been covered in three separate television movies. “Like everyone else, I expected the two movies to split the audience Sunday night,” Ms. Slawson said. “I wasn’t sure how they would do after ours had been on, but I guess you could say Amy has become a cottage industry.”

And There’s More

Indeed, Ms. Fisher has been fodder for ratings-hungry programs all over television. (Last night, the tabloid syndicated magazine show “Hard Copy” ran a few moments from what it labeled an X-rated home video recorded by Ms. Fisher and a boyfriend before the shooting took place.) The CBS movie, called “Casualties of Love: The ‘Long Island Lolita’ Story” and starring Alyssa Milano, will be shown twice more this month on the USA cable channel. It will be the first time a network television movie has ever resurfaced that quickly on cable.

NBC has already been taking advantage of Ms. Fisher’s notoriety. The network’s weekly news magazine program “Dateline NBC” broadcast an interview with Ms. Fisher each of the past two weeks and scored the highest ratings in that program’s history. The first interview pushed “Dateline” to seventh place in the weekly ratings. It usually finishes about 45th.

“All of us perpetuated this,” Ms. Slawson said. “It became a media phenomenon.”

It has become common for network movie departments to seek to win the rights to the same well-publicized murder cases, especially if they involve some aspect of lurid sex. On several occasions, two networks have bought the same story and competed to get their version on first.

But this was the first case that brought all three networks into the action. NBC purchased Ms. Fisher’s side of the story for an undisclosed sum. CBS bought the rights to the story as told by Mary Jo Buttafuoco, the victim, as well as by her husband, Joey. Thus Mr. Buttafuoco was portrayed as Ms. Fisher’s adulterous lover in the NBC movie — “Amy Fisher: My Story,” starring Noelle Parker — and as an innocent victim of her obsession in the CBS version.

Many Viewpoints

The ABC version, called “The Amy Fisher Story” and starring Drew Barrymore, used multiple points of view without defining who was guilty and who wasn’t. Yet the ABC version may be the highest rated of all: a result, several television executives said, of the decision to cast a well-known actress, Drew Barrymore, in the role of Amy.

“ABC’s also had the most sex,” said one senior television executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Nonetheless, executives could not easily explain why this story had such widespread appeal. Ms. Slawson said, “I don’t believe there was anything so unique or gripping to this story to make it that special,” though she did say that Amy’s age — 18 — seemed to be a factor in luring viewers. “Thematically, this is just another ‘fatal attraction’ story,” Ms. Slawson added.

It carried so much more interest, she said, because of the attention that surrounded the case from the first moment. “It helped that this was a New York story. It was constantly in the New York tabloids and those stories get picked up by the national tabloid television magazine stories.”

Timing Is Cited

The timing between the events and the movie was also unusually short because Ms. Fisher reached a plea bargain under which she went to prison for 5 to 15 years. “We didn’t have to wait for a long-drawn-out trial,” Ms. Slawson said. “It was a very fresh story. You also had the very fact that three networks were doing the same story. That was another way for people to keep talking about it.”
Ms. Slawson said she had serious reservations about the process through which Amy Fisher’s story became the hottest thing on American television. “I think it’s a really sad commentary about what people are interested in,” she said.

“It’s crazy,” she added. “It’s self-perpetuating. We all say we don’t want to keep on doing these true-crime movies but then these numbers come in and what choice do we have? Obviously the audience wanted to watch it, for whatever reason. I’m happy with the success of our own movie. But overall I’m not happy about the state of movies on television.”

Photos: The networks’ three Amy Fishers were, from the top, Noelle Parker (Shane Harvey/NBC), NBC, Alyssa Milano, CBS (CBS), and Drew Barrymore, ABC. (ABC)