Ah, 1992. So naive, so innocent and, contrary to what we thought back then, so attentive! Nowadays, we can barely focus on a certain mitten-shaped state's pus-gargling governor poisoning an entire city's water supply for more than a day or two. But in 1992? We could give the stupidest, most trumped-up "scandal" our eyes and ears for months!
Case in point: Amy Fisher. On May 19, 1992—24 years ago today—Fisher, whom the press would nickname "The Long Island Lolita," shot suburban New York housewife Mary Jo Buttafuoco on her doorstep in a jealous rage over Buttafuoco's husband Joey. Amy and Joey had allegedly been having an affair off and on since Fisher was 16. Mary Jo didn't die from her wounds, but sustained substantial physical, emotional, and mental injury.
New York Daily News Archives
Unfortunately, so did the American public, as we found ourselves barraged relentlessly with the minutiae of this case for what seemed like forever. Throughout 1992, tabloids would fill their pages with salacious stories of the affair between the teenage Fisher and the thirty-something Buttafuoco; David Letterman and SNL, as one might expect, had a field day. The media frenzy around the scandal was so feverish, in fact, that Fisher's story was made into not one, but THREE, TV movies, two of which aired on the same night (revisionist history has all three running the same night, but that's not what the New York Times archive archive says about it).
So, in recognition of the anniversary of the botched hit job which launched this story into the national spotlight, I went back and watched every one of these vintage pieces of TV trash to see if they were as bad and exploitative as you remember. The answer, of course, is subject to taste; since I have no such thing, my opinions should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt.
[youtube ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgFiHjVLhIU
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Amy Fisher: My Story
NBC's version of the story, the first to air, was advertised as Amy Fisher's version of events, and it shows. Though hardly portrayed as an angel, Fisher (played by the all-but-forgotten Noelle Parker) is a scared, slightly rebellious kid who just got in over her head. Fisher narrates the story via a weepy cassette recording she's making in jail to send to boyfriend Paul Makely (even though Makely sold her out). Joey Buttafuoco (Ed Marinaro) is portrayed, naturally, as a leering and manipulative creep, and the infamous confrontation between Mary Jo (Kathleen Laskey) and Fisher is portrayed as an accident largely resulting from fear.
Parker is probably the most convincing as Fisher, playing her the most like a real teenager, but that doesn't keep this one from being a bit of a slog. The only one I had to pause multiple times, it feels not unlike a very special episode of Beverly Hills 90210, or worse, The Heights.
Casualties of Love: The Long Island Lolita Story
CBS let the Buttafuocos have their say here, and man, it must be seen to be believed (too bad it keeps getting taken down from Youtube). Its gut-busting intro features Joey (Jack Scalia) running wild in the streets and snorting coke while driving, a situation that Mary Jo (Phyllis Lyons) finds untenable with their suburban lifestyle and his position in the family body shop. Faced with the threat of losing his wife and kids, Joey goes into rehab, coming out "his old self" a few weeks later. Just as he's getting his life in order, though, along comes that strutting harlot Amy Fisher (Alyssa Milano, in her first "adult" role) to seduce him and ruin his life like the amoral monster she is. Just by being the nice guy HE is, he gets sucked into her devious world!
This one is highly entertaining, has the best production values, and somehow they roped in the late Lawrence Tierney—yep, Hollywood legend/Reservoir Dogs' Detective Don Brodka, Lawrence Tierney!—into playing Joey Buttafuoco's dad. Still, its efforts to portray Joey as largely innocent don't sit well, although to be fair, he hadn't yet been convicted on charges of statutory rape (or arrested for auto insurance fraud, or for illegal possession of ammunition, or for starring in a "celebrity" sex tape that I refuse to link to) by the time the production wrapped.
The Amy Fisher Story
Now this, my sweet friends, is flavor country. ABC made no concessions either to the central figures or to common notions of propriety in their take, and the results are glorious. Told from the perspective not of Fisher or Buttafuoco but of New York Post reporter Amy Pagnozzi (?!), it is a special sort of burning trash whose flames burn a mile high.
Casting a still-controversial, still-jailbait Drew Barrymore to play Fisher is a move straight out of the John Waters playbook, and she owns the role (it helps that she had practice in this kind of part with the previous year's trash classic Poison Ivy). She plays Fisher as a holy terror, aiming constant mood swings at her parents, brazenly flirting with random dudes just for kicks, and unapologetically taking advantage of whoever she can. Basically, she's everything Men's RIghts Activists think women are, while also being a one-woman feminist revenge movie. Tony Denison plays the grossest, greasiest Joey, and in an excellent touch, does so while decked out in parachute pants. It's also worth noting that this is the only one of these movies with extended, sometimes surprisingly graphic, love scenes, which is extra-squirmy when you remember how old Barrymore was when it was made (see also: Christina Ricci in Buffalo '66).
New York Daily News Archives//Getty ImagesAmy Fisher as she leaves Nassau County Mineola Courthouse
Since this version is told from the perspective of someone reporting on the court case, screenwriter Janet Brownell (incidentally, this is the only one of the three films to be written by a woman) takes ample opportunity here to criticize the media reaction to the Fisher case, and the court's sexist and puritanical treatment of Fisher. Though this factor doesn't prevent the movie from being just as slipshod and corny as its competitors, at least it has something on its mind besides bags and bags of money.
Since these halcyon days, both Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco have kept chasing those bags of money. Both have appeared in porn and reality TV when they've not been incarcerated, squeezing every last dime from their infamy. Somehow, as inconsequential as their story of forbidden lust and (almost) fatal attraction was to its time, it has kept them at least in the edge of the spotlight to this day. Who says Americans have no attention span?
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