America 1987

Chapter 118 Simple and Honest Folk Customs

"Why did it take you so long?"

My partner ran off to help the young lady halfway through.

As soon as the car stopped in front of the police station, a colleague came over to ask what was going on. Bud's partner said helplessly, "He has no sense of priorities."

His colleague chuckled twice, clearly used to this kind of thing. It seemed that Bud's reputation in this regard was well-known in the police department. "He's playing the same old trick again, Bud."

,

Catherine, sitting not far from the center of the set, watched David's performance with great interest, feeling a sense of novelty.

It's not that I've never seen anything like it before; I've often watched other actors perform in the past. But this time there are three male leads, and judging from their performances a few days ago, the other two are just as good as David. With the three of them performing on the same stage, it's going to be a good show.

"Jack, Hollywood Jack."

The camera focuses on Pierce, who is on duty, while an off-screen voice calls out the name of Kevin Spacey's character. The two are about to meet. This visual language couldn't be clearer, so clear that even an amateur like Catherine could see it.

"What wind blew you to this poor, remote place?"

While the camera focused on Pierce, it also panned to Kevin Spacey, who swaggered in with his two celebrity prisoners. "How are you?"

What are you doing here?

""

"I'm maintaining order in the city," Spacey said to the two officers who came over. "Have them put on their uniforms and then take them into custody."

"Everyone is upstairs."

""

"Okay, I'll be right up."

""

Spacey walked to the window where he was on duty, beckoned to Pierce inside, and then, while glancing around, quietly took a banknote out of his pocket and placed it on the table.

"What are you doing?" Pierce asked, puzzled.

"You're the officer on duty tonight, right?"

'

"So what?"

"This is a small token of appreciation from Hush Magazine," Spacey said politely. "You can use it to buy a pair of shoes."

"Why is Jack giving money to the officer on duty here?" Catherine thought of a question she had asked David when she first read this part of the script.

"We need the other party to cooperate and expedite the process without delving into anything further."

"Why do we need to expedite the process? What will happen if we're slow?"

"Are you stupid? Celebrities and ordinary people aren't the same. Arresting a celebrity who commits a crime and arresting an ordinary person who commits a crime are completely different things in nature—"

The management companies and production companies behind celebrities have a lot of connections and resources. Once their artists are arrested for drug-related offenses, they will immediately use public relations resources to ensure that the case goes through a process of "deferred prosecution + secret drug rehabilitation" to avoid leaving a criminal record that could affect the production of blockbuster films with hundreds of millions in box office revenue.

This is a capital-related operation.

Top entertainment media outlets generally don't directly expose concrete evidence. Instead, they release vague reports like "suspected poor condition" to secure exclusive promotional resources for new films from the agency, avoiding any extreme measures.

This is the operation on the media side.

Local police will selectively simplify the public disclosure process, unlike when dealing with ordinary citizens, by directly releasing arrest photos and going through expedited prosecution procedures. This is to avoid offending the capital circles behind the scenes, and to ensure that they can still obtain cooperation and publicity resources for related film and television projects, unless the capital has already abandoned this person.

This is the operation from the law enforcement side.

In short, the complex web of vested interests makes this situation very complicated, and ordinary police officers in Los Angeles generally wouldn't bother Hollywood stars for no reason.

However, what David told Catherine was actually something that happened more than a decade later in the internet age. He didn't know exactly what Hollywood was like in the 1950s. Maybe the stars back then didn't have that much power, and it wasn't as difficult to catch them as it is now.

However, it's not that difficult, only relatively speaking. So it's not hard to understand why Jack, who just arrested two celebrities, wanted to bribe Ed on duty to turn a blind eye and not interfere with the matter.

But Pierce's response was, "No, thank you. You can keep it yourself. I'm not interested."

Upon hearing this, Spacey sensed something was off about the man and was about to say something when the police station doors suddenly opened again.

A group of police officers escorted six criminals in, who were cursing and swearing.

"What's going on?" Spacey, who was always well-liked, asked casually.

"They were the six Mexicans who attacked Brown and Halen."

""

"I heard that Halen lost a lot of blood and Brown is in a coma."

"They just had minor injuries and went home," Pierce corrected Spacey when he heard him say "heard."

This is a classic example of the distortion effect of information dissemination. What was clearly just a minor injury was exaggerated and made more and more outrageous by the people who spread the story.

When spreading information, people often exaggerate its dramatic aspects to attract attention and gain greater acceptance and control of the conversation.

This is commonly known as embellishing or exaggerating, like this.

"Hey, Smith. Have you heard what those six Mexicans did to Brown and his crew?" David's partner asked, pouring drinks with both hands.

"Halen has lost an eye, and Brown is on his deathbed."

As expected, the message conveyed by this colleague had been artistically embellished once again, becoming even more exaggerated than before.

"They had a really miserable Christmas this year."

Jack's partner, Stans, is a kind-hearted person who got angry as soon as he heard that.

"Hey guys, they've caught the Mexican." Just then, someone came in to report the news. "He's downstairs."

"Stans, yeah, everyone hurry up and get some revenge."

,

Spacey and Pierce, who were busy with their own things in the duty room downstairs, suddenly heard a commotion coming from upstairs.

"Hey, Stans, the party's upstairs." Sensing something was wrong, Pierce quickly came out to stop them.

.

However, the indignant officers ignored him. Stans merely glanced at him and walked away.

"This is none of your business. Please, don't you have anything better to do?"

Pierce could only weakly try to dissuade him, "Go back to the party, it's Christmas, please help us out."

"Get away!"

Just then, two reporters who had just finished interviewing a police officer and came out of the room happened to witness this scene.

If nothing unexpected happens, these dozens of indignant police officers will probably storm into the cell and give those six Mexican prisoners a good beating.

In fact, nothing unexpected happened, because this plot was actually adapted from a true historical event.

Specifically, on Christmas Eve in 1951, seven civilians (five Mexican Americans and two whites) were taken to the police station after a conflict with officers and were then collectively beaten by dozens of intoxicated police officers. The incident was captured on camera by a reporter who was staking out the location, and it made the front page of the newspaper the next day, causing the Los Angeles Police Department to lose face.

In an effort to quell public opinion, the police department subsequently prosecuted eight officers, reassigned 54, and suspended 39.

Wow, that's pretty intense. They used over a hundred police officers to take down seven people. It seems Los Angeles really does have a simple and honest folk culture.

From this perspective, the movie somewhat romanticizes the image of the police. They were misled by rumors and then, out of loyalty to their colleagues, beat someone up, which is somewhat believable.

David estimates that this change is probably to make it easier for the film to pass censorship. Although Hollywood film censorship has always been lenient, it is still necessary to pay attention to things when it involves public authorities.

It's one thing to call the police chief a drug lord villain, after all, it's a matter of personal morality that no country can completely avoid. But to say that police officers collectively and without cause violently beat prisoners is to tarnish the professional image of the police force.