Next thing anyone knows, there's Nick Broomfield running about the place with his boom-mike shoved in everyone's jaws, trying to get the low-down on the whole debacle. However, Glazer and the adoptive guardian, Arleen, want 25 grand before they'll say a word, or even let Broomfield anywhere near Wuornos. It wouldn't be a Broomfield film if things didn't go arse-up ten minutes in, and sure enough, rectums are in the air before you can say "No Comment."
What emerges from all this is that Aileen Wuornos put her life into the hands of a pair of individuals concerned only with selling the rights to the story, whilst her trial is manipulated by authority figures concerned only in TV-Movie deals. It is truly a diabolical situation.
Gotta laugh, right?
Well, no. Because Aileen herself emerges as a tragic figure, relating tales of horrific sexual abuse as steal-eyed officials and jury-members look on. When Broomfield is finally granted an interview with her, she is polite, accommodating, and more than a little pissed off about the level of deceit going on around her.
The Selling Of A Serial Killer is much more low-key than Broomfield's later investigatory shindigs. There's no celebrity names here to keep the promoters happy, and there's no El Duce's running around claiming they were hired to kill Kurt Cobain and then getting crushed by trains.
What there is, though, is a spiralling series of events than lend the whole enterprise the aura of grand farce. Glazer should, on this evidence, never be allowed on the tax-paying side of a witness box ever again. Similarly, Arleen, the adoptive mother, emerges as money-seeking, deceptive, manipulative, and, as Broomfield informs her, "mercenary", looking for a case to lend her name to, and then reap the rather lucrative rewards.
And of course, there's good ol' Nick, and it wouldn't be proper if he didn't make himself the focus of at least 60% of the proceedings. He appears vain, not entirely ethical in his treatment of his interviewees, but always charismatic and convincing.
This is supremely disturbing, as far as the implications of the affair go, and also infuriating.
And it really isn't right to laugh.
The Duke resides at Mondo Irlando.
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