true stores and the accused

Kenny’s story.

Kenny’s guilty from the off. Someone tampered with his little girl in the park. Kenny and his pals sorted it. Didn’t they? It was no great surprise that it was the wrong person they’d gave a beating to. The surprises were thick and fast after that. Kenny goes to the hospital with a sore hand and the guy that they’ve beaten up dies and he catches the eye of the dead man’s wife. He’s a mortuary assistant and it’s his job to break up the bones and gristle and filter it into a nice little urn for public consumption. Before this, of course, the wife and family of the dead man turn up and the priest introduces them. The paedo strikes again in the park, but Kenny spots the shark fin on the dance floor. He tells his erstwhile pal, one of two brothers, that had beaten the man to death, that he’d seen him watching the little girl’s dancing and that was why he was so vicious: he was beating the paedo inside himself. Emm showing and telling. Kenny was always going to get time for lines like that.

True Stories: Road to Las Vegas.
I like True Stories even if they’re false. Vanessa had a dream that she should go to Las Vegas. She and her husband didn’t have any money, but God gave her a little tic and they went in their car. The old maxim: go forth and multiply seemed to work, but that seemed the only kind of work they could get. Vanessa had ten kids and Maurice Malton five or six. There weren’t that many in the car, but who was counting? They were too busy arguing about money.

Year 2 (*yes this was a long-termer) and Vanessa was making twenty dollars an hour as a steel erector, working six days a week for ten hours a day. They’d a nice new home and everything was nice and cushty. The kids might even have gone to school at this point. No one was really saying, because that wasn’t really important. Maybe they were just leaving a gap for god to speak.

Maurice was back on the streets taking crack. Vanessa felt that god had let her down. She hooked up with another guy that was giving her a lift to work. Maurice was fuming. He might have done a lot of things he said – a quick check list from Vanessa is due here: stealing and wrecking the rented car, using 17 different credit cards she had use of for drugs- but he’d never cheated on her.

Maurice’s brother dies of crack and Vanessa drives about with funeral news, but can’t find him. Then she does. They all love each other. But they’ll never get back together again especially as Vanessa’s moved on and hooked up with another guy, who, of course, proposes. Vanessa admits that she is going to marry him. Maurice goes to prison, for trying to steal from an undercover cop. This isn’t shown because it’s not a comedy and we’d probably just laugh.

Boom and bust. Las Vegas property market dies overnight. Nobody’s working. Vanessa is living in rented accommodation with her brood. Maurice’s other brother is dying 4000 miles away. He goes to the hospital bedside for the last few days. Vanessa drives him some of the way. She tells him they’ll never get back together. The family turn up for the funeral. Vanessa’s gambled the unemployment money and won enough to fly them all the way. God has come up trumps. It will be difficult to see how Vanessa will cope without the camera on her.