Smart finally ‘ready’ for a movie to tell her story

‘Sam’ brings to life NY 40 yrs ago

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif, July 29, (Agencies): Elizabeth Smart said it required years for her to participate in a movie about her kidnapping ordeal.

Smart said Friday that she couldn’t have done so immediately after her abduction from her Salt Lake City home in 2002 at age 14. She was rescued nine months later, and said Friday she was eager to “run away” from the experience.

Even as an adult, Smart said it took time and serious discussion with producers for her to agree to work on Lifetime’s “I Am Elizabeth Smart.”

Smart said she began to realize that such a project could make a difference. She narrates the drama, which stars newcomer Alana Boden as Smart and Skeet Ulrich as her abductor.

“I will say that it is the best worst movie I’ve ever seen. I mean, I think it’s so well done. I think it was accurate,” she said. “I’m very proud of it, but at the same time, part of me thinks I’ll be happy if I never have to watch it again.

Smart took advantage of her appearance at a TV critics’ meeting to promote AMBER Alert, designed to help locate missing children with alerts distributed through media, email and other means. Smart asked that promote the system and activate it on their smart phones.

“I Am Elizabeth Smart” debuts Nov 18 on Lifetime, preceded by a two-part documentary on Nov. 12 and 13 that Lifetime said will include new information on the case and detail Smart’s life today.

A ripped-from-the-headlines TV movie about the crime, “The Elizabeth Smart Story,” aired in 2003.

Brian David Mitchell, a Utah street preacher, was convicted of kidnapping and raping Smart and sentenced to life in prison.

Geraldo Rivera dates the low point in modern New York City history to Aug. 9, 1977.

That was the day before police arrested David Berkowitz, the serial killer who called himself “Son of Sam.” He terrorized the city for a year with late-night shootings, killing six and wounding seven, and primarily targeted young women sitting in cars.

The time is vividly brought to life in the Smithsonian Channel documentary, “The Lost Tapes: Son of Sam,” premiering Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT. The Investigation Discovery network is airing its own retrospective on the crime spree that airs Aug. 5.

Producer Tom Jennings has made similarly styled documentaries on Pearl Harbor, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King and the 1994 Los Angeles police riots. The idea is to trace the story through news reports shown at the time, trading in retrospective for a “you are there” feel.

Since police were largely flummoxed until the end, news producers sent crews out on the streets to interview New Yorkers about how they were coping. As such, “The Lost Tapes” offers a rich portrait of what the city was like that summer 40 years ago. It isn’t pretty. The city was grubby, crime-ridden and scared, in the midst of a hot and sticky stretch that included a blackout-induced night of lawlessness.

“1977 was an awful, awful year in New York City,” said Rivera, who appears as a studly ABC News reporter in the documentary, painted into a pair of jeans. “It was a year of the blackout, it was a year the city seemed totally dysfunctional, coming apart at the seams.”

Fanned by news reports, and Berkowitz’s own oddball letters sent to newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin, the “Sam” saga whipped up fear among young people at a usually carefree stage in their lives. Many turned down dates or parties to stay home. Since the killer appeared to favor women with long, dark hair, women across the city cut or died their hair.

“You wouldn’t let your kids go out,” Rivera recalled. “It was the kind of crime spree that was so irrational. His victims were people that everyone could relate to and everyone was subsequently fearful that they could be next.”

Berkowitz, he said, was the Joker in Gotham City.

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are bringing their Boston pride to Showtime.

The cabler has picked up a drama pilot “City on a Hill” from the Oscar winners, who will executive produce the project.

Based on an original idea by Affleck and Chuck MacLean (“Boston Strangler”), who wrote the script, “City on a Hill” is a fictional account of what was called the “Boston Miracle.” In the early ‘90s, corruption and racism was the norm in Boston, until an African-American district attorney from Brooklyn arrives in the city, advocating change. He forms an unlikely alliance with a corrupt yet venerated FBI veteran who is invested in maintaining the status quo. The two take on a family of armored car robbers in a case that eventually upends the city’s criminal justice system.

The pilot will be directed by Gavin O’Connor (“The Accountant”), who will serve as executive producer along with James Mangold (“Logan”) and Jennifer Todd (“Memento”) of Pearl Street Films. Pearl Street developed the project with IMG.