Irreverence, Not Lies, Made Cheerleader Mom Story

As the creative team behind HBO Pictures’ “The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom,” we thank Howard Rosenberg for his laudatory review of April 9. But we also feel we must express our dismay over his assumption that we had dropped “the pretense of truthfulness, in effect using skilled comedy writing to legitimize lying.”

We certainly agree that television docudramas can be irresponsibly fictional. Too often formula is chosen over fact, sensationalism over truth. There’s too little room for shadings of character and situation in the black-and-white world they present. This evening, as we write, the drama in Waco has come to its awful conclusion. We wonder about all those camped out in Texas who are madly punching in the end for their movies of the week, perhaps secretly thankful for such a dramatic Fade Out that obviates their need for pesky legal releases and frees them from factual restraints.

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That is not the case with our movie. As unbelievable as it may seem, our movie is “positively true” and that’s what makes it so successful. As producer, writer and director, we all took infinite care to present what actually happened. Every line of dialogue, every scene, every moment in the movie can be validated either through the public record or through interviews conducted separately or together by Jim Manos and Jane Anderson and documented by the court transcripts.

For example, the scenes in the pickup truck in which Holly Hunter as Wanda Holloway and Beau Bridges as Terry Harper discuss the ways in which the intended victims can be dispatched--with all of its absurd gruesomeness and frightening humor--is taken verbatim from the actual tape-recorded conversations offered as evidence in the trial. Television viewers heard exactly the same words as the trial jurors, including the remarkable and now infamous line, “The things you do for your kids.”

The painfully bizarre moments in which Marla Harper, played by Swoosie Kurtz, admits to her mysterious sightings of “wig fur,” as well as her propensity toward self-inflicted injury, are also factually true and well documented.

These are but two of the many unbelievable moments in the movie that are firmly based on fact and public record and are an important part of what makes our movie what it is.

And, yes, it is funny. Rosenberg seems to suggest that there are certain subjects that should be spared comedic examination. But we believe that from the time of the Greeks to “Marat/Sade” and “Sweeney Todd,” there is nothing like a little irreverence to beam a light on the darker corners of the human condition.

So if in the end our movie makes people ask, “What is appropriate to put on the television screen?,” then we are delighted. That was exactly our point.