DAN Klores’ docudrama “Crazy Love” caused a bidding war at its Sundance premiere, just won Santa Barbara’s film festival grand prize and, me, I actually mix into its chemistry. The astonishing tale of this real-life, obsessive roller-coaster relationship between New Yorkers Burt and Linda Pugach made news decades back. Ten years ago I was on that story.
April ’97 I reported this Pugach person was doing some kind of a rhumba in Queens Supreme Court. As with today’s lady astronaut, who drove in diapers to do who-knows to the female rival for the affection of the male astronaut of her dreams, this was another demented love story.
This saga began when, as a jealous lawyer in ’59, Pugach actually hired three thugs to toss lye at a beautiful young woman. After willfully blinding Linda Riss for life, he did 14 years in Attica. The day he came out he proposed to her. And she accepted. OK?
In ’97 he cheated on her and allegedly threatened the newest girlfriend and ended up in court again. This time he stood before a judge and said such things as: “Except for that one incident in ’59, I’ve had an otherwise unblemished life.” Like the kid who ices his parents then begs for mercy “because I’m an orphan.”
His defense was that his jail term had been the result of a single incident. That what he did had really happened only once. Like, I just blinded one woman in my whole life, so why’s everybody mad at me? He never realized some folks go their whole lives without putting out another person’s eyes because it’s considered really rude.
And a judge was actually hearing him. And I was actually reporting it. And Linda herself was actually saying she loves him although he cheated on her and that she doesn’t want “anything bad to happen to him.” That’s although he’d allegedly threatened harm to his newest ex-girlfriend. As I wrote then, can it be at all even wildly, remotely possible that in some weird way-out way, somebody’s elevator is not going to the top floor?
And his verbatim statement to the judge? “I think I told the truth.” He thinks. He stinks.
First off, what did these women see in this 70ish guy who was about as wildly stunning as a dead azalea bush. In May 1997, I wrote he was in court with his fly open and that “even though it was a warm day, it was scarcely the proper way to get air.” And that jury members admitted they “didn’t quite know where to look.”
Anyway, years later this pair was seen walking in their Queens neighborhood hand in hand. And today there’s a movie about them. Long back when Dan Klores first told me at lunch that he was doing this film, I realized such could only happen in this country, which has now added a Fifth Freedom: Freedom to be a Freako.
“Crazy Love” comes out this spring.
THE Madame Alexander Doll Co. is doing a Desperate Housewives collec tion with clothes as fashionable as those real live dolls on Wisteria Lane . . . Director Deepa Mehta, Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Film “Water,” is onto Focus Features’ “The Julia Project.” Set in the ’50s, it’s about decorator Julia, who marries architect Kyu in N.Y.C., finds he’s Korea’s last crown prince, then also finds she wants a divorce. It will shoot here and in Seoul . . . Robbie Williams’ gift to Elton John’s March 25 birthday party will be to sing “You Can Leave Your Hat On” accompanied by a striptease. Hey, beats a tie . . . Isaac Mizrahi, once again designing clothes and being in top stores, says: “It’s time I got back to what I do best.” About his recent accident and showing his collection while in a wheelchair: “The fashion show really helped take my mind off the physical problems.”
FRANKIE Laine, who left us this week, hadn’t worked in forever. Figures when you hit age 93 you slack up a little. In 1989 he teamed with three other singers of yesteryear – Billy Eckstine, Tony Martin, Don Cornell – and they hit the road together. Between them there was 50 gold records. June 1998 he did his first album in 100 years, “Wheels of a Dream,” and he left his San Diego home to come east and hustle it. Frankie Laine was a very nice man.
SO these three ladies do car service. The brunette executive in back sud denly asks the one in front with the driver, “So do you tweeze?” The conversation then bats back and forth: “No, I bleach . . . well, don’t wax because those hairs grow back thick . . . ” and degenerates into the best kind of creams and depilatories. The driver then puts in: “It doesn’t pay to use expensive stuff on your face because in the end nothing really helps. My mother says you just look the way you look.”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.