Two deaths only the beginning

Today's LA Weekly cover story by Paul Cullum reconstructs what happened near Wilshire and Bundy in 2001 when screenwriter Eric Red plowed his Jeep Cherokee into a stopped Honda, careened into the bar of Q Billiards, then sliced open his own neck with a shard of glass. Two bystanders died in the carnage, but it's the aftermath that makes the story. Despite a civil suit and a million-dollar judgment, Cullum writes:

Red has continued to demand a jury trial, even as his fifth appeal was denied by the California Supreme Court last September 21. (He is currently appealing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.) Meanwhile, plaintiffs’ attorneys — among them, family members of the victims — have unsuccessfully lobbied the District Attorney’s Office to reopen the criminal case. With Michael Bay and Focus Features/Universal set to remake his mid-’80s horror opus, The Hitcher, and Red claiming legal malfeasance on the part of his own attorneys, he could walk away from any liability, criminal or civil, and make his long-imagined comeback.

It’s as if the whole thing never happened.

Also in the Weekly: Harold Meyerson on the passing of Frank Wilkinson, "L.A.'s most famous commie."