{"id":93096,"date":"2024-10-06T22:36:45","date_gmt":"2024-10-07T05:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=93096"},"modified":"2024-10-06T22:36:45","modified_gmt":"2024-10-07T05:36:45","slug":"brothers-open-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2024\/10\/06\/brothers-open-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Brothers Open Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

I finally finished watching Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Men\u00e9ndez Story<\/em><\/strong>.  Not that it was a chore \u2013 I was simply savoring it.  I loves me some Men\u00e9ndez boys.  I\u2019ve always been more partial to Erik than to Lyle.  I felt the same way here.  In this version, Erik is far more, shall we say, \u201cfluid\u201d than Lyle \u2013 except in the shower, which is a whole other story.  In any Ryan Murphy <\/strong>oeuvre<\/em>, we have come to expect a certain amount of artistic license.  In this one, he doesn\u2019t disappoint.  Call me crazy, but I find it hard to believe that these boys were lounging alone in a hotel room wearing only colorful bikini briefs while ordering shrimp.  Something seemed \u2013 well, fishy.  There was also lots of sexual content.  We had Jos\u00e9<\/strong> touching the boys (and more), Kitty <\/strong>check out Lyle\u2019s junk, the boys soaping up each other (in a manly sort of way), and Erik teasing guys of color in the prison shower with his perfect ass.  The actor says the penis was a prosthetic.  But you can\u2019t fake that ass \u2013 as you\u2019ll see on BillyMasters.com<\/u><\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Let me say a bit about the casting.  As far as I was concerned, the star of the show was Ari Graynor<\/strong>, who played the unlikeable Leslie Abramson <\/strong>(and looked strikingly like Jennifer Grey <\/strong>two noses ago).  She was riveting.  Nathan Lane<\/strong> gave a wonderful performance without even the slightest resemblance to Dominick Dunne <\/strong>(but there was something vaguely reminiscent in his halting speech pattern).  I\u2019m no fan of Ms. Sevigny <\/strong>\u2013 so that was probably good casting.  Javier Bardem <\/strong>didn\u2019t grab me \u2013 which puts me ahead of his sons.  Lyle was perfectly played by Nicholas Alexander Chavez <\/strong>\u2013 who claims to have never heard of the family before he auditioned for the part.  And Erik was embodied eerily by Cooper Koch <\/strong>\u2013 who is openly gay, and looks like a young Matthew Ludwinski<\/strong>.  Koch had quite a tour de force with Episode Five, which was shot in a single take.  I\u2019d like to think he\u2019ll be remembered at Emmy <\/em>time \u2013 while I\u2019ll remember other aspects of his \u201cperformance\u201d frequently.<\/p>\n

\"colorbar1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The miniseries (which is what we\u2019d call it in the old days) has been met with both praise and criticism \u2013 starting with Erik Men\u00e9ndez himself, who called it \u201cdisheartening slander\u201d.  Ryan Murphy said, \u201cI think it\u2019s interesting that he\u2019s issued a statement without having seen the show.\u201d  The brothers can\u2019t be too pissed off at Netflix <\/em>\u2013 they participated in a documentary called The Men\u00e9ndez Brothers<\/em><\/strong> via extensive audio interviews.  Rosie O\u2019Donnell<\/strong>, who has gotten close to Lyle over the years (she\u2019s visited him and interviewed him on her podcast), advised him to never watch the show \u2013 but added that perhaps the attention would be helpful to their cause.  In recent years, their claims of sexual abuse have gained traction, particularly after last year\u2019s docuseries, Men\u00e9ndez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed<\/em><\/strong>.  Kim Kardashian <\/strong>visited with the brothers \u2013 which must have done wonders for their \u201cmorale\u201d.  She said: \u201cHad this crime been committed and trialed today, I believe the outcome would have been dramatically different.\u201d  Kim didn\u2019t visit the brothers alone \u2013 she brought Cooper Koch.  Cooper spoke to Erik before the show premiered and says, \u201cI got to have a really good conversation with him and tell him that I believe him and I did everything I could as an actor to advocate for him and portray him as authentically as possible.\u201d  During his visit, he says he got to embrace both brothers!  The LA District Attorney <\/em>is conducting a \u201creview of evidence\u201d in anticipation of a November 29th<\/sup> hearing for the brothers\u2019 petition for a new trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finally finished watching Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Men\u00e9ndez Story.  Not that it was a chore \u2013 I was simply savoring it.  I loves me some Men\u00e9ndez boys.  I\u2019ve always been more partial to Erik than to Lyle.  I felt the same way here.  In this version, Erik is far more, shall we say,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93097,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93096\/revisions\/93097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}