Capturing the Friedmans | Things Not Made Clear in the Movie

Things not made clear by the movie

Capturing the Friedmans implies that this so-described “performance on the courtroom steps” is the same day as the news footage from the courtroom on the day of my sentencing. It is not. The day I was laughing with my brothers outside the courthouse was the day my bail was remanded and I was taken into custody to jail.

That afternoon I was kept waiting for about three hours to find out if I was going to plead guilty to an 18 year sentence or a 30 year sentence. The families of the alleged victims had stormed the D.A.’s office when they learned that I was going to be pleading guilty, instead of a trial. Some parents were trying to insist that I be forced to stand trial because they expected the result would have been a longer prison sentence for me.

The teary-eyed scene before the judge was after six weeks in the Nassau County Jail in solitary confinement. It is standard procedure that there is a period of time between the two procedures. I did not go from laughing and joking to crying the way the film inappropriately portrays. The film makers realize now that this is a common misunderstanding for viewers, and have apologized for thinking it was clearly presented.

I think the back and forth between me and my attorney remains a question for people because it comes near the end of the film. I believe Panaro is rather accurate when he say how he always believed I was innocent. However, he is also clear about how in order for him me to accept a plea bargain agreement I would have to admit to him that I committed those crimes. He would not permit me to plead guilty so long as I told him privately that I was innocent. I think he rightly reports that when he told me I would have to admit in court that I committed those crimes that I responded to him, “Peter, I can admit it.”

My father loved to take home movies of the family while my brothers and I were growing up, but we are not "The Osbournes". There was never any sense that anyone outside the family would ever seen these films or videotapes. The press has repeatedly tired to characterize my family as constantly having the video camera on and "obsessively documenting" everything in our lives. However, there are eight VHS tapes, with about eleven hours of footage from the course of a year in 1988 "after the police showed up" (or as the press likes to say, "documenting the disintegration of the family.")

David had just recently bought a video camera. It was as large as a suitcase. Nothing like what we have today. Originally, it was a new toy for us to goof around with. Instead of having three minute reels of super-8 film which then had to be sent out for development, these were instant movies, and on a comparatively cheap format.

But then David began to create a record our father because we knew he more than likely going to prison, and additionally more than likely going to die there. We wanted something to show his grandkids, "This was your grandfather." Capturing the Friedmans opens with me and my father in our backyard. That is a clip from a "This Is Your Life" sort of interview we made with my father talking about his schooling, meeting my mother, his first jobs, and the like. There are two minutes of my father playing piano in the documentary, but David recorded over an hour of my father playing his favorite Broadway show tunes. This tape is a priceless gift to have today -- the ability to watch and listen to my father play piano!

As for recording family arguments: The decisions we were making (individually and collectively as a family) were going to have such immeasurable long-reaching effects on everything which followed in our lives, forever. I remember a keen sense of realizing that there would be no way to look back in a year, or five or ten or twenty-five years and consider how the decisions which were made in 1988 lead all of our lives to where they would eventually lead. There would be no way to look back and understand why we made the decision we made. And this turned out to be true. I would never to be able to answer any question about why I decided to plead guilty in 1988 if it had not been for David sitting me down, with the camera the night before I went to prison, and asking me, "Why?" Now I know what I was thinking then. Again, this is a priceless gift to have in terms of understand how the decisions I made in life lead me to where my life is today.

Regarding the story in the movie about Panaro, my attorney, visiting my father in prison I was not there, but I can say this: Panaro says that that my father asked to move to another table because there was another inmate visiting with his son nearby. According to Panaro, my father said that the child bouncing on his father's knee was making my father aroused.

There are few cardinal rules in prison. One of them is that if you are a known child molester in the prison, you better not get accused of glancing at another guy’s child in the visiting room or you are a dead man when you return to the cell block.

I think it is perfectly fair to say that my father said to Panaro that the child at the next table was making him uncomfortable and he wanted to move to another table to avoid any possible confrontation with other inmates.