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'Crazy Love' documents couples truly mad for each other |
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Written by Colin Covert, MCT
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Friday, 08 June 2007 |
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CRAZY LOVE
3 stars
Starring: Burt Pugach, Linda Pugach
Directed by: Dan Klores and Fisher Stevens
Rated PG-13 for language including sexual references, and mature thematic elements.
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Some stories are so weird they could only be true. Exhibit A is the story of Bronx-born shyster Burt Pugach and his obsessive desire to possess the lovely Linda Riss. "Crazy Love," the tragicomic talking-heads documentary of their bizarre courtship, is a wild ride through passion, deceit, rejection, revenge, psychosis, attempted suicide and reconciliation.
Mostly forgotten now, but eager to talk about their history, the oddball couple were tabloid fodder in 1959 when their affair became a sensational courtroom drama.
Burt, convicted of doing terrible things that you should learn about in the course of the film, served 16 years in prison. Veteran Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin remarks that, in all his decades of covering New York craziness, "Nobody was as visibly insane as Burt Pugach." The movie makes you wonder why he omitted Linda Riss.
In the 1950s Pugach was an ambulance-chasing lawyer who staged accidents to set up big insurance settlements. He did well enough by his 30s to buy a private plane and dabble in movie production. He was gaga for Riss, a 20-year-old beauty from a lower-class family, wooing her with rides in his convertible, nights at the Copa and drinks with his low-echelon celebrity friends. Her family pushed her toward the prosperous lawyer who, despite his crooked grin and orbiting eyes, looked like a good catch.
But when she discovered that he was not available (I'm tiptoeing past spoilers here, pardon the vagueness) she dumped him for Larry Schwartz, a poor but handsome boy with honorable intentions. Burt went ballistic, stalking Linda and launching a campaign of harassment that ended with a physical attack by three hired thugs.
Burt was swiftly arrested and convicted. Linda was so seriously disabled by the assault that Schwartz dropped her, but Burt sent her flurries of ranting love letters from the slammer (his spidery penmanship alone would set off burglar alarms). Linda, now "damaged goods" in her own words, weighed her options in mercenary terms and decided to give her attacker a second chance.
And that's not the half of it. Dan Klores' documentary follows their relationship through a roller coaster's worth of head-spinning switchbacks up to the present day. Their story is horrifying, darkly funny and inexpressibly weird, conclusive proof that some couples are truly made for each other.
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