In a Fix

I had really hoped that Anthony Pellicano's wiretapping, fraud and intimidation trial - now finally underway in Los Angeles, with the self-proclaimed "detective to the stars" conducting his own defence from a gen-pop cell at LA's Federal Correctional Institute (lights out at 10!) - might finally reveal all the semi-legal, subterranean shenanigans of countless Hollywood big-shots.

Ideally (for me at least), Pellicano, now in his 60s and likely to die in prison if convicted, will rat out all the rich and famous creeps for whom he has toiled for 20 years. Since his former clients include Disney boss Michael Ovitz, Paramount honcho Brad Grey, former MGM owner Kirk Kerkorian, and legendary entertainment lawyer Bert Fields, alongside stars such as Michael Jackson, Kevin Costner, Chris Rock, Steven Seagal, and even OJ Simpson (even though none of them necessarily knew about Pellicano's work for their lawyers), one can only hope that he comes to his senses and sings like a canary. We hacks need material, after all.

But the fact that Pellicano has chosen to represent himself suggests that the fantasies he has long nurtured about himself have yet to evaporate. Perhaps he really does believe in that goombah code of honor he is always heard citing, and will take his secrets to the grave. Pellicano spent a lot of time persuading clients of his underworld bona fides, his expertise in the field of illegal wiretapping (in which he was indeed a pioneer) and his predilection for hiring large thugs to wave guns at recalcitrant witnesses, reporters and ex-wives.

Close examination by investigative reporters has already revealed the rich, vivid fantasy life of the Pellican: he saw The Sopranos as a weekly church sermon. He named his autistic son after Luca Brasi - he who "sleeps with the fishes" in The Godfather - but despite being Sicilian, and from Chicago, his outright mafia connections seem a tad exaggerated. Of course, the kind of fantasies he peddled are particularly appealing to spoiled Hollywood types whose lives are as distant from reality as Pellicano's seems to have been, hence his roster of high-profile clients.

In reality, despite the weight of his incriminating inside knowledge, Pellicano is a pale shadow of the archetypal Hollywood fixers, clean-up men, ratfuckers and shakedown artists who preceded him, and after whom he seems partially to have styled himself. He is easily outranked by a figure like studio fixer Howard Strickland, who dealt with the aftermath of the death of the original Superman, George Reeve, in 1959, and who is rumored to have saved 30s star Wallace Beery's ass after he allegedly killed a man in a drunken bar fight. Pellicano doesn't even come close to Sidney Korshak, the late associate of studio heads Robert Evans (Paramount) and Lew Wasserman (MCA/Universal), who is said to have run interference between them and the mobsters controlling the Hollywood unions. Korshak died in bed without once having been arrested or indicted.

Pellicano was, it seems, incapable of such discretion. His nearest equivalent is the notorious 1950s LA "bedroom detective" Fred Otash, who, like the Pellican, was into state-of-the-art wiretapping gizmos, which he used to gain a competitive edge for his clients, and also to acquire saleable tidbits for such gutter-dwelling tabloids as Confidential (similarly, Pellicano is said to have bought potentially juicy material from tabloid reporters, then waved it at the celebrities under scrutiny, saying that only he could make such scandals go away - at a price). His roster of dirty cops and bent phone-company employees puts him more squarely in the company of such fictional bagmen as The Godfather's Tom Hagen and, more recently, Michael Clayton. His fantasy life was what added real color to his profile.

That said, if Pellicano wises up, disavows his bullshit omerta vow and flips state's evidence, we will have a mighty Hollywood cataclysm on our hands. And that is one show we would all gladly watch to the bitter end.