Biopic showdown Exceptional stories of real-life teens compete against each other tonight

They are real-life survivors whose perils captured the hearts and prayers of millions, not to mention the pixels and ink of the American media. Tonight, they become made-for-TV movie heroines as NBC's Saving Jessica Lynch goes head-to-head with CBS' The Elizabeth Smart Story.

Both real-life women-in-jeopardy stories occurred in the spring, and both biopics were fast-tracked by their networks so they would be ready for the November sweeps. In a bizarre but not unprecedented coincidence, both are airing from 8 to 10 tonight.

Each network blames the other for the scheduling conflict; neither would step forward and change its air date. Instead, both are risking their movies' maximum ratings potential by forcing viewers to make a choice -- the rescued soldier vs. the rescued kidnap victim.

"It's such a shame," said Patricia Clifford, executive producer of The Elizabeth Smart Story. "Both movies deserve to be seen by as many people as possible. But I think any time you make a movie you know is going to run in the November sweeps, you know you're going to have that problem. They cancel each other out, I suppose."

"In the old days you'd have 10 or 11 movies broadcast during sweeps," said Dan Paulson, executive producer of Saving Jessica Lynch. "Nowadays, there are just a few, and we're going head-to-head. But it's out of our control, and there's nothing we can do about it."

As the hour of this biopic showdown nears, one can't help but wonder whether this network game of chicken might backfire. Is it possible that we have read and heard so much about both stories that we couldn't care less about either?

In a season of ratings disappointments galore, CBS and NBC should fear the answer to that question. As a genre, biopics tend to be so rote, compressed, rushed, stilted and respectful that they seldom make compelling entertainment projects.

Yet Jessica Lynch and Elizabeth Smart appear to be exceptional examples. In one you have the exceedingly rare story of the rescue of an American prisoner of war, a pretty 19-year-old Army supply clerk from West Virginia who was ambushed with her unit during the early days of the Iraq war. The story is enhanced by the role played by a selfless Iraqi in the rescue.

The other is the million-to-one story of a pretty 14-year-old who was abducted from her own bedroom by a religious zealot, endured captivity in squalid conditions and, miraculously, was rescued nine months later and returned to her faith-abiding parents.

Highly dramatic stories with happy endings that capture the nation's attention do not happen often. When they do, they can be just what the ratings doctor ordered.

In May 1989, ABC scored huge ratings for a feel-good biopic that also happened to be about a girl named Jessica. It was The Jessica McClure Story, about the baby rescued after she fell down a well in Midland. That movie, which aired at a time when cable was not as powerful as it is today, was watched by about 50 million viewers.

A more recent example of biopic success is ABC's The Pennsylvania Miners' Story, about the dramatic rescue of nine trapped miners in Somerset, Pa. That movie, which aired a year ago, attracted 14 million viewers -- more than any other movie during that November sweeps.

With Saving Jessica Lynch and The Elizabeth Smart Story, NBC and CBS have two of the most remarkable stories of recent times. But have the filmmakers done remarkable jobs?

"Certainly the story was a heck of a lot better than (any other TV movie) I had seen before," said Dylan Baker, who plays Ed Smart, Elizabeth's father, in the CBS movie. (Lindsay Frost plays Ed's wife, Lois. Amber Marshall plays Elizabeth.)

"This is probably one of the best feel-good stories of the year," he said, "and is also a testament to the faith these people had that good things were going to come, that this little girl was going to come back again."

"We worked so hard on this film trying to make it as factual as possible," said Nicholas Guilak, a Houston-born, California-raised actor who portrays the heroic Mohammed al-Rehaief in Saving Jessica Lynch. "Every time something would come out in the news, we had to come back and update the script. We knew people would (try to) tear it apart."

The accuracy issue, for both films, will be of interest to sharp-eyed viewers who closely follow the news.

"We took great pains to be extremely accurate with this story," said Paulson (Passenger 57, A Cooler Climate). "Some of the characters might have been consolidated for dramatic purposes. For instance, there was a Fedayeen colonel that was a composite character. On the whole, we took this story from published accounts."

"I had a lot of contact with Ed and Lois (Smart)," said Clifford (Three Blind Mice, Brian Dennehy's Death of a Salesman). "I spoke to them two or three times a week when we were developing the movie. But not with Elizabeth. Lois would channel my questions and talk to Elizabeth, and I would get the answers back."

Neither movie reveals anything substantially new. If there are grim details yet to surface about Elizabeth Smart's nine months in captivity, they are not on view here. We see her tethered to a clothesline under the watchful eyes of her captors, Brian David Mitchell, aka Emmanuel (Tom Everett), and Wanda Barzee (Hollis McLaren). We get a sense of the mental torture Elizabeth endured. In one scene, she is doused with a pot of water by Barzee. Though her captors have been charged with sexual assault, that is not seen or alluded to here. The parents "were concerned how much of her personal story is told," Clifford said.

As for Saving Jessica Lynch, if you are aware of the role played by al-Rehaief in her rescue, you are not likely to be surprised by the movie. Paulson relies heavily on al-Rehaief's Because Each Life Is Precious (Harper Collins, $23.95), in which the Iraqi lawyer emerges as the story's main character and hero, leading a rescue team of U.S. servicemen to Lynch's hospital location.

Amid sandstorms, flying bullets, chaos and confusion. Lynch (Laura Regan) gets hurt when the Humvee she is in collides with another vehicle.

Al-Rehaief becomes aware of her because his wife and sister-in-law work at the hospital. He witnesses Lynch being slapped and is aware of her injuries. It is his choice to help with her rescue.

Paulson is comfortable with this story even though Lynch's own book has yet to be published. Press reports have said that Lynch has no memories of her ordeal, yet, according to Paul Bogaards, Knopf's senior vice president, "Her memory is intact, and her recall of events -- during the ambush and after -- informs the narrative. This is the book that will finally give us a first-person account of what happened."

On the other hand, Paulson does allow that there are composite characters and dramatizations in the movie, which he says is "about 90 percent accurate."

Both projects were filmed far from the location of actual events. In the Smart movie, Halifax, Nova Scotia, stands in for Salt Lake City, Utah. Most of the Lynch movie was shot in Texas, with Dallas standing in credibly for the dusty Iraqi city of Nasiriyah.

"We needed a location that would accommodate everything in the street," said Paulson. "We actually built Nasiriyah in Dallas. We also wanted the help of the military, certain equipment, and it was a lot easier to get it from (military) bases in Texas. We shot some in El Paso to get the scope that we couldn't get in Dallas."

In the end, The Elizabeth Smart Story is a dazzling demonstration of the power of prayer and religious faith. But it is also a story about faith gone maniacal and used to justify kidnapping, polygamy and virtual slavery -- dark areas only lightly brushed upon here.

Our heroes are Ed and Lois, who refused to give up hope. But the movie, I am sad to report, is just a notch or two above the cookie-cutter variety, a collection of scenes stitched together that does not entirely succeed at drawing us in.

Saving Jessica Lynch is a more engrossing film, a dynamic mixture of war, stealth, pretty girl, handsome hero and happy ending, played out in an exotic setting. As TV movies go, this is a cut above.

What a badly written news report. Here is my favorite quote that proves these Hollywood idiots are, well, idiots:

" "It's such a shame," said Patricia Clifford, executive producer of The Elizabeth Smart Story. "Both movies deserve to be seen by as many people as possible. But I think any time you make a movie you know is going to run in the November sweeps, you know you're going to have that problem. They cancel each other out, I suppose." "

I guess this overpaid executive producer has never heard of TiVo, VCR's and other recording devices. Or even reruns. Does anyone think these movies won't be shown again?

I taped the Lynch story and have yet to watch it. I did watch the Smart story and it was one of the most ridiculous pieces of crap I've ever seen.

If the parents had any control over the story, as reported, it's obvious they had some axes to grind. They SLAM the father of Polly Klaus as nothing but a media shill for Fox News. They SLAM John Walsh of "America's Most Wanted" as a self-promoting jerk. And they clearly SLAM the police, officials and even the FBI.

But as I watched what was meant by them to be a portrayal of the evils in the media, the papers, TV, personalities, the police, etc. and they tried to paint the Smart's as perfect.

Well, I think this family doesn't match up to their last name. I'll list the examples.

1) They claim the police were convinced the screen was cut from the inside. Now, I don't know too much about forensics (I don't watch CSI! lol) but I'm pretty sure it's easy to tell which way a knife cut into a screen from the direction of the initial cut.

They also seem to point out the father is a complete idiot since he was shown checking doors, locks, etc. but he missed the ONE window open on a cold night?

2) For people so supposedly distrustful of the media, they seemed to be horribly concerned about it's message to the point of hiring a PR firm that read them the tabloids. Now, if your child was missing would you really give a crap what "The Globe" was writing?

3) Almost instantly, the message was clear to slam the cops. They painted them as cruel and not caring. But right off the bat I thought the police were sensible. Did she have a boyfriend? Did she ever leave the house? Did she use the internet? The police have enough statictics to know a high percentage of "missing" children can be attributed to runaways, rebellousness, etc.

But then they went into the realm of unbelievable. For no reason, the cops were asking about the older son. Oh come on. They painted the police as determined to find a scapegoat and wanted to blame it on a sexually abusive dad or brother. I don't know about you, but while I've heard enough bad dad stories, the bad older brother isn't a common theme in sexual crimes.

4) The family itself, in my opinion, came off as stupid. First, let's look at their "search". The movie, using the 'based on a true story' rules of writing, showed Elizabeth and her captors camping out within voice distance from the searchers. In one scene they show Elizabeth standing there while you can hear searchers calling her name.

There are so many simple common sense problems with this it's amazing. First, how could no one that close couldn't see the smoke from the FIRE they had going or even smell it? Where were the dogs? If you are searching for someone in the woods you get someone with dogs. Every single person with sense knows that, it's been in movies for decades.

But they didn't have dogs. Second, did you see their search patterns? It was like a free for all with everyone walking in small areas clumped together about 5 feet apart. Did any of these Smart geniuses contemplate the idea of setting up search teams based on maps, quadrants, etc. with communications that could eliminate places as they covered them. You need to separate people by 25-30 feet in groups to cover assigned areas to go over as much ground as possible in a short period of time.

Why didn't they hire some private detectives? Or even woodsmen? Heck, call out the Boy Scouts. And what was the obsession with not letting their youngest daughter to at least talk to the police when offered? They ended up using her later to supposedly remember the man and get a sketch of him. Why did they wait over 6 months to do this?

5) And finally, the Smart parents obviously don't know how to raise tough kids. I know I'll get post about my insensitivity, but according to what I saw in the movie, Elizabeth was a moron.

Now, being male, I normally was thinking just hit the guy and run. Kick him in the groin. Run...run...RUN. But the movie tried to paint the idea that Elizabeth truly thought her family was in danger. So I asked my wife and she agreed that the kid did nothing she would have down at that age. Heck, she said, she ran a guy off at gunpoint once at 15 who was knocking on the door but wouldn't identify himself (turned out to be a meter reader that, for some reason, wouldn't answer but kept going back and forth between the front and back doors).

What kind of idiot is this 14 year old kid? What insulated world has she been brought up in? After a couple months of being held by these lowlife losers, didn't any form of cognitive reasoning enter her brain? Heck, she could master the playing of a harp but she couldn't reason that this man had no way of harming her family? Once she knew they were looking for her, did she think he had supermen hiding in the bushes to abuse her family? She could have screamed when she was shown hearing people call her name. At that point, did she still think her family was in danger? Maybe just her, but her family? Did she think there were no police maybe hanging around her house now? The same TV media portrays 14 year olds as sassy mouthed, independent, tough minded thinkers that rebel against their parents. Elizabeth came off as a protected butterfly with no concept of the real world.

Then she supposedly, finally, cuts herself free. Geez, she even had a knife. I don't know about you, but I would have used the knife to stab the crap out of the bad people, she had enough cable to move around!

Then she couldn't run worth crap. And all of a sudden, Emanuel became Rambo. Now, I've seen 14 year old boys and girls run. They can move pretty fast. She, in the movie, stopped too much and kept looking back. Again, her parents have been negligent in teaching her some real world common sense.

And then comes the INCREDIBLE opportunity to tell a police officer, in a store, to say YES!!! I'M HER...KILL THESE PEOPLE! But she did nothing. That's beyond stupid, it's even beyond the stupidity of a Democrat. The cop has a gun, he has a radio, he is there, there are only two of her captors, one is a weak woman.

One word, ONE F'ING WORD, and that cop would have protected her, pulled his gun, called for backup and cuffed the man. Any movement by the man or woman towards him and Elizabeth would have been met with force strong enough to take them down or they could have been shot.

Well, maybe it's just me. But if this is the extent of the education our young children are getting out there in even a good family, we are doomed.

This movie was a total piece of crap and if it in anyway portrayed reality, it's sad so many people can't recognize the threats and dangers in our society (and they whine about Iraq?) and can't prepare our children any longer to protect themselves and do what is necessary when presented the opportunity.

But afterall, these same people do nothing as our own society crumbles to the point we have to even endure this madness at all.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.