Crazy Love

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source: Crazy Love

source: Crazy Love

Directors Dan Klores & Fisher Stevens present a real head-scratcher, a documentary focusing on what is likely the most curious love affair since Edward VIII & Wallace Simpson. In the late 1950s, nebbish ambulance chasing lawyer/film producer(!) Burt Pugach spots Linda Riss on a NYC street corner and becomes immediately obsessed with her. What transpires over the next fifteen years is mind boggling. What goes on after that time is surrealistic. To say anything more would spoil an unbelievable viewing experience. Suffice to say, if the film were fiction, it would most appropriately be directed by either David Lynch or even the great Federico Fellini. CRAZY LOVE is grotesque, cringe-inducing, funny, horrifying, and more...a real emotional roller-coaster. There are appearances by Jimmy Breslin, William Kuntsler, Mike Douglas, Joe Franklin, several friends of both Pugach and Riss as well as Pugach's first wife Francine.

This is a very, very bizarre documentary about a very, very sick couple. In addition to this film, the story of their relationship was also chronicled in the book "A Very Different Love Story". In the late 1950s, Burt Pugach was a shyster lawyer who was married with a kid. However, Linda Riss did not know he was married and dated Burt for some time. When she realized he was already married, she broke off the relationship. During this time, Burt harassed and threatened her repeatedly. On the day she was to marry another man, some guys threw acid in Linda's face and disfigured and blinded her. It turned out Burt had paid the man to do this. So far, the story is sad and a bit shocking--but that's NOT the end of the story. While in prison for 14 years, Burt harassed Linda by writing to her no matter how often she moved. Despite this, he was paroled--even though they knew he was harassing her. Now here's the punchline--when he was released, the two freaks married each other!!! So,...the guy has lye thrown in her face and goes to prison for it...and THEN she married the guy?!? Believe it or not, the story gets even weirder, as Burt was a horrible man. Years later, Burt began threatening another lady with blinding while still married to Linda--at which point Linda came to Burt's defense!!!! I know all this sounds pretty much like an episode of "The Jerry Springer Show" and it is very compelling--in a sick and twisted way! Okay, now that the outline of this sick story has been given, let's talk about Burt and Linda. Burt's easy to figure out--he's a sociopathic scum without a conscience and quick to portray himself as a victim! His behavior while he's in jail awaiting his trial and in prison and in recent years proves he's the lowest of the low--the very worst stereotype of the sleaziest lawyer. Plus throughout the whole documentary he seemed unrepentant and actually enjoyed the attention. However, Linda is the real enigma. She sounds normal and said how much she hated him for the attack....but how does this explain what she later did?!? It was absolutely surreal how she rose to his defense in the second case and proclaimed his innocence. A Hollywood movie couldn't have been any more dramatic and weird. The film is very well made--with excellent direction and composition. I have no complaints about how they made this film--my only complaints are about this crazy couple!!! But it sure makes for an excellent film that you just can't stop watching!! By the way, near the very end, I just couldn't believe Burt saying "I just can't believe what the courts have done with me"--gee what a putz! Also, this relationship would be described most likely as a "shared psychotic disorder" according to the DSM-IV--they're both very, very disturbed and feed on each other.

I fell for the hype and viewed nothing that I expected. I just didn't find it shocking or outrageous in content. In more or less a documentary style is the telling of a very weird romance. The married 32 year old Burt Pugach, a nerdy looking attorney of sorts and a jack of several trades puts his eyes on an attractive 20 year old sweet girl from the Bronx named Linda. It was love at first sight. Maybe a bit one sided in favor of Burt. Linda didn't stop the whirlwind romance that was a roller-coaster ride of pretense and obsession. Their marriage was a saga of violent and psychological abuse that headlined newspapers and magazines in the late 1950s. It was a complex coupling to say the least and director Dan Klores with the couple examine those turbulent times almost fifty years later. This film is an example of making craziness seem mundane.

The nice thing about this story is that it doesn't show what it pretends to--that with age comes wisdom. It shows that demented people are walking around us all the time and you can even be married to one so stay awake and never sleep while dating. Burt is a sociopath with psychopathic tendencies. Linda is a lovely girl who is stuck on herself. It's a union made in Hell. He is pretty much unrepentant after disfiguring her, but supposedly still in love with her (huh-Brooklynese)! She is frightened out of her mind but still able to be wooed by him (her ego demands satisfaction). He is a known *, she's a tease. It's inevitable that people like this are drawn to each other in life. The only remorse he shows is in getting old. He's upset that he has no cachet anymore, not that he frigged up a woman's life. Their faces reveal the delight at being able to 'tell their stories' after all these years and that anyone would care enough to watch. We have become the ultimate voyeurs. Most of the friends, family, witnesses are elderly boozed out/smoked out floozies and pimps. It could have cult status. It's a film that ought to have been made by John Waters. Watch it knowing that these people have lived and learned nothing. Watch it knowing that though you'll try, you probably will NEVER reach beyond your high school mentality. Who you are in h.s. is basically who you are the rest of your life regardless of career, style, money, etc. A thug is a thug is a thug. A cheerleader is a cheerleader is an old cheerleader.

The victim, Linda, who ends up married to the guy did not say in this documentary that she loved the man who paid someone to disfigure her and then years later married her. He disfigured her face, her beautiful eyes and ruined her life as much as possible without actually killing her. To me it is obvious he is a narcissist because he never really admits any GUILT over ANY of his BAD VERY BAD actions. Dating her when he was married, obviously he's about 8-9 years older than her. She never had sex with him, and it was 'hinted' but not stated outright that finally in her mid-30s after she'd been disfigured she was planning to lose her virginity, finally! to another guy, but when that guy saw her eyes not hidden behind dark glasses, he freaked. The one man she thought loved her (not Burt) broke off their engagement after she got out of the hospital after the acid attack. This woman was STRONG WILLED. To be blind to the point where she could only see light/dark and 'shapes' and yet walk to work, in a big city, without a seeing eye dog or even a white cane, shows her strength. But by the time Burt got out of jail, Linda had been single, and living alone, for years. She had no one, no money, barely surviving in a one-room 'apartment'. AND there's Burt, still relentlessly telling her he loves her, and asking for her forgiveness. So she has a love/hate relationship with him, what's new about that? She tells him 'if you love me send me money'... and although he was still in jail at the time, he was selling his lawyering services to the inmates and two weeks later she's got a certified check from him for $4,000.00... in early 1970-71. That was BIG money for that time. Enough time has passed that she has 'gotten over' what he did to her, as much as one could, and she no longer hates him. Hate is a strong emotion, and very draining, just like infatuation. (I think infatuation, not love, is the flip side of hate.) So he's out of jail, paid his 'debt to society' (as he said) and she wants some respite from her life of not-much. So she marries him. Odd, maybe, but not 'weird'. She doesn't love him, and he, purportedly, does love her (in his narcissistic way). I understand why she married him. Although he never stopped being a liar/cheat (he's a narcissist), he does seem to take care of her, and finally, that's better than living alone, struggling to survive financially with an overwe'ening sense of loneliness. Maybe his punishment is having to take care of the woman he supposedly loved and yet injured so seriously. Who knows. Life is short and difficult. So she took comfort from her enemy. Move along, people, nothing (new) to see here. Very well done documentary! I was surprised it kept my interest, but it did.

Now I thought the subject of this documentary was very interesting, but the overall documentary just wasn't all that interesting. Now how they screwed it up and made it quite boring, I don't know. It's funny that these two somehow ended up married even though he blinded her and went to jail for that crime, and makes you realize that often times love does indeed conquer all! I really wanted to like this, but it just wasn't very good. I'm not sure if it was the way it was presented or what it was that just didn't make it quite work. I would only recommend this documentary to those that love documentaries. Personally I don't think this is worth having a DVD release and would have been better off as a CourtTV special or something. It's simply not that good.

I haven't seen CRAZY LOVE nor am I particularly interested in doing so. I spent many decades in a prison cell in upstate New York where in one of those upstate prisons, Burt Pugach was an inmate. In prison, Burt was ignored by nearly all the inmates because he was antisocial even in that setting; rarely did I ever see him walking around the outdoor recreation yard. However, allow me to give you a personal glimpse into Burt Pugach, the inmate. In the late 1960's, in Queens County, a young, very attractive married mother of two children, was arrested for the kidnapping & murder of her two children whose bodies were never found. Much controversy surrounded this kidnapping/murder case, and there were numerous rumors about the woman having ties to a Mafia big shot named Grace. When the woman's first murder conviction was overturned on appeal, and she was readying for her second trial, Burt Pugach wrote a letter to the Queens County District Attorney, Thomas Mackel, advising that he "has information about (the woman's) case." Burt Pugach was taken to Mr. Mackel's Office in New York City, and shortly thereafter was returned to the upstate prison because as Mr. Mackel told the media, Burt Pugach's information is worthless. A few days later in the prison, Burt Pugach was returning to his cell carrying a stack of old New York Law Journals when an infamous jailhouse lawyer now deceased, Jerome 'Jerry the Jew' Rosenberg (who spent five decades in prison and died in prison in 2009) clubbed Burton Pugach with a steel pipe; Burt was taken to an outside hospital for treatment, and subsequently returned to the prison to serve out the remainder of his 10-20 years sentence. I was there, I never spoke to Burt Pugach, but saw him throughout the years he and I were in that particular upstate prison. kidblast3