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Washing Hands of Long Soap

By Marvin Kitman | Staff Writer

3:50 PM EST, November 14, 2003

Hearts were aflutter in TV land. It was the big day, the last chapter (sigh) in the "Amy Loves Joey Story," the most touching and well-publicized generational gap romance since the Grover-Cleveland-dated-Frances-Folsom affair. The hour of truth and justice in the Nassau County Courthouse yesterday ended perhaps the longest mini-series in TV history in the nick of time. Joey Buttafuoco was into his 16th minute. The overtime clock was on in his Warholian fame count.

It's easy to say now it was overdone, good riddance to rubbish. But the coverage of the affair had kept our pulses racing at the thought of the two of them in locked embraces in the grease pits. Thank goodness, others would say about the media's obsession with the case last year. Look at how dull this fall's season has been without Amy and Joey.

It was a story of passion described so acutely in the hit song lyric, "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore," from the soon-to-be-produced musical "Amy Get Your Gun." Or at least an educational lesson on how to pull the polyester over one's wife's eyes. Either way it was interactive TV without the new boxes of the 21st Century. Future scholars will decide why so many people tuned in, either in disgust or fascination, to the trials and tribulations of these extraordinarily ordinary tacky people in the tackiest case of the century.

It was a story made for TV - fueled by local and national news, TV movies and tabloid TV appearances.

Here was Mary Joey Buttafuoco, the most broad-minded woman of the year, who forgave her husband for eating pizza with young Amy Fisher, the little accident-prone vixen, staying at home for the final act of the drama, not standing by her man, as she had done on many TV appearances. It was said to have been because she couldn't stand the sight of Amy, although she was televised watching the courtroom proceedings at home on TV.

And here was her man, charged with 19 counts of pizza-eating and otherwise endangering the welfare of a child, at last facing Amy, who had come down from prison to make a statement, making those who doubted her story eat crow. It's not for nothing they call it the theater of court.

It was a shock to see Amy again. Drew Barrymore was so much more convincing playing the role. "She aged considerably," Chuck Scarborough, who had interviewed Amy after the first week in the slammer, explained on Ch. 4.

When she was in Joey's boots Dec. 1, she spoke extemporaneously. This time it was a written statement - and the mike was not working, a commentary on the super-information highways of the future.

"Very eloquent. She spoke from the heart," Eric Shawn of Ch. 5, doing the best stand-up by a nonlawyer outside the courtroom, explained, as he rolled his eyes at the speech, which all the experts agreed was written by her lawyer, Eric Naiburg.

The plea bargaining cheated many TV viewers of seeing what would have been a major legal soap opera of the year. They cut to the chase yesterday with the sentencing. Which was probably just as well.

Joey had already been tried once on TV, on the "Geraldo" show. The Constitution bars double jeopardy. If the case had gone to trial, it would have wrecked the legal system as we know it. Where would Joey have gotten a jury of his peers to judge without bias, uninfluenced by media coverage? Outer Mongolia? It may no longer be possible to hear cases fairly because of TV.

The TV coverage was remiss in not having two cameras trained on the star players to see their reactions on a split screen. Amy and Joey were the story, more than their attorneys, who should be applying for Actors Equity cards.

The best commentary of the morning was by legal expert Michael Sherman on Court TV, who said he was amazed at Joey's attorney, Dominic Barbara, who started trying Amy and Eric Naiburg again. " `Look, judge,' " Sherman explained Barbara should have been saying, " `My client is no angel . . .' " and then gone on to revel in his total remorse and abject sorriness for his acts.

All of which was compounded by not insisting his client speak for himself. What the judge wanted was to hear him personally say he is sorry. "Yo, judge, I'm a dumb jerk for the troubles I've caused my family and society . . ." As Sherman explained, "A sense of being contrite or faking it is what they look for at this moment."

So Sherman was not surprised the judge threw the book at Joey, actually a pamphlet. As Ch. 4's legal expert, attorney Barry Slotnick, noted, Joey could have gotten 70 years, had he been convicted at trial.

Slotnick also raised the question of why Joey did not speak up. What they all seemed to ignore is the possibility that something other than the cat had his tongue.

The mystery might be answered by the possibility that Joey speaking at his own trial may have jeopardized the Buttafuocos' deal for exclusive rights with "A Current Affair." Silence is golden in this age of electronic jurisprudence. The concept of "why speak out for nothing?" is yet another new twist in the law Blackstone and Coke never dreamed possible.

Would Joey be an accessory to a deal like that? Does Pinocchio have a big nose?

Is six months, the max that Joey got, punishment to fit the crime? No, a ban against appearances on Howard Stern would hurt Joey more. And while a tougher judge was at it, six months of community service fixing cars for free.