We have a special treat for your hangover today. It’s a journey of deceit, love, lust, homosexuality, murder, and the American judicial system. The Staircase is the 360 minute 2004 documentary of Michael Peterson’s murder trial. That’s right, six hours of bureaucracy and litigations to get you through the morning and well into the afternoon.

When I first heard of Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s all encompassing look at a Durham, NC murder trial I was all, “great, some sissy french asshole with an awesome name made a film about our court system so he can laugh at it with his fellow french butt pirates while they smoke cigarettes and wear funny hats.” But after climbing out of the ass-mold I had made after six hours of sitting on the couch, I realized you don’t have to be French to laugh at our judicial system, you just need a pulse.

Lestrade got unrestricted access to almost all aspects of Peterson’s defense team. Everything from the initial crime scene investigation to intimate dinners at Peterson’s home. The times at Peterson’s house are strange. There’s a bit too much laughing and horseplay between a guy who probably just murdered his wife and the morally bankrupt bunch of jokers who are defending him anyway. It almost seems like no one is even feigning the possibility of innocence. They talk about the logistics of proving obviously incriminating evidence irrelevant in the same way your drunken roommate with paint-cracking beer breath might deny drinking that sixer you left in the fridge. Your roommate being Michael Peterson and the empty beer bottles representing his wife’s bloody, mangled corpse lying at the bottom of the stairs.

The state’s case is pretty solid, and if you can get past the phonetical car crash that is the prosecuting attorney’s southern drawl, even intelligent. Lestrade rarely shows the late night meetings and inner workings of the prosecution however, which may help explain why they come across as professional and prepared where the defense is more like a colony of dim-witted orangutans.

Anyway here’s a rare insight into the trial of some asshole in Durham who beat his wife and threw her down the stairs.

Birdemic IFC

JONATHAN SMITH