Theresa Saldana was a Hollywood actress in the late-seventies, on the verge of major stardom having recently played a major role in Scorsese's "Raging Bull". The actress was stabbed in the chest and abdomen 26 times in the streets of L.A. by a crazy man. This is a made-for-television movie about the attack and its aftermath. Theresa plays herself, and I have the utmost admiration for this person I only know as a screen actress for the immeasurable amount of courage and skill it took to survive, to grow from, and to publicly relive this crisis in her life.
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Inserts25 November 2001
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I thought it was remarkable that Theresa Saldana was brave enough to portray herself in her own biopic, and relive the horrible ordeal she went through. She didn't have to "act". She was very real, and the near fatal attack on her was real. One of the reviewers to say that it's ironic that she starred in a role that she ordinarily wouldn't of gotten, is a very insensitive thing to say. This "role" as you called it, was a first person account of something horrid that happened to her and was almost killed as a result. Unless we can walk in her shoes, and experience what she experienced, I feel no one has the right to critique Theresa on her "perfomance". All her emotions were real; whether or not it was a re-enactment or not is irrevelant. Miss Saldana wasn't doing a re-enactment of someone else's life; she was re-enacting HER life and what she went through. She was right when she said that only another victim like herself can really understand what she went through. I'm an actress, and if I was to play a re-enactment of an attack of this kind, would I play the victim with the right conviction? I've thankfully never been in that kind of situation; and I would put as much realism into the role as I could. Theresa did live that ordeal; and I give her a lot of kudos for showing the public what she went through. This is not your typical movie where it calls for criticism of the acting or the role of the director. This woman was telling her OWN personal story, and I feel that she deserves a lot of respect. Thank you, Miss Saldana, for sharing your story and not turning into a typical Hollywood story. May you RIP.
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mailme999uk20005 December 2003victims for victims
horrified at this attack.
i only remember this movie vaguely but i am so glad that Theresa was able to set up a support group for victims of violence. i was horrified she almost died at the hands of this obsessed fan, and i am ashamed to be Scottish as he is also this nationality. she was just getting her confidence together when he stabbed her. i am so glad she survived. the man saved up his fare from welfare payments...did his family not take board money from him? he must have been pretty well off. i hope he never gets parole for she will live in fear. he is very very sick. -
petershelleyau20 October 2003One of the ironies of the attack on Theresa Saldana is that it gave her a starring role in a movie, in this made for TV biography, that she might otherwise may never have had.
Given the troubling genre of an actress playing herself (is this acting or being?), Saldana invests her "character" with admirable presence. Although director Karen Arthur never shows Theresa as conventionally attractive (she is often lit to resemble a vampire), her strange face looks different each time we see her, which adds more interest to the train wreck appeal of the situation. I could have done without the tiresome schematic of her wardrobe, where before the attack she is dressed in virginal colors, and on the day she wears a dark blue sailor suit, and her singing the song Prodigal Child is equally obvious. The whimpers Saldana makes after she is stabbed is almost parodied in the whimpers of a puppy she is given, however the silent acting she does in reaction to another hospitalised victim is most effective. She gets to be occasionally funny eg to her father "Your hair turned grey in two weeks and you tell me don't worry", but her climactic speech for her Victims for Victims support group lacks the control of a professional actress. One can defend this apparent amateurishness as being her personal reaction, whereby technique is abandoned, however it reads more as the limitations of her skill.
The treatment by Arthur Heinemann is weak in establishing the context of Saldana's career, which would helps balance the media attention she receives. She has a poster for Raging Bull in her house, and we are told she receives flowers and cards from directors and actors around the world when she is hospitalised, however before the attack we are shown that she still attends classes. The most intriguing character, the stabber Arthur Richard Jackson (Philip English) is only a cypher and a plot mechanism, and we get ludicrous touches like her husband being a counsellor who is distracted at work, who also chooses to fight Jackson at the crime scene, rather than go to the hospital with his wife. (Adrian Zmed's blah performance as Fred doesn't help). There are some cliches eg "It's not just the pain. It's what it's doing to her inside", a whorey idea of the nurse who hides her empathy behind bureaucratic control, but also a rationale explaination for Theresa's love of stuffed animals.
Although some of Arthur's setups are painfully bad, she does present the shocking indifference of people when Saldana is attacked in daylight (even given this occurs in Hollywood), an acceptable use of subjective camera, and the gothic horror of Theresa's injuries being photographed by the police, complete with her JonBenet kewpie hairstyle.