More Treatment Than Trial, Alan Feuer, Your Agent Is Calling

The jury’s verdict is in! This means Alan Feuer can begin working on his book and/or filmscript.

First, note the obvious literary pretensions:

The verdict, coming 20 years after their first victim, Israel Greenwald, was gunned down in a parking garage and 13 months after both defendants, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, were arrested at the coat check of a Nevada restaurant, brought to a close a trial that stretched from the gangland prefectures of southern Brooklyn to the palm-lined subdivisions of Las Vegas.

. . .

The verdict was delivered after lunch. As the Federal District Court jury filed into the fourth-floor courtroom, Mr. Eppolito’s daughter Andrea fought back tears and clutched a rosary. Seventy times, one for each of the specific crimes in the indictment, June Lowe, courtroom deputy for Judge Jack B. Weinstein, asked the foreman, “Proved or not proved?” to which, 70 times, the answer came back, “Proved.”

The process of rendering the verdict, reading it aloud, then polling jurors one by one, took 18 minutes, 5 minutes longer than the best case the defense could mount on Mr. Eppolito’s behalf. The fleshy bags beneath his eyes seemed to deepen as the toll of “Proved, proved, proved” cut through the room. Mr. Caracappa sat back in his chair, shook his head ever so slightly and placed his left hand on his chin in a pensive gesture.

Don’t forget the clearly defined good vs. evil framework:

Moments later, at the same microphones, Roslynn R. Mauskopf, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, read from a statement accusing the detectives of perverting “the shield of good” and turning it into a “sword of evil.”

Plus, it’s obvious where Feuer will go with this with his discussion of the trial’s “drama,” “cast” and “characters”:

The trial itself was not immune to a certain level of absurdity. The case, with its “eight bodies,” occupied a three-week federal trial, with insult-laden arguments, subpoenaed book deals and a wildly extravagant cast. The characters ranged from an illiterate sixth-grade dropout who kept secret for nearly 20 years that he had buried Mr. Greenwald’s body at his business, to a Connecticut accountant who stole $5 million and then made amends to the government by secretly recording everyone from the defendants to exotic dancers at a strip club called the Crazy Horse Too.

Indeed, from the very moment when, freed on bail last summer, Mr. Eppolito strolled from the courthouse in a guayabera and diamond-patterned lounge pants, then lifted his hem to show reporters the monitoring anklet clamped to his leg, it was clear that the trial would be no ordinary drama.

Backstory: And When You’re Pitching This Script, Make It Clear That Brooklyn Itself Is A Character; “Nothing Has Hurt People More In This Country Than Wanting To Be In The Movies”.