Amanda Knox on what happened with her mental health after it was all over
Spoiler alert: it's never over
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Convicted, overturned, re-convicted, acquittal. Then what?
Amanda Knox is my guest on the show this week.
Related: I often bring up the ending of the movie Captain Phillips when I’m talking about trauma. In that movie, the titular protagonist is in charge of a large ship that gets hijacked. When the situation is finally resolved, the ending isn’t a big smile and high-five and roll credits. It’s a very painful sort of decompression.
I remember the rest of the film, kinda, mostly the amazing performance by Barkhad Abdi and the actor’s own story. But the ending always stays with me because it’s a short glimpse into what happens after trauma.
When I noticed that Amanda Knox was following me on Twitter, I was surprised. Maybe shouldn’t have been because she’s from West Seattle, where I lived for many years. One of her friends from high school was the babysitter for my kids when we lived there. But I invited her to be on the show because I knew exactly what I wanted to talk to her about.
It wasn’t about her life in Italy before her roommate, Meredith Kercher, was killed and it wasn’t even about the trials, the wrongful convictions, or the time in jail. Wasn’t even about the exoneration. It was what happened after that. It was about what she did to heal from that experience.
I don’t mean how she was able to become all better and solve everything. I’ve been around the block, that’s not how it works. I’m talking about healing in the ongoing sense. How did Amanda Knox go about finding steps to take to get her mental health to a better place? Having been through all that she went through and still in her twenties, how did she move forward?
Amanda has been interviewed a lot of places but I don’t think she’s done a lot of interviews that really drilled down into that side of it. In this episode, she tells me about some very very bad therapy she went to and some better therapy. She talks about her newborn daughter and the issue of how to explain what happened to her. How going to an Italian film was more of a trigger than she expected. And she talks about how the idea of her ordeal being over isn’t really the point.
And then there’s Matt Damon
We also talk about the movie Stillwater, which came out last year.
The new movie Stillwater stars Matt Damon as an American father trying to exonerate his daughter, who’s been charged in Europe with the murder of another young woman. Director and co-writer Tom McCarthy told Vanity Fair his film was directly inspired by the story of Amanda Knox, an American college student imprisoned for eight years in Italy over a murder of which she was ultimately exonerated.
But Knox had no role in making the film. Instead, she says she found out about the movie the way a lot of people did: When the trailer came out.
Obviously there’s no legal way to prevent someone from making a movie based on news events and it’s done all the time. But I do think if you’re going to make a fictionalized version of a particular person’s traumatic events, the classy thing to do is to give that person a call. Not as a matter of licensing or clearances but just to not be a jerk.
Beyond that, the filmmaker talked openly about Amanda’s story being the inspiration for his movie but then takes liberties. The daughter in the movie turns out to have some involvement in the death of the roommate, with whom she was romantically involved, none of which was true in Amanda’s case.
Says Amanda in an article in Vox:
It’s the same sort of story that I encounter in the real world where people go, you know what, there’s just something about her. I bet she’s guilty, kind of, sort of, somehow. I bet she knows something. She was somehow involved. Even if she didn’t plunge the knife, even if she’s technically innocent, she’s probably in some way responsible somehow for this crime. And that’s what is presented in the film.
Tony Dow on art, depression, Beaver
Nice feature on CBS about Tony Dow, who played Wally on Leave It to Beaver.
Axelrod asked, "You didn't think Wally was gonna define you?"
"No, I didn't," Dow replied. "But it did. And I was gonna have to live with it for the rest of my life. I thought: This isn't fair. You know? I mean, I'd like to do some other stuff. I'd like to do some interesting stuff. You know, it's sad to be famous at 12 years old or something, and then you grow up and become a real person, and nothing's happening for you."
The sadness turned to anger, setting Dow up for a struggle that would mark the rest of his life.
"Anger, if it's untreated, anger turns to depression," he said. "But depression isn't something you can say 'Cheer up!' about. You know, it's a very powerful thing. And it's had a lot of effect on my life."
Of note: these videos were kind of hinky on playback for me. Maybe they’ll work better for you.
I wrote a thing that blowed up
I’ve been writing for McSweeney’s for over 20 years. Off and on. Mostly off. But this is, many skillions of times over, the most popular thing I’ve written for them. It came out Friday.
WHAT YOUR FAVORITE SAD DAD BAND SAYS ABOUT YOU
The National
You should have moved to Brooklyn when you had the chance. You never had the chance. At what point does the artisanal whiskey interest become just alcoholism with a higher word count? You used to think you were once great at soccer, but now you’re not so sure you were ever good at soccer. This is causing a very low-level existential crisis that will vanish in three years.
I’ve now received a lot of complaints that this is somehow offensive to… the bearded?… I can’t remember. But there’s a certain level of ubiquity that always always always leads to complaint.
The Real Martin Luther King Jr
via Kottke via The Guardian
One does not have to reach back into the historical archives to explain why King was so despised. The sentiments that made him a villain are still prevalent in America today. When he was alive, King was a walking, talking example of everything this country despises about the quest for Black liberation. He railed against police brutality. He reminded the country of its racist past. He scolded the powers that be for income inequality and systemic racism. Not only did he condemn the openly racist opponents of equality, he reminded the legions of whites who were willing to sit idly by while their fellow countrymen were oppressed that they were also oppressors. “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it,” King said. “He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”