R26 Someone on another Menendez thread posted this 1994 article about the TV movie at R22 where the actor Travis Fine discusses playing Erik and what Erik's friends had to say about him.
[quote]Travis Fine portrays Erik Menendez in second made-for-TV movie about the infamous murders.
[quote]When the producers of the new CBS mini-series, ``Menendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills' hired Travis Fine to portray Erik, little did they know what a perfect choice they'd made.Sure, the 25-year-old actor who stars opposite Edward James Olmos, Beverly D'Angelo and Damian Chapa in this re-creation of the infamous Menendez murders and subsequent trials is a dead ringer for the real-life Erik. But Fine also brings some unique edges to his portrayal: The young actor lived a mere four blocks from the Menendez home while growing up in Beverly Hills, and he and his wife of one year, Jessica, both attended Beverly Hills High School, Erik Menendez' alma mater. (Fine graduated before Erik, Jessica at the same time.)
[quote]Following the double murder, when initially the assumption was that it had been a Mafia hit, Jessica even dated Erik Menendez for a while. And after graduating from high school, Jessica told Fine that if a film was ever made about the case, he would be ideal to play Erik.
[quote]However, even with this inside take on Erik's character and the case, Fine, who starred for three seasons on the Emmy Award-winning series ``The Young Riders,' and whose feature credits include ``Child's Play 3,' reports that ``getting a handle on Erik was the most difficult thing I've done so far.
[quote]``I'm playing Erik from the age of 16 to 22, present day,' he says, ``and I tried to piece together as accurate a portrait as I could by talking to everyone who knew him. Of course I talked to my wife, and I talked to friends he'd hang out with, and to people who saw how he reacted around his parents, because, like all of us, there are different sides to a person.'
[quote]Fine says he came away feeling that Erik ``was highly unusual in the way he showed his different sides. It was almost as if he had multiple personalities, because the descriptions I got from his friends were so far removed from the descriptions I got from his parents' friends. His friends told me he was wild and crazy and fun, while according to his parents' friends, he was very quiet and subdued and respectful of his father. So there was this huge discrepancy, which I found very interesting.' Like the rest of the country, Fine was riveted by the brothers' trial.
[quote]``It was a strange feeling to be playing a character and to also watch the real-life drama unfold at the same time,' he explains.
[quote]But according to Fine, art and real life collided noisily when defense lawyer Leslie Abramson ``went out of her way to attack our show as insensitive and inaccurate, which is ridiculous,' he notes.