At the Movies
Robert Durst has seen the movie that implicates him in three killings — and helikes it
Courtesy photo
Robert Durst, during his 2003 trial in Galveston
You wouldn't think that Robert Durst would have much love for All Good Things, a new movie that implicates him in three sensational killings.
But Durst, who splits his time between Houston, New York and Los Angeles, told the New York Times that he liked the movie, which opens Friday in New York.
"Parts made me cry," he said.
Houstonians know Durst as the man who hacked up a neighbor and threw the body parts in Galveston Bay. A jury determined he acted in self-defense and acquitted him in 2003.
About Ryan Gosling, who portrays him in the movie, Durst said, "Close. Not as good as the real thing."
He was more complimentary of Kirsten Dunst, whom he said was a dead ringer for his wife, Kathie, who mysteriously vanished in 1982. Police have questioned Durst but have never charged him in her disappearance.
And he pronounced Frank Langella, who plays his father — a wealthy New York developer responsible for the rejuvenation of Times Square — as "not bad" in the role, but he defended his father as never as "sharp and aggressive" as he was portrayed in the movie.
Durst was also suspected in the execution-style murder of a close friend in Los Angeles in 2000, but said, "I'm ready to go before God naked and say I don't know nothing" about her death.
Durst, 67, who received a $65 million settlement from his family, had no input into the making of the movie. Director Andrew Jarecki combined facts of Durst's life with fictionalized accounts of the murders. All of the main characters in the movie have fictitious names. According to the Times:
Mr. Jarecki, who has spoken of the pressures of life within his own strong-willed father, said he hoped the movie could explain how Mr. Durst unraveled, ending up in Texas in 2001 posing as Dorothy, a mute woman in a blonde wig, and capable of cutting up a body with a hacksaw."
While Durst disagreed with the movie's view that he was responsible for all three deaths, he said he expected to be portrayed much worse. "The movie, I did think, is as reasonably accurate as anything out there," he said, "a whole lot more accurate than those endless TV documentaries. And this doesn't pretend to be a documentary."
