Live! From Death Row (1992 TV Movie)

Joanna Cassidy: Alana Powers

Quotes 

• Alana Powers : Good evening, I'm Alana Powers, this is the electric chair. In exactly 4 hours, Lawrence Harwin Dvorak will be strapped into this instrument of death. A man especially hired for the job will pull this switch, and 2,000 volts of electricity will enter the body of Lawrence Harwin Dvorak; it will literally cook his brain, his muscles will contract in violent spams, some strong enough to break bone, it will most definitely kill him. In the ways of death, electrocution is one of the most unpleasant, but I suppose that's the point. There are 26 steps from this chair to this cell, 26 steps, not a long way to go, but in here the inmates call it the 26 step mile, if you have to walk it for the last time it must seem like a mile. And in this cell we have the enigma that is Lawrence Harwin Dvorak, adroit of wearing the mask of sanity and charm, he is also responsible for the bludgeoning, strangling and mutilation of at least 27 innocent women. What is he thinking about right now? Is he reexamining his past? Is he repentant? What does he have to say for himself? The questions will be asked tonight, live from death row, I'm Alana Powers, and I'll be right back.

• Joel : Don't you want to know why?

  Alana Powers : What if I said I didn't care.

  Joel : Well that would be consistent.

  Durbin : Come on you two.

  Alana Powers : Stay out of this, Roy, it's none of your business.

  Durbin : If it's about business, it's my business.

  Joel : Butt out, Durbin, it's personal. I remember our first shoot, babies born with drug addictions. You cried on camera.

  Alana Powers : Yeah, I cried a lot back then, it was unprofessional.

  Joel : But it was human.

  Durbin : It made you famous. A few tears these days would be appreciated.

  Alana Powers : Just how many times do you think somebody can do that? You have no idea what that cost me.

  Durbin : Got us ratings.

  Alana Powers : I'm not gonna open my veins every week and bleed for the sake of your ratings or mine. Do you understand?

  Durbin : If you can't cry, then fake it.

• Alana Powers : Hi Kenny, you mind if I call you Kenny?

  Kenny Nevins : Yeah, uh, you think my mom was watching?

  Alana Powers : She's concerned about you, I'm sure she's watching.

  Laurence Dvorak : Ask him how old he is.

  Alana Powers : How old are you?

  Kenny Nevins : I'm 26 last July, guess I won't make 27.

  Laurence Dvorak : Ask him how old he was when he got here.

  Alana Powers : You know, a good producer lets his people do their job, Mr. Dvorak, if you want to do the interview, you go right ahead, I'll watch.

  Laurence Dvorak : Oh sorry, I overstepped my bounds here didn't I? Yeah please, proceed Miss Powers.

  Alana Powers : Now you were convicted when you were 15 and tried as an adult, is that correct?

  Kenny Nevins : Yeah, because of what they said I did.

  Alana Powers : Tell us what happened.

  Kenny Nevins : Well, Pepper Michaels, he was a kid from my block, he's here too, only he's in lockup cuz he had a better lawyer than me. Pepper and me was high and stoned, you know, and we wanted some munchies, but we didn't have no money, and the fella behind the counter, he wouldn't give us no credit, you know, all I wanted was some munchies.

  Alana Powers : He wouldn't give you any credit so you killed him?

  Kenny Nevins : The fella got all chopped up, but I knew him. Ozzie. He kept this uh, meat cleaver right behind the meat counter. He got chopped up with his own cleaver.

  Alana Powers : And you did it?

  Kenny Nevins : Guess so.

  Alana Powers : And now you want to die.

  Kenny Nevins : [nods]  Yeah.

  Alana Powers : Why? Why, Kenny? You still have an appeal pending, don't you?

  Kenny Nevins : [sighs]  Suppose my appeal goes through, and look, I ain't never gonna see those streets again except as an old man. I mean my appeal goes through, yeah, yeah, I might get bumped off the row, life in the lockup. Life in the lockup, man, a guy like me, hey, I won't last 2 seconds in there, I'm fresh meat to those guys. You got a choice, man, 20 years in the lockup, or dead.

  [tears up] 

  Kenny Nevins : Which would you choose, ma'am? I'd rather be dead.

• Silsbee : I want to say it's cruel and unusual punishment to make the only damn window we got face Big Mama Payback.

  Alana Powers : I think you'll have to explain that for our audience, Mr. Silsbee.

  Silsbee : The chair. You know? I can't look out the only damn window I got without looking at that... thing. That ain't cruel and unusual, what is?

• Alana Powers : For the last two hours we've watched Lawrence Harwin Dvorak terrorize, manipulate and assault, in addition he's provoked two suicides. I think he is a coward and a fake.

  Laurence Dvorak : Careful now.

  [wielding gun] 

  Laurence Dvorak : I still have the power here.

  Alana Powers : Obviously. Now, Mr. Dvorak, do you want to live?

  Laurence Dvorak : Well I don't have the usual preoccupation with living that most people have.

  Alana Powers : Will you sit in this chair? Or is this all a bluff?

  Laurence Dvorak : Um, well I will sit in the chair when the time comes.

  Alana Powers : Meaning?

  Laurence Dvorak : After Reyes and Silsbee.

  Alana Powers : Those two hoodlums will never volunteer for death.

  Reyes : Me and Sils, we been thinking and uh, we're in a good position to negotiate right now. Governor's not gonna want anymore people popping off on TV.

  Laurence Dvorak : You want to live like this?

  Reyes : Well, at least it's living.

  Silsbee : Man can get used to anything.

  Alana Powers : You picked the wrong crew, Mr. Dvorak. Two low rent petty crooks. Reyes here, the poor put upon war veteran, who spent most of his Vietnam tour in the stockade for drug offenses, much like he had spent his earlier life. From the age of 12 he's been in and out of jail, always making excuses for himself: a broken home, lack of a job, no education, Vietnam is no more a legitimate reason for his criminal behavior than any other lie he's told, and the fact is he's a lazy, a-moral petty thief, who got too drunk to realize he'd hit a man too hard and too many times and killed him. And Silsbee, Mr. Silsbee, the poor victim of racial subjugation, one of those brave soldiers in the war against racial discrimination. Is this the man who when the paint on his new car got scratched, he went home, got a shotgun, and slaughtered the offending man, the man's wife, his two children? Blew away an entire family because the paint on his car got scratched, an entire *black* family. Are you the same man who shot and killed a black man, a black woman, and two black children? Now where does that fit into your racial war, Mr. Silsbee, where? You picked two losers, they'll never sit in that chair voluntarily.

  Laurence Dvorak : Oh they will.

  Alana Powers : And now it's time to return to the agreed upon theme of our show: you're the star of the hour, and the question is, Mr. Dvorak, will you sit in this chair? You want a grand exit? Sit in this chair and I'll give you a moment they'll be talking about forever.

  Laurence Dvorak : Who'll throw the switch?

  Alana Powers : I will.

  Laurence Dvorak : You'd do that for me?

  Alana Powers : You said so yourself, we'll both go down in history, I'll be the most famous woman on television.

• Alana Powers : Good evening, this is Alana Powers. Behind me are the forbidding walls of the Haviland State Penitentiary. Within those walls, a man waits to die. Death awaits us all but most of us don't know when. Lawrence Harwin Dvorak knows exactly when he's going to die. At 11 o' clock tonight in exactly four hours, Lawrence Harwin Dvorak will be strapped into the electric chair. Lawrence Harwin Dvorak: diabolical genius, master manipulator, conjurer, charmer, the man the FBI called the prolific killer in American history. In four hours he will go to his final judgment, but in just one hour, I will be in that cell with Lawrence Harwin Dvorak, and you will be there with me. Maybe we will get inside that bizarre mind, maybe we will find out why he committed those cold blooded torture slayings, crimes that sickened America. Questions will be asked, join us in one hour, the enigma that is Lawrence Harwin Dvorak, his last hours on Earth, your reporter, Alana Powers. Live! From Death Row.

• Laurence Dvorak : Do it, bitch.

  Alana Powers : No.

  Laurence Dvorak : You promised.

  Alana Powers : I *lied*. Never trust the media.

• Alana Powers : What are you doing with that psychopath?

  Lorraine : I want to die.

  Alana Powers : Why?

  Lorraine : Why not? I'm gonna die anyway, and I'm waiting, the waiting is driving me around the bend. They tell you you're gonna die, the jury tells you, the judge, the warden, but then you wait, is a part of the punishment the waiting? I've been here for three years.

  Alana Powers : But you filed the appeals.

  Lorraine : No I didn't, they filed them for me: the do-gooders, this way, I pick the time and I get it over with, finally, as I just deserve to die, it's justice, and I accept it, so let's do it.

  Alana Powers : I think our audience can understand the grief and pain you were going through when your husband left you...

  Lorraine : No they can't.

  Alana Powers : You helped your husband start a very successful plumbing business, you sacrificed, you loved him I'm sure, but to murder your own two children in front of him...

  Lorraine : He was gonna take them away from me. *My* little babies.

  Alana Powers : But women go through marital crises every day and they don't...

  Lorraine : Just let me die, please.

  Alana Powers : I'm trying to understand how you could kill your own children. I want the audience to try and see how a woman can do this.

  Laurence Dvorak : This is an interesting question here: now was Lorraine Viela sane when she killed her children?

  Lorraine : I wasn't crazy, I knew what I was doing.

  Laurence Dvorak : Well, even the societal taboos against murder, especially infanticide, and knowing the full consequences, how can anyone in their right mind commit murder? I mean you'd have to be crazy, and if you are crazy, according to this system of jurisprudence, you can't be found guilty, that's a paradox.

  Lorraine : I did it. I am not crazy, and I want to die.

• Laurence Dvorak : Well, looks like we have a hit. It'll rate higher than your biggest show. What was your biggest show? Satanic cheerleaders was it? That was a fine piece of journalistic work if I ever saw one.

  [points at the woman anchor] 

  Laurence Dvorak : You used to have her job, didn't you?

  Alana Powers : I worked with her in Baltimore for about a year, good at a desk, not so good in the field.

  Laurence Dvorak : Oh confess, you'd give your eye teeth if you could have her job and be in the real news again.

  Alana Powers : Adding TV critic to your resumé, Mr. Dvorak? I have my own news show.

  Laurence Dvorak : You used to cover the news, now, I mean uh, hookers vs. housewives, satanism in your own backyard, teenage sex surrogates, Alana! You don't represent the news, you just pimp for your audience.

  Alana Powers : Well Larry, how about letting me pimp for you? Let's do our interview, one on one, pimp and provocateur. Joel, turn us on! Come on, Mr. Dvorak.

• Alana Powers : Okay, Mr. Reyes, how many years have you been on death row?

  Reyes : Uh, three years.

  Alana Powers : And what was the crime that brought you in here?

  Reyes : I served my country. I was in Vietnam in '71-'72 with the Fourth Infantry. And my country, the United States government, they taught me how to kill, see? But then they never unteach me. See? They drop me in the hood and then never untaught me, so one time it's alright to kill anybody who gets in my way, in fact they even give you medals for it. But then I come home and uh, I don't get squat. You know? People they spit at me. I mean, I never killed no babies, right? I made 'em though. I made a lot of 'em. Those gook women, they really liked old Reyes. They liked him beaucoup.

  Alana Powers : [dryly]  Yeah I'm sure they did. But you still haven't explained to us why you're in here.