Famed prosecutor and mystery novelist Marcia Clark along with award-winning author and forensic science advocate Jan Burke join the party to discuss a death by llama, and a special visit from "special correspondent" and travel expert, Tanya Lee Musgrave.
Eric Shaw Quinn: You are listening to The Dinner Party Show with Christopher Rice and Eric Shaw Quinn. The Dinner Party Show, where we ask the question, is soup really that amazing?
Christopher Rice: Laughing at ourselves with Christopher Rice and Eric Shaw Quinn on The Dinner Party Show.
Eric Shaw Quinn: And Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.
Christopher Rice: Marcia Clark is in the studio.
Eric Shaw Quinn: Yes.
Christopher Rice: Welcome, Marcia.
Marcia Clark: Hi, guys. Thank you so much for having me.
Eric Shaw Quinn: Tonight's guests are Jan and Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.
Christopher Rice: We got this button. Yeah. Marcia Clark.
[fanfare and applause play]
Marcia Clark: Oh yeah. Oh, the crowd. I love it. Yes. I'm waving to the crowd. I'm doing the Queen thing.
Christopher Rice: Are you? You look amazing.
Marcia Clark: The Queen thing. Why, thank you.
Christopher Rice: We haven't gotten video figured out yet, but we are filming tonight's show for our archive and we'll post clips, but I'll describe. You're in a beautiful silk shirt and a lovely leopard... Is that a leopard print?
Marcia Clark: It's ocelot.
Christopher Rice: It's ocelot.
Marcia Clark: Ocelot.
Christopher Rice: Okay.
Marcia Clark: Not real ocelot. I don't do real.
Christopher Rice: Yeah, of course.
Marcia Clark: Right. Of course. Of course.
Christopher Rice: You hear that, animal people? She's not wearing her real fur.
Marcia Clark: Yes. Don't throw stuff on me.
Christopher Rice: Don't start that. Yeah. Absolutely.
Eric Shaw Quinn: I'm sure we'll do something that will upset you, but this isn't it.
Christopher Rice: Yeah, absolutely. I'll just tell people how we met. We met at Patricia Cornwell's launch party for her last novel here in Los Angeles. You were the nicest person at the party and also the prettiest.
Marcia Clark: I thought you were both.
Christopher Rice: Oh, thank you.
Marcia Clark: I did. And I was like so jazzed.
Eric Shaw Quinn: No, it's you. See how I'm the guest on the show?
Christopher Rice: I ran home and I told Eric... I went to the party and I was dying to meet Patricia because I'd been a huge fan of hers for years and years and years. We connected on Twitter and she had sent me some really nice emails and invited me to what was a very actually small, intimate party at Sunset Tower. I got to meet her, which was a thrill. But then I got to meet you, which was a real thrill because we worshiped you in our house. My mom just adored you. She thought you were such a strong, independent woman who stood up under an amazing amount of pressure.
Eric Shaw Quinn: Unbelievable.
Christopher Rice: She really really loved you. I got to run home and tell everybody that I had met Marcia Clark. I was like, yeah, yeah, Patricia Cornwell’s party was great. Blah, blah, blah. I met Marcia Clark!
Marcia Clark: It's a mutual admiration. I loved you. I love your mom.
Christopher Rice: Thank you.
Marcia Clark: I mean, I was like, oh my God, what a perfect connect. It really made the whole night for me. It was so much fun. So much fun.
Christopher Rice: It was a lot of fun.
Marcia Clark: And there you were. It's like, Chris Rice. Chris? Oh my God.
Christopher Rice: I was like Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.
Marcia Clark: It was wonderful. It was wonderful.
Eric Shaw Quinn: Totally, yeah. And then we started talking about, oh, got to get her to come on the show. Oh yeah. That would be great. Oh yeah, absolutely. We'll have her on the show.
Christopher Rice: Absolutely. Because you really were the most famous prosecutor in America as a result of that trial.
Eric Shaw Quinn: And one of America's leading experts on cyber bullying, too, I would think. Boy, did you take it on the chin.
Christopher Rice: I mean, really. Imagine if there had been social media when that trial had happened.
Marcia Clark: Thank God for small favors, right?
Christopher Rice: Yeah.
Marcia Clark: If there'd been Facebook and Twitter back then.
Eric Shaw Quinn: Oh my God. The LA Times was enough.
Marcia Clark: It was. But you know what? I've got to tell you guys, the LA Times hated the DA's office forever and ever. They were so happy to sock it to us whenever they had a chance anyway, and so in the course of that trial, boy, did they. It was ugly.
Christopher Rice: Really?
Marcia Clark: It was ugly. Yeah.
Eric Shaw Quinn: It was brutal.
Marcia Clark: It was.
Eric Shaw Quinn: And then every media in the world, and that means I'm going to go... This is my big Marcia Clark question that I've been dying to ask. Should there be cameras in the courtroom?
Marcia Clark: It's a really good question. It's such a good question.
Eric Shaw Quinn: I hate it. But it seems like if anybody is the person to ask that question, it's you. I think cameras changed that trial.
Marcia Clark: Absolutely. They change every trial. This is a is a knife’s edge question because on the one side I was very adamant about no cameras in the courtroom because lawyers strut for the cameras. Witnesses show up who really have nothing to say but who want time.
Christopher Rice: Absolutely.
Marcia Clark: Witnesses don't come forward because they don't want to be on camera. Jurors get all weird and twizzly. Judges misbehave as we've seen and get all crazy about their star turn. None of this serves justice. None of it.
Eric Shaw Quinn: And it's not anybody's business, but the people involved in the suit. I just think that we get the verdict and that's enough.
Marcia Clark: There's another side to it. When I got into this conversation with Fred Goldman on a radio show many years ago, I said, "I just think it's subverts justice. I think there's no good that comes of it." He said, "But if there hadn't been cameras in the courtroom no one would know what a travesty of justice this verdict is."
Eric Shaw Quinn: No.
Christopher Rice: Right. That's a very good point.
Marcia Clark: And that's true.
Christopher Rice: Yeah.
Eric Shaw Quinn: Yeah. There were no cameras at Simi Valley.
Marcia Clark: There were none. Not only that... We all knew that was a travesty anyway, though.
Eric Shaw Quinn: We didn't need cameras.
Marcia Clark: Because it was videotaped.
Eric Shaw Quinn: But just the same, we didn't see—
Marcia Clark: But what about Robert Blake? Robert Blake was acquitted of the murder of his wife, but nobody really is up in arms or all upset about it because they don't really know what the evidence was. But the evidence was so compelling. He went and tried to hire people to kill his wife all over Hollywood, all these stunt men. He knocks on the door, "Hi, would you kill my wife?" "No, I've got a bridge game. Sorry." "Would you kill my wife?" "No, I got to go do my sock drawer." Finally he goes, "Oh fuck it. I'll do it myself." You know what I mean? It was that clear. The evidence was that clear and they acquitted him. There's no hue and cry about it because there were no cameras.
Eric Shaw Quinn: What about this Casey Anthony? She's the latest.
Marcia Clark: Oh.
Eric Shaw Quinn: People literally competing. The part that bothers me is that it becomes entertainment.
Marcia Clark: Oh, yeah. Oh, big time.
Christopher Rice: Yeah, right.
Eric Shaw Quinn: That whole trial was about... I have no idea what the issues are in that particular trial. And it was televised.
Marcia Clark: Yes.
Eric Shaw Quinn: So it doesn't help.
Marcia Clark: Yes. Yes. Absolutely it did. It's the same thing. I do think that the cameras... Like we said, the cameras affect everything and it becomes entertainment. And then you have all the spinners. You have all the people out there.
Eric Shaw Quinn: Right. All the pundits and the Nancy Grace. Boy, if we want to do something about cyber bullying we can start with Nancy Grace.
Marcia Clark: Oh my God.
Christopher Rice: Honey. Tell you, honey.
Eric Shaw Quinn: Pounding people into the grave, that one.
Marcia Clark: Yeah.
Christopher Rice: We are live in the studio with Marcia Clark. We're going to come back and talk about her amazingly well-written mystery novel. She's got two out now. But first we have a word from another new sponsor.
[comedy sketch]
Christopher Rice: We're back in the studio with Marcia Clark. We will not be talking anymore about that trial. We'll be talking about your books. You have two novels in the Rachel Knight series out. They're available for sale on our store page.
Marcia Clark: Yay.
Christopher Rice: I read the first one and I really loved it. I genuinely loved it. Did you have to overcome this belief that it was this ghost-written celebrity thing? Not that there's anything against that, man who wrote two novels for Pamela Anderson.
Marcia Clark: No. Really?
Christopher Rice: Yeah. Eric Shaw Quinn was Pamela Anderson's ghostwriter.
Marcia Clark: Oh my God.
Eric Shaw Quinn: This is what the voice of Pamela Anderson naturally sounds like. Who thought? Who knew? Who suspected?
Marcia Clark: No wonder she sounds so brilliant.
Eric Shaw Quinn: I ended up being the number one chick lit author…
Marcia Clark: No kidding.
Eric Shaw Quinn: ...on Amazon in 2004, whenever I wrote that book. It was like, wow, I hadn't planned on that in my career. Yeah. Anyway.
Christopher Rice: Anyway.
Marcia Clark: I think that's great.
Eric Shaw Quinn: You did not have a ghostwriter. You actually got in there and got on the old Underwood and—
Marcia Clark: And did it and pounded it out.
Eric Shaw Quinn: Typed it out yourself.
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