It seems Belzer, in his own right, has accrued a respectable, dedicated following of conspiracy theorists. Still, I found myself not wanting to take this seriously, waiting for the punchline to fly out of Belzer’s mouth, conditioned to expect wry one-liners from the slight, brazen actor. “This is a publicity stunt right?” I thought at least once. Law & Order: SVU has after all, in my mind, been suffering immensely in recent years.

Jokes aside, I was surprised to find Belzer was completely serious about the whole thing. Belzer loves — lives even — a “good” conspiracy. This would come as no surprise to someone familiar with his literary repertoire — his first book UFOs, JFK, and Elvis: Conspiracies You Don’t Have to Be Crazy to Believe was published 12 years ago.    

Crowd members were there to hear him read from his latest novel, however, Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country’s Most Controversial Cover-Ups. Actually, what this crowd really wanted was to be heard as they spouted off their own favorite — or most contentious — conspiracy theories. People are inclined to trust “good-cop” Belzer and want to open up to him, evidenced by bookstore personnel literally dragging audience members away after they had their books signed. 

“But what about….” they would trail off, shooed away by employees.

“Tell us you’re running for president!” shouted one audience member.

At one point, Belzer put the whole event on pause to help a crying child locate its mother elsewhere in the store. “Let’s put a bullet in that parent’s head,” he said, returning to the crowd, to offset the nurturing gesture.

It’s way more fun to see a seasoned actor and stand-up comic read from his book than your average author, who isn’t sure how to publicly appeal to his audience. Belzer knew what the people wanted, and , a renaissance man, he delivered. He only read from the book’s introductory “warning,” before opening up the forum.

Only one brief mention of Belzer’s Law & Order career was made (“Is it a conspiracy you and Ice-T don’t get more screen time?”), which he laughed off with grace, preferring to get back to the subject at hand. (In case you were wondering, real-life Belzer is essentially Detective Munch, but with the limelight he’s always craved.)

“Is there one big grand conspiracy in the world?” said Belzer, of a question he’s often asked. “I don’t think there is. Sometimes dark forces have a common interest and come together to do a big thing. Every once in awhile the bad guys have to take care of a thing.”

It seems Belzer feels he has a unique duty to expose the conspiracies he does. “I wish I could be writing joke books,” he said. “But I believe everything is a conspiracy until you prove it’s not a conspiracy. People are ready for no BS anymore.”

“Thank you for exposing these conspiracies,” one elderly audience member responded.

Richard Belzer is currently writing three more books about conspiracies, “not to brag,” he says.

By Alissa Fleck 

By Mark Peikert

In an early scene in My Week with Marilyn, a film adaptation of Colin Clark’s account of working on the set of 1957’s The Prince and the Showgirl, starring Sir Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, Olivier’s wife, Vivien Leigh, watches hungrily as the young and beautiful Monroe captivates her husband. Reassured by Clark that she’s still beautiful, Leigh turns to him. “Dear boy, I’m 43,” she says wearily. “No one will love me for very much longer.”

Leigh, despite her own riveting story of international success and madness, is not the subject of My Week with Marilyn, however. The vastly over-exposed Monroe is, and so instead of an insightful, melancholy examination of aging screen beauties, we’re treated to another look at Monroe’s little girl lost, popping pills, sloshing booze and being, in general, simply irresistible.

The problems with My Week with Marilyn start almost immediately, when a title card informs us that this is the true story of third assistant director Clark and Monroe—and is immediately followed by Clark sitting in a movie theater, watching a film of Monroe in concert that has never existed. So much for their true story (though Michelle Williams, who did her own singing, is remarkable in the musical numbers that open and close the film).

The making of The Prince and the Showgirl was a notoriously difficult affair, and some of that on-set drama makes it into My Week with Marilyn. Monroe, terrified by Olivier, is typically tardy and unprepared. Olivier (played here by Kenneth Branagh) is desperate to prove himself as a screen actor. Their clashes over Monroe’s dependence on acting coach Paula Strasberg are dishy and fun; less arresting are the scenes between Clark and Monroe as they frolic in the English countryside and he rushes to her side at every new crisis.

The secret weapon of the film is, of course, Williams as Monroe. Breathy, vulnerable and totally in command, Williams is a nuanced delight. Eddie Redmayne does yeoman’s work as Clark, but these two accomplished actors can’t disguise the fact that they’re in another coming-of-age story, this time with a celebrity twist: the older woman teaching the innocent young buck is the world’s most famous sex symbol!

Director Simon Curtis elicits from his supporting cast—a who’s who of British acting royalty—sharp performances that make their eventual disappearance halfway through all the more disappointing. Particularly enjoyable is Dame Judi Dench’s turn as Dame Sybil Thorndike, an unlikely ally of Monroe’s against the bullying from a frustrated Olivier. As Leigh, however, Julia Ormond (who makes the most of her few scenes) has been made up with so many thin wrinkles that her beauty is almost vanished—all the better to contrast Williams’ alabaster skin and curves.

As is usually the case with movies about female celebrities, Williams’ performance is ultimately better than the rote film, which tells us nothing new about Monroe, the art and tedium of making movies or what it means to be a sex symbol who is desperate for love.

Michelle Williams as the oft-portrayed Marilyn Monroe in Simon Curtis’ My Week with Marilyn, which will be released Nov. 23. Photo courtesy of The Weinstein Company