Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Spector’ on Showtime, A Limited Series Look At Producer Phil Spector’s Murder Of Actress Lana Clarkson

Spector (Showtime), a four-episode limited series doc from directors Sheena M. Joyce and Don Argott, revisits the sordid story of Phil Spector, the producer of iconic rock hits like the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” and the Beatles’ Let it Be who in 2009 was convicted for the 2003 murder of actress Lana Clarkson. This is a true crime situation through and through, delving into the backgrounds of both killer and the killed, and considering questions of what made Spector do it; his daughter Nicole is interviewed, along with journalist Mick Brown, LAPD homicide detectives, and friends and family of both Spector and Clarkson.

SPECTOR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: February 3, 2003, Alhambra, CA, and an aerial drone shot of a lavish mansion known as the Pyrenees Castle. “My name is Adriano, I’m Phil Spector’s driver – I think my boss killed somebody.” 

The Gist: The 911 operator asks the caller to repeat that, asks him why he thinks there has been a murder. “Because he has a lady on the floor and a gun in his hand.” It’s a pretty strong indictment of Phil Spector’s involvement in the death of actress Lana Clarkson, who he had been seen with that evening at the Los Angeles House of Blues. But as Spector plays audio of the record producer’s encounter with responding officers, it’s already clear that nothing is set in  stone. “I’m sorry, there’s a dead woman here, I’m sorry this happened, the gun went off accidentally…”

This could be the beginning of a Dateline: Secrets Uncovered, or of an episode of 20/20. Difference is, Phil Spector was a groundbreaking record producer whose work defined the golden age of teenage rock and pop, elevated the career of Tina Turner, and in general established the concept of the producer and a recording studio as creative tools in and of themselves. If rock ‘n’ roll music is made by lonely people for the benefit of lonely people, journalist Mick Brown says, then Phil Spector was that person, and the studio room the incubator of his genius.

It was also where his worst traits as a person were acted on and enabled, controlling behaviors and erratic outbursts that came to define Spector as much as his accomplishments behind the mixing board. Spector delves into the producer’s past, his father’s suicide, and his combative relationship with his mother and sister; it also lends context to the life and career of Lana Clarkson, the woman whose murder he would eventually be convicted of in 2009. Questions of genius, celebrity, paranoia, sensationalism, and legacy are all in the mix as Spector spools out into four episodes.  

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The framing and presentation of Spector feels so similar to the stalwarts of TV true crime, right down to blurry archival footage, reenactments of Spector’s father’s suicide, and talking head interviews with authorities, family, friends, and collaborators. and that’s before footage appears of a much younger version of longtime Dateline correspondent Keith Morrison, who reports that Lana Clarkson was “hoping she’d be famous too, and now, ironically, was.” It’s another ugly instance of Clarkson’s slaying being presented by the media as something she somehow planned for attention, or as a career boost.  

Our Take: Remember Phil Spector, the 2003 HBO film written and directed by David Mamet? Following closely on the heels of his eventual conviction – it took two trials to finally put him away – the movie featured Al Pacino as Spector and Helen Mirren as Linda Kenney Baden, his defense attorney, and was criticized for being disingenuous and loose with the facts. So perhaps Spector is a reaction to that film’s legacy in the media space, an attempt to present the facts of Spector’s case free of the spectacle of Pacino in a wig and tanning booth sheen. But to do that, it has to grapple with a dicey central question, which is how to align Spector’s accomplishments as a groundbreaking music producer with the reality that he became a convicted murderer. But it also seems intent on rehabilitating the character of Lana Clarkson, the woman he shot and killed, whose reputation was sullied by Spector’s legal defense and suffered relentlessly in the media, which never tired of limiting her to the dismissive descriptive “B-movie actress.” 

Nicole Spector, the producer’s daughter, and journalist Mick Brown, who interviewed Spector extensively in the weeks before the incident, are both featured prominently here. But they’re also listed as “consultants” in the credits, which suggests that they’re the ones who wish to set the record straight. The lengthly look at Phil Spector’s upbringing and his eventual immersion in the record industry and music production that consumes most of episode one connects his father’s 1949 suicide not only to the themes of teenage heartbreak that permeated his music productions, but also to his erratic behavior, especially with women. But did that make Phil Spector a frustrated genius, since he became a Hall of Fame record producer? Or is this just the same sad tale of a killer and a victim on a collision course that exists at the heart of so much of the true crime genre? At times, Spector doesn’t seem to know how to align the man’s competing legacies. But it does its best to portray a fuller picture of the woman who paid the ultimate price for his behavior.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: As “To Know Him Was To Love Him” closes, its circles back to its beginning, with grainy archival news footage of the Spector mansion surrounded by police lines, still photos of the crime scene, and more context from the perspective of the LAPD homicide detectives who worked the case. And there’s another surfacing of the description that would cling to Lana Clarkson in the breathless scrum of media coverage surrounding her murder, and go on to inform the tone of Phil Spector’s legal defense. “Beautiful B-movie actress.”

Sleeper Star: There’s a fascinating subtext to the interviews in Spector with singers Darlene Love and The Crystals’ La La Brooks, who each speak to the mood and tone of 1950s and 60s recording sessions with not only Phil Spector but the larger music industry itself, where they were compelled to look out for themselves as women, as artists, and as professionals in a toxic climate of disrespect and casual disposal.   

Most Pilot-y Line: We might transpose the views of an uncredited 1950s reporter disparaging the new pop sound that Spector was largely the creator of onto local news of today trying to categorize viral TikTok hits. “Never in the history of popular music has the recording industry been so completely in the grip of America’s teenagers. This new type of music has been described as the teen feel, and the dumb sound. These new songs are usually about broken romances and unfulfilled love. The lyrics are simple-minded and repetitive. The sound is loud, weird, and driving as possible. The singers are young and often inexperienced. The new generation has turned Tin Pan Alley into ‘Teen Pan Alley.’” 

Our Call: STREAM IT, certainly from the perspective of true crime heads. That’s the genre where Spector truly wishes to exist, the genre its structure emulates; trouble is, that creates friction with how to reconcile Phil Spector’s life and accomplishments before Lana Clarkson’s death by his hand.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges