TALHOTBLOND (2009 documentary)

[agate]

I wonder if this movie was made with a view toward shortening the amount of time being served by one of the people in it, for it certainly seemed heavily weighted on one side–his.

Thomas Montgomery himself, who has been serving a 20-year prison sentence, has a fairly large role in this documentary. As a bored married man in his mid-40s, he frequented Internet chat rooms and passed himself off as an 18-year-old Marine, tall and muscular, in his budding Internet friendship with one Jessi (“talhotblond”), an 18-year-old who posted quite a number of photos of her scantily clad self.

The two never met in person, but Brian Barrett, a young man Montgomery knew on his job, entered the picture, and a budding relationship between Brian and Jessi irritated Montgomery, who made at least one threat against Brian, at which Jessi expressed horror.

Montgomery shot and killed Brian cold-bloodedly, but his 20-year sentence will probably be reduced by several years.

It came out that Jessi was a real 18-year-old as pictured in the photos, but the real Jessi had no idea that she was being impersonated–by her own mother, a woman in her 40s.

So both participants in this Internet romance were lying.

I wonder why so much of this movie is given over to showering blame on Jessi Shieler’s mother. People who are interviewed express the firm opinion that this woman ought to have been convicted of a crime and locked up. She pulled no trigger, she abetted no crime. Perhaps she should have reported Montgomery’s Internet threats against Brian Barrett to the authorities. Using her daughter’s identity on the Internet was exploitative and dishonest. But her behavior seems to me as far less harmful than Montgomery’s. The movie not only loses sight of this–it seems to want to deflect the viewer’s attention from Montgomery’s culpability and onto Jessi’s mother’s weirdness.

This movie serves very little purpose other than to provide some keyhole-peeping into the smarmy side of the lives of a couple of people. Being included in their fantasies is embarrassing. I wish this movie hadn’t been made.