How much true crime did Treat Williams have on his c.v.?

Treat Williams’s IMDb “top four” – that block at the top of an IMDb entry that tells you which properties folks search for the most – is, in a word, weird. Hair is there, but then the others are, like, mid-nineties action stuff; no Everwood, no Prince Of The City. 

So it’s hard to tell from that whether we might expect Williams to score high on the Best Evidence True-Crime Résumé Percentage…what legendary genre material we’ve all forgotten. I know he played DB Cooper, but who else did he play that the algorithm doesn’t think is worthy of note?

Before I dug into his c.v., I figured he’d have a respectable but not striking number; said c.v. is pretty long, but then, he’s had at least two name-figure roles that I knew off the top of my head. Where would that put the erstwhile Andy Brown?

Quick review of how BET-CRP numbers work, here…

• 1 point for each true-crime property, regardless of size/nature of role
• 2 points for playing a “name figure” in case
• 1 point if the role received awards attention (i.e., Emmy, Globes, or Oscar nods)
• 1 point if the property is considered a hall-of-famer
• all points divided by number of IMDb credits —> the Bet-Crap

Going in, we’re looking at 133 entries on Williams’s IMDb page; a handful of name properties I could remember without looking, like I said, but that’s still a lot of acreage, so I’m going with…18 percent.

Prince Of The City (1981). It’s Hair that made Williams a bold-type name, I would say, but it’s not until the 1980s that he gets on the BET-CRP board – and he does it with a splash in Prince Of The City, which we’ve already seen in Sidney Lumet’s BET-CRP. I still don’t think it’s quite a major case, anymore, but Williams is the lead, and the role did get him a Globes nomination. That’s good for 4 pts.

The Pursuit Of D.B. Cooper (1981). Two big point-getters in 1981! Williams plays “Meade” – i.e., Cooper – and in some circles this is considered a minor classic. I do own a vintage t-shirt advertising the film and I wear it all the time but I don’t believe that qualifies it for the genre’s HOF. 3 pts.

It’s tempting to neighborhood-play 1983 TV movie Dempsey thanks to Jack Dempsey’s IRL friendship with Watergate judge John Sirica, but I can’t justify it.

Once Upon A Time In America (1984) isn’t as easy to dismiss. It’s based on a book by “Harry Grey,” the pseudonym of Herschel Goldberg, called The Hoods. Goldberg, a small-time Russian gangster during Prohibition, wrote the semi-autobiographical book during a bid in Sing Sing. I know, I know, it’s corny to count a project for “vibes,” but in this case I think we gotta. That said, it’s only getting the 1 pt (it’s a hall-of-famer, according to some, but 1) not to me (I found it very slow) and 2) not in the genre).

What to do with Flashpoint (1984), a based-on-a-novel tale about border-patrol agents and a buried Jeep containing guns ‘n’ money? “Uh: nothing? Because it’s based on a novel?” Right…but apparently the original owner of the Jeep and its stash is the “real” killer of JFK? …No, you’re right, it shouldn’t count. Glad I discovered it and its extremely mid-’80s-coded trivia, though (HBO’s first theatrical release, which flopped! Score by Tangerine Dream!). 

Smooth Talk (1985). I can’t find a link-able version of my review of The Todd Killings, the early-’70s take on the “Pied Piper of Tucson” case. I do know that I mentioned Joyce Carol Oates’s short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” in that review, and the Williams-Laura Dern iteration of it that my girls’ school required us to watch in health class, Smooth Talk, both “inspired by” that case. That they would inflict this deeply unsettling account of how predators operate on young women who don’t know what they don’t know seemed weird to us 40 years ago; at this distance, it makes total sense, because it stuck with me all that time. 

Dern’s portrayal of a mid-teens girl who wrongly believes attracting men means she has any power is pitch-perfect – you can really see the child and the grown woman co-existing and fighting each other – and Williams’s implacable “A. Friend” is just right too. In any event, it’s a real case, and Williams plays a name figure, but while maybe it ought to be a hall-of-fame property, I can’t claim that for it. 3 pts.

J. Edgar Hoover (1987). Williams and the film got a couple of Cable ACE noms for this telefilm but I don’t think I’ll count those, although he picks up the other 3 pts.

Echoes In The Darkness (1987). Feels like this case keeps coming up in BET-CRPs? Maybe it’s time to track this down on YT and give it a look. Based on the book of the same name by the great Joseph Wambaugh (who did…not look great around this case, getting tangled up in a lawsuit), about a case that used to qualify as “major” but may not after a half century. Williams is not a “name figure” here and didn’t get awards notice. It’s just the 1 pt.

Max And Helen (1990). The source material is a “fact-based novel” by Simon Wiesenthal about a real couple reunited – perhaps not happily – during one of the Nazi Hunter’s 1960s investigations. I never know how to treat the Holocaust and other war-crimes stories, here or at Exhibit B. Books; it’s not that they’re not crime stories, it’s that the label is inadequate as to scale. Ditto the BET-CRP parameters here, but let’s work with what we have. Williams plays the titular Max Rosenberg; 3 pts.

Drug Wars: The Camarena Story  (1990). Also a true story; this miniseries has a cast so starry, Williams doesn’t even make the front page of its IMDb listing. It won an Emmy and Michael Mann produced it, and somehow I still never heard of it. 1 pt.

Final Verdict (1991). Me, right-clicking the title: “Don’t know why I’m bothering, this vague title will be a nothingburg– holy crap, Williams played Earl Rogers??” Rogers is one of those names that comes up over and over again in the genre; he was the inspiration for Perry Mason. …Oddly, this got CableACE notice as a children’s special? In any event, that’s 3 pts.

Till Death Us Do Part (1992). Me, right-clicking this title: “I know this one’s true crime thanks to the word order, so: holy crap, did Williams play Vincent Bugliosi??” He did not, and this isn’t a well-known narrative in the genre or for V. Bugs, but Williams does play a name figure in the case for 3 pts.

Deadly Matrimony (1992). Lather, right-click, repeat my comments from Final Verdict – but this too is a real case and Williams plays the scumbag in chief. One of Brian Dennehy’s myriad genre credits from the era; Williams notches 3 pts.

Mulholland Falls (1996). I could award a point here – the midcentury LAPD unit in the film is based on a real gangster-squad outfit known as The Hat Squad – and if Williams played anything resembling a real guy, I would. He doesn’t, so I shan’t.

Escape: Human Cargo (1998). Williams plays John McDonald, a businessman kidnapped in Saudi Arabia and forced to engineer an escape. McDonald wrote a book about the experience that became this telefilm. 3 pts.

The Deep End Of The Ocean (1999) is evidently influenced by the Steven Stayner case, or it was in its original novel format; I don’t think that qualifies for points.

Guilty Hearts (2002). This is a true story, though it’s changed the names of the Rezas. Williams is still a “name” here, though certainly there aren’t awards points on offer (despite the property’s much-decorated cast, reviews were unkind). 3 pts.

The Staircase Murders (2007). “…Are you…kidding?” Nope! Don’t think I knew this even existed; none the happier for knowing it now! (Side note: this Entertainment Weekly piece from a few years back has some insight into the difficulty of casting a Michael Peterson, but I don’t think Harrison Ford would have worked either. The real Peterson is a bit scrawny; Williams, Firth, Ford, all too substantial physically IMO. (Side note to the side note: how many times do you think casting directors asked John C. McGinley to consider the role, and got turned down?) Hell of a choice for Williams for his second listed role after Everwood, eh what? 3 pts.

Howl (2010). Speaking of material I was fine with forgetting…it’s the Franco-starring Ginsberg-obscenity-trial flick, and I don’t know if that’s true crime, strictly speaking, but I’ll award the point. “Name figure,” I can’t get there (Williams’s Mark Schorer did exist but was a critic, not a cop; I just don’t see it). 1 pt.

Law & Order: SVU S13.E10 “Spiralling Down” (2011). Whether Treat Williams’s CTE-defense case is truly intended to parallel Lawrence Taylor’s for solicitation of a minor is not cut and dried, to me – but I do think the CTE situation in football at every level it’s played is a matter of criminal negligence and enterprise corruption. 1 pt.

Confirmation (2016). HBO’s dramatization of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings stars, among a dozen others, Williams as Ted Kennedy. It’s good for a point – Thomas is a crook; so was Kennedy, being real – but I don’t think Kennedy is a name figure in this case, if that makes sense. It did get awards notice, but not for Williams. 1 pt.

We Own This City (2022). I’ve meant to watch this one for ages; it’s from David Simon, about a real (and really corrupt) Baltimore task force, and Williams plays a composite Baltimore PD academy instructor. Not a hall-of-famer, no awards attention for Williams, but still good for 1 pt.

American Outlaws (2023). Not the Jesse James one; the one about the Dougherty sibs’ crime spree. Williams’s federal agent isn’t a real guy. 1 pt.

Feud (2024). …Sigh. It’s not really a crime story per se; Williams’s Bill Paley is a real guy, of course, but not a name in the Clutter case or the Woodward one (and he’s miscast to boot); but then I did cover it in this space and Williams did get a couple of nominations for it. If I’m going to give it any, I have to give it both, right? 2 pts.

That gives us 44 points, with a little give in either direction – maybe you want to count Dempsey or choose not to count Feud – but 44 divided by 133 leaves us at 33.1 percent, nearly twice as high as I’d predicted and a not-insignificant one third of Williams’s work. Of course, I’d forgotten all about various nineties TV movies, and actors of a certain age and longevity always have a dozen of those on their résumés from the pre-streaming era, but it’s still a little surprising…let me know if you agree in the comments!