The Real Dead Ringers

May 5, 2023 2:38 PM

The Strange Death of the Twin Gynecologists: A patient’s notes.
posted by OneGearIsEnough (6 comments total)

Yikes. Did not know that Cronenberg was working, very loosely, from real life.

Kind of reminds me of the Hermeler twins.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 3:16 PM on May 5, 2023

The story of the Marcus twins can be found in the creative nonfiction collection Travels With Dr. Death by Ron Rosenbaum. In addition to containing an early published piece about the twins who would later inspire Dead Ringers, the title essay in Travels With Dr. Death is about James Grigson, the psychologist in Texas who would psychologically examine defendants in death penalty cases (sometimes in less than 15 minutes) & testify "with 100 percent certainty" to the jury that it was necessary to sentence the defendant to death because, in his "scientific" opinion, the defendant was simply doomed to kill somebody again if they were not executed. The Errol Morris documentary The Thin Blue Line originally was supposed to be a documentary about Dr. Grigson, but instead the subject of the documentary radically changed after Morris learned that Grigson sentenced an innocent man to death in the case of Randall Dale Adams.
posted by jonp72 at 4:00 PM on May 5, 2023 [6 favorites]

This was so interesting from a stylistic perspective. Contemporary magazine articles are so different in tone from this. It's a bit sensational, a bit conversational, very direct. It gives you the facts early on in the piece instead of making you read through pages of context first. The personal component, that it was written by a woman who had been their patient, was a bit shocking, but presented without the trauma narrative we would usually get now. Thanks for posting.
posted by latkes at 12:14 AM on May 6, 2023 [7 favorites]

I was home while the rest of my family was on vacation.

At 4 am, this movie came on. It was an experience, defining the "I stayed up all night" feeling for me to this day.

But it was such a sad story.
posted by rebent at 5:18 AM on May 6, 2023

Great prose style!
posted by larrybob at 7:27 AM on May 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Link fixed to go to article instead of its comments, carry on good people!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 2:07 PM on May 6, 2023