Culture
DiCaprio Sparks Interest In Local Milligan Video
By: Athens Messenger staff reports
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News that Leonardo DiCaprio is slated to portray multiple-personality figure Billy Milligan in a film has led to a local video on YouTube getting 20,000 views in just four days, according to the Athens man who posted it a year ago.
“Such is the power of the DiCaprio brand name,” said James Murray of Athens.
The six-minute video is comprised of clips from a two-hour documentary about Milligan that Murray made 30 years ago.
“It (the documentary) was controversial at the time and was yanked off of access TV for a short period while the lawyers got involved,” Murray said in an e-mail to The Athens Messenger.
Murray first met Milligan when Murray invited him to appear in 45701, a locally made soap opera that aired on access television in Athens.
The video features Milligan, author and Ohio University professor Daniel Keyes, Dr. David Caul and Milligan’s mother, Dorothy Moore. Keyes wrote The Minds of Billy Milligan, the book on which the DiCaprio film is to be based. Caul treated Milligan at the Athens Mental Health Center.
All four people featured in the video are now deceased.
Word that DiCaprio was planning to appear in the film was first reported in The Hollywood Reporter. Milligan, who was said to have had as many at 24 personalities, was found innocent by reason of insanity of rape, robbery and kidnapping charges in 1978 in Columbus. He is believed to be the first person to be found innocent of major crimes because of multiple personality disorder.