Red Arrows Take America

- Oh, they're gonna have a weekend rendezvous, look out.

- One day, a friend of mine, an Englishman,

who lives in Los Angeles, who was in the world of film,

he called me and told me that he had two friends in town,

a filmmaker who was making

an important indie film in London,

and his girlfriend.

I learned that this is Simon Monjack.

He said his grandfather founded British Steel,

something like that, and he's worth $1 billion.

Since I'd never met a billionaire before,

and I'm a very curious person, I decided to host a dinner.

So Simon kind of held forth

and he kind of controlled the table.

And he told us a lot of things about himself that night.

He said that he was the largest collector of Vermeer,

the great Dutch painter.

He had more Vermeers than anyone else in the world.

He had dated Elle Macpherson and Madonna.

He said that he had been dying from terminal brain cancer

and that he had bought an experimental treatment

derived from the fins of sharks

and that it had saved his life.

He said that he had a collection of Ferraris,

17 in all.

You know, we laughed and we had a good time,

and, you know, I wondered if he'd ever finance

one of the movies I wanted to make,

and that was it.

The only hint that anything was askew

was that Simon had told me his movie

was getting the best reviews

in the history of independent film in England.

My friend, in London, went to see the movie,

and he came back and he said,

"This is-- it's pretty terrible."

In this generation of lust,

I never found you, Lucy.

No, I can't hear you, Lucy.

So that was kind of shocking.

Time goes by, I get an email from his girlfriend.

And I find out that every single word

out of his mouth was a lie.

One of the ways that Simon legitimized those lies

was by bringing a lovely girl into the equation.

That was the cloak.

And it was perfect because she believed the lies too.

So he lived off this girl that had worked her heart out

for every penny she had.

And when her money ran out, he was gone.

And very quickly, he became engaged to one of her friends.

I can't stress enough how convincing this man was.

["Die Young" by Sylvan Esso playing]

- I want to talk now about Brittany Murphy,

her controversial husband.

The unemployed British screenwriter Simon Monjack

is being portrayed as the villain,

the drunken bully living off a woman that he married

because his visa had expired.

- I don't think Simon has recovered

from the bad publicity. He was like a Svengali.

- People don't die at home with the husband present

of pneumonia, of anemia.

- "Every story needs a villain,"

Monjack said after his wife's tragic death, concluding,

"And everyone decided it is me."

And on that point, ladies and gentlemen,

I agree with him.

- I'm Linda Monjack, and I am

Simon Monjack's mother.

- And I'm James Monjack, Simon's brother.

As he was growing up,

Simon was the most incredible guy.

He had an IQ off the scale.

He was able to charm anyone, old ladies, mothers.

He would turn his charm on anyone.

- From early childhood, Simon had that ability

to manipulate the environment

to get what he wanted out of it.

- Simon was 16 when his father died.

It was a terrible, terrible shock.

He never was the same again.

He was still witty and full of life and funny,

but something died in him.

And I think he became more and more...

unreal.

He lived in the now. The now is important.

The now meant everything to him.

In a minute, that's not the now.

The next moment happened,

and there's a new moment to experience.

But he did fall in and out of love very easily.

He was in a very good place when he met Brittany.

They were very much in love.

When you saw them together,

they literally fell into each other's eyes.

I mean, literally drowned in each other.

The one conversation that I remember with her

was just before she died, and I said,

"Oh, Brittany, Simon tells me you're not feeling well.

What's the matter?"

She said, "I'm having trouble breathing.

If I go up the stairs," she was like,

"By the time I get to the top of the stairs,

I can't breathe."

She said, "Do you think I'm dying?"

So I said, "No, of course you're not dying, you're fine.

But you need to go to the doctor."

I didn't speak to them again until Simon phoned me

on that terrible day.

He was totally devastated,

and he cried for about two hours on the phone.

He just could not get his head around it.

He kept saying, "She's dead. How can--she can't be.

How? How?"

He was in shock for months.

Nobody could get through to him.

He's too frightened of the paparazzi,

and he was getting increasingly ill.

And you could see it in his face, his hair was wild.

I phoned him, and I couldn't get him for a couple of hours.

And I finally got hold of him, and he said, "I'm alive.

I'm alive. I went sleep and I'm alive."

Which I couldn't get my head around.

I didn't know why he would say such a thing.

He was confused.

So I think he felt let down by everyone.

- In May, I had taken a trip to Hawaii

with, like, a significant other at the time.

Simon called me a lot.

And I didn't answer a lot because I was,

like, "No, I'm on vacation."

Some of his messages,

you could sense this growing frustration

that I wasn't there for him.

I certainly never viewed my friendship with Simon

as anything romantic.

And I don't think he did. I mean, I have a wife.

I don't even look at men that way,

so it definitely wasn't something,

but it did cross my mind just because you never know.

That probably was hard for him at the time.

I'll never know because it was

right after I got home from that trip that he died.

- Everybody ready? - Yes, sir.

- This evening, Mr. Monjack was found unresponsive.

Paramedics responded to the house.

He was pronounced at 2145 hours.

His death is under investigation

by the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner

with the assistance of LAPD.

I got notified of Simon's death,

and then it's like, "Are you kidding me?"

I get a call in the night.

Sharon's screaming, "Please, please come here.

"Please come here. It's happening all over again.

I'm living Brittany all over again."

So I get in the car, head up to the house,

and when I get up there, there is media everywhere.

I couldn't get to the gate,

much less get through the gate.

That's a day I won't forget.

Simon came out, he was sweating.

And he's got a cigar in one hand,

a cognac in the other hand, but he would be talking to me

and he would drift off to sleep.

And then he would just open his eyes

and come back into the conversation

like he was there the whole time.

And when I think back about it,

he's dying in front of me,

and I don't know he's dying in front of me.

- Here's a copy of Simon Monjack's report.

Cause of death is listed as

community acquired acute bronchial pneumonia.

The toxicology study

showed the presence of multiple medications.

The media, they said, "Isn't that strange?

Both died from the same cause of death."

And it'd be like, "Yeah, we don't get a lot of those."

- Just five months after Brittany passed away,

Simon, her husband, passed away in the same bathroom

in the same mansion for almost identical reasons.

- A small, tiny, petite woman and a very large man,

they die of the same thing in the same house.

- People start thinking there's more behind this,

there's something else.

- After Simon died, it was like, "What happened?"

You know?