"There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane" Monday, July 25 at 9 p.m. on HBO
On July 25, almost exactly two years since the horrific, tragic car accident that took the life of "wrong-way driver" Diane Schuler and seven other innocent people on the Taconic, Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus brings us "There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane," a reexamination of the case.
Yesterday, I was given the first look at this documentary -- and it will stay with me forever.
As you know by now, toxicology reports from the autopsy reveal that Diane, who was driving back to Long Island from an upstate New York campground on July 26, 2009, had the equivalent of 10 drinks, along with marijuana, in her system at the time of the crash.
TRAGIC: Documentary examines the 2009 crash in which Diane Schuler killed herself, her daughter and six others. Her son survived.
The only problem is that Diane by all accounts -- and Garbus leaves not one stone unturned -- was not a drinker, although she occasionally had some pot before going to bed.
The title of the documentary refers to the words screamed by Diane's niece, Emma Hance, on her cell phone to her father in the minutes before her aunt drove at up to 70 mph in the wrong direction on the Taconic Parkway for two miles -- before slamming head-on into another car.
Diane killed herself, her daughter and three of her nieces (one of whom died later in the hospital) -- and, in the other car, Michael Bastardi, his son Guy and their friend, Daniel Longo.
(Diane's young son, Bryan, survived the crash.)
The documentary follows Diane's husband, Daniel Schuler, and his sister-in-law, Jay Schuler, as they desperately try to dispute what they know cannot be true. And it does seem impossible that everyone who ever knew her well claims that Diane Schuler was the quintessential "super mom" who would never drive drunk. Ever.
The film follows the excruciating time shortly after the crash, when the Schuler family pooled their money and hired a private investigator, Tom Rushkin, recommended by TV-loving attorney Dominic Barbara. They paid Rushkin but never got the results of the medical tests or his investigation.
It took HBO to get Rushkin to the phone. He says he gave the results to Barbara, who never gave them to the family.
Witnesses to the crash, lifelong friends of Diane's and everyone except Jackie and Warren Hance -- the parents of Emma, 8, Alyson, 7, and Kate, 5 -- testified to her sobriety and clear-headedness.
The Bastardi family, meanwhile, doesn't buy any of it.
So what happened? All the Schulers know is that Diane had an abscessed tooth for which she had stopped a root canal mid-surgery. She'd been holding her face for the week prior and stopped in at a Sunoco rest area asking for pain medication minutes before the crash. She does not in any way look impaired on the video taken in the rest area.
Then, she got back into her car, and all hell literally broke loose.
Despite the filmmakers signing a deal with Daniel Schuler for $100,000 to have Diane's body exhumed for another autopsy to see if she'd suffered a stroke, no permissions have been granted. We may never know what happened but watching this shows us what can happen -- and did happen to all those children, the Bastardis and Longo.
This should be mandatory viewing for anyone applying for a driver's license.
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