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The Return of the Sleep Eaters
As you may have heard (unless you’ve avoided television, newspapers, or the Internet the last two days), Rhode Island Congressional Representative, Patrick “Son of Edward” Kennedy, received three notices of infractions after he crashed his Ford Mustang into a security barrier at 3 a.m. near the Capitol on Thursday night. At the time of the incident, when asked what he was doing out at that time of night, Kennedy claimed he needed to get to a vote on the House floor (a vote that ended three hours prior).
The next day, Kennedy decided to enter the Mayo Clinic rehab facility, asserting that he was addicted to the prescription sleeping aid. Kennedy claims,”I simply do not remember getting out of bed, being pulled over by the police or being cited for three driving infractions. That’s not how I want to live my life, and it’s not how I want to represent the people of Rhode Island.”
And while it would be easy to dismiss Kennedy’s sleep-driving excuse as the ramblings of a drunken Congressman who’d had one-to-many highballs before scouring Capitol hill for an easy intern, you may remember that QuizLaw brought the “Sleep Eating” phenomenon to your attention several weeks ago. At the time, we told you about a lawsuit brought by a New York attorney on behalf of “sleep eaters,” who claimed that the the sleeping pill, Ambien, causes people to eat, drive, have violent outbursts, and hallucinations, and then wake up with absolutely no memory of it.
In fact, we also suggested that:
Sleepeaters would be a perfect bookend to George Romero’s zombie-movie career that included the classics Day of the Dead and Dawn of the Dead: A real life documentary on sleep eaters, who abuse Ambien and go on brain-eating benders only to awake with no memory, other than the trickles of blood drooling on their pillow.
Well, in honor of Patrick Kennedy, we’d like to modify that script treatment, turn it into a legal thriller, and get Ridley Scott to direct. In our new movie, the storyline will follow a copy-cat Congressman who, after bar-hopping for several hours, starts trolling the District for homeless men and cheap prostitutes, who he then murders Patrick Bateman-style (i.e., while listening to Phil Collins). Following his arrest, our Congressman/murder uses the so-called “Ambien defense,” but a young D.C. prosecutor (here played by QuizLaw favorite, Kiera Knightley) ultimately derails it with her hard-hitting, Matlock-inspired cross-examination.
We’ll call it: Ambien, My Ass - Dude, You Were Three Sheets to the Wind
