Mount St. Helens lies dormant since its last big eruption, but every now and then it gives off a rumble, and everyone assumes that sooner or later it's going to blow. Little did we know it, but the same was true for the family of actor Ryan O'Neal - all those years we were in the presence of an active volcano, and now, the top has blown off that bad boy, and there's nothing but ash and lava and carnage of Pompeiian proportions.
Not that we didn't know they had problems - there was that little incident where a drug-addled Griffin was held responsible for a speedboat accident that killed Giancarlo Coppola, and there were the stories of Ryan's questionable parenting, including a time when Ryan knocked Griffin's front teeth out. But that was all in the past. As far as we knew, the tumultuous times were behind the O'Neals. They could've become a model American family, dysfunctional but not violently so. Now we know this was not the case - in fact, all those old issues were just simmering beneath the surface, building up pressure, waiting for the release.
And what, precisely, set off the now-infamous confrontation between Ryan and Griffin, which led to Griffin's girlfriend being injured, and Ryan arrested for assault? If you believe Griffin, it was an act of brotherly love. Griffin's younger half-brother Redmond, according to Griffin, was drugged out of his mind last Friday night, so Griffin did the only thing a protective older sibling could - chain him to a staircase to keep him from getting out and buying more dope. Sounds perfectly sensible, right? Well, Ryan apparently didn't think so. Because when he returned from dinner Friday and discovered his progeny tethered to the banister - let's just say Ryan didn't see things quite the way Griffin did. In fact he flew into one of his characteristic rages. The elder O'Neal then, according to Griffin, his girlfriend Joanne Berry and their lawyer Gloria Allred, started swinging the fireplace poker that allegedly injured the pregnant Joanne. And this is where things start to get hazy. Because according to Ryan, it was actually Griffin who grabbed the poker and started swinging it, hitting his own girlfriend. And what happened after that is scarcely clearer: Griffin and Joanne left, having been shouted at by Ryan, then returned to the house for whatever reason. It was at this point that Ryan peeled off the gunshot that apparently struck the banister, prompting Griffin and Joanne to beat a hasty exit.
It's difficult to know exactly what happened in that house; right now it's Griffin and Joanne's word against Ryan's. And, frankly, it's hard to find a person in this story whom one would tend to believe. Ryan has certainly been a shitty excuse for a father all his life, making him perfect for the villain role, but Griffin is no angel himself. And Joanne Berry, the most-injured party (she suffered blunt head trauma and a sinus orbital wall fracture in the fracas), being Griffin's girlfriend and perhaps psychotically loyal to him, is not necessarily a credible witness herself. And of course there's Redmond, who was completely bombed on drugs. So whom do you believe? In the end, probably none of the above - we're dealing with a load of completely dysfunctional people, for whom truth is probably not a top priority. The only lesson to be derived from this sad saga is that some people really ought not to have children. Narcissists, for example, and egomaniacs - especially ones who work in a profession like acting, which tends to inflame those conditions until they become outrageous. Ryan O'Neal, it's safe to say, doesn't have an ideal personality-type when it comes to fatherhood. I personally wouldn't entrust him with the care and feeding of my spider plant. And I definitely wouldn't let Griffin drive my boat.
