Patricia Hearst Shaw has no interest in reading Jeffrey Toobin’s upcoming book about her, or seeing the movie version, and she has harsh words about the New Yorker writer for exploiting her tragic story.
Known as Patty Hearst in 1974 when she was kidnapped and brainwashed by the Symbionese Liberation Army, the publishing heiress confided to a friend, “I’m tired of being a cash cow for hack writers like Jeffrey Toobin. He is an emotional rapist.”
Toobin’s book, title unknown, won’t be published by Doubleday until 2016, but it has already been optioned by Fox 2000, with “Big Eyes” screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski signed for the screenplay.
“I don’t have anything to do with it and neither do any of my friends,” Hearst said.
As for the news that Jennifer Lawrence might play her in the movie, “I couldn’t care less who plays me,” she said.
Hearst wrote her own book, “Patty Hearst: Her Own Story,” in 1988, detailing how she was locked in a closet for 57 days, threatened with death and raped before she joined her captors in robbing banks, for which she served 22 months behind bars.
“This didn’t define her. It was 40 years ago,” said one friend. “She’s had a great marriage, two beautiful children, grandchildren . . . It was just one chapter in her life.”
“My friends say things go in 40-year cycles,” Shaw told her friend. “So hopefully my shelf life is up.”
