When Did He Have The Time?

This movie was entertaining, but if you are really interested in the case of John Orr, I highly suggest the booker "Fire Lover", but Joseph Wambaugh, the brilliant writer of "The Onion Field". The movie takes some liberties with things, but that is to be assumed, as it is meant to entertain, and it does. "Fire Lover" is an excellent account of the life of Orr, the progression of the arsonist, and the investigation and trial of Orr. It is clear that he was the Pillow Pyro.

In seeing the movie multiple times, I have answers to at least some of your questions.

1. How much work do you think John Orr really put into investigating his own fires? He is just there as an alibi to repel possible suspicions.
2. When does he have an active sexual relationship with his wife? She complains that he is never in bed with her at night later in the movie when she reads his book.
3. If I remember correctly, Kate is a member of one of the authorities giving him an alibi.
4. The book he is writing involve the actual accounts of the fires he started. How do you think he knew exactly where in the crime scenes to find the weapons and why do you think that he could write the book so quickly? The fiction excuse was an alibi for his reason to write it.
5. When a crimefighter is investigating a series of crimes, it is not uncommon for them to be awake all the time trying to find the criminal.
6. How stupid would John have to be to set fires in daylight, not only with his bare hands, but with his normal face present everywhere? John did take the time to put on a disguise. Remember the scene where Aaron morphs into John? Why were there fingerprints in every crime scene that belonged to John? If he were investigating and touching evidence, that's why you wear gloves.
7. Why would he get nervous when other firefighters find clues. It would only lead to their suspicions of him.
8. The arsonist was John. Aaron was a made up personality. John knew exactly what he was doing, and never admitted to it. His ego would never allow him to do so. That's why the fires stopped.

Hope that helps answer your points.

I think you're exactly right, and from a cinimatic standpoint that doesn't make any sense. If it was a fictitious movie, I'd say that the writer did a bad job. However, this is supposed to be based on real events, so some things have to be excused, and probably the writers added thing that didn't really happen. Also, since the movie only focuses on eventful times, you never really know how much time he does these things. It seems more likely that he usually did an 8 hour day, and only put in overtime once in a while. He probably only saw Kate at the weekends, spent maybe an hour a night writing his book, maybe had sex with his wife a couple of times a week, and probably got about 7 hours of sleep. At the end, I'm not sure if he put on a disguise, or Aaron was just a character created so the movie wouldn't devulge that Orr did it, and maybe he did set fires in broad daylight with no disguise, who knows. No one ever really got a good look at him. And finally, Orr probably did have a little self-hatred for his alter ego, but I think it was more developed in the movie than in the true story.

My Dad said that in the true story, Orr confessed when he was caught.

John Orr used the name Aaron Stiles as author of his book. Where did that made up name came from? Well, the name is an anagram for "I Set LA Arson". I don't think John Orr thought anyone would stumbled onto that fact.

I agree with the majority of the people who thought the movie was ruined by the ambiguous story. One more fact, Glendale averaged 67 brush fires per year for the 5 years prior to his arrest and only 1 per year for the 5 years after his arrest. The aforementioned information came from a TV documentary about this case, a much better TV viewing than this movie.

Then there was the fingerprint, his guilty pleads, other evidence, and fires wherever he went and no fires where he wasn't.

"When did he have the time" was one of the things that convicted him. Prosecutors showed that many of the fires were lit close to off ramps from freeways from which he travelled to and from fire investigator conferences. They presented very impressive maps detailing the time of Orr's travel to and from conferences and the time of fires that occurred.

This film is a very impressive depiction of actual events and the psychopathic, narcissistic personality that was John Orr. A very underrated film and one I recommend to fire fighters.