You've Got The (Healing) Touch!

‘Healing Touch' film to air
BY ROY WAGGONER/oaoa.com

Odessa’s infamous prostitution scandal is set to re-emerge July 19 when Jennifer Love Hewitt’s movie based upon the Healing Touch massage parlor case premieres on the Lifetime television network.

The film "The Client List" doesn’t really promote itself as a film about the Odessa scandal, but it is loosely based upon the events. Hewitt’s production company bought the rights to the Texas Monthly article about the massage parlor in 2005, and Hewitt will play a character based upon Crystal Ann Burchett, one of the prostitutes at the brothel.

Mayor Larry Melton said he’s not concerned about the film’s impact on the city.

"I really don’t think it will have an impact. That’s in the past," he said.

He said he wants the city to move forward because those involved in the scandal have already done so.

"The people involved have moved on and recovered. It’s time for the issue to go away and go to a new chapter in Odessa," Melton said.

The movie lays the blame for Burchett going into prostitution on her family’s financial condition. Hewitt stars as the fictional Samantha Horton, a former Texas homecoming queen and physical therapist who starts working at the "Kind Touch Health Spa" massage parlor after both she and her husband lose their jobs.

Hewitt declined OA requests to be interviewed for this story, but she told ET Online she sees the movie as something that can touch viewers in a time of turmoil. (Hewitt didn’t mention the Healing Touch scandal or Odessa in the interview.)

"Given where we are economically, it's an interesting story," Hewitt said in the ET Online interview. "It's really a movie about the human condition, and the heart, and where life can take you."



Judging by the trailer above I don't think this movie is going to be anything I'd hoped it would be. Not that I'm out for blood against any of the johns in this story (I would have joined them if I knew the place existed) but I was hoping this movie would at least shame them a little, you know as a goof. But this looks like the typical Lifetime shlock about a girl who made a bad decision based on the best of intentions and ended up in a bad spot. Blah, blah, blah. I wanted to see a Hollywood comedy about a small town in a sexual uproar. I never get what I want.