Review of the The Laramie Project by Angela Rentmeester
October 12, 1998 is the date that many people will never forget. 20-30 anti-gay murders take place across the United States every year. None however have caught the united conscience of the country that took place in early October 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming. The image of Matthew Shepard being violently beaten to a state of comatose and bound tightly to a fence became the rallying point again intolerance.
As a journalism student I teachers have said don’t become emotional towards certain stories that I might cover and keep my personal feelings out. In the case of Matthew Shepard it was hard for me, I have several gay friends, some of who have received harsh beatings just for the fact that they were gay. I couldn’t help but think “what if that was my friend?” I can’t help but not check my emotions at the door, this could have happened to one of my best friends. For the sake of the review, I did just that; I put my emotional feelings aside so I can give a non-bias, and emotional review of this film.
Before watching The Laramie Project, I wondered how could you create art from tragedy. Then I thought just forget art and let the tragedy speak for itself. It would be easy for a filmmaker to create a self-righteous, preachy film about the murder of 21-year-old college student Matthew Shepard in the outskirts of Laramie, but the director did the opposite.
The Laramie Project was an Off-Broadway play that was turned into an HBO docudrama. Moises Kaufman, the playwright, went to Laramie with several other interviewers in the wake of the vicious murder of Matthew Shepard. Shepard was beaten and left for dead by two men who wanted to “scare him straight” or “teach him a lesson” about hitting on straight men.
Their goal of this project was to speak to the townspeople and get their thoughts and memories of the incident. From 250 interviews that came directly from residents, court transcripts and reenacted by actors, Kaufman was able to create this emotional documentary.
The end result is an amazing ensemble of sadness, outrage, hatred and hope. The movie features a cast of indie actors including Steve Buscemi, Christina Ricci, Janeane Garofalo, Joshua Jackson and Laura Linney.
Kaufman (Nestor Carbonelli) and fellow New York theatre interviewers go to Laramie and experience some resistance, cooperation and a lot of shame. When they first arrived the first thing they noticed was a sign outside a motel saying, “Hate is not a Laramie Value.” The small town is now being defined by this crime and they don’t want that and want to be able to put all this behind them. Townspeople keep repeating the same saying “Live and let live,” but it seemed it’s for those who are heterosexual or “in the closet.”
Sherry Johnson (Laura Linney) was one of the few characters, not including the two accused, who I really did not like. Linney played a housewife who could just not fathom why people were making a big deal out of the Shepard case when people are constantly being murdered everyday; someone might want to inform her that people aren’t being murdered everyday because they are homosexual. The other character that angered me was the Rev. Fred Phelps (James Murtaugh) who was protesting outside the court hearing holding a sign that said “Fags Burn In Hell.”
The movie had other standout performances. Christina Ricci (Now & Then) as a well-drawn, ungloomy performance as a “self-described ‘little lesbian’; Joshua Jackson (Dawson’s Creek) as the good-hearted bartender who was one of the last people to see Matthew alive; Amy Madigan (Uncle Buck, Winter Passing) as a tough but vulnerable police offer who was the first person called to the scene, and had the HIV scare because Matthew’s blood was exposed to hers.
None of the performances is flashy or overwrought. Instead, the actors let the words of the Laramie residents stand on their own. It is telling that the film is least effective when it portrays the interviewers’ reactions to their work. They are affected, of course, as was all of America. But their feelings should not be the centerpiece, because they pale in comparison to the feelings of the people more directly associated with the tragedy.
The heart of the movie goes to the actor who is not as well known and didn’t get as much screen time. Terry Kinney (Oz) stood up in court at the end of the movie as Matthew’s grieving father. The speech Dennis Shepard gave in tribute to his son, who he called “my hero” where he gave his argument about why the court should not give the murderers the death penalty. During his speech he does admit that he does believe in capital punishment and would like to see them die he wants them to suffer in the memory of what he did to Matthew. Once he got to the part about how Matthew wasn’t alone when he died, the sights and sounds of the town were there with him, the words became something like poetry that brought tears to my eyes. It’s moments like these that can demonstrate just how voices can be collected into art.
Though the movie doesn’t actually show the beating of Matthew, though we may never know what really happened out there, I was still to have a clear visual as to what happened when the accused were his testimony in court. The film does show the very last thing that Matthew saw on this earth, the sparkling lights of Laramie. The way the scene was shot it was as if you were starring out into the lights and it got a little darker, as Matthew was slipping into a coma. That scene was very effective in getting a glimpse as to what Matthew saw in his final moments.
While Aaron McKinney was describing what he was doing I could visualize in my mind what was happening. What annoyed me most about McKinney was that he knew he was going to jail and may get the death penalty, but he had the nerve to still call him a “queer” and a “fag” which makes me believe that he was not sincere when he was apologizing to the Shepards and the court.
There were two other scenes that stood out as very memorable in the movie. First was the homecoming parade where at first there was a very small group of maybe 10 people walking for Matthew Shepard, but as those 10 people turned the corner to the other side of the street the number of people was five times before than just a few minutes ago. To see also those people walking gave me hope that maybe things will change and so will the people. The word hope was used quite a bit; even Steve Buscemi’s character spelled the word out to emphasis that.
The other was when Romaine Patterson (Christina Ricci) and several other people were dressed in white as angels, they even had the huge angel wings, went to the courthouse and stood around the gates blocking the ignorant protestors so that the media could not see them, hoping to stop them.
The Laramie Project overall did an excellent job discussing the issue of discrimination and showing the magnitude of hatred that people have towards one another. By listening to Laramie’s residents, the resulting play illuminates America’s character in terms of its attitudes about tolerance and acceptance. I could not believe the attitudes that some of the people had in this town. One man said that Matthew was to blame because he was supposedly hitting on Aaron and that if he weren’t gay then this wouldn’t have happened. Who the hell thinks like that? What’s worse is that one year after his death, no one has passed any laws anywhere about the hate crimes.
Moises Kaufman, making his debut as a film director, translates his abstract play very well into the more concrete form of film. And all the right emotions are there. The inhuman, unspeakable crimes committed the evil of the Christian minister who protested at Shepard’s funeral, the sorrow of an entire nation- all are driven home.
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