The Laramie Project

source: The Laramie Project

If you want to know the truth of what happened to Matthew Shepherd, read "The Book of Matt," by Stephen Jimenez. Or read any of the interviews Jimenez have about the book. The author is a gay man that went to Laramie and researched this subject exhaustively. Shepherd was killed for multiple reasons, none of them had anything to do with him being gay.

There's nothing new in this movie. Nothing you haven't thought about before, nothing you haven't heard before. The story of a gay man who is brutally murdered in a small town and the reaction of people can be broached in many ways, and this movie has chosen the most demagogic and slushy one. One of the biggest flaws in this movie is that it isn't neither a movie nor a documentary. The director has used the transcriptions of the original interviews and made the actors play them as if it was a movie. The result is weird. And finally, I read in previous comments that stated that people who don't like this movie are anti-gay. I'm pretty sure this comments come from people who consider themselves tolerant but don't tolerate that other people don't like this movie. This is a funny world.

It is incredible to me that someone would even THINK about doing a mock documentary on a SERIOUS subject with an intent to arouse our emotions. Drama requires talent in crafting dialogue, scenery and mood to convey a message: Be it clarity or ambiguity. Documentary requires skills in packaging other's points of view: Be it to underscore the maker's message or that of the speakers. What the makers of TLP have done is to avoid the work needed in drama and documentary by canning blunt messages and delivering them without the need of acting, directing, camera work, etc. The result is cheap and insincere. I wouldn't mind learning about this tragic incident from a real documentary where even if the producers' point of view was biased I could hear the actual words and see the expressions of the interviewees. Conversely, I could handle a fictional account where I might adopt and/or appreciate another's perception of the events and emotions involved. But to impose a mandated message by pulling our outrage, pity, anger and tragedy stings like TLP is shameful.

into reality. Many previous reviewers have delineated the basic theme, as well as the excellent cast. After having seen this several times, however, I sincerely hope my review will also be read, as I wish to credit Moises Kaufman on his play, and smooth translation into film. The cast does not overpower the true story, which is a difficult feat to accomplish. When you see the car scene wherein Matthew Sheppard is being taken to the scene of his murder, it is quite chilling. The contrast of man's inhumanity to man against the beauty of the Laramie, Wisconsin landscape is stark and true. There is no melodrama here, just reality and the sad story which needs telling. The division of classes amongst college students and "townies" is shown in realistic fashion. The sad fact is this exists on most campuses, to a lesser degree, of course. The group mentality and proliferation of hatred and violence which precluded this murder are examined, as well as the townspeople's reactions to it. We see Stockard Channing and Sam Waterston as the bereaved parents, Peter Fonda as the weary physician, Janeane Garofalo as a lesbian, feeling afraid for her life. Christina Ricci and Clea Duvall also do very well, as a younger generation disrupted by violence. We also see Laura Linney, always credible, as a Laramie resident angry that the murder receives too much media attention. Overall, this is a complex and tragic subject which deserves much more attention. Highly recommended.

While this film is very powerful for those unfamiliar with the incident and/or the play, I think it loses quite a bit of the depth that the stage version has. The play is a sparkling piece of experimental theater that invariably is produced by small ensembles taking on six to ten roles each. The set is minimalist, usually containing no more than a few chairs and a table. When you take away the visuals, and you take away the famous actors, what are you left with? The words. I think that the movie version takes away from that, with the flashy camera angles and editing. The characters (as they became in the movie; they are more true-to-life in the play) were pretty well-portrayed in the movie, with some disappointing exceptions (Jedediah Schultz, for example). The story still gets through, and you still understand that this is an issue of enormous gravity. But I reiterate my opinion that the play is much better.

Have no idea why the producers of this film, based on a real life tragic incident, could not have used the residents of Laramie themselves to produce this film. Using Hollywoodites the film came across so phony in its presentation that the message of violence against and murder of any person, regardless of their chosen life-styles, got sidetracked by the struggle to focus on and promote, favorably, a very controversial life-style. Will this film become the "Reefer Madness" of today? It is surely in the top running for same!

This screened at Sundance last night to a receptive if mute crowd. Clearly the story is worth relating, it's powerful and true, but did the director have to cast every single role with a recognizable face? I mean, really, you spend have your time saying "Oh look, it's the guy from 'Armageddon'", or "Hey, it's Easy Rider!" and you lose sight of the story. Perhaps it's the only way this guy could get his movie made, but it's a little distracting, sort of like 'The Love Boat", or those old Towering Inferno movies, that were 'chock o' block with stars!'. I wish he's just told the story simply with less famous faces. Also, the camera work seems kind of lazy, like there wasn't any thought about where to put the camera to best tell the story. All in all, I thought it was okay, but could have been really good.

This movie is simply a documentary. In fact, it's really just a bunch of interviews. And interviews with actors portraying the original people that lived in this town. So, really, it's just a made-up documentary. That understood, it was well done. It looked real, the actors did a great job. I don't remember hearing about this true-life incident, so I wasn't swept up in the emotion, nor was I really interested in the event. I would have liked this movie a whole lot more if it was NOT a documentary, but a re-enactment of the whole incident, from the Shepard boy's life and home and at school, to the murder, to the aftermath. THEN, the interviews could have had some meaning. I watched it. I sat through the whole thing. But if I came across this documentary, or rather, a REAL documentary with the real people on Discovery, A&E, or some channel like that, I would change the channel and not be interested at all.

Matthew Shepard was about two months short of his twenty-second birth when he was robbed, beaten, tied to a fence post and left to die in a rural area of Wyoming. The man who found him at first thought he was a scarecrow. Rushed to Poudre Valley Hospital at Fort Collins, he died on 12 October 1998--and when Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney were arrested for the crime they resorted to a defense known as "gay panic." Matthew Shepherd had propositioned them, they said, and they were so horrified that they killed him in response. The gay community and numerous civil rights watchdog groups were outraged by the defense, and as more and more facts came to light it seemed that the crime was somewhat more complicated than Henderson and McKinney wanted the public to know. Witnesses stated that Henderson and McKinney had specifically targeted Shepherd because he was gay. After much legal wrangling, Henderson pled guilty and testified against McKinney, who was convicted; after still more legal wrangling, and at the request of Shepherd's parents, McKinney escaped the death penalty but has no chance of parole. The case made headlines from end of the United States to the other and prompted numerous calls for Hate Crimes legislation, which had long been stalled both at the state and federal level. And in the midst of the confusion, chaos, and controversy, Moises Kaufman and the members of The Tectonic Theatre Project arrived on the scene, interviewing more than two hundred people about their thoughts and feelings on the case. These were shaped into THE LARAMIE PROJECT, a drama that debuted in 2000 and which has since shocked, impressed, and deeply moved audiences from coast to coast. On the stage, THE LARAMIE PROJECT is played by eight performers who enact the numerous interview subjects in a three act, three hour performance on a largely bare stage. When filmed by HBO in 2002, it was reduced in length by about half and each interview subject was performed by a different actor--some of them members of the Techtonic Theatre Project, some of them well-known actors such as Laura Linney and Peter Fonda. The result is indeed powerful... but not as effective as the stage version, for on film it tends be a series of readings by "talking heads," a sort of pseudo-documentary, rather than as a cohesive whole. That said, the great difference between the film and the original script is one of balance. On stage, THE LARAMIE PROJECT takes no sides per se; it simply sets forth the words and allows the audience to judge. On screen, it is distinctly slanted, cutting much of the commentary that gave the original such remarkable balance. Even so, and although far outstripped by the stage version, it is a powerful voice for equality, tolerance, and simple human decency. Recommended. GFT, Amazon Reviewer