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When Matthew Shepard was murdered because he was gay, the crime had implications far beyond the personal. Two TV projects examine it - and reveal much about changing attitudes.
By ERIC DEGGANS, Times TV Critic
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 8, 2002
In the end, the most remarkable result of HBO's Saturday airing of The Laramie Project and NBC's broadcast eight days later of The Matthew Shepard Story won't be the renewed examination of homophobia, hate crimes or gay issues both movies are bound to inspire.
It's what won't happen: no major protests by conservative groups, no anguished outcries over viewer sensibilities and no attempts to avoid showing a gay man who was beaten and left to die in a remote Wyoming field in October 1998.
Some say that's because both stories present Matthew Shepard the way mainstream media most like their gay men: as good-looking, middle class white guys who wind up as tragic victims.
But others say these movies are a more encouraging sign of the times -- a success in the ongoing struggle to bring gay issues to mainstream television.
"Things have changed enough that having these kinds of sexually challenging moments emerge in our world is no longer a (flashpoint) for right-wing protests," said Suzanna Walters, the director of women's studies at Georgetown University and the author of All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America.
"What the Matthew Shepard moment told us was that such crimes would no longer be tucked in the back pages of an obscure newspaper article . . . it was front page news all over the world," Walters added. "Now I'm hoping these projects speak to the heart of homophobia. How does a world produce this kind of hatred, and how is it supported?"
Eight years after ABC blanched at showing sitcom star Roseanne kissing a gay friend on her self-titled sitcom, the network's Once and Again on Monday features a high school girl who shares a passionate kiss with another girl.
Talk show host Rosie O'Donnell has announced she is gay, and there have been few repercussions among fans. Series such as HBO's Sex and the City and UPN's Buffy the Vampire Slayer have featured explicitly gay relationships among core characters, with a similar lack of controversy.
Now two major TV outlets will offer different takes on the beating death of Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student who was assaulted and left tied to a fence on ground overlooking Laramie, Wyo.
The approach each movie takes has as much to do with the medium as the message.
On HBO, where there's money to burn and hipness rules, The Laramie Project emerges as a widely anticipated film version of a cutting-edge play, crafted by the New York-based Tectonic Theater Project from interviews with 200 residents in Laramie.
On stage, the play features 60 roles played by eight actors. On screen, the roles are packed with thespians who enjoy sizable reputations in the world of indie film, theater and mainstream Hollywood, including Peter Fonda, Janeane Garofalo, Camryn Manheim, Christina Ricci, Terry Kinney, Joshua Jackson, Laura Linney and Steve Buscemi.
The film retells the story of how Shepard was discovered at the fence, lingered in a coma for days and died, leading authorities to charge two longtime Laramie residents, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, with his murder. The film's climax is an emotional scene in which Dennis Shepard, Matthew's father (played by Oz star and Steppenwolf theater co-founder Terry Kinney), asks the jury not to give McKinney the death penalty. (Henderson had already pleaded guilty.)
Events are mostly related through the eyes of others in the community, including a theater professor at the University of Wyoming, a shopkeeper who knew Shepard, the police officer who discovered his bloody body (and endured numerous tests after learning Shepard was HIV positive), the spokesman for the hospital where Shepard died.
"When the media first descended upon the community, it was a major frenzy . . . students . . . were in my office in tears on a daily basis saying, "They took everything I said out of context,' " said Rebecca Hilliker, chairwoman of the theater department at the University of Wyoming (played by The Practice's Manheim).
"When (Tectonic leader Moises Kaufman) came to town, it was an awesome responsibility to put him in touch with members of the community, hoping he was going to . . . actually listen," added Hilliker, speaking with reporters at press conference in January. "They took on a lot of the emotional pain we had been experiencing. It (opened) a dialogue that we never would have had if it hadn't been for them coming."
As directed and shaped by Kaufman, The Laramie Project film plays out as a series of conversations between Tectonic members and those affected by the crime. What emerges almost immediately is a peculiar denial that blankets Laramie. Residents refuse to recognize the homophobia that simmers beneath the town's placid surface.
"They might poke one . . . in a bar situation, you know, when they've been drinking, they might actually smack one in the mouth, but then they just walk away," said Frances Sternhagen (ER, Sex and the City) as Marge Murray, the mother of the police officer who discovered Shepard, explaining how heterosexual men in Laramie might respond to a gay man. "Laramie is live and let live."
Like the play, the movie aims to communicate both the universality of Laramie and its uniqueness, to help understand the big question: How could this happen here?
"These people trust us . . . they want everyone to know they are not this crime," one anguished theater project member tells the camera in a typical aside. "It's more than clearing Laramie's name; it's clearing their own. And I don't know if we can do that."
As you would expect, the HBO movie offers some powerful performances, including Buscemi's comic relief as plain-talking car service driver Doc O'Connor (who drove Shepard to a gay bar an hour from Laramie) and Kinney's emotional reading of Dennis Shepard's words to the jury. Breathtaking shots of the Wyoming countryside help explain why the gay residents who speak in the film still live in a town that can be so inhospitable.
But the HBO film also shares the stage play's biggest flaw: because neither the Shepards nor McKinney nor Henderson were interviewed by the theater company, their perspectives are mostly missing. It's not mentioned in the HBO or NBC film, but part of McKinney's plea bargain involved him and his lawyers agreeing not to talk about the case.
So some important questions go unanswered.
Was it appropriate to allow the Shepards so much control over McKinney's fate? How much did the area's subtle hostility toward gays play into McKinney's and Henderson's decision to assault Shepard? Why did the parents insist on McKinney's silence, and was it appropriate to grant their request?
And where does this awful hate come from, anyway?
As a network made-for-TV movie, NBC's The Matthew Shepard Story is a much different animal.
Based on close consultation with Shepard's mother, it's more Judy Shepard's vision of her son's story. Where The Laramie Project looks at the larger community, The Matthew Shepard Story is all about the personal -- a close look at the way Shepard's parents remember their son and struggled over whether his killer should be killed by the state.
Like most network TV projects, it has recognizable stars, The West Wing co-star Stockard Channing as Judy Shepard and Law & Order star Sam Waterston as Dennis Shepard. It has a high-profile closing theme, Elton John's Forgiveness. And it even has a celebrity executive producer: movie star Goldie Hawn, who first approached Judy Shepard about telling her story.
"Our job was to break this down into these components of everyday, average human life, average people," said Channing, speaking with reporters in July about the project, which was to have aired in October 2001. "They were not far right, far left. They're not very rich. They're not very poor. They're just people, very decent, good people. And to see how they're coping with this extraordinary event that landed in their laps . . . is amazing."
NBC's film also seems to continue Judy Shepard's attempt to demystify her son, showing his life in a series of flashbacks the parents experience over three days spent composing their statement to the jury for McKinney's sentencing.
Scenes show Shepard romancing with his first lover at boarding school (with a couple of heavy kissing scenes), his rape by a street gang during a trip to Morocco, his struggle to fit in while living in Denver and at the University of Wyoming.
NBC chose to dramatize the actual beating and events that led up to it, showing McKinney and Henderson telling Shepard they are gay and encouraging him to catch a ride home with them.
What The Matthew Shepard Story doesn't have is the powerful vistas of Wyoming. Like many network TV movies these days, the film was shot in Canada to save money.
For better or worse, it also shows Shepard as a perpetual victim -- of the Moroccans who assaulted him and of homophobes in Laramie and Denver. A slight, small guy (played by newcomer Shane Meier), he gulps medication to stave off panic attacks and struggles with bouts of self pity and a lack of self-confidence.
These may be the facts of Shepard's life. But it also offers a tragic character ready-made for a sympathetic TV movie aimed squarely at an older, female demographic -- splashing his name on the project for recognition purposes, but tempering his tale with the moral struggle of his heterosexual parents.
"No matter what your views (on homosexuality), you can sympathize with him . . . the fact that he was a nice kid, he was white and blond . . . all these TV-ready things," said Steven Capsuto, author of Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television. "Historically, TV has always told gay stories as the straight relative or friend's story. Telling the story through an intermediary . . . to make the audience more comfortable."
In a move that may reveal NBC's ultimate attitude about the movie, The Matthew Shepard Story airs on Saturday -- the least-watched night of week. Still, the network caused a minor furor when it scheduled The Matthew Shepard Story for March 16 -- the same day The Laramie Project was to air on HBO.
Faced with major network TV competition, HBO moved its film to Saturday, averting a war for viewers that might have tested the viability of both movies.
"That was nothing more than NBC trying to get publicity," said Scott Seomin, entertainment media director for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which asked NBC to consider moving its film before HBO recheduled. "Both stories need to be seen. And when you schedule them against each other for the sake of publicity, nobody wins."
Viewers may have to watch both movies to get a full sense of the incident -- as both a cautionary tale about unchecked homophobia and the tragic story of one man.
"When the play came to Laramie . . . we brought 400 high school students from all around the whole state," Hilliker said. "(Afterwards), we had students . . . come to us and say, "I will never use the word "queer" again in my life.' Because they did learn something. We made a difference in some young people's lives. And when the movie comes to Laramie, it's our hope we will be able to do the same thing."
REVIEW: The Laramie Project, Saturday at 8 p.m. on HBO. Grade: A. The Matthew Shepard Story, March 16 at 9 p.m. on WFLA-Ch. 8. Grade: B.