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| Plot Synopsis Laramie, WY, is a small town which became infamous overnight in the fall of 1998, when Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, was found tied to a fence after being brutally beaten and left to die, setting off a nationwide debate about hate crimes and homophobia. A month after the crime, Moises Kaufman, a writer and director with the New York City theater troupe the Tectonic Theater Project, traveled to Laramie with a handful of actors to interview people who lived in and around Laramie in preparation for an upcoming production; Kaufman's goal was to create a play that focused not on the assault on Matthew Shepard, but on the community where such an attack could happen, and how many of the citizens reacted to the crime. The result was The Laramie Project, which was first performed in early 2000, and was performed in Laramie in the fall of that year, two years after Kaufman and his associates first arrived in the city. The Laramie Project is a film adaptation of Kaufman's play, in which the thoughts and opinions of Laramie residents from all points of the political spectrum are presented alongside re-enacted excerpts from the trials of the two men who attacked Matthew Shepard. Produced for the premium cable network HBO, The Laramie Project was adapted for the screen by Moises Kaufman, who served as both writer and director. The distinguished cast includes Dylan Baker, Steve Buscemi, Peter Fonda, Janeane Garofolo, Laura Linney, Amy Madigan, Camryn Manheim, Christina Ricci, and Frances Sternhagen. - Mark Deming Reviews BRIAN J. DILLARD AMG Innovative, mournful, and politically charged, this piece of journalistic theater translates powerfully to the screen. Helmed by its original stage director, cinematic newcomer Moises Kaufman, The Laramie Project manages not only to sidestep the obvious emotions milked by TV movies about the Matthew Shepard case, but also to reject all of their hackneyed techniques. Compiled by the Tectonic Theater Project from hundreds of hours of interviews with the residents of Laramie, WY, where Shepard was murdered, the film is more of a sociological interrogation than a dramatic story. Fragmentary and spare, the material benefits enormously from Kaufman's precise pacing, judicious use of split screens and wide-open exteriors, and sensitive direction of a motley Hollywood cast. Christina Ricci has one of the punchiest roles as Romaine Patterson, Shepard's fiery lesbian best friend, but even Laura Linney, in just one extended scene and a few snippets, manages to nail one particular outlook and set of responses, contributing to the mosaic of individual thoughts and emotions that make up the piece. Performers as diverse as '60s survivor Peter Fonda and Dawson's Creek teenybopper Joshua Jackson exhibit the same careful attention to craft. Amy Madigan deserves special mention for her grave cop role, which scans like Frances McDormand's part in Fargo drained of its humor and Minnesota kitsch. One of the few moments that rankles is the inclusion of actual news reports from the time of the murder; there's enough leftie celebrity glitz involved in the casting without seeing the real-life Ellen DeGeneres in footage of a vigil. Such minor quibbles aside, this is the most powerful film produced about the Shepard murder - a stunning achievement considering the young man himself never appears. PERRY SEIBERT AMG DVD Reviews Moises Kaufman's blending of documentary and fiction, The Laramie Project, comes to DVD with a pair of transfers. The widescreen anamorphic transfer preserves the original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and is preferable to the standard full-frame image. Closed-captioned English soundtracks are rendered in both Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital Stereo, while a Spanish soundtrack has also been recorded in Dolby Digital Stereo. English, Spanish, and French subtitles are accessible. Supplemental materials include biographies of the directors and the all-star cast, and an informative making-of documentary. This is a high-quality disc from HBO/Rysher. CHRISTOPHER NULL Copyright � 2002 filmcritic.com Hey, look at me! I'm a B-list Hollywood actor with an inflated sense of self-worth that thinks he can "do something" for the world by making a socially responsible film. Hey, look at me! A gay kid got beaten to death in Laramie, Wyoming, so let's go there and interview people... and write a play using their words. Hey, look at me! A play ain't good enough. Let's make a movie about making a play about going to Laramie and interviewing people. In case you're not following, "stars" like Clea DuVall and Suddenly Susan player Nestor Carbonell play New York theater types who went to Laramie and interview the populace about Matthew Shepard, a murdered youth in Laramie, Wyoming, beaten to death ostensibly because he was gay. Stars like Christina Ricci and Joshua Jackson play the townsfolk, and their words are based on the real transcripts that the real NYC theater types recorded during their interviews. Got it? The egos involved in this project are so insanely inflated (the director, Mois�s Kaufman, actually has Carbonell playing Kaufman oh-so-earnestly) that the whole project degenerates into utter mush within five minutes. (Even Jeneane Garofalo appears with a concerned look on her face that comes off as little more than deer-in-the-headlights.) Overly earnest dialogue readings are alone enough to kill the picture immediately, but a bigger annoyance is the movie's score, a somber orchestral movement that plays without pause through virtually the entire movie. It gets on one's nerves the way nothing else can. Except for the split screen. Half the movie is presented in a ridiculous split screen format. Movies like Boys Don't Cry have made this movie before -- and made it well. The Laramie Project, its very title a lame and conceited moniker, is at every turn an example of a movie gone wrong. Tragic? Yes. A movie? Hardly. Sundance pap, and little more -- a shameless attempt to capitalize on tragedy and a pathetic end result which should be shunned. TIM MERRILL SplicedWire (2002-01-30) "The last thing Matthew saw was the sparkling lights of Laramie, Wyoming." So says an auto mechanic, played by Steve Buscemi, of the moment his friend Matthew Shepard - a 22-year-old gay college student - slipped into a coma after a savage beating. The attackers, a pair of stupid young homophobes named Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney, began by luring Shepard out of a local bar and ended up lashing him to a split-rail fence, leaving him for dead in the frigid night air. It was October 6th, 1998. Within a day, both Henderson and McKinney were in jail, and America's eyes were upon the town of Laramie, population 26,687. After a national deathwatch which lasted nearly a week, Shepard slipped out of his coma and into the arms of death after midnight on October 12th. Less than a month later, playwright Mois�s Kaufman and members of his Tectonic Theater Project ventured to Laramie and conducted interviews with more than 200 of its residents. "The Laramie Project" is the result of their noble efforts. And a noble piece of work it is, if significantly flawed. The Shepard case - like the savage slaying of James Byrd in Jasper, Texas only four months earlier - focused national attention on the fathomless depths of hatred that still exist in America, depths few of us wish to contemplate. It's a compelling and horrifying story, and "The Laramie Project" is worthwhile for reminding us that this sort of thing does, in fact, still happen in America. Laramie is America, and America is Laramie. As one local eloquently says in the film, "It happened here, so how can this not be the kind of town where this happens? We are like this." The flaws in "The Laramie Project" arise not from the telling of the story, but rather from the acting of it. For lack of a better term, it's an "acted documentary." In other words, Kaufman has enlisted a formidable roster of American indie talent to not only play the roles of Laramie's citizenry, but also of those who interview them. This is problematic not only because of the way the parade of famous faces sets one at a remove from the monstrous reality of the story, but also because, quite frankly, some of the actors are better than others. Some convince, and some do not. Luckily, most shine: Dylan Baker as the chief neurosurgeon who tended to Shepard, Peter Fonda as the doctor who first admitted him, Christina Ricci as Shepard's best friend, Jeremy Davies as a drama student, Clancy Brown as a detective, Joshua Jackson as a bartender, Ben Foster as the boy who discovered Shepard tied to the fence. Terry Kinney, in the role Shepard's father, has a tour-de-force courtroom scene in which he drives home the horror of his son's murder to McKinney (Mark Webber, also terrific). Often, though, there's a slightly queasy feeling that Shepard as a human being has gotten lost in the shuffle of name actors, that many of the actors and filmmakers, rather than honoring Shepard's life, are merely making themselves - and by extension all of us - feel better about his death. The lack of even a single photograph of Shepard - which, placed at the final fade, would have provided the sort of emotional wallop much of the film is missing - feels like something of an insult. Matthew Shepard was a young man who died because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time with a couple of small-minded brutes who simply couldn't handle the fact that he happened to be gay. "The Laramie Project" certainly has power, but the film could have paid a bit more mind to Shepard the person, and a bit less to Shepard the victim. Awards Best Film Made for Cable TV (win) - -2002 National Board of Review |
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| THE LARAMIE PROJECT 2001 - USA - 95 min. - Feature, Color, Made for TV Director -Moises Kaufman |
| Genre/Type -Drama, Docudrama, Ensemble Film Artistic/ Production Styles -Pseudo-documentary Keywords -interview, prejudice, gay-bashing, hate-crime, gay/lesbian-rights Themes -Social Injustice, Mothers and Daughters, Musician's Life Tones -Compassionate, Somber, Talky, Matter-of-Fact, Angry, Forceful Moods -Only Human, Food for Thought Set In -Laramie, WY Color type -Deluxe color Sound by -Dolby Digital Produced by -Cane / Gabay Prods. / Good Machine Released by -HBO DVD Street Date -Jun 25, 2002 Languages -English, Spanish Subtitles -English, French, Spanish Screen Formats -Letterbox for 16x9 TVs Sound -SDD5.1, 2 Studio -HBO Home Video Region -1 (USA & territories, Canada) DVD Sides -1 Cast Dylan Baker Stephen Belber Tom Bower Clancy Brown Steve Buscemi Nestor Carbonell Kathleen Chalfant Jeremy Davies Clea Duvall Michael Emerson Noah Fleiss |
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