“Like No Place On Earth” the sign reads as the cameras enter the state of Wyoming. Rolling prairies as far as the eye can see stretch out for miles. The landscape is so tranquil that it almost seems to be refuting that such a heinous crime could have been committed in this pristine environment. This is the setting for The Laramie Project, HBO’s foray into the Matthew Shepard story.
Matthew Shepard was severely beaten in October 1998 on a road outside of Laramie, Wyo., and left to die. His attackers had lured him to a country road, where they beat him because he was gay. He was later found and taken to a hospital, but his injuries were beyond repair, and he died days later.
The Laramie Project (HBO co-opted the title for its production) was designed to try to make sense of an event that by its very nature made no sense. Moises Kaufman and a crew from his theater company in New York City set out to produce a play in Laramie about the events surrounding Matthew Shepard’s murder. To do this, he and his crew interviewed more than 200 residents of Laramie. HBO’s production attempts to re-create the events and circumstances of Kaufman and company’s work, electing an all-star cast over documenting Kaufman’s actual fieldwork.
The Laramie Project‘s star-studded cast (including Christina Ricci, Camryn Manheim, Peter Fonda, Laura Linney, Janeane Garofalo, among others) serves more as a distraction than as a boon to the overall production. Watching Joshua Jackson play Matt Galloway is an excellent example. Galloway was the bartender at the bar where Matthew Shepard met his eventual murderers. It is difficult to focus on Galloway’s words as Jackson‘s persona usurps the message.
Nestor Carbonell, of Suddenly Susan fame, plays Moises Kaufman. When he arrives in Laramie, what he and his fellow playwrights find is a town struggling with its identity. What is most striking from these re-created interviews is that Laramie appeared to be a town without a clear sense of what it was before this event forever branded it as the epicenter of hate. Similarly, The Laramie Project is a film struggling with its own identity crisis.
Like the band playing as the Titanic went down, the University of Wyoming marching band plays in the homecoming parade marching through downtown Laramie while Matthew Shepard, a student at the university, lies in a hospital bed, just hours away from death. Above all others, this scene best illustrates the dichotomy of Laramie, a town struggling emotionally, spiritually and politically.
On one hand, this film attempts to dramatically document the collective emotional growth that Laramie underwent immediately following Shepard’s murder. However, the film does an about-face from one-on-one interviews to re-enactments of some of the key events surrounding the murder, not finishing its points about the growth of Laramie’s residents. Although dozens of Hollywood’s most recognizable actors appear in The Laramie Project, none save for a handful appear for more than a total of five minutes, further confusing the actual direction of the film and leaving the viewer without a clear sense of who these characters are supposed to represent.
What we’re left to glean from the series of jump cuts and abbreviated interviews is that the people of Laramie, of Wyoming, do not believe that they are “like this” (presumably meaning not likely to brutally murder homosexuals). They are a tolerant, loving people. Of all those “interviewed,” only one resident dares rebuff the statement “Laramie isn’t this kind of a town.” She states matter-of-factly, “Laramie is this kind of a town. How can it not be a town where this kind of thing happens? We are like this. We are like this.”
Instead of being moved by the dialogue and the character-driven performances of some of Hollywood’s finest, what is most striking about The Laramie Project, and what evokes the most emotion, are the few pieces of actual news footage interwoven through the film. The closest to a real person appearing in the film is Tom Brokaw featured in an NBC News snippet. And a clip of Ellen DeGeneres‘ statement, made at one of the hundreds of rallies across the nation following the murder–“I can’t stop crying. This is what I was trying to stop,”–is one of the most powerful, heartfelt moments in the film’s 90 minutes. Another clip, taken from a rally in New York City, captures hundreds of people chanting the word “shame” over and over, providing the film with a much-needed soul.
The complex messages and mode of delivery ultimately serve as the film’s downfall. For a story with such a powerful message, Hollywood did not need to stack the deck with its first-string players. The story already had proven it could stand on its own. In the end, regardless of the production value and all of its flaws, The Laramie Project allows us to revisit a time in our not-so-distant past when humanity was temporarily suspended, then rediscovered.
Written by Todd Kimmelman, exclusive for Hollywood.com.
