The Laraamie Project Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

The Laraamie Project - Essay Example From watching this movie, certain things are clear. People of Wyoming are not as tolerant of homosexuality as they like to proclaim. They seem derogatory of the lifestyle and say it is a sin, no matter how much they like to proclaim that they believe in the philosophy of live and let live. This has affected the gay community of the state very much. They are all terrified of being who they are openly since they could be the next victims of such a heinous crime. We don’t really know what happened with Matthew Shepard that night, whether he really propositioned and thus offended his murderers. But one thing is for sure, no one deserves to meet their end the way he did. The Laramie Project covers the murder of Matthew Shepard. It is based on over two hundred interviews that were conducted by the Tectonic Theatre Project in this regard. The movie clearly shows how most people were absolutely unwilling to talk about the incident. They didn’t want anything to do with the membe rs of Tectonic Theatre Project. They were angry, depressed and in denial. And they obviously believed that getting involved in this case would put them in danger as well. The members of the Tectonic Theatre Project however, did find people that were willing to talk to them – about Matthew, how he was, his characteristics, his dreams and what he was doing just minutes before he was kidnapped. It is nice to see that people were willing to speak up about Matthew Shepard. The movie takes us through the entire case by showing news reports, interviews from friends and relatives to people who hate homosexuals to supportive and unsupportive priests, interviews with the boy who found Matthew Shepard in the morning, tied to the fence, interviews with a group of gay and lesbian people talking about how nervous the entire episode had made them, the court case and interviews with people who were close to the criminals – Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. The film also takes a cl ose look at the turmoil that the film crew underwent. The members of the Tectonic Theatre Project, who wanted to convey Matthew’s story to the world. It shows what they went through, not just the difficulties in getting people to speak to them, but also in terms of how they had to convey Matthew’s story to the world without being biased and without offending people. It also showed the hardships they went through, being homosexuals, as a lot of the people of Laramie were not very welcoming of them and were blatantly rude and insulting about their sexuality. The film also covered the story of the police officer who rescued Matthew and was exposed to his HIV. All in all, the movie is a complete telling of what happened that night and how the people dealt with later. The only thing missing from it was – Matthew’s version of the events, which obviously no one will ever know. Matthew Shepard was a very well-known young boy from Laramie. For this movie, the grou p cast a great set of people to play the interviewees and characters that were affected by Matthew’s death. Matthew’s close friend, Romaine Patterson was played by Christina Ricci. She greatly captured the essence of being best friend to Matthew. She was strong and her belief in Matthew never wavered. She knew he hadn’t done anything wrong. Christina Ricci played the part very well, especially when she and the others dress up as angels to protest the bad mouthing of the gay community. Joshua Jackson plays the bartender who was