THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

Statement from the Shepard Foundation: "While we appreciate MTV's efforts to fight anti-gay discrimination and hate crimes, and support the social justice organizations participating in the network's year-long pro-social campaign, the Shepard family wants to make clear that it had no involvement in and does not give its blessing or endorsement to the MTV film Anatomy of a Hate Crime. Instead we are working in conjunction with Cherry Alley Productions and Alliance Atlantis to produce the official Matthew Shepard Story, which will ultimately air on NBC in 2001."

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The brutal, hate-fueled murder of transgender Brandon Teena inspired last year's acclaimed, Oscar-winning ( for Lead Actress Hilary Swank ) film Boys Don't Cry. But it also inspired many other theatrical, multimedia, and cinematic productions ( including All She Wants, which was Drew Barrymore's hopeful baby ) . A similar artistic response has met the 1998 tragedy of Matthew Shepard, a petit, boyishly handsome 21-year-old who was beaten and left for dead by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson&emdash;in Laramie, Wyoming. Theater has seen an acclaimed piece, The Laramie Project, while NBC plans to air its Matthew Shepard story in April. But MTV is beating them to the TV movie punch with January's Anatomy of a Hate Crime&emdash;although its makers emphasize it's not about Matthew Shepard. Well, not entirely.

"It's really not a script about Matthew Shepard," insists the film's openly gay writer, Max Ember. "It's about the MURDER of Matthew Shepard ... about three young men living in cowboy country in America. ... As we face the Bush administration," he adds, not altogether glibly.

Indeed, much of Anatomy focuses on Aaron and Russell, deconstructing who they were, why they did what they did, and how they ended up landing two life sentences each.

"I felt that by telling the story from the POV of Aaron and Russell, the two perpetrators, that something very unique could happen," Ember explains. "What was really fascinating about this case, unlike others, is that Aaron and Russell didn't have any great political agenda, any great belief system in fact at all. These are two young men who clearly got lost in a sea of drugs, of immediate priorities ... They didn't hate gay people any more than anyone else they knew. They didn't wake up in the morning and say 'we're gonna kill a fag.' They were two young men at the end of their ropes ... certainly the last thing they expected in their minds was to kill someone, much less a gay guy. Nonetheless that's exactly what happened and I thought it's worthy of discovering why that would happen."

Newcomer Cy Carter plays Matthew Shepard, who moves back to his home state of Wyoming to resume college after spending time in Denver. Although diminutive, he's worldly ( time in Saudi Arabia where Dad worked, high school in Europe, college in N.C. ) and assured, joining the school's gay union, challenging teachers at school, and befriending anyone with a smile. But behind closed doors, he struggles with his share of depression, anxiety and loneliness.

As for untravelled townies Aaron and Russell, they're close friends whose lives revolve around partying, making money, being harassed by the police, and their two girlfriends&emdash;one of whom works for the University's gay union. And one fateful night, jonesing for cash, they spot a well-dressed Matthew at the local bar and decide to roll him, leaving his limp, pistol-whipped body by a lonely fence. They assume nobody will care about some battered fag, but when Shepard dies, learn otherwise, earning two consecutive life sentences&emdash;with no possibility of parole&emdash; each.

"They're those kinds of everyday tough kids, so you do relate to them," says executive producer Lawrence Bender. "But then you see as they go into the circle of violence and you get kind of caught up in their characters, that these everyday tough kids, that maybe you think are kind of cool, don't end up being cool at all."

A socially minded filmmaker ( including the Peabody-nominated AIDS doc, Being Alive ) and former TV writer, Ember admits he was interested in Shepard's tragedy from day one. "We all picked up The New York Times on a slow news day and saw that picture, that picture of Matthew in the checkered shirt," he remembers, "and I knew when I was seeing it that a watershed moment was happening. I call it a 'Rosa Parks moment,' when all of a sudden one human being encapsulates something and we'll never look at that kind of thing again in the same way. "It's not that Matthew was the first gay bias crime or the last," he continues. "As you know, there have been over 40 gay bias murders since Matthew's death, but I think that Matthew and Laramie and cowboy country and the old West all kind of collided on that day in that picture in that newspaper account. And it made me realize it was time to stop and take a look at this."

From there, Ember conducted research, poring over court transcripts, news accounts, speaking with locals, friends of Shepard, McKinney, Henderson, and Matthew's mother, Judy Shepard ( however, the Shepards did not officially take part in nor do they endorse the production ) . So armed with information and accounts&emdash;"Everyone had a very unique agenda and POV," he notes&emdash;Ember put it to paper and approached Lawrence Bender.

Bender, best known for producing Quentin Tarantino's films, had been looking to produce television projects for some time when Ember approached him with Anatomy's script. "I just felt that if I was going to get into the TV world I wanted to do something that would have a lot of social relevance and be meaningful," Bender says. "Because you work really hard, you're not making any money, and you have a short amount of time to do the same thing you have in the feature world, so why do it? You do it in this case because it's a very important message and the reason to do it on MTV specifically is that, as I'm sure you know, the majority of hate crimes are committed by young adults on young adults, and MTV's audience is young adults. They were very passionate about the piece, what it had to say, and brought an enormous amount to the project that helped make it what it is&emdash;to keep it on message." Ember also lauds MTV for backing their efforts, as not many stations were eager to at the time. In fact, Ember was told "nobody is going to be interested in this," he recalls, "so MTV showed enormous courage in taking this on, especially at that point."

Actor Cy Carter recalls the project was on the down low when he first auditioned. "When I read the script everyone's names were different," he says. "I think they were kinda trying to keep it hush-hush. It SEEMED like it was the Matthew Shepard story, but all the names had been changed. But then when I went back [ for callbacks ] they informed me it was in fact a Matthew Shepard story, so that kind of helped I think in my callback because I knew more of the specifics."

Indeed, Carter hails from a small town himself, outside Amarillo, Texas. Like Shepard he studied political science, had a father in the fuel business, a male sibling ( two in Carter's case ) , and although heterosexual, experienced his share of schoolhouse harassment. "I can identify with a lot of the ostracism he experienced, even doing theater in West Texas," he admits. "'Theater fag,' yeah, it was weird&emdash;you grow up with these football players who are still there ... Such sad people."

Aware Shepard was not only a public figure, but one many claim as a friend, son, brother, and even mirror of themselves, Carter admits he initially felt pressure to please those people, including Shepard's family and close friends, with his performance. "The pressures, they were there in the beginning," he says. "But in order to do what I could for the film and in turn for Matthew and all the people who consider him a brother and rally around him, I had to respect them, know they were there, their hearts were there, know that my heart was in it, and let myself go into it and forget about it. Because I think every morning waking up to that kind of pressure would have debilitated my efforts in telling the story. I just hoped to spread the word." Adding further challenges to the role was the fact Anatomy of a Hate Crime didn't flinch from depicting rarely discussed, not entirely pretty elements of Shepard's life. To wit, the film brings to light Shepard's HIV+ status, which had previously been noted in the theatrical piece, The Laramie Project, and is part of the public record, but rarely if at all mentioned in widespread print or media. However, Ember emphasizes such details don't make Shepard's death any less tragic, although "it kind of explains why a gay man with a lot of options might feel the need to get home to regroup," says Ember.

"I hope those facts we kind of brought out in the film show Matthew as a fallible human being," Carter opines. "Someone who was facing hard things, would get upset with his mother, was impatient, frustrated, insecure sometimes, afraid ... [ Director Tim Hunter ] and I, every day, would talk about how if we were going to have the audience relate to him we couldn't gloss over it all, because an audience is smart and they know when they're being lied to. I think the effect of his murder is more impactful when you know that Matthew was a regular person just like you or me&emdash;he had his good days and he had his bad days. Most of the time he acted very honorably and I just tried to show that because I think he was a very honorable soul and I tried to bring that into the film."

Although the film only depicts the actual beating/murder to a point ( "We showed the beginning of it but we didn't want to show the actual killing because maybe that was going to be too painful to have to relive," says Bender ) , Carter recalls the difficulty in shooting that scene, which much like Boys Don't Cry's painful rape sequence, left its participants in tears. It also galvanized the crew. "The two guys, Brendan and Ian, they were both in tears because they had to go places inside of themselves I'm sure were kind of scary to rummage up that kind of hatred," Carter recalls. "We shot that the first Sunday we were there, for like eight hours one night, but I'm so glad we did it early on in the shoot because it drastically affected the crew as well as the cast. This wasn't even real, but just to see that, a tenth of what it would have been like for him, just made them realize what an important film they were working on."

Speaking of fractions, Ember acknowledges that many others have suffered Shepard's fate, although we don't see their faces in print, on websites, or in TV movies. A number of factors contribute to that reality, says Ember, and further motivated him to keep the focus on the crime and its perpetrators versus Shepard himself.

"I totally agree the selling of Matthew Shepard is a very unique and interesting and important point of view," Ember says, agreeing that had he not been so "cute," Shepard wouldn't be the well-known figure he is today. "Not just that Matthew was cute, but also that the picture of Matthew was not sexual. It made him look like everybody's friend, everybody's brother, son. As you know, certain amounts of gay bias crimes occur while gay men are looking for sex, or after sex. ... Matthew became a lightning rod because he was one of the few gay bias murders where his pants weren't down around his legs at the time of the murder. That's why, as I say, this isn't a movie about Matt Shepard, it's a film about the perpetrators. Because the truth is if you make the movie about how unique, or for that matter how cute Matthew Shepard is, what about those who aren't? Who aren't as photogenic or full of promise, or whose parents aren't as articulate. Do they deserve any less respect or care? That's why my feeling was the focus of the movie is not about Matthew Shepard."

Which will hopefully have the side effect of drawing in MTV's Eminem-lovin' audience&emdash;an audience which could end up the next generation of Aaron McKinneys and Russell Hendersons ... or not.

"I'd run an Eminem marathon in front of the movie if I had my choice," Ember states. "I really would, because in my opinion Eminem is the spark and Matthew is the explosion. We can't live in a culture where it's OK to bash fags verbally and attack people and not expect for that to take on weird and bizarre and terrible consequences somewhere sometime. But people have enormous capacities to change and grow if you allow them, and the whole hope of this movie is that some kid who buys an Eminem record or allows the guys on his team to use the word 'faggot,' is there's a possibility of change and growth. Where someone's gonna say in that locker room 'you know it's not OK to say the word faggot,' and 'Eminem is not someone I want to listen to because he speaks ill of people.' I believe in that capacity for change and growth and that's why I wrote the movie. If one kid in a locker room asys 'hey, my brother or neighbor's gay, don't call people fags,' then the world changes."

As for Carter, he hopes "people walk away from the film just knowing the world is bigger than what YOUR world is. That there are people out there having different experiences than you, it doesn't make it right or wrong, that you're going to encounter people who are different than you and if you love and embrace life you're going to have an amazing life. Matthew loved life and loved people. But if you allow your own insecurities and hatred to bubble up, you're going to have a life of misery and whether you end up in prison with two back-to-back life sentences or in a mansion where everything around you is surrounded with hate, then you still end up in the same place in your soul."