Father Geek here, my son-in-law LOBO sent the following report in for me to post up for all of you... His sabiduria adquirida con trabajo on this subject once he was free of la presion social in his native land of Mexico gives an interesting and different perspective to this TV film. His open talk of his own ingenuidad y decisiones indoctas concerning the gay lifestyle hopefully may open a few eyes on the subject. Anyway I'm happy to post this for him. Educacion is always better than blind elitismo. Pensamiento racional is always preferred to the inabilidad de cambio... and a brain libre de prejurcios is always superior to one full of estancamiento. Here's LOBO...

QUE haciendo "Small Screen" aficionados LOBO esta aqui....This is a little report on a film I saw tonight (3-9-02) called THE LARAMIE PROJECT...which by now I'm guessing some of you have already seen....but for those who haven't I really think you should check it out.....

THE LARAMIE PROJECT had it's premiere at 8pm on this Saturday night on HBO and I was really waiting to see it since I saw the previews for it last weekend. The first time I saw the previews for this I just caught them in the middle and missed the whole introduction, but I was waiting to see them again since what I saw really got my attention, specially all the known faces that were playing in this film, like Steve Buscemi (Things to do in Denver when you are dead), Christina Ricci (Opposite sex) and that COWAGAYA (meaning cool guy) from the Million Dollar hotel who played the character of Tom Tom (Jeremy Davies).... The next time I saw the whole preview thing (cause belive me I was hunting it down) I saw even more celebrities as part of the cast, and then I really wanted to see this, to the point where I even wrote it down on a calendar,set the computer to remind me about it and even set the timer on the TV, why....only because! the rest of the cast was Peter Fonda (Ya know, bad guy in LIMEY), Clea Duvall (Stokely... who made me like the film "THE FACULTY" cause of her dive outside the pool) Jeneane Garofalo (She is Cool....) and many, muchos more.

The Whole Pie was written and directed by Moisès Kaufman ( Un AMERICANO de Caracas ,Venezuela) this being his first Full Length film, he is also the founder (Big PAPA) and Artistic Director of Tectonic Theater PROJECT, a NYC theater company. One of the Production companies is GOOD MACHINE ( The ONE Company that is responsible for bringing the bad ass flick Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN to the US of A...THANX..)

There were a lot of commentaries from the actors on why this film was made, but the one that stuck with me was Christina Ricci's who said ;
"This is something we can't forget and that must be documented on film."

The Film is based on the case of Matthew Shepard that took place in Laramie, Wyoming in October of 1998, a hate crime that put the town under a microscope and brought up alot of controversy all over the country.

To be completely honest I had heard of this incident before on the MTV special and various news programs. So the films content was not totally foreign to me, I knew what had occurred and the story line.

Who was Matthew Shepard?
Matt was a college student, a nice guy, a son, a young gay man in a part of the country where that isn' t expected. He wasn't in the closet, if you asked him he would tell you the truth, although he did not advertise it . On October 5,1998 in a town with the population of 26,000, Matt walked into the Fireside Bar and met two young men (20 & 21). Eighteen hours later a young blonde male was found beaten, tied to a fence post and unconscious, this was Matthew beaten until he was unrecognizable and clinging to life. He died as a result five days later never once regaining consciousness to say goodbye. His family, friends, and the world had only one thought...How do we prevent this from ever happening again and bring justice to the incident.

This film is about the effect on the small community swallowed up in the media-frenzied aftermath of Matthew Shepards death... This is not a rarity, things like this happen all over the world although it is tragic, hate crimes are an every second event put upon millions of races, genders, religions, and sexualities... This film shows the reaction of a community labeled "hate crime capitol". It shows how it affected everyone in the town and the ones who knew Matt. This also documents the research of a group from the NYC theater company and their arrival to the town to analyze the reaction, changes and effects on the people of the town for a play in process, as one of the group members says in a restaurant , "this is not about the case, this is about the town, why did this happen here, what are the people saying, how do they feel and think about what happened." , also includes actual footage from the trial! s and news broadcasts.

The film was nicely made and it really teaches you more about what's behind, inside and around the whole situation, it was also nice to see all the cast involved in this feature and their work, specially Christina Ricci and Steve Buscemi.

Now let me tell you exactly why I really wanted to see this....

For me this was a way to learn more about these types of situations. I was born in Mexico a country that is known for the stereotypical Macho mentality, there I was raised in a very conservative manner and around a catholic society (family and school). I never knew what Gay was or meant until I started hearing all types of comments ( mainly bad ones) and specially jokes in High school, that was exactly what was in my head all that time, those voices saying "PUTO" meaning "FAG" and "MARICON" meaning "QUEER" and I noticed that those people that looked or were Gay weren't accepted as "Normal" people. Maybe the reason why I didn't really know the Gay community existed in Mexico was because it is hard for them to come out clean and without losing all respect. I was once a bully who followed the verbal attacks of some students towards feminine guys, just because I was an ignorant asshole that wasn't able to think for himself.

Then I moved to Austin,TX. and started realizing that here it is more open and accepted, there are even stores in town that sell merchandise with pictures and words of that type. So I felt like I just came to another planet, not just the language changed, but also the way people around me thought. This really made me realize that the whole gay thing wasn't what I had in mind and opened a window to learn about respecting people regardless. So this movie has change more the way I look at things and I really like the fact of how one incident can change a lot of lives in different ways ....that is all it takes a spark that triggers the chain reaction to an explosive wake up call.

( to bad the spark in this case was a human life)

LOBO