Daniel J. Stasiewski, A&E Editor
behrcolls@aol.com
`Freddy 3' remains Fishburne's best film
or Why The Matrix Revolutions' sucks so bad
by Chris Hvizdak
contributing writer
Before Wednesday morning I would
have thought the only way to fail at be
ing pointless would be to have a point.
"Matrix 3" (I will no longer dignify the
movie by using its full title) has opened
my eyes to an entirely new dimension
of pointless failure, a concept which will
take significant energy to integrate into
my personal knowledge matrix.
Yes, I said matrix in a manner non
referential to the movie. Over the past
four years anyone using "that word" in
such a context would be showered with
a barrage of giggles and the phrase "I
know kung-fu." After seeing "Matrix 3,"
I feel I have the provenance to reclaim
"that word" in the name of all English
speaking people. So here we go:
Matrix: "1. A situation or
surrounding substance within which
something else originates, develops,
or is contained: 'Freedom of
expression is the matrix, the
indispensible condition, of nearly ev
ery form of freedom' (Benjamin N.
Cardozo)." www.dictionary.com
2. An enjoyable 1999 motion picture
characterized by then cutting edge
special effects and a story composed
of ideas mostly plagiarized from au
thors Phillip K. Dick (Do Androids
Dream of Electric Sheep?) and
William Gibson (Neuromancer). Fol
lowed by two revolting sequels no
table for their bland characters, te
dious action sequences and painfully
shallow storylines. Chris Hvizdak
Is it acceptable for a movie to be
pointless? Sure. One (not "the one," the
royal one) can argue that lots of movies
deemed great are pointless. Personally
Shepard's story inspires emotional telefilms
by Chuck Barney
Knight Ridder Newspapers
On Oct. 6, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a gay col
lege student, was savagely beaten with the butt
of a pistol, tied to a cattle fence and left to die in
the freezing countryside outside Laramie, Wyo.
Nearly 3-12 years later, television is poised to
revisit, in a major way, one of the most notorious
hate crimes of our time. On Saturday, HBO de
buts "The Laramie Project," a movie based on
the highly acclaimed play of the same name. A
week later, NBC offers "The Matthew Shepard
Story," a biographical telefilm produced by,
among others, Goldie Hawn.
Matthew's mother, Judy Shepard, is greeting
the fresh wave of exposure with mixed emotions.
On the one hand, she embraces the opportunity it
brings to amplify the call for social justice. On
the other, she fears it will rip open old wounds.
"I worry about some of the negative comments
that might surface in the press_particularly from
the religious right. Hurtful comments like 'He was
asking for it' and things like that ," she says. "But
hopefully, the good will outweigh the bad with
both films. Like any mother, you want everybody
to love your kids."
These latest productions follow on the heels of
last January's "Anatomy of a Hate Crime," a
movie about the Shepard case that aired on MTV.
In addition, there have been documentaries, books
and other explorations. Clearly, the creative com
munity continues to be intrigued by Shepard's
murder and the incredible fallout it generated.
"We're moved by it because the nation was
moved," says Moises Kaufman, director and lead
writer on "The Laramie Project." "It was a water
shed moment in our culture. It was the first hate
crime that woke this nation up and had us saying,
'This can't be happening. This shouldn't be hap-
pening.'"
Kaufman believes the Shepard story resonated
for a number of reasons, including the symbolic
nature of the crime. "He was tied and left hang
ing on a fence, which conjured up crucifixion im
agery, and our culture is very sensitive to that kind
of imagery," he says. "Also, he didn't die right
away (Shepard was in a coma for five days), so,
for a while, we became emotionally invested in
his possible recovery, hoping that he'd make it."
Finally, and perhaps most significantly, says
Kaufman, the 5-foot-2, 21-year-old Shepard was
"photogenic and angelic" - a young man just start-
"The Matrix's" Laurence Fishburne
turns his back on this review in an
attempt to horrify the reviewer with
his frightfully polka-dotted overcoat.
I love Orson Welles and do not have a
problem with the argument that "Citi
zen Kane" has no point other than to
explore Welles' fixation with the axiom
that "Absolute Power Corrupts Abso
lutely." That's because I enjoy Orson
Welles. I also enjoy "Dude, Where's My
Car?," which coincidentally has a far
more concrete storyline and resolution
than "Matrix 3." Did you think all that
tedious psuedo-philosophy the
Wachowskis spent a good chunk of the
second movie spewing would amount
to something? I hoped it would but it
ing out in life, who easily could have been a neigh
bor or friend.
"To be blunt, it would have been much more
difficult for the country to relate to a big-city Af
rican-American or Hispanic drag queen who met
his end in a dark alley somewhere," he says. "Mat
thew was seen as a worthy victim."
Four weeks after the murder, Kaufman and
eight members of his New York-based Tectonic
Theatre Project traveled to Laramie. There they
recorded interviews with more than 200 towns
people over an 18-month period and attended the
trials of Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson,
who are serving life sentences for the crime.
The troupe's material was distilled into a three
act docudrama featuring more than 60 speaking
parts, each with its own perspective on Shepard,
his killers and the events that inextricably linked
them. The play premiered in Denver in early 2000
and went on to become an off-Broadway hit. In
the Bay Area, Berkeley Repertory Theatre staged
"The Laramie Project" in April 2001.
Kaufman's film version was developed through
the Sundance Film Lab and was chosen to kick
off this year's edition of the prestigious film fes
tival; it opened to mostly favorable reviews.
HBO Films president Colin Callender points
out the provocative "Laramie" arrives at a highly
appropriate time. "It has remarkable resonance
in the post-September 11 consciousness, and not
just as an exploration of a hate crime," Callender
says. "It's fundamentally the story of a commu
nity forced to face itself in the wake of a tragedy
under the glare of the national press _ and in the
process, reexamining and reaffirming its sense of
self."
Shepard is never depicted in "The Laramie
Project," nor is the crime enacted. It is, however,
described by the killers, and its severity is con
veyed through the actors playing police and medi
cal personnel. The effect, nonetheless, is chill
ing.
"The Laramie Project" marked Kaufman's first
foray into movies, and the resulting film is more
literal and external than his play. While the stage
version featured eight actors playing 64 parts on
a spare stage, the movie relies on a 64-person
ensemble of mostly familiar actors, including
Steve Buscemi, Peter Fonda, Laura Linney,
Camryn Manheim, Christina Ricci and Amy
Madigan. Actual news footage is also intercut
with the performances, and viewers get a sense
of place through shots of Laramie's beautiful
AM'S ... -0.
WIMMVVOMIT
Friday, November 7, 2003
doesn't. There is no payoff in "Matrix
3."
The picture ends up coming off like
some hypothetical jerk who bopped by
Barnes and Noble on his way home
from the tanning salon and skimmed a
copy of "Philosophy for Dummies" so
he can, in his own words, "Score some
brainy chicks." Just like our hypotheti
cal jerk, from "The Cave" to causality,
"Matrix 3" does some name-dropping
and alludes to a lot of things, but it never
quite brings them together. Nor does it
manage even to simply present a set of
ideas in an interesting or thought-pro
voking context. No questions are raised;
no ideas are expounded upon. We, the
audience, end up feeling like a hypo
thetical "brainy chick" that went home
with our hypothetical jerk, used and
abused, and in our case out of $7.50.
Of course a movie need not culmi
nate in a point to be entertaining and
"Matrix 3" might have succeeded in that
respect if its characters were not per
petually deadpan and its action not un
relenting repetitive torture. In sharp
contrast, "Dude, Where's My Car?"
achieves far and beyond "Matrix 3" by
providing us not only with an enjoyable
90 minutes of hilarity, but 90 minutes
of hilarity that result in a (compara
tively) creative and exhilarating reso
lution. Even the "Planet of the Apes"
remake, as thoroughly terrible as it is,
attempts to end in an interesting man
ner, the attempt putting it far ahead in
the running.
So do you want to see "Matrix 3?" If
you're curious about how the story
"ends" and hearing it from some poor
schmuck who paid to do so isn't enough
maybe. If you want to see what a mil
lion dollars a minute worth of special
effects look like maybe. You will see
a lot of expensive special effects, but
remember that you've seen the vast ma
jority of them in the first two movies.
Occasionally a shot crops up that has
something new and interesting, but I'd
say that occurs less than half a dozen
times during the two plus hours. You
will see more action than in the second
movie. However, bear in mind that the
action in this movie is even more tedious
than in "Matrix 2" and there are se
quences that, once they pass the half
hour mark, you may simply want to end.
As I find "Matrix 3" to be highly
denigrating to all people and, in the
interest of adapting my reactions to the
widest possible swath of audiences, I'll
wrap this up with two fictitious mini
reviews. The first is designed to evalu
ate the "Matrix 3" on its own patroniz
ing terms, and the second via a re
spected method of film critique.
(Author's Note: Please bear in mind
that I'm not a crazy sexist, I'm simply
attempting to illustrate how this movie
makes victims of us all.)
No. l .Fictious Maxim Review:
"'Matrix 3' is like a reasonably hot
chick, a 6 or a 7, who is pretty dumb.
After awhile you get bored with it's av
erage attractiveness and find it to be
shallow and incoherent. You will wish
you hadn't wasted any of your time on
it to begin with."
No. 2. Fictitious Joe Bob Briggs (of
TNT's Monstervision) Review:
"Second crappy sequel to a pretty
good first movie. We've seen all the
action before in the first two, so that
leaves us only to experience the awe
some profoundness of its story, which
I'm certain will leave you all in tears
for one reason or another.
Things to Look For
1 "Bum-Fight"
2 Face Gouges
4 Breasts
skies and stark landscape.
Some who have experienced the play may find
the use of celebrity cameos to be a bit off-put
ting, and perhaps some sense of intimacy is lost.
But the film still packs an emotional wallop, and
makes effective statements about the roots of
prejudice and the communities in which we live.
Although Kaufman points out that the play is
now touring the country and "has a life of its own,"
he was eager to reach a much wider audience
through television, a medium that has assumed a
major role in the production of independent films.
"Millions of homes, along with every motel in
the country, have HBO," he says. "This allows us
to get our work into the cultural bloodstream
much quicker than a theatrical release."
Judy Shepard has never seen "The Laramie
Project," but she has read the scripts from both
the play and film and considers the piece a "won
derful" endeavor.
"I'm just not ready to relive some of the things
they get into," she says. "I told Moises that I'd
tape it, though, and someday I'll watch it and, I'm
sure, pause the VCR several times to cry."
Judy and her husband, Dennis, however, were
involved in NBC's "The Matthew Shepard Story."
They sold the film rights to Hawn's production
company, approved the final script, and Judy vis
ited the set early on in production. The family's
relationship with Hollywood, however, was ini
tially a tentative one.
"We really wanted to avoid the whole movie
thing for a while. I don't know of anybody who
wants their life to be a movie of the week," she
says. "But it became apparent that others were
doing things that we weren't fully comfortable
with. After meeting with Goldie and her people,
we realized they would approach the project with
passion and dignity."
In comparison to "The Laramie Project," NBC's
piece, which stars Stockard Channing and Sam
Waterson as Matthew's parents, takes a much
more conventional telefilm approach. Still, it con
tains a family viewpoint that "Laramie" doesn't,
and viewers who take the time to see both mov
ies will come away with more pieces to the puzzle.
The film's dramatic thrust is pegged to the
couple's changing and conflicting emotions dur
ing the murder trial, when they are compelled to
draft a public statement asking the jury for either
the death penalty or the kind of mercy the killers
never showed their son. Against this backdrop,
Matthew's often tumultuous life is recalled in a
The Behrend Beacon
Improper use of Igia Electric Facial
Hair Removal System
Goofy Religious Imagery
Goofy Wizard of Oz Imagery
Gratuitous Bad One Liners (nothing
so well written as "I know
kung-fu.")
Gratuitous Robot Man-Suit vs.
Robot Squid Battle
Gratuitous use of minor, uninterest-
ing characters
Gratuitous Rave full of creepy
leather-nipple freaks
Superman-Fu
Hover-Boat-Fu
Source-Fu
Jedi-Fu
Rebar-Fu
No Stars.
(Don't) Roll it."
Personally I'd say the Wachowskis
should have stopped while they were
ahead, or continued synthesizing
*cough* plagiarizing *cough* other
peoples ideas into their own little world
of slow-mo backyard wraslin'. Ulti
mately "Matrix 3" is consumed by said
psuedo-philosphy and fails to live up to
the "accidental profoundness" of the
first film. If you're going to skip this
heap but still need a flick try "Starship
Troopers," "Ghostbusters" or "Back to
the Future 2." They're all pretty good.
Chris Hvizdak (viztron.tripod.com;
toastmaster® iname.com) has re
cently been contracted to write/di
rect the big-budget epic "Beetlejuice
vs. Ghostdad" for Levar Burton's
RRP (Reading Rainbow Pictures)
Inc. Read about his adventures in
the project's production log at
www.livejournal.com/-hviz.
Christina Ricci in the somber "Laramie
Project."
series of flashbacks
"It's a very, very dark and sad story," says Shane
Meier, the actor who plays Matthew Shepard.
"But it's an important story. I want the world to
realize what happened and what is still happen
ing. This is not made up."
Meier, who researched his role partially by in
terviewing members of the gay community in his
hometown of Vancouver, Canada, says he was
stunned to learn that so many of those he talked
to had recently suffered some form of harassment
and/or abuse - from verbal slurs to assault and
robbery.
Working on the film has been a "life-changing
experience," Meier says. Last week, he joined
Judy for a few public speaking engagements in
Denver, where they addressed the issues of dis
crimination and intolerance.
"I told her I want to help in any way I can. I
want to have an impact," he says. "I know I'm
going to carry around a little piece of Matthew
with me forever."
As for Judy, she hopes "The Matthew Shepard
Story" will convey the essence of her son's life
and help viewers to get to know the young man
behind all the horrifying headlines.
"I want people to understand that Matthew was
just like any other person on the planet," she says.
"He just wanted to be happy."
"The Laramie Project," sponsored by Trigon,
will be shown on Thursday in Reed 117 at 6:30
p.m. Sponsored by Trigon.
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