Looking for Matthew: the Laramie Project traces a hate crime's deep impact on ordinary people's lives. (television).

For most of us, there is a terrible helplessness in thinking about what happened to Matthew Shepard. But as they field questions at a recent press event, the actors and real-life townspeople from HBO's The Laramie Project have moved beyond that. Along with their sadness--and at some point every one of them cries--they exude the joy and confidence of believing they've done their best for Matthew.

March 2002 is turning out to be Matthew Shepard's month, on television anyway. After a well-publicized dustup between the networks, NBC will broadcast The Matthew Shepard Story--which stars Stockard Channing and Sam Waterston as Matthew's parents and on which Judy Shepard was a consultant [see p. 58]--on March 16. That's the date HBO had originally announced for Laramie, which now will premiere on March 9.

While NBC's film offers a praiseworthy, slightly fictionalized account of the Shepards' decision not to seek the death penalty for killer Aaron McKinney, Laramie's docudrama approach is more complex and inevitably more compelling. Starting in October 1998, as Americans were still trying to absorb the shock of 21-year-old Shepard's death, out theater director Moises Kaufman and his New York City-based Tectonic Theater company made six trips in 18 months to Laramie, Wyo., where Shepard was fatally beaten, recording 400 hours of interviews with local residents about Matthew, the media, gays, God, and the law. Dramatized and distilled, these conversations became the hit stage version of Laramie and now a film adaptation, which received a high-profile premiere in January as the opening film for the Sundance Film Festival in Salt Lake City, Utah.

People in The Laramie Project speak largely uninterrupted, and The Advocate here uses the same format to hear from members of the Laramie troupe. Although one would assume there'd be nothing new to say about this tragedy, the very first conversation produces a stunning revelation.

Tied to that fence, Matthew was not alone after all.

Reggie Fluty

The Laramie policewoman, first law officer on the scene, tells what she saw when she first approached Matthew Shepard, badly beaten but still alive.

The only thing I can say is: That's exactly what hate looks like. That sadness that you feel in your heart for somebody else. You want to fix it, and you know by the looks of him that you can't. And the courage that guy had, for being such small stature, to still be alive, I'm still stunned by it.

It was so fitting, though: When I was running up there, there was a big doe lying there--a huge deer, a mother deer. Here Matthew is, and there's a big bush right next to him, and the doe is lying right on the other side of the bush. I didn't see her until I started running up. Like the old saying--"deer in the headlights"--she looked right at me, and poom! she was outta there. I thought, Wow.

Did she know Matthew was there? Oh, most definitely. It's not something that was brought out in the reporting, I don't know why.

Matthew couldn't talk to me. He had been exposed half the night and half the day. Even though I tried the best I could to comfort him and let him know somebody was there, I think [his comfort came from] that big old doe. That was the good Lord, no doubt in my mind. I'm sure he could feel her and she could feel him, and she was staying with him till help came.

Fluty, who later learned that she might have contracted HIV from contact with Matthew's wounds, took AZT for about six months. She is negative.

[HIV] wasn't really a fear. My husband and my daughters were devastated, and my parents were upset, obviously. But you just knew. I mean, what more of a sign do you want than a deer lying with somebody like that, that everything was gonna be OK? For me, I figured either way--I'd just as soon get to heaven a little early and say hey, I was trying to help, than get there late and say I was selfish.

What would I say to your gay and lesbian readers? You know, that's where my support came from [when I thought I might be HIV-positive]. You're gonna make me cry again. 'Cause people from San Francisco who had never met us sent us packages of information on safe sex, and you don't know how thankful we were for that. And this was people that we didn't know, we never asked--but that's where our support came from. And I wish everybody would just celebrate that kind of thing and look at the giving that's come out of this, because they really, to be quite blunt, saved our ass in a jam.

Joashua Jackson

The Dawson's Creek teen idol plays Laramie bartender Matt Galloway, one of the last people to see Matthew alive. He talks about his own gay-positive upbringing--and the effects of hate speech.

I had never been aware of Rev. Fred Phelps before [making this film]. I've heard people speak with hatred, but being on the set and seeing these 7- and 8-year-old children holding placards that say "Thank God for AIDS" and "Matt Shepard in Hell"--with this violent, virulent asshole just belching out this hateful vomit--and they don't know, you are condemning these children's minds to ignorance for their entire life. That was heartbreaking.

And the poor guy who played Reverend Phelps! I can't imagine how massively uncomfortable that must have been, 'cause not only are you putting these horrible words into your mouth and having to portray this truly evil manner of being human, you're also doing it in front of people who had to experience this the first time. Some of our extras were good friends of Matthew Shepard. We would cut and there would be people who were just shattered.

It's a long way [smiles] from Dawson's Creek to here. Though strangely--and this is why I think Matthew's murder became such a touchstone--it's not really a long way from anywhere. Laramie, Wyo., is not so isolated. It's Bakersfield, Calif.; Santa Fe, N.M.; Austin, Tex.; Wilmington, N.C. [where Dawson's Creek is filmed]. And it's not like there aren't ignorant and hateful people in big cities. It's New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta. That's why people respond so strongly. This is a very, very human tale. These are humans who are capable of committing this act of evil.

I grew up in Vancouver [Canada], a beautiful part of the world. To say that I was intimately involved in the gay community growing up, that would be untrue. But my buddy Wes's mom is gay, and she's had a live-in lover for my entire recollection of his life. It certainly wasn't growing up without exposure. I grew up in a single-parent family, and my mother's very liberal. So it wasn't really--and bless my mom for this--it wasn't really an issue, it wasn't like, "Well, now we need to expose you to gay people, because you need to know what this is like."

Before I did Dawson's Creek [with its gay story line], I didn't realize, never having been through this, how truly painful the experience of those high school years can be for kids. It just never dawned on me. Because my sexuality is fed to me by the mass media every single day. I can't tell you how many people, mostly to Kerr [Smith, who plays gay teen Jack on Dawson's Creek], come up and say, "Thank you so much."

On top of being about this horrific crime that's specifically related to Matthew Shepard and gay rights--human fights, really--this script speaks beyond whatever the particularities of your oppression might be. I believe the breakdown in the minds of these two children [McKinney and Russell Henderson] was that they denied Matthew Shepard his humanity. [To them] homosexuality was wrong, and therefore he was less than human.

It's what we do when we go to war. People need to make themselves feel righteous so while they're killing other human beings, they don't feel a compassionate response. The scale of September 11 was just bigger, but atrocities are committed at all levels at all times around the world, in this country, out of this country. That's why it resounded with me, not just because he was a young gay man but because he was a young man who was murdered for living his life.

Kelli Simpkins

A costar in both the film and the original play, Simpkins shares her personal decision to come out.

Several gay publications interviewed our company, and I was really struggling. I thought, What better time to come out than during this play where a young man has been killed because of his sexuality? But along with that came the fear that I didn't want to do anything that might stop me from having diverse opportunities before my acting career even got started.

When I was home in Indiana during Christmas, I got the phone call that [The Advocate] wanted to talk to me, and they made it pretty clear that it was about being gay and my involvement in the film. I thought about who I was and what was important to me and the fact that I'm very proud of being gay. I thought about younger kids who might be reading The Advocate. If I can help anyone feel better about themselves or a little more normal, with the constant barrage of people saying you're abnormal or perverted or sick, that would be great for me.

Being with this company has made me more political. It's made me think about what it is to be a gay person in the world. However much we are tolerated and accepted in our social circles, there is inherent danger in being gay and being out about it. I came to the conclusion that it's very, very important for me to be visible, to play gay characters, to have this kind of representation in the world.

Going to Laramie was life-changing for me--to see the beauty of this community that struggled with this murder, with social issues and class issues and gay issues and the media onslaught--how they were able to really sit down with people and search themselves. What a gift it was to be there, listen to them, and learn from them, because when this happened, they had an opportunity that they didn't let pass them by.

If I could talk to him right now, I guess one of the first things I would say is "Matthew, I can't begin to know what you went through, and I'm so sorry that you had to endure that. I want to say thank you for your life and your presence."

And this might be somewhat controversial, but with the film, you go to the Sundance Film Festival, and you go to all these places, and it is exciting, and I think on some level, we lose sight of what happened. There would be no film, there would be no play, if it weren't for Matthew and for this town, Laramie, being so open and so lovely to us, strangers from New York.

Sitting in the audience on the opening night at Sundance, I kept saying in my mind, I don't forget that. I don't forget him.

Moises Kaufman

The Laramie Project director talks about Shepard's effect on America's culture and his place in gay history.

The second day of shooting, we were shooting the court scene [in which Dennis Shepard, played by Terry Kinney, reveals that the Shepards will not ask for the death penalty] in the same courtroom where it really happened. I looked around at our cast--all of them actor's actors. There was this wonderful sense that everybody wanted to be there, wanted to be a part of telling this story.

Matthew's murder was one of those moments in our culture where something happened that kind of changed things. His name became a sign. [His stow] resonated because we as a culture were ready to hear it. I think that if Matthew had been killed 10 years ago, it would not have had the impact or the repercussions that it has now.

I've spent three years on this project. I don't want to sound pompous, but The Laramie Project is the second-most-performed play in America. How magnificent is that? That the dialogue Matthew encouraged continues to permeate the country. That Matthew's spirit soars.

RELATED ARTICLE: A mother's work: portrayed by Stockard Channing in The Matthew Judy Shepard works behind the scenes to keep her son's spirit alive with her foundation.

It's been more than three years since Matthew Shepard's death. And since then, Matthew's mother, Judy Shepard, has made it her life's work to educate others about the dangers of hatred and intolerance. Her latest project, The Matthew Shepard Story, premieres March 16 on NBC. For Shepard, the film marks the culmination of a long and difficult process. "I wasn't quite sure that I wanted to do [a movie] and quite frankly am still not sure that I did the right thing," she says of the biopic, which stars Shane Meier as Matthew. "But people kept telling me, `The only way to tell the truth is for you to do it.'"

Ultimately she and her husband, Dennis Shepard, gave their blessing to Alliance Atlantis and Goldie Hawn's production company, Cherry Alley, to make the movie. "Goldie just seemed so committed, and we felt so good about her, knowing her [work for] social justice issues," she says. "We felt that she would be an ally in telling the truth."

The movie sets out to tell the story of Matthew's life but is just as much about the aftermath of his death--particularly the agonizing decision faced by his parents as to whether to support the death penalty for Aaron McKinney, one of Matthew's killers. Initially, Shepard says, she and Dennis chose to leave the decision up to the jury. "Then," she says, "when we began weighing the benefits to us--like never having to deal with [McKinney] again--the decision [not to ask for the death penalty] became easier. It was very hard, though." The plea agreement the Shepards supported for McKinney allows him no chance at an appeal.

Shepard's work on the NBC movie and other projects is part of her duties as executive director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, an organization she and her husband set up shortly after Matthew's death. The foundation has also produced a half-hour documentary about homeless gay youth called Out in the Cold. And she is planning to put out two books. One, Face in the Crowd, will feature photographs of gay men and lesbians from all facets of life. In the other she hopes to compile some of the letters that were sent to Matthew following the attack. The foundation also sponsors Shepard's speaking tour. This spring she will visit 24 cities in three months. "I'm always well-received," she says. "A lot of questions and interest--that tells me that people know that there is work to be done.

"I want people to understand that Matt was a kid like any other kid," she adds. "He could've been anybody's son, brother, grandson, nephew, neighbor. He was just a good kid who bad things happened to. I want their eyes opened and their hearts moved by what happened to him so that they understand the position that the gay community is in when it comes to hatred." --Dan Allen