A Powerful Rememberance in Honor of Matt Shepard Brings DOC NYC Audience to their Feet
Written by Laura Dattaro
When audience members at the New York premiere of Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine were invited to ask questions after the screening, at first, no one had much to say. What do you say to the parents and close friend of a college student who was brutally murdered over a wallet and homophobic hate? But eventually, one man stood up and shared his memory of Matt Shepard — how he and three of his friends marched down the streets of New York in the days following news of Matt’s death, managing to yell his name to Martha Stewart as she drove by in her limo.
More stories followed. Everyone wanted to tell Matt Shepard’s family and friends what his story meant to them, strangers to Matt’s life but deeply touched by his death. It was this fact that everyone knew Matt Shepard but no one knew Matt that spurred director Michele Josue, who attended high school with Matt, to make a film about his life 15 years after he died. “I was watching a lot of what the media was putting out about him, I was watching him turn into this icon, and I thought that was a bit unfair to him,” Josue said in a discussion after the screening. “It took me over a decade to get the courage to begin the project.”
Josue interviewed nearly everyone in Matt’s life — his parents, school friends from childhood through college, his guidance counselor and confidant, the leader of an LGBT group at the university he briefly attended in Laramie, Wyoming. Through their retellings, along with family photos and videos, Josue shows Matt as a deep and complex human, full of love and kindness but also marred by insecurity and times of deep trouble. “Showing his dark moments and struggles with depression, that was tough,” Josue said. “But we wanted to be honest.”
She also shows what happened to Matt in wrenching detail. On October 6, 1998, shortly before Matt’s 22nd birthday, Matt left a bar in Laramie with two other men his age who drove him out to a field, tied him to a fence post, beat him with fists and the butt of a gun, and left; he died in a hospital six days later from the injuries. Matt’s story made national news, in part due to the efforts of his counselor who called national gay rights organizations to ensure the local media in Laramie didn’t “gloss over” the story.
Many hoped Matt’s death and the great suffering it caused would be enough to move the United States beyond homophobia and hate crimes. But it was not so simple. Anti-gay groups picketed Shepard’s funeral; though Matt died during Bill Clinton’s presidency, it was Barack Obama who was finally able to sign hate-crime legislation, known as the Matthew Shepard Act, into law fully 11 years after Matt’s death.
Matt’s parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard, continue to work against hate crimes and for greater tolerance and acceptance of individuals through the Matthew Shepard Foundation, which they founded and operate. And there is still much work to be done — Josue and Judy are bringing the film to Russia, where anti-gay rhetoric and violence has escalated in recent years, in the hopes of showing more of the world just how devastating hate crimes can be.
“Seeing him on film, he’s with us again,” Judy said at the screening, reflecting on how it feels to watch a documentary about her son’s murder. “And then when it’s over, he’s gone again.”
For more information about Matt and hate crimes, visit the Matthew Shepard Foundation’s web site.
For more about Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine, visit the film page on the DOC NYC website.
Laura Dattaro is a freelance reporter in New York City focusing on science and the environment. Follow her on Twitter @ldattaro
