Matthew Shepard Is Interviewed In `Dear Jesse'

Last month, the Boston Society of Film Critics named Timothy Kirkman's "Dear Jesse" as its runner-up for best documentary of 1998.

The Boston group's top prize went to Michael Moore's "The Big One," a rehash of Moore's ever-popular "Roger & Me." But "Dear Jesse," which makes its television debut at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday on Cinemax, is the more compelling film.

Kirkman's movingly personalized documentary, which had its local premiere at last spring's Seattle International Film Festival, focuses on North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms' obsession with homosexuals.

"A lot of people expect `Roger & Me'," said Kirkman when he brought "Dear Jesse" to Seattle. Like Moore's film, it does attempt to demonstrate the responsibility of people in power, though Kirkman thinks his film is more like Ross McElwee's diary-like documentary, "Sherman's March."

He skillfully draws his own family and coming-out experiences into the narrative, including a breakup with a lover who became increasingly suicidal as Kirkman was working on the film.

"I was a teenager in the 1980s, attached at one point to the Republican party," said Kirkman, who grew up in North Carolina. "It was that weird thing where they made conservatism seem like rebellion." A Southern Baptist, he even voted for Helms once because the senator believed in God.

Eventually Kirkman moved to New York, where he now works in the art department for Miramax Pictures, helping design Academy Award campaigns for such Miramax productions as "Shakespeare in Love." His own film is distributed through another company but is eligible for this year's Oscar for best documentary.

"Dear Jesse" may be a little too subjective for Oscar's documentary committee, which has rejected the films of Moore, McElwee, Errol Morris and other nonfiction filmmakers who take a personal approach. Nevertheless, it makes potent use of interviews with Helms supporters and with North Carolina mothers of AIDS casualties who have been politicized by their dealings with Helms.

"I'm still not sure why he gets re-elected," said Kirkman, who has seen Helms emerge victorious from several campaign attacks. "Nothing seems to stick."

When the movie opened in East Coast cities last summer, Helms attacked the papers that reviewed it, claiming that "The New York Times and the Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals. . . . Just about every other person down there (at the Post) is homosexual or lesbian."

Cinemax's telecast will be slightly different from the version Helms attacked. A postscript, taken from deleted scenes on the cutting-room floor, has been added.

The film now ends with footage of the late Matthew Shepard, who was attending Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C., when Kirkman interviewed him. After the 21-year-old student was murdered in Wyoming last fall, Kirkman remembered the interview, found Shepard's signature on a release form and decided to add the footage to the end of "Dear Jesse."

"The sheer brutality of Matthew Shepard's murder brought the reality of gay-bashing into America's living rooms," said Kirkman, "but seeing Matthew as he was - a vibrant young man - will serve to humanize this tragedy."