26 TEXT: KORLEKI OKLETEY
It has been fifteen years since Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old boy from Wyoming, USA, was tortured to death because he was gay. After Matthew's death in ‘98, his parents Judy and Dennis Shepard became advocates for the equal rights movement. Their organization, the Matthew Shepard Foundation, supports diversity and tolerance in youth organizations. Fifteen years after Matthew's death, his childhood friend Michele Josue made a documentary to introduce the world to the Matthew she knew. Matt Shepard is a friend of mine has been featured at a number of film festivals all over the world and was the opening documentary at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) this year. Gay&<strong>Night</strong> Magazine spoke to Judy and Dennis Shepard and director Michele Josue during their stay in Amsterdam. Is watching the documentary hard for you? How is it to watch all the material, such as short clips and photographs, of Matthew in general? Judy: It is difficult, especially because there’s a lot of information and material in the documentary that we’ve never seen before. It has a good and a bad side. It’s full of good memories, but it’s also sad. Dennis: Because you keep wondering: what if? What things in the documentary didn't you know about? Judy: Well, it all comes from a different perspective. But no big surprises or anything. Just another perspective. Did you immediately say yes to working with Michelle on the film? Judy: We made pretty clear to Michelle that we were on board with what she wanted to do. We trusted her completely. We know how much she cared about Matt and we knew how much he loved her. Dennis: We wouldn’t have done that for anyone else. We knew what Michelle’s motives were, but we wouldn’t know that for a stranger. We knew the purpose behind Michelle’s film was just telling the story of her friend and showing the world the guy she knew. Recently a book came out called The Book of Matt, in which the writer talks about Matt's alleged crystal meth addiction. The writer says Matt's untimely death was not caused by homophobia, but because Matt was a drug addict with friends in the underworld. How does that make you feel? Are you scared people will believe this story? Judy: It’s very frustrating that this story is still out there. It has been negotiated many times before, it’s not new. Dennis: They investigated the whole drug-related story, but there were no drugs involved. Not before, not during and not after the murder. Judy: The story has been out there for a while now. It’s like this game we play in the States called the telephone game. You tell someone something in that person’s ear, they tell it to the next one and so on and the story is always completely different in the end to when the first person told it. That’s how this story got out. I think people assumed a lot. McKinney and Henderson (Matthew’s murderers - ed.) were in the drug world. And I think a lot of people assumed that Matt had something to do with it as well, even though McKinney and Henderson said many times that they never met Matt before that night. We don’t know that much about the book, besides from what people have told us and little snippets. What I do know is that the interviews are all in quotes, and the writer often writes ‘this is what I think they really meant to say’. Dennis: He makes the facts fit to his story. He also quotes a man called Ted Henson, who is supposedly a family friend, and he claims he has a part of Matt’s ashes. We have never heard of this man and he does not have Matthew’s ashes. This whole story is like a fairytale to me, it should be up there with the stories of Anderson and Grimm. Judy: They always say: everybody is entitled to their opinion, but there’s only one set of facts. Well, he doesn’t seem to believe in the facts. He’s a frustrated screenwriter, that’s what I know. Dennis: He tried to sell it for a long time. He tells people it took him ten years to write it. I think it only took him ten years, because he wasn’t able to sell it. Judy: The whole book is more about the writer than about Matt. It’s so frustrating because now people who are going to research what happened to Matt will see this as well. It’s just a bunch of BS! Dennis: They probably won’t believe it, hopefully, but it’s something that’s out there and is not true. He even used the title The Book of Matt to make people believe it’s this feel-good story about Matt. He also stole the title from Judy’s book The Meaning Of Matthew. Judy: He even tried to use the exact same picture I used as the cover of my book. Thankfully, the photographer didn’t let him. That says something about the writer, doesn’t it? How far have the United States come in the battle for equality? Judy: Well we now have marriage equality in 16 states. There’s federal hate crime legislation, named after Matt. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell got repealed and parts of DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act or as I like to call it Denial Of Marriage Act, are gone now too. Social acceptance is way up, it’s not wonderful yet but it’s getting there. Pop culture has a huge influence on social acceptance. There’s still a lot that needs to be done. One 27