Thursday, January 26, 2012
Film Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin of the West Memphis Three at The Belcourt Tonight
Posted by Jim Ridley on Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 9:31 AM
Last weekend, in the midst of a thunderstorm and a power outage, Adam Gold still managed a coup: interviews with Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin of the West Memphis Three, Echols' wife Lorri Davis, and Amy Berg — the director of the hotly anticipated documentary West of Memphis, the hardest ticket to get in town tonight. The movie will have one screening only 7 p.m. at The Belcourt, as part of the Sundance Film Festival USA night going on across the country, and it's been sold out for weeks.
Covering Sundance in his regular gig for the A.V. Club — which you should be reading regularly if somehow you're not — longtime Scene contributor Noel Murray saw the film last weekend and compared it favorably to the landmark Paradise Lost documentaries on the subject.
"Berg has the story (and the testifiers to same) already in place," Noel writes, "plus she has Jackson’s money and personal interest in the case to get her access to DNA experts, forensic pathologists and FBI profilers, all of whom establish very convincingly that the three men convicted for this crime were the victims a justice system more interested in expediency than truth."
Gold spoke to the principals just after the film's emotional premiere, and if you've followed the case you won't want to miss his full transcripts of the interviews. An excerpt from his talk with Damien Echols:
[Knowing] that there are people out there who remain suspicious, if there was something that you could say to them, what would it be?The only thing I could say to them is just to ask them to watch this film, to watch West of Memphis. Because, really, I do believe that if anybody were to take just a small amount of time and start looking at the case and the evidence, they would change their minds. I think this film does a really good job at taking everything and compressing it into a small amount of time, so that you really learn a great deal from it. That's the only thing I could tell them — "watch this," and just be open to the evidence.
Would you say that this film is the case that you would want to present in court if you had the opportunity?
I think so. There's lots of other stuff, like smaller things that you don't always have time for. The documentary is two-and-a-half hours long. And even then there was so much more footage and so much more information that we wanted to get in, but you can't very well have a 12- or 15-hour movie. So there was other stuff, but I think, you know, this is the seed of it. This is the heart of it.
Comments (7)
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I'm so glad that this documentary is coming to the Belcourt. We get the chance to see so many great films that would otherwise skip our city. I'm encouraged to see the interest here and feel very fortunate that Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols are coming to Nashville tonight.
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Thanks to all of the people who have worked for all this time to gain freedom for these men. They were railroaded, unjustly accused by lying, cynical, and unethical people in an appalling miscarriage of justice. People who should have known better used mass hysteria created by their cynical construction of an occult ritual murder theory reinforced by bogus 'experts' and resting heavily on the illegal and near torturous questioning practices of the police to convict these three young men and take their freedom to live their lives away from them. They had done nothing and they suffered for eighteen years while a murderer has gone free.
Many people believe the WM3 were not innocent but guilty as charged and that they were the ones that committed the crime. They were found guilty by a unanimous jury the first time. They plead guilty instead of waiting for a trial the second time.
Misskelley confessed three separate times, once with his lawyer present. Misskelley also told two other people about the crime before he was arrested. Baldwin told someone else he committed the crimes. Echols was seen in muddy clothes near the crime scene. Echols is reported to have either told or bragged about the crime to four people before he was arrested.
Echols also had a history of psychiatric treatment. His reported actions included brutally killing a dog, starting fires at his school, threatening to kill his teachers and parents and stating he liked to drink blood. (from court records)
@M S
We heard you the first two times you posted this exact same comment verbatim. Are you a spambot?
I didn't know Noel used to write for the Scene.. He's been one of my favorite writers on the av club for some years now. Anyways, sorry for the tangent- flame on commenters!
Mine too! Check out his participation in our year-end film wrap-up:
http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/fr…
