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When I saw this story, I recalled that the 1996 O.J. Simpson civil trial was not televised — unlike the infamous murder trial when he was acquitted. The E! channel produced a next-day re-enactment of the prior day’s verbatim transcripts using actors in a courtroom. Simpson was found liable for the deaths of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman in the civil trial.
I don’t know if filmmaker John Ireland was inspired by the above, but it’s a great idea to bring the Prop 8 federal trial trial to life since SCOTUS has blocked the broadcast of the landmark event.
Freelance journalist and filmmaker John Ireland, who’s based in Los Angeles and regularly examines gay rights issues, will produce a daily re-enactment of the Proposition 8 federal trial and post it on YouTube, starting this week.
Ireland has been casting the parts of pro-gay marriage lawyers Ted Olson and David Boies, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, and anti-gay marriage attorney Charles Cooper, among others, over this weekend.
Filming started over the weekend according to On Top Magazine, and the first “episode” will debut on YouTube on Tuesday.
“People want to see this drama unfold and there is a tremendous narrative that was propelled by that first day of testimony. This is the first time that gay and lesbian people have talked about their lives in federal court. It’s historic from that point of view.”
12 Comments
Good for John IrelandConservative SCOTUS can’t stop activist artists working within the free enterprise system no matter how hard they try. Good way to flip those bastards the bird.
Good.Quite excited. Will be good stuff and reason enough to fire up firefox again, as I can store and later edit them together via it.
I was hoping PBS would respondIf you recall when PBS/NOVA did the reenactment titleds, “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial”
An incredible piece that named names and kicked ass. This was the model I had in mind should a reenactment move forward.
http://video.pbs.org/video/980…
THEY STOLE MY IDEA!!And I couldn’t be happier. This is excellent news. Any word as to how we can support this effort through donations?
We’ll have to seewhat turn out to be the key moments in the trial, but don’t you think that live reenactments of snippets of the trial might make excellent educational street theater this summer? As AFER noted in their week 1 roundup, our side presented real people being harmed in real ways and extremely well qualified experts to present the facts, whereas the other side:
Let’s start a poolWho wants to bet on the Cease and Desist letter from ProtectMarriage.com? I love a good comedy, and the antics of these mental giants make for good entertainment.
Casting Cooperwill pose a very hard problem. Lon Chaney is dead.
I don’t doubt they’ll try.But they don’t own a copyright to the trial proceedings, and there’s no way they can argue that this production will impinge on their rights or profits. Let’s just hope SCOTUS doesn’t decide to rule.
Bloody brilliant concept
Amen to that. Hopefully, this re-enactment is just the start, and we can look forward to a primetime dramatization.
And, P.S. to Hollywood producers, I’m still waiting for a Latter Days for the Lifetime crowd. And a gay Dr. Manhattan comic book hero flick (i.e., what happens when super sinister BYU basement reparative therapy goes wonderfully wrong). More free sample movie treatments available on request
The tribunals for government corruption here in Ireland… were acted the same evening, with occasional commentary interjected, on RTÉ Radio 1. That’s the beauty of radio acting: you need less preparation. The actors don’t even need to memorise their lines.
TRiG.
YES to this action
YES!!!This is wonderful to hear! Now I get to aggravate all of the fundies I went to high school with by posting nightly videos to Facebook.
ROFLMAO…