Moisés Kaufman and members of New York's Tectonic Theater Project went to Laramie, Wyoming after the murder of Matthew Shepard. This is a film version of the play they wrote based on more than 200 interviews they conducted in Laramie. It follows and in some cases re-enacts the chronology of Shepherd's visit to a local bar, his kidnap and beating, the discovery of him tied to a fence, the vigil at the hospital, his death and funeral, and the trial of his killers. It mixes real news reports with actors portraying friends, family, cops, killers, and other Laramie residents in their own words. It concludes with a Laramie staging of "Angels in America" a year after Shephard's death.

The film was to make its HBO debut on March 16, 2002, but was pushed forward a week when NBC scheduled The Matthew Shepard Story (2002) (TV) for the same day.

[last lines]


Doc O'Conner:
I remembered something to myself. The night he and I drove around together, he said, 'Laramie sparkles, doesn't it?' And where he was in that spot up there, if you sit exactly in that spot up there, Laramie sparkles. With the low-lying clouds, it's - uh - it's the blue lights that bounce off the clouds. And it goes over the whole city. I mean, I mean, it blows you away. And Matt was right there in that spot. And I can just picture - in his eyes - what he was seeing. And the last thing that he saw on this Earth was the sparkling lights of Laramie, Wyoming.