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This landmark award-winning
documentary, which revolutionized the form and helped acquit an innocent
man of murder, came about almost by accident. Errol Morris had already
directed such offbeat documentaries as Gates of Heaven (concerning pet
cemeteries; a favorite of Roger Ebert's) and Vernon, Florida, which
touchingly portrays the small town's eccentric inhabitants. He'd intended
to travel to Texas to make a film about the criminal-psychiatry expert
James Grigson, or "Dr. Death" as he came to be known for his
frequent testimony against defendants, who were often then sent to death
row. When Morris discovered that the doctor was involved in the trial
of Randall Dale Adams, a man who, it seemed, had been falsely accused
of the highway murder of a police officer, he decided that Adams's story
was the real one to tell. Morris's innovative use of repeated dramatization,
multiple points of view, talking-head and phone interviews, and symbolism--in
concert with Philip Glass's haunting music--establishes that a combination
of communitarian zeal and overly eager testimony persuaded the jury
to find Adams, a "drifter" from the Midwest, guilty of the
crime.
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