USA: Spacey is influenced by views of Darrow

The death penalty is back on the front page.

In January, Florida released an inmate who served 16 years on death row, awaiting execution for a crime which new evidence shows he did not commit. In Illinois, outgoing Gov. George Ryan halted executions in the state after realizing, he claimed, that the system that convicts and sentences the inmates on death row "is haunted by error."

 Polls show support for capital punishment waning, just a bit. And arriving in theaters with China Syndrome timing is a movie about that very subject. The Life of David Gale, which opens Friday, is a fictional thriller about a death penalty abolitionist. Kevin Spacey plays a man about to be executed for a crime he may not have committed.

 "I don't know how much a movie can change people's opinions," says Abraham J. Bonowitz, director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "But a good movie on the subject will make people curious and want to know more and sometimes that makes them change their minds."

 A New York play, The Exonerated, built on testimonies of innocent people freed from death row, is credited with swaying Gov. Ryan. But a handful of movies can also lay claim to shaping an evolving attitude on capital punishment. From I Want to Live! and Compulsion through Dead Man Walking and Monster's Ball, film has explored the grays areas of a subject politicians are often eager to render in black and white terms.

 One recent film has done more than any other to shape the current debate.

 "Dead Man Walking (1995) changed the course of the discussion in this country," Bonowitz says. "It personalized the death penalty. It brought questions of the death penalty from all perspectives into the argument. It made the whole issue understandable."

 Dead Man Walking, based on a true story, followed a condemned murderer's final days and visited the families of the people he killed, all seen through the eyes of a nun who befriended and counseled them all. It was an Oscar-winning film made by the politically committed filmmakers Tim Robbins (who directed) and Susan Sarandon (who starred).

 'An opportunity to learn'

 Ask Spacey about David Gale's message and agenda, and he denies that he or the film that he stars in has one.

 "I'm always a little reluctant to take a stand when a film is asking the audience to open -- just sort of open their mind up and start thinking about an issue, because I think it's better for the film to say what it says, and for the viewer to make up their own mind about it," he says.

 But you don't have to press hard for Spacey's true feelings to emerge.

 "One of my first educations in this subject was when I played Clarence Darrow" for a 1991 PBS special, he says. "Studying his summations for his death penalty cases -- where he would speak for like 6 or 8 hours, without a note, passionately on this subject -- was my education. The eloquence of his argument, the inhumanity of putting another person to death, no matter what they've done, is kind of the last word on the subject, to me."

 Spacey's co-star, Laura Linney, didn't need an acting job to clarify her thoughts on capital punishment.

 "I have always instinctively been against the death penalty, for moral and ethical and religious reasons," Linney says. "Having the opportunity to learn more about it for this film just confirmed my beliefs. It's such an emotional and instinctive topic. People have an instant visceral reaction to it, either way. When you actually take the time to be more thoughtful, more clinical about it, it will either affirm or deny your beliefs."

 Tim Robbins always said that Dead Man Walking was never intended as a movie crusade. Bonowitz, who consulted on the film and was an extra with his friend and fellow death penalty abolitionist, Sister Helen Prejean, notes how Sister Helen's nonfiction book about the case depicted there was "softened" for Hollywood. No gruesome electric chair for this murderer. The more benign-looking lethal injection was used for the film.

 "And the guy had to be guilty," Bonowitz says. "It's not about guilt or innocence. It's a question of the morality of the death penalty, and what's the collateral damage of the death penalty?

 "What Dead Man Walking did was open the discussion and drove people to the book. The book had been out and never sold, but the movie put it on The New York Times best- seller list for months."

 Monster's Ball (2001) took a peripheral issue, the effect of being around the condemned and actually escorting them to their deaths on those guards.

 "For the first time, a movie looked at the collateral damage this causes to the people who have to carry out the state's executions," Bonowitz says.

 '50s brought a change

 Historically, the movies are more often reflections of the culture than any sort of moral compass. Since the dawn of film, movies have traditionally reached for a sense of "just deserts," whether it's the guilty being brought to justice, or a rough form of justice administered by the hero. The popularity of Clint Eastwood's 1970s Dirty Harry films, in which a rogue cop serves as judge, jury and executioner, was seen as a reaction to what many thought were softening attitudes on crime and capital punishment.

 I Want to Live! (1958) followed a morally suspect woman through the courts, sentenced to the gas chamber for a murder she did not commit. This Susan Hayward film still resonates as a death penalty discussion because it suggests that there are people society considers more disposable than others. Compulsion (1959), a fictionalized account of the infamous 1920s Leopold and Loeb murder case, discussed the morality of society accepting responsibility for putting even remorseless killers to death. When these films were released, death penalty laws were still on the books, but states and the federal government had grown increasingly reluctant to execute people.

 It took more than a decade after those films came out for the U.S. Supreme Court to stop executions altogether. In the late 1970s, with a more conservative high court and conservative backlash in the populace, executions resumed. But films, including the acclaimed TV film The Executioner's Song (1982), continued to tackle the issue.

 'Holding up a mirror'

 The Life of David Gale ventures into new territory, taking a peek inside death penalty abolitionist culture and finding many shades of devotion to the cause, many degrees of commitment, from casual opposition to fanaticism.

 "It was very interesting to learn about this debate and the lengths that people will go to for their cause," Spacey says. "People become fanatics about it, on either side."

 And that's fair, Bonowitz says.

 "The abolition movement has all types -- candle-holders and people who do civil disobedience, people who are totally sober and people who are drunks, and every type of person in between," Bonowitz says. "Hollywood needs to tell a dramatic story. The movie doesn't have to be flattering to this movement, just accurate in the information it gives about the death penalty. The only way a movie could hinder the abolition movement is if it doesn't present the death penalty in an accurate way."

 Spacey can cite statistics on the death penalty and relay the cost-per- case in Texas, which is where most American executions occur and where David Gale is set. But he doesn't expect David Gale to change anyone's mind about the issue.

 "I've never had a member of my family murdered," Spacey says. "I certainly understand the impulse of wanting to feel that justice is done, and that killing a killer is justice.

 "But we live in a country where everything that's expressed is either far right or far left. In actuality, most people live in the middle, in that gray area, figuring things out. It's easier to take some extreme position than to ponder it."

 Linney agrees, and suggests that all the filmmakers can hope for is a film that "makes people talk. It isn't going to revolutionize the country, just open up the debate some more."

 And Spacey, having broken his own rule about making a movie with "an agenda," feels the need to refer back to the core mission of the artist and his role in society for his final word on the subject.

 "We're just holding up a mirror so that we can see ourselves and ask, 'Is this who we want to be?'" 

 Cinema's Death Row

 Texas-filmed 'David Gale' joins a long list of films that have put their spin on capital punishment

 The clock is ticking as the lawyer/reporter/ sobbing mother tries desperately to win a reprieve for the innocent man scheduled to be put to death by the state. It's a tried-and-true movie formula pressed into duty again in The Life of David Gale, premiering today. David Gale, starring Kevin Spacey, is a thriller about a Texas professor and capital punishment opponent who is convicted of murdering a fellow activist and sent to Death Row. The movie was shot on location in Austin, Huntsville and other Texas sites, and will no doubt focus the nation's attention even more sharply on Texas' reputation for executing more prisoners every year than any other state.

 Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)

 The story: 2 childhood friends from a rough neighborhood in New York City grow up and take different paths. One becomes a priest, the other a gangster who ends up in the electric chair.

 Fact or fiction: Fiction

 Awards: New York Film Critics Best Actor award for Jimmy Cagney

 Notable: Famous for the scene showing Cagney's long walk from his cell to the electric chair.

 Death penalty stance: Angels depicts the death penalty as a just response to a string of crimes that have cost many lives. In the end, Cagney feigns fear of execution so young toughs from his old neighborhood won't follow in his path.

 I Want To Live! (1958)

 The story: A party girl with a shady history is framed for the robbery/murder of an elderly woman and ends up in the gas chamber.

 Fact or fiction: Based on the true story of Barbara Graham, who was dubbed "Bloody Babs" by the California media, though many felt she was innocent.

 Awards: Susan Hayward won a Best Actress Oscar.

 Notable: Hayward said she believed Graham was present at the scene of the murder but did not commit it.

 Death penalty stance: A blistering indictment of capital punishment. The movie goes to great lengths to portray Graham in a sympathetic light, for instance showing her love of music but leaving out her heroin addiction.

 Dead Man Walking (1995)

 The story: A nun who opposes the death penalty counsels a man who has killed a young couple and shows no remorse for his actions. The sister develops a bond with the condemned man and then finds herself in a moral dilemma over her obligation to the victims' families.

 Fact or fiction: A true story based on a book by Sister Helen Prejean.

 Awards: Susan Sarandon won a Best Actress Oscar.

 Notable: Prejean became something of a celebrity with the release of this movie, making the rounds of the interview shows.

 Death penalty stance: Neither solidly for nor against capital punishment, this movie is an intensely thoughtful exploration of the many facets of the death penalty question.

 The Green Mile (1999)

 The story: A compassionate prison guard/executioner is changed by his relationship with a condemned man who is a gentle giant with unexplained powers to heal.

 Fact or fiction: Fiction, based on a Stephen King story.

 Awards: Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for Michael Clarke Duncan.

 Notable: The electric chair used in Green Mile is a mahogany and copper chair with characteristics of a chair at New York's Sing Sing prison.

 Death penalty stance: Green Mile dwells on the grisly physical effects of electrocution, making portions of the movie difficult to watch. The execution of an innocent man is a central theme.

 Monster's Ball (2001)

 The story: Executing people is the family business for an unhappy man -- his hateful father did it, he does it, and his son is expected to do it, though the son hasn't the stomach for it. When he crosses paths with the wife of a man he recently executed, they turn to each other for solace.

 Fact or fiction: Fiction

 Awards: Halle Berry won a Best Actress Oscar.

 Notable: "Monster's ball" is English slang for the eve of a condemned man's death.

 Death penalty stance: An implied condemnation of the death penalty, not because of any question of guilt or innocence of the people on death row, but because it dehumanizes the executioners.

 Chicago (2002)

 The story: 2 Jazz Age murderers subvert the legal system, milking the publicity machine to not only escape conviction but also further their singing and dancing careers.

 Fact or fiction: Fiction, based on a musical by Bob Fosse

 Awards: Front-runner for Best Picture Oscar. Renee Zellweger is nominated for Best Actress, and Catherine Zeta-Jones and Queen Latifah are nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

 Notable: The only woman executed is also the only woman in the jailhouse who is innocent.

 Death penalty stance: Though there's no attempt to offer a serious message in this cheerfully cynical movie, the implication is that administration of the death penalty is corrupt.