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Finding Peace,
if Not Closure
By
Susan King
The Los Angeles Times
Oct. 13, 2001
HBO adaptation of Mikal
Gilmore's 'Shot in the Heart' stirs up writer's complex feelings
about his infamous brother Gary's 1977 execution.
Journalist
Mikal Gilmore seems to have achieved some sort of inner peace. He's
given up drinking and lost a great deal of the weight he gained
during his bout with the bottle. And he's thrilled with the outcome
of "Shot in the Heart," HBO's movie version of his acclaimed 1994
nonfiction book chronicling the tragic story of his family. Mikal's
oldest brother, Gary, made national headlines in 1977 when he
campaigned for his own death and was executed by a firing squad for
the brutal murder of two Mormon men.
The movie, which premieres tonight, stars Elias Koteas as Gary,
Giovanni Ribisi as Mikal and Lee Tergesen as their brother Frank Jr.
Sam Shepard is featured in flashbacks as their alcoholic, abusive
father, Frank, and Amy Madigan is their devoutly Mormon mother,
Bessie. Barry Levinson, Tom Fontana and Jim Finnerty are the
executive producers; Agnieszka Holland ("Europa, Europa") directed
the film from a script by Frank Pugliese.
Gilmore, a respected rock journalist who has written for the Los
Angeles Herald Examiner and Rolling Stone, had written "Shot in the
Heart" because he wanted to learn more about his family and in doing
so acknowledged, he says in a recent interview, "there were some
similarities between my own history and my family's history, which
is something I tried to distance myself from."
"It took years to recognize that probably I was a product of my
family just as Gary was a product," Gilmore says. "I always denied
being any product of my family. As I began to do research on the
book, I did think there was some kind of lesson to be learned or
some kind of catharsis to be gained. There were no easy answers or
solutions to [my] history ... writing this story wasn't going to be
a form of closure. I don't think I believe in closure anymore."
Gilmore believed that once he finished the book and completed
publicity for it, he would return to his music journalism and get on
with his life. Instead, he fell back into the pattern of trying to
distance himself from his family. "There were probably long seasons
where I felt I wish I had never written 'Shot in the Heart,"' he
confesses.
"I felt like I had to find myself so much again [after I finished
the book] in terms of my brother and his crimes and my family's
legacy of bad fortune. I didn't find the next story that would take
me beyond that. That isn't something I realized until recent months,
working on the movie as a consultant. Sometimes when you bring those
demons to the surface, that doesn't necessarily dispel them."
While writing the book, Gilmore began to drink. "That was part of my
family legacy I never really faced. If you went back through the
story of my family and took alcohol out of it, it would be a
different story. My father had been a heavy drinker, but actually I
think he was at his kindest when he was drunk. But it certainly
created these patterns of disruption in the family. Gary, I know,
was drinking very steadily when he committed the murders, in
combination with headache medication."
Gilmore has always harbored mixed feelings about "Shot in the Heart"
being turned into a movie. "We are writers and much of what we do is
very private," he explains. "If you write about something personal,
you find that you have to account to the world for it in interviews,
which is very different than the writing."
The movie was optioned by numerous producers who hired various
writers to tackle the book, including Gilmore. "On some level or
another, I was involved much longer in the making of the movie than
the writing of the book. About three or four years ago, I got
involved as the screenwriter for a while when another producer had
the project. When it moved to another producer, I felt I had written
myself out of it."
But working on the set as a consultant was a "good process" for
Gilmore. "I don't think I can articulate precisely why. My family's
story continues to hold lessons and surprises for me."
Gilmore's greatest worry about a film version of "Shot in the Heart"
was that it would diminish the emotional integrity of the book. "The
book is not a big, warm hug of a book," he says. "It's a dark story,
and its affirmations at the end are dark. To my great relief and to
my great pleasure, I felt the movie didn't live up to any of those
fears. I think the movie underscores everything I valued about the
book."
Holland, who lived in Poland at the time of Gary Gilmore's
execution, admits that when she read the script, she thought it was
fiction. "Then I realized it was a true story," says the director.
"Then I read the book, which I found really fabulous. When I read
the book, I was thinking about [such writers as] William Faulkner."
As Koteas tried to get to understand his character, he came to
believe that Gilmore wanted to die because he wanted to take
responsibility for his actions "and for the sins that he committed.
He's atoning for it and somehow finds his own freedom."
"In a sense he is taking responsibility, but it is such a double-
edge sword," adds Ribisi, who knew nothing of the story prior to
making the movie. "For the family members who truly do find love
with [Gary], they still have to live with his sins as well as the
fact that they are losing a loved one."
Though the book covers nearly 300 years of family history, the movie
concentrates on the last week of Gilmore's life in which both Mikal
and Frank Jr. try to persuade their brother to change his mind and
sign papers that would stay the execution. Unfolding like a two-
character play, "Shot in the Heart" really is the story of how Gary
and Mikal learned to understand each other and grow to love each
other in that emotion-filled week.
"The movie focuses on something like a 20-page portion of a book
that is largely based on an article I wrote back in 1977 for Rolling
Stone shortly after Gary's execution and being his family and
watching this event unfold before the nation's eyes," Mikal Gilmore
says.
"They also tried to pull together other elements of the story as
well, because when I wrote the article back in 1977, there were a
lot of things I did not understand about the family story. Then when
I wrote the book in the '90s, I had a different perspective. The
challenge in the movie is to merge [both perspectives] and make my
character seem like someone who is coming to an understanding of the
family history in a span of a few days. I think they did that very
well."
One of the benefits for Gilmore that came from writing the book was
reestablishing his relationship with his older brother Frank, who
lives in Portland, Ore.
"Frank was the most valuable contributor to the book," Gilmore says.
"Frank helped me understand the story better, and I think he did it
at a real cost to himself emotionally. He had to summon up a lot of
memories which were painful. I think if the book has a character
[with] grace, it is Frank."
But he hasn't been in contact with Frank in quite awhile. "Frank
doesn't have a phone," Gilmore says matter-of-factly. "He lives by
himself. He's very private. We write each other, but I think he's
moved recently. We have sort of lost each other. We are trying to
find each other right now."
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