Actors Pitch In for Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment
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SAN FRANCISCO (Feb. 3) – On the morning the landmark Proposition 8 trial was set to begin last month, John Ireland was sitting eagerly at his computer ready to watch the proceedings on YouTube.
But to the Los Angeles filmmaker's great disappointment, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that morning blocking any broadcast of the proceedings, except for inside the San Francisco courthouse where the trial was being held.
"They were really trying to bury it forever," he says.
His friend and fellow filmmaker John Ainsworth was equally disappointed he couldn't watch the trial. As gay men who married their spouses during the brief period when same-sex weddings were legal in California, they felt the issues in the trial were too important to be confined to a single courtroom.
So the pair decided to create their own production: "The Perry vs. Schwarzenegger Trial Re-enactment."
Using court transcripts and a cast of 40 professional actors, they began re-enacting every moment of the proceedings. Now, three weeks after the trial began, the first episode is airing at marriagetrial.com and on YouTube. Eleven more episodes will follow.
"We're very excited to be on YouTube," Ireland told AOL News. "It's been a long journey of three weeks."
For both men, the motivation was to let members of the public hear the arguments firsthand and decide for themselves whether the right to marry should be extended to same-sex couples.
"As someone who is a gay married man, I wanted to present this the best way possible: a non-biased, objective presentation of what went on there so people can make a judgment on their own," Ainsworth said.
Proposition 8, approved by voters in 2008, banned same-sex couples from marrying in California. A gay couple from Burbank and a lesbian couple from Berkeley filed a suit arguing that the measure unconstitutionally deprived them of their right to get married. The case is expected to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The 12-and-a-half-day trial featured emotional testimony from the plaintiffs about discrimination they have faced, and from expert witnesses who discussed the history of marriage, the psychological effects of discrimination and the political influence of the gay community.
Testimony in the case ended last week. Chief District Judge Vaughn Walker, who is hearing the case without a jury, is expected to schedule closing arguments for next month. Walker, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, will decide whether gays and lesbians make up a class of people that suffers discrimination and whether Proposition 8 unconstitutionally infringes on their rights.
To find actors and actresses to play the roles of the judge, lawyers and witnesses in the trial, Ireland and Ainsworth first called on friends in Hollywood and posted an ad on Craigslist. But they quickly found enough professional actors who wanted to be in the production and were willing to work for free. The two producers are attempting to cast actors who look as much as possible like the trial participants they portray.
"We want to keep this a high-quality production, and the level of actors we have gotten shows we are able to stay true to that," Ainsworth said.
Among those playing a part is Tess Harper, who starred in the film "Tender Mercies" and was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress for "Crimes of the Heart." She plays Sandra Stier, a plaintiff who testified on the first day about her love for her partner, Kristin Perry, the lead plaintiff in the case.
Gregory Itzin, who plays President Charles Logan on the television series "24," will portray David Blankenhorn, the defense witness and president of the Institute for American Values, whose testimony during cross-examination by attorney David Boies was unusually confrontational.
Veteran character actor Jack Laufer plays Boies, one of the plaintiffs' lead attorneys. And Adrienne Barbeau, who has performed in numerous movies and TV shows, plays psychology professor Letitia Peplau, a witness for the plaintiffs.
Ireland is playing Yale history professor George Chauncey, a witness for the plaintiffs.
Although Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the named defendant in the case, he refused to defend the initiative in court. He has no role in the trial, so no one is cast to portray him.
During the real trial, the court used three cameras to videotape the judge, lawyer and witness and displayed all three images on a single screen. This is what viewers would have seen on YouTube if the Supreme Court had not intervened. In the end, the video was shown only in an overflowing courtroom.
Ainsworth and Ireland came up with a system of using one camera to tape the three actors simultaneously and then splicing them together later into the same screen, similar to the actual court video.
University of Southern California law professor David B. Cruz is advising the production on the scripts and the dynamics of a trial. The university's Gould School of Law has made a mock courtroom available as the set for the video, which is being shot on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
"Few people are going to have the time and patience to read through the voluminous transcripts – almost 1,300 pages just in the first week of trial," Cruz wrote on his USC Web page. "Being able to play the re-enactment on the Web will increase exposure, which in the end can only help the cause of equality under law."
Ireland and Ainsworth maintain that the high court was wrong in agreeing to the request from defenders of Proposition 8 to block the broadcast and deny the public the opportunity to see video of the trial.
"I view it as a landmark case," Ireland said. "I want this to be a piece of the historic record that people can review. It's for the everyday citizen who has the right to participate in the judicial system."
