| The Thin Blue Line | |
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Theatrical Poster |
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| Directed by | Errol Morris |
| Produced by | Mark Lipson |
| Written by | Errol Morris |
| Starring | Randall Adams David Harris |
| Music by | Philip Glass |
| Distributed by | Miramax Films (USA Theatrical) |
| Release date(s) | August 25, 1988 |
| Running time | 103 min |
| Language | English |
| Box office | US$1,209,846 (US and Canada)[1] |
The Thin Blue Line is a 1988 documentary film by Errol Morris, depicting the story of Randall Dale Adams, a man convicted and sentenced to die for a murder he did not commit. Adams' case was reviewed and he was released from prison approximately a year after the film's release.[2]
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The film concerns the November 28, 1976 murder of Dallas police officer Robert W. Wood during a traffic stop. The Dallas Police Department was unable to make an arrest until they learned of information given by a 16-year-old resident of Vidor, Texas who had told friends that he was responsible for the crime.[3] The juvenile, David Ray Harris, led police to the car driven from the scene of the crime, as well as a .22 Short caliber revolver he identified as the murder weapon. He subsequently identified 28-year-old Ohio resident Randall Dale Adams as the murderer. Adams had been living in a motel in Dallas with his brother.
The film presents a series of interviews about the investigation and reenactments of the shooting, based on the testimony and recollections of Adams, Harris, and various witnesses and detectives. Two attorneys who represented Adams at the trial where he was convicted of capital murder also appear: they suggest that Adams was charged with the crime despite the better evidence against Harris because, as Harris was a juvenile, Adams alone of the two could be sentenced to death under Texas law.
The film's title comes from the prosecutor's comment during his closing argument that the police are the "thin blue line" separating society from "anarchy". This is a re-working of a line from Rudyard Kipling's poem "Tommy" in which he describes British soldiers (nicknamed "Tommy Atkins") as the "thin red line", from the color of their uniforms and their formation.
The film was directed by Errol Morris and scored by Philip Glass. Morris was originally going to film a documentary about prosecution psychiatrist, Dr. James Grigson, known as Doctor Death,[4][5] who testified in more than 100 trials that resulted in death sentences.[6] As an expert psychiatrist, Dr. Grigson made a name for himself by giving testimony in capital cases for the prosecution. Under the law in Texas, the death penalty can only be issued if the jury is convinced that the defendant is not just guilty, but will commit violent crimes in the future if he/she is not put to death. In almost every instance, Dr. Grigson would, after examining a defendant, testify that he had found the individual in question to be an incurable sociopath, who it was "one hundred per cent certain" would kill again.[7] Grigson told the jury that Adams would be an ongoing menace if kept alive but Morris, after meeting Adams, became skeptical that he committed the crime.
The film contained re-enactment scenes built carefully from witnesses' statements, which became common in later documentaries.[8] Although the film recreates several versions of the shooting, it does not recreate one in which David Harris shoots the officer, the interpretation which it argues is true.
The final scene, in which Morris and Harris are only heard, while shots of a tape recorder appear from various angles, was not originally planned. Morris's camera broke down on the day of the interview, forcing Morris to use a tape recorder to document the dialogue.[9]
Prior to directing the film, Morris worked as a private detective. Once fascinated by the Adams/Harris case, he applied those skills to his research on the film. The weekend that David Harris killed Mark Walker Mays, Morris actually had an interview scheduled with Harris. Morris remarked in an interview with James Hughes: “I often say it's my favorite excuse for missing an appointment: 'I'm sorry, I was off killing someone.'”[10]
Morris's interview style, that of the subject staring directly into the camera, led to a later invention that his wife termed the Interrotron. It was first used in Fast Cheap and Out of Control (1997), and it places Morris behind a curtain staring into a camera, which feeds into a teleprompter-like device that the interviewee can interact with. The interviewee, therefore, looks directly at Morris, and the camera.[11]
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts, Program Development Company Productions Inc., public television stations, and The Chubb Group of Insurance Companies funded the documentary.[12]
The Thin Blue Line grossed $1,209,846.00 in the US and Canada.[1] On its opening weekend, in only one theatre, it took in $17,814.00.[1] Although the film is the 95th highest grossing documentary film released since 1982,[13] Morris says he lost money on the production.[14]
Morris's investigation suggests that five witnesses committed perjury.[15] As a result of publicity around the film, Adams (whose death sentence had been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1980 and commuted to life in prison) had his conviction overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals; the case was returned to Dallas County for a retrial.[16] The district attorney's office declined to prosecute the case again and Adams was subsequently ordered released as a result of a habeas corpus hearing in 1989.
Harris had testified in the original trial that he was the passenger in the stolen car, that he allowed Adams to drive and that Adams committed the murder. He recanted this testimony at Adams' habeas corpus hearing, but never admitted guilt in a judicial setting and was never charged in the case. In 2004, Harris was executed by lethal injection for the unrelated 1985 murder of Mark Mays in Beaumont, Texas, which occurred during an attempted abduction of Mays' girlfriend.[17][18][19]
After Adams' release from prison, he ended up in a legal battle with Morris concerning the rights to his story. The matter was settled out of court after Adams was granted sole use of anything written or made on the subject of his life.[20] Adams himself said of the matter: "Mr. Morris felt he had the exclusive rights to my life story. ... I did not sue Errol Morris for any money or any percentages of The Thin Blue Line, though the media portrayed it that way."[21]
Morris, for his part, remembers: "When he got out, he became very angry at the fact that he had signed a release giving me rights to his life story. And he felt as though I had stolen something from him. Maybe I had, maybe I just don't understand what it's like to be in prison for that long, for a crime you hadn't committed. In a certain sense, the whole crazy deal with the release was fueled by my relationship with his attorney. And it's a long, complicated story, but I guess when people are involved, there's always a mess somewhere."[22]
Adams died in October of 2010 but lived in such obscurity that his death was not discovered by the media until June 2011.[23]
The Thin Blue Line has a metascore of 79 on Metacritic[24] and 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.[25] Gene Siskel named it the 7th best film of 1988. Chicago Tribune[26]
The Thin Blue Line won Best Documentary honors from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Kansas City Film Critics Circle, the National Board of Review, and the National Society of Film Critics.[27] Morris himself won an International Documentary Association Award, an Edgar Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship Genius Grant (1989).[28][29] The film was marketed as "nonfiction" rather than as a documentary which disqualified it from being considered in that category for an Academy Award.[8]
Variety credits the film in a 2008 retrospective of documentaries as “the most political work of cinema in the last 20 years.”[30]
The film has had a considerable influence on later television and documentary film, often credited with pioneering the style of modern crime-scene reenactments.[8]
In 2001, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[31]
Some scholars believe that by calling the certainty of events surrounding the murder case into question, Morris positions the film as a postmodern text. Referencing theorist Fredric Jameson's framework, film critic Linda Williams refers to documentaries that seek only to reveal the past as supporting the notion of an “intensified nostalgia for a past that is already lost.” Conversely, "The Thin Blue Line" suggests Adams' innocence by clouding a previously established history.[32]
Stanford Law Review author Richard Sherwin believes The Thin Blue Line actually presents two plots. Through the construction and ordering of the non-linear story Morris presents, he reveals an easy-to-follow narrative implicating Harris instead of Adams, not unlike the story that implicated Adams in the first place, because it presents an easy-to-believe retelling of history. The other, is what Richard Sherwin points to as an example of “postmodern skepticism." Sherwin notes sociologist Jean Baudrillard's interpretation of the postmodern media landscape "flattening" meaning, and the impossibility of “truth, authority, and history” existing, as fitting within this notion. He criticizes The Thin Blue Line for failing to resolve what he calls an “acausal” plot, referencing certain details about the case that were presented but remain unanswered, such as where Adams actually was the night of the crime. Instead, the end of the film abandons the “acausal” plot by returning to the easy-to-believe narrative, that which paints Harris as the perpetrator. Sherwin argues that for the film to succeed as an affirmative postmodern work, it must contextualize the past events within a present narrative. In short, reveal through the clouding of history a present challenge, that of resisting the lure of a narrative and fulfilling “their sworn duty to convict only in the absence of reasonable doubt."[33]
In an interview at the Museum of Modern Art, however, Morris denies being a postmodern at all, joking that “one of the nice things about Cambridge, Massachusetts is that 'Baudrillard' isn't in the phone book”.[34] In a video interview for the Columbia Journalism Review, Morris reiterates his view of an inherent value in truth, acknowledging that our view of history will always be flawed, but should still be sought after.[35]
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