The Thin Blue Line (documentary)
Encyclopedia
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.
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. 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.
and scored by Philip Glass
. Morris was originally going to film a documentary about prosecution psychiatrist
, Dr. James Grigson, known as Doctor Death, who testified in more than 100 trials that resulted in death sentences. 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. 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. 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.
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.'”
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.
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.
; the case was returned to Dallas County
for a retrial. 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.
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. 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."
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."
Adams died in October of 2010 but lived in such obscurity that his death was not discovered by the media until June 2011.
and 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes
. Gene Siskel
named it the 7th best film of 1988. Chicago Tribune
, the Kansas City Film Critics Circle
, the National Board of Review
, and the National Society of Film Critics
. Morris himself won an International Documentary Association
Award, an Edgar Award
, and a MacArthur Fellowship Genius Grant (1989). The film was marketed as "nonfiction" rather than as a documentary which disqualified it from being considered in that category for an Academy Award
.
The film has had a considerable influence on later television and documentary film, often credited with pioneering the style of modern crime-scene reenactments.
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".
'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.
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."
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”. 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.
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
by Errol Morris
Errol Morris
Errol Mark Morris is an American director. In 2003, The Guardian put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best directors. Also in 2003, his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.-Early life and...
, depicting the story of Randall Dale Adams
Randall Dale Adams
Randall Dale Adams was wrongly convicted of murdering police officer Robert W. Wood, and was subsequently sentenced to death. He served more than 12 years in prison, at one point coming within 72 hours of being put to death...
, 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.
Synopsis
The film concerns the November 28, 1976 murder of Dallas police officer Robert W. Wood during a traffic stop. The Dallas Police DepartmentDallas Police Department
The Dallas Police Department, established in 1881, is the principal law enforcement agency serving the city of Dallas, Texas.-Organization:The department is headed by a chief of police who is appointed by the city manager who, in turn, is hired by the Dallas City Council...
was unable to make an arrest until they learned of information given by a 16-year-old resident of Vidor
Vidor, Texas
Vidor is a city in western Orange County, Texas, United States. A city of Southeast Texas, it lies at the intersection of Interstate 10 and Farm to Market Road 105, six miles east of Beaumont. The town is mainly a bedroom community for the nearby refining complexes in Beaumont and Port Arthur and...
, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
who had told friends that he was responsible for the crime. The juvenile, David Ray Harris, led police to the car driven from the scene of the crime, as well as a .22 Short
.22 Short
.22 Short is a variety of .22 caliber rimfire ammunition. Developed in 1857 for the first Smith and Wesson revolver, the .22 rimfire was the first American metallic cartridge....
caliber revolver
Revolver
A revolver is a repeating firearm that has a cylinder containing multiple chambers and at least one barrel for firing. The first revolver ever made was built by Elisha Collier in 1818. The percussion cap revolver was invented by Samuel Colt in 1836. This weapon became known as the Colt Paterson...
he identified as the murder weapon. He subsequently identified 28-year-old Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
resident Randall Dale Adams
Randall Dale Adams
Randall Dale Adams was wrongly convicted of murdering police officer Robert W. Wood, and was subsequently sentenced to death. He served more than 12 years in prison, at one point coming within 72 hours of being put to death...
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
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
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
Lawlessness
Lawlessness may be:* lack of law, in any of the various senses of that word ;* chaos;* anomie;* anarchy;* anarchism* anarchism* randomness;* antinomianism;...
". This is a re-working of a line from Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
's poem "Tommy" in which he describes British soldiers (nicknamed "Tommy Atkins
Tommy Atkins
Tommy Atkins is a term for a common soldier in the British Army that was already well established in the 19th century, but is particularly associated with World War I. It can be used as a term of reference, or as a form of address. German soldiers would call out to "Tommy" across no man's land if...
") as the "thin red line", from the color of their uniforms and their formation.
Production
The film was directed by Errol MorrisErrol Morris
Errol Mark Morris is an American director. In 2003, The Guardian put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best directors. Also in 2003, his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.-Early life and...
and scored by Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
. Morris was originally going to film a documentary about prosecution psychiatrist
Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...
, Dr. James Grigson, known as Doctor Death, who testified in more than 100 trials that resulted in death sentences. 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. 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. 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.
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.'”
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.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a non-profit corporation created by an act of the United States Congress, funded by the United States’ federal government to promote public broadcasting...
, National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
, Program Development Company Productions Inc., public television stations, and The Chubb Group of Insurance Companies funded the documentary.
Box office
The Thin Blue Line grossed $1,209,846.00 in the US and Canada. On its opening weekend, in only one theatre, it took in $17,814.00. Although the film is the 95th highest grossing documentary film released since 1982, Morris says he lost money on the production.Aftermath
Morris's investigation suggests that five witnesses committed perjury. 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 AppealsTexas Court of Criminal Appeals
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is the court of last resort for all criminal matters in the State of Texas, United States. The Court, which is based in the Supreme Court Building in Downtown Austin, is composed of a Presiding Judge and eight judges....
; the case was returned to Dallas County
Dallas County, Texas
As of the census of 2000, there were 2,218,899 people, 807,621 households, and 533,837 families residing in the county. The population density was 2,523 people per square mile . There were 854,119 housing units at an average density of 971/sq mi...
for a retrial. The district attorney's office declined to prosecute the case again and Adams was subsequently ordered released as a result of a habeas corpus
Habeas corpus
is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. The remedy can be sought by the prisoner or by another person coming to his aid. Habeas corpus originated in the English legal system, but it is now available in many nations...
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
Lethal injection
Lethal injection is the practice of injecting a person with a fatal dose of drugs for the express purpose of causing the immediate death of the subject. The main application for this procedure is capital punishment, but the term may also be applied in a broad sense to euthanasia and suicide...
for the unrelated 1985 murder of Mark Mays in Beaumont, Texas
Beaumont, Texas
Beaumont is a city in and county seat of Jefferson County, Texas, United States, within the Beaumont–Port Arthur Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city's population was 118,296 at the 2010 census. With Port Arthur and Orange, it forms the Golden Triangle, a major industrial area on the...
, which occurred during an attempted abduction of Mays' girlfriend.
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. 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."
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."
Adams died in October of 2010 but lived in such obscurity that his death was not discovered by the media until June 2011.
Critical reception
The Thin Blue Line has a metascore of 79 on MetacriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
and 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
. Gene Siskel
Gene Siskel
Eugene Kal "Gene" Siskel was an American film critic and journalist for the Chicago Tribune. Along with colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted the popular review show Siskel & Ebert At the Movies from 1975 until his death....
named it the 7th best film of 1988. Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
Awards
The Thin Blue Line won Best Documentary honors from the New York Film Critics CircleNew York Film Critics Circle Awards
New York Film Critics' Circle Awards are given annually to honor excellence in cinema worldwide by an organization of film reviewers from New York City-based publications. It is considered one of the most important precursors to the Academy Awards....
, the Kansas City Film Critics Circle
Kansas City Film Critics Circle
The Kansas City Film Critics Circle is a group of media film critics in the Kansas City metropolitan area. James Loutzenhiser, a local psychiatrist and film buff, who died in November 2001, founded the group in 1967...
, the National Board of Review
National Board of Review of Motion Pictures
The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures was founded in 1909 in New York City, just 13 years after the birth of cinema, to protest New York City Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr.'s revocation of moving-picture exhibition licenses on Christmas Eve 1908. The mayor believed that the new medium...
, and the National Society of Film Critics
National Society of Film Critics
The National Society of Film Critics is an American film critic organization. As of December 2007 the NSFC had approximately 60 members who wrote for a variety of weekly and daily newspapers.-History:...
. Morris himself won an International Documentary Association
International Documentary Association
International Documentary Association , founded in 1982, is a non-profit organization promoting documentary film, video and new media, to support the efforts of documentary filmmaking and video production makers around the world and to increase public appreciation and demand for the art of the...
Award, an Edgar Award
Edgar Award
The Edgar Allan Poe Awards , named after Edgar Allan Poe, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America...
, and a MacArthur Fellowship Genius Grant (1989). The film was marketed as "nonfiction" rather than as a documentary which disqualified it from being considered in that category for an Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
.
Legacy
Variety credits the film in a 2008 retrospective of documentaries as “the most political work of cinema in the last 20 years.”The film has had a considerable influence on later television and documentary film, often credited with pioneering the style of modern crime-scene reenactments.
In 2001, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
by the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Postmodern themes
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 JamesonFredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson is an American literary critic and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends—he once described postmodernism as the spatialization of culture under the pressure of organized capitalism...
'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.
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
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.-Life:...
'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."
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”. 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.
External links
- The Thin Blue Line from ErrolMorris.comErrol MorrisErrol Mark Morris is an American director. In 2003, The Guardian put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best directors. Also in 2003, his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.-Early life and...
- David Harris Offender Information
- Officer Robert W. Wood at The Officer Down Memorial Page, Inc
- Review of The Thin Blue Line
