GVSU movie

Friday night my husband and I are going to the premiere of "To Live and Die in Dixie," a local film made by the Grand Valley film department. It's based on a screenplay by John Dufresne, who was teaching at Northeast Louisiana University (now University of Louisiana at Monroe) when I was there. The screenplay, in turn, was based on a book by a woman named Frances Parker. I haven't read the book and apparently am unable to get a copy of it. However, since I was a student at NLU when the first murder took place and carefully followed the story, I pretty much know what happened in real life and ought to happen in the movie.

Sue Sasseen (now Sue Whately) and I shared an office in the Admin Building, and one of the people we knew and socialized with was Veronica Bordelon. The only reason that's relevant is because when we found out about the murder, Veronica (who is bipolar and possibly schizophrenic) acted weird, so for a short while, Sue and I honestly wondered if Veronica had anything to do with it. She hadn't, of course, but she was very ill at the time (wouldn't take her lithium) and was behaving so bizarrely, she had the teachers scared. Sue and I were also terrified of her, so we kept a close eye on the story as it unfolded.

The real story: the body of a young white woman was found in a black garbage bag in a dumpster near the psychology building. The suspect who was charged and later acquitted was a young black man, the boyfriend of a young black basketball player. The dead woman had played basketball at NLU for a while, as well. It turns out that the white woman had developed a crush on her teammate, and the boyfriend (a pre-med student) didn't like it. The apparent time of death had been around the time of a basketball game that the black girl was playing in. The boyfriend was at the game, so his alibi was that he was at the game with his girlfriend's mother. This woman swore in court that he had not left the game at all. That was the reason for his acquittal.

Later, the young black man married his sweetheart. They moved to Memphis or somewhere like that. Then the body of a young black woman was found in another state. It was his wife. For a long time, there was dithering about which state had jurisdiction since the woman had been killed in one state, presumably, but dumped in another. But ultimately, since the woman was wrapped in a sheet known to belong to the married couple, law enforcement was able to charge this young man with his wife's murder. It turns out that his future mother-in-law had knowingly given him a false alibi for the basketball game, and that was indeed when he had killed this young white woman. As a result, the mother-in-law later had to suffer the death of her own daughter because she knowingly allowed her daughter to marry a man who was a murderer. (Did she think that because he killed a lesbian white woman, he wouldn't kill a straight black woman?)

So there are lots of themes. Race, of course, is one of them. Another is homosexuality. Social class is yet another. The white girl was from Jena (where my sisters and one brother live), and her parents were not of a high social class. The young black couple were reasonably affluent. In fact, my Spanish teacher had taught the young man and thoroughly believed in his innocence. She said often that he was a great student, polite, respectful, intelligent.

Now he is in prison. I doubt that he was ever charged again with the white woman's murder (double jeopardy), but he was convicted of his wife's murder.

I'm probably going to be disappointed in the film, maybe even outraged. I hope that the plot isn't too distorted. Of course, the Southern accents will be horrible. (I'll probably hear someone say "anyways," which is a Northern thing, not a Southern.)

We've ordered our own copy of the movie, so I'll have a lot of chances to play, replay, and critique. I'm looking forward to it. S.