Product Details

• Actors: Karen Brown (VI), Patsy Clarke, Hal Crowther, Jaki Shelton Greene, Allan Gurganus
• Directors: Tim Kirkman
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: New Yorker Video
• VHS Release Date: August 10, 1999
• Run Time: 82 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 1567302009
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #475,462 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Tim Kirkman's plainspoken documentary Dear Jesse addresses the five-term "Senator No" from North Carolina repeatedly over the course of its 85 minutes. Although Helms never appears to respond, it's easy to anticipate his answers, especially after the openly gay Kirkman offers countless close-ups of sensational newspaper headlines as well as insensitive replies, typed neatly on Senate letterhead, from Helms's office to concerned constituents. Like Helms, Kirkman is a son of the rural South, who grew up in "a town of banks and churches." As it so happens, however, fewer folk can be seen standing with Helms atop his conservative platform than even Kirkman reckons. Returning from self-imposed exile in New York City, where his ex remains behind eventually to commit suicide (we're never told why), Kirkman travels around his home state in his dad's truck, interviewing his parents, a cousin, old high school chums, a gay mayor, a civil rights activist, mothers who'd lost sons to AIDS, and many others, from left to right. Some support Helms; others want to unseat him; most give him the benefit of the doubt, including novelist Allan Gurganus, who admits to getting a hernia while extending a peculiar Southern gentility, fairness, and concern for character to the intractable politician.

Kirkman comes across as a thoughtful assimilationist: He simply wants gay people to be accepted as churchgoers, married couples, and parents, and can't fathom Helms's rancor, despite the provocative psychologizing of certain interviewees. Likewise, Kirkman locates his work squarely inside the antistyle, point-and-shoot tradition of documentary filmmaking, waving around a handheld camera, often vertiginously, in mostly natural light. The furthest Kirkman goes out on a limb finds him inquiring whether he and Helms might be equally "evil, dangerous, immoral," just in different ways. He answers his own question by appending eerie footage of Matthew Shepard and his African American boyfriend being interviewed outside Catawba College after a Helms lecture--two and a half years before Shepard's murder in Wyoming at the hands of homophobes. --Robert Burns Neveldine

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mr. Kirkman's courageous road trip, December 15, 1999

By 

James (Greenville, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dear Jesse [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Here, now, a gay man addresses Senator No. And one might justifiably expect a hatchet job instead of Mr. Kirkman's elegant and restrained documentary. This piece makes its points quietly, allowing those interviewed by the director to examine what Jesse Helms has come to mean to them. The resulting portrait is all the more damning for the filmmaker's M.O. Helms, arguably one of the most powerful U.S. senators ever, is exposed, finally and conclusively, as a man whose political career has been marked by the most odious forms of scapegoating, and very little else: each of his campaigns has been driven by racist innuendo and overt homophobia, and his political stands are notable more for their brutality and condescension than for any meaningful legislation. Incalculably crafty and evil, Helms has spent his public life hiding behind a crude, jingoistic patriotism which is itself girded by a foul and decidedly cruel Old Testament religiosity. This Kirkman allows to unfold before us with a deft and singular craftsmanship. I recommend this film to anyone, but especially to those who know young, besieged gays and lesbians. Dear Jesse will tell them that, yes, there are forces (political, religious, etc.) that fear them; and, no, they are not, and never will be, alone.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars From the eyes of a FIGHT-er., August 28, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Dear Jesse [VHS] (VHS Tape)

For awhile now, I've been involved in FIGHT (Free Inspire Guide Help Teach), which is a club against any type of discrimination (it just wouldn't all fit into the title.) And, one person I've been researching to the point of almost obsession, was Matthew Shepard. He was a 21 year old student at U of Wyoming, and was beaten to death by Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney, just because he was gay. I was searching sites about him, and I found that he was in this movie. So, I instantly became obsessed with getting a copy. I watched this film, which is basically a video-letter from a gay film maker to homophobic Senator, Jesse Helms. There are interviews and other interesting footage from around both his and Jesse's hometown, and you really learn a lot about how people viewed Jesse Helms. I found it all interesting, but didn't see anything of Matty Shepard. At the end, in a 'PS', he interviews students who attended lecture given by Senator Helms. The two students were Matthew Shepard, and his boyfriend. While watching this boy, who was only nineteen or twenty at the time, my blood ran cold, because this was the boy I had been fighting for. Who was shot down before he even got a chance to test his wings. As Tim said, all he had was those few minutes of footage of Matty. It's not enough. It's not fair. Only a few minutes of a boy who had hopes and dreams of helping people, and making a difference. I know that this review is more of Matty Shepard than 'Dear Jesse', but he played an incredibly important part, even if it was only less than ten minutes at the end of the film. Tim, the maker of this documentary seemed to be moved by his story, as am I. But, remember, this is coming from a fifteen year old, who still has the passion to keep FIGHT-ing. I haven't let myself become accustomed to going unheard. Tim Kirkman also wanted to be heard, he wanted Jesse Helms to understand that they were really the same, both men under the same god, from the same town, from similar families...and they both were thought to be 'evil, dangerous, and immoral.' Jesse Helms never replied.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars what a wonderful film!, November 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Dear Jesse [VHS] (VHS Tape)

it's indeed a rare film that combines the personal and the political in such an emotionally powerful way, i'm so glad i saw DEAR JESSE. it's as much a story of the filmmaker's struggles for identity as it is an examination a major political figure. as the filmmaker is gay and he's focused his film on the notoriously homophobic senator jesse helms, one would assume there might be some overly subjective and even hostile treatment of helms. amazingly, the filmmaker is very even-handed. he talks to all sorts of north carolinians who have been positively and negatively affected by helms. ultimately the film works so well because it's about a fascinating character, the filmmaker himself, who is drawn convincingly as a sweet, vulnerable person trying to deal with the antagonism and prejudice that helms and his followers subject him to.