Devil's Knot_ The True Story of the West Memphis Three - Mara Leveritt [166]
Berlinger, who was now working on another film, said he asked everyone he knew in Hollywood who socialized with President Bill Clinton to send him copies of the documentaries, but that most had demurred. Given his conviction that the inmates were innocent, and that one could be put to death, he found their reticence frustrating.380
Berlinger finally e-mailed Roger Ebert, who’d praisedParadise Lost, both one and two. He asked Ebert if he would mind sending the films to the president (as Clinton had been on Ebert’s show), and to Berlinger’s delight, Ebert agreed. “Two months later,” Berlinger said, “I get a letter from Bill Clinton. It’s on official White House stationery, and it comes in protective cardboard, as if I’m going to frame it. It said, ‘Dear Joe, I found both of the films fascinating and disturbing, but please be aware….’ He said that as president he had no influence on the court system in Arkansas. It was a total cop-out.”
More Artists Sign On
If the president of the United States felt powerless with regard to the case, a growing number of musicians, oddly, did not. The group Metallica had been the first to express support for a new look at the case when it donated its music for the sound track of the first documentary. As the realization spread that prosecutors had linked Damien and Jason’s tastes in music to the satanism the state claimed had been the motive for the murders, other musicians saw the tactic as an assault—one that they felt threatened both their form of artistic expression and, potentially, anyone who listened to it. Where the filmmakers had been from New York and the founders of the Web site from Los Angeles, the musicians who stepped most energetically into the case hailed from Seattle.
In March 2000, the manager of a Seattle-based band announced a project that would pull together several groups in support of the three Arkansas convicts now known as the West Memphis Three. Danny Bland, manager of the Supersuckers, a Seattle band, explained the project’s genesis in an opinion piece published in one of the city’s entertainment newspapers.381Bland described his encounter with the case through the HBO documentary, his further explorations at the Web site and letters to the three young inmates. “Something about this story filled me with great sympathy for these guys and great anger for the justice system in Arkansas,” he wrote. “I gathered up the troops—Super-sucker Eddie Spaghetti [lead singer Eddie Daly], his wife, Jessika, and [record promoter] Scott Parker—and headed down to Arkansas to visit Damien and Jason.” The visit with Damien lasted three hours, during which the visitors explained their idea.
We told him about the benefit CD we’re putting together to raise awareness about their case, and how bands like Rocket from the Crypt and L7, as well as solo artists Tom Waits and Mark Lanegan, were stepping up to the plate with their time and music. Damien admits he doesn’t know much about these groups; after all, he’s been in prison for seven years, and before that he lived in West Memphis. Kelley Deal (of the Breeders) said that along with the song she’s contributing, she wants to send a picture of herself wearing a Black Sabbath shirt, black lipstick and fingernail polish for the artwork. When I told Damien this he smiled and said, “Oh, good. Now she can have the cell next to mine.”
It was not easy to pull together dozens of musicians, most of whom needed permission from their own recording studios to participate in the project. But, seven months after the Seattle group’s visit to Arkansas, the CDFree the West Memphis Three was ready for release. Some of the more famous names on the liner notes were Tom Waits, singing his own song “Rain on Me”; Steve Earle, doing “The Truth,