Twilight Production starring Anna Deavere Smith

I assumed the video would not be that different from the book, but if I thought I understood different perspectives in the book, it was nothing compared to the production. Smith’s portrayal of so many different characters was beyond impressive. She switches from a female Beverly Hills real estate agent to a male Mexican victim of police brutality seamlessly. Each character has a unique way of speaking, of expressing emotion, of being. Smith somehow makes every character unique and different, even though she is the only actress in the whole production. Some characters, like Angela King and Charles Lloyd, were nothing like I thought they would be. However, I didn’t mind losing the fantastical image I had developed, because her interpretation was so rich and vivid.
The way she wove the other clips and the music and the footage into the narrative added a lot of drama to the story. For example, in the Josie Morales segment, the music came in right as Josie started talking about her dream. In her dream, the officers were acquitted. She emphasizes that she wasn’t thinking that the officers would be acquitted, that it was never something that occurred to her consciously. She insinuates that an acquittal, the result that in fact becomes truth, was so absurd as to be only possible in a dream. This is emphasized by the eerie, mystical music in the background.
Another especially interesting part of the production was when Smith interweaves Chief Gates’ interview with Mrs. June Park’s interview. Smith juxtaposes Mrs. June Park’s interview, her angry, hopeless wonderings about her husband’s death and musings on how he was well-known for giving money to the community and working with the police, with Chief Gates’ interview and his attempts to defend his actions as the riots were starting up. It makes for a very interesting experience. In reading Gates’ interview I felt some sympathy for him, but next to Mrs. June Park’s heartbreak and despair, any sympathy I had for him disappeared.