Updates
- 7 January 2013
The drawings and collages that survived Damien Echols’ prison stay now occupy a New York gallery. The sold-out opening for "Moving Forward; Looking Back" at Sacred Gallery NYC in SoHo offered an eye into the mind of the man prosecutors deemed the ringleader of the so-called West Memphis Three.
Tony Scalzo of Fastball recently took his daughter to a memoir reading Echols gave in Austin. "We were totally moved," he told Rolling Stone. Back in 2000, the HBO documentary Paradise Lost inspired him to contribute a song to the Free the West Memphis Three compilation, which also featured Eddie Vedder and Steve Earle.
"The DNA thing, that’s probably the first big change that's made a lot of these stories come to light, or helped get people out of prison who aren’t supposed to be there. That’s the biggest breakthrough in this century," Lucinda Williams told Rolling Stone in a phone interview. "There have been so many mistakes. Too many. One is too many."
Williams recorded a new, acoustic version of her 1998 song "Joy" for the album West of Memphis: Voices For Justice, which is due out on January 15th as a companion to the Peter Jackson-produced documentary West of Memphis. The collection also features Henry Rollins, Patti Smith and Marilyn Manson.
Organizers of the exhibition say part of the proceeds raised Saturday will benefit the Dharma Friends Prison Outreach Project, which distributes letters and dictionaries to inmates. The exhibition lasts through January 31st.
Read more at Rolling Stone.
- 4 January 2013
West of Memphis was among the films nominated today for Best Documentary Screenplay by the Writer's Guild of America! Winners will be honored by the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) and the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) at the 2013 Writers Guild Awards on Feb. 17 during simultaneous ceremonies in Los Angeles and New York.
Read more at The Hollywood Reporter.
- 4 January 2013
The documentary film West of Memphis will be screened at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, N.J. on January 7th at 7 p.m. EST. Damien Echols and Lorri Davis will be there to answer questions after the screening. Tickets can be purchased at CountBasieTheatre.org.
- 2 January 2013
For a decade and a half, Eddie Vedder worked tirelessly with a team to free Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley who, as teenagers, were sentenced to life in prison for the murder of three eight-year-old Arkansas boy scouts (Echols was sentenced to death). The 18-year nightmare -- plus their release in August 2011 -- is chronicled in the new film West of Memphis, directed by Amy Berg and produced by Peter Jackson, which presents new evidence suggesting the trio's innocence."I'm grateful that I can live in a country and feel at least like there is some hope," Vedder says. "If Damien would have been executed that would have been something I can't even imagine."
Read more at Rolling Stone.
