'Hoop Dreams' filmmakers shift focus to death penalty

Steve James and Peter Gilbert have got to be the luckiest documentary filmmakers in the business.

Either that, or they're simply very good. Perhaps both.

In making "Hoop Dreams," their breakthrough 1994 documentary set in Chicago, they followed two high-school stars over a period of years and traced how their stories dovetailed. Eventually, the more talented one flamed out, while the other went on to win a state championship, ending the film on an irresistible note of underdog triumph.

More recently James and Gilbert were hired by the Tribune to do the story of a couple of reporters researching a Texas death-penalty case about an executed prisoner who appeared to have been falsely accused. What the filmmakers stumbled on instead, however, was a calm, proud, stately man who for 15 years ministered to the inmates at the "Walls" prison in Huntsville on the days they were to be put to death.

The resulting film, "At the Death House Door," makes its TV premiere at 8 p.m. Thursday on the Independent Film Channel, and it's a compelling experience, even if it is a little overly somber, as one might expect of a movie about the death penalty.

James and Gilbert go back and forth between Steve Mills and Maury Possley, the reporters investigating the case that caused Carlos De Luna to be put to death 16 years before, and the Rev. Carroll Pickett, the "death-house chaplain" who cared for De Luna and almost 100 others as they awaited execution. Yet it's no contest: Pickett is the more compelling presence, and this is his story.

Pickett left his job as the head of a church in an attempt to cut his workload and save his marriage, but the marriage didn't last in any case. Instead he took a job at the Huntsville prison, first forming a choir -- "I just wanted to use music as a message," Pickett says, "I wanted every song to be a sermon" -- before being compelled by the warden to tend to the condemned on the days they were to die. Pickett was told to "seduce their emotions during the day so they won't try to fight at midnight."

A man of faith who had been raised by a strict disciplinarian father, Pickett went about it in the stoic, methodical way he appears to do almost everything, even going so far as to tape each execution. Although personally in favor of the death penalty, he felt a pastor's obligation to tend to his flock -- whoever they are.

"No one should die without a friend," he says, adding he never seriously considered quitting the job. "Leaving the death house to me would have been leaving a ministry," Pickett says. "I don't regret staying here as long as I did. They need to be treated as human beings."

Compare that to the attitude of the guard who strapped the condemned to a gurney and removed the bodies afterward. "I did what a man does," he says, "go home, go to sleep, go to work the next day. Put it behind you." Even for him, however, it's not that simple.

The De Luna case, in fact, haunted everyone involved in it. He maintained his innocence right up to what now appears was clearly his wrongful execution, and almost 20 years later it has had a noticeable effect on Pickett's attitude toward the death penalty.

"It's wrong to kill," he says. "It's like most of the convicts say, 'How can the state say, kill somebody to show somebody that killing people is wrong.' All it does is create a disrespect for human life. … It's like a disease."

Of course, the film seeks to have the same effect on the audience. In that, it sneaks up on a viewer, allowing Pickett's presence and the accumulation of evidence amassed by the reporters to build a case against the death penalty without even suggesting that it's trying to make that case.

Yet make no mistake: There is nothing lucky about James and Gilbert's filmmaking in that regard. It is precisely their intent.

In the air

Remotely interesting: WGN Channel 9's Dean Richards is going interactive, encouraging viewers to record their own movie responses for "Reel People Reviews" through the www.wgntv.com Web site. He'll air a few of the best each week on Monday's "WGN Morning News." … Dave Savini's investigative series "Fly at Your Own Risk," produced by Michele Youngerman for WBBM Channel 2, has been selected for the permanent collection at the Paley Center for Media in New York City and Los Angeles.

"Moonlight" fans are rallying to bring the vampire show back from the dead. Contact Lisa Gerry at leeser@moonlightline.com.

End of the dial: Scott Mackay has joined WERV 95.9-FM as morning host from 5:30 to 9. The River also has a new Web site at www.959theriver.com.

Rachel Maddow has returned to progressive-talk WCPT 820-AM as host of a weekday show from 5 to 8 p.m. Thom Hartmann's tape-delayed show moves up to 2 p.m., but he'll go live in the final hour on Fridays over the summer to take calls from 'CPT listeners.

-- Ted Cox