Dear Jesse

If you thought former governor Weld had it tough with Senator Jesse Helms, think again. This poignant but amateurish documentary tartly chronicles the longtime senator's vehement perpetuation of prejudice. Director Tim Kirkman explores Helms's mystique by scrutinizing some strangely similar demographics: Kirkman and Helms grew up in the same small town in North Carolina, both attended Wingate College for one year, and both are obsessed with homosexuality -- Helms because he's a right-wing hatemonger, Kirkman because he's gay.

Kirkman's amiable Roger & Me approach takes on its subject with wit and verve, but at times the camera meanders off as the filmmaker tries to illuminate irrelevant details from his own personal life. The most pointed moments come from Jesse himself, on air and cultivating homophobia, and from Kirkman's interviews with persons who have had dealings with the senator. In a letter of condolence to a mother who lost her son to AIDS, Helms proselytizes the Bible's condemnation of homosexuals and tells her that her son "played Russian roulette with his sexuality." That says it all.

-- Tom Meek