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The True Story
The True Story
The True StoryBy and large, this film remains truthful to the main elements of a story that
happened in Montreal between October 1998 and January 1999.
On October 12th, 1998, a man woke up naked in an alley in Old Montreal, not far away from the Convention Center where the big gay rave Black & Blue was held the night before. The man had no notion of who he was or where he was. Doctors from the Montreal General Hospital examined him, but found no trace of drugs, or signs of a physical trauma. They didn’t think he suffered from schizophrenia or any other mental illness, either. They tried truth serum and hypnosis therapy, without concluding results. Their final diagnosis was : “ dissociative amnesia ”. He thought he was an American of British origin and that he might have been called James Edward Brighton. The only thing he was sure of was being gay. Volunteers from Gay Line decided to shelter and to help him regain his identity. They worked to get media coverage of the story and pressured the police to re-open the investigation. But after three and a half months of research done in the United-States and elsewhere, there were no results…&
Until the tabloid-style TV show Hard Copy featured his story and his family in Tennessee identified him as Matthew Honeycutt. He was then arrested by the Montreal police, TV cameras in tow, in the midlle of the night, and charged with identity theft and public mischief. Charges James/Matthew denied, still claiming he didn’t remember anything. His mother and sister came to Montreal to pick him up, but he didn’t recognize them.
On October 12th, 1998, a man woke up naked in an alley in Old Montreal, not far away from the Convention Center where the big gay rave Black & Blue was held the night before. The man had no notion of who he was or where he was. Doctors from the Montreal General Hospital examined him, but found no trace of drugs, or signs of a physical trauma. They didn’t think he suffered from schizophrenia or any other mental illness, either. They tried truth serum and hypnosis therapy, without concluding results. Their final diagnosis was : “ dissociative amnesia ”. He thought he was an American of British origin and that he might have been called James Edward Brighton. The only thing he was sure of was being gay. Volunteers from Gay Line decided to shelter and to help him regain his identity. They worked to get media coverage of the story and pressured the police to re-open the investigation. But after three and a half months of research done in the United-States and elsewhere, there were no results…&
Until the tabloid-style TV show Hard Copy featured his story and his family in Tennessee identified him as Matthew Honeycutt. He was then arrested by the Montreal police, TV cameras in tow, in the midlle of the night, and charged with identity theft and public mischief. Charges James/Matthew denied, still claiming he didn’t remember anything. His mother and sister came to Montreal to pick him up, but he didn’t recognize them.
