SYNOPSIS
Irritated that his law firm has offered him an early retirement, lawyer Jack Ketch wants nothing more than to go home and catch the latest ball game on TV while enjoying a few cold beers. Unfortunately, he promised a colleague that he would attend their performance in an amateur production of Shakespeare’s Othello, so Jack is instead off to the theatre. As the play begins, however, Jack cannot help but get distracted by his own thoughts.
As an idealistic young lawyer, Jack worked tirelessly to eliminate the death penalty in the United States. But in 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court once again upheld and legalized murder. But Jack, as is his nature, refused to give up the fight. He went on to devote his entire life to the abolishment of capital punishment. He wrote 53 books and lectured extensively around the world. Now nearly 60 years old, Jack has started to feel that his entire life was perhaps a waste. Divorced and alone, Jack is depressed. Sadly, he has now become a man with nothing left to lose.
Trying to concentrate on the play before him, Jack is slowly overcome by a shocking revelation. The parallels between the U.S. criminal justice and Othello are undeniable! While the heroic Othello is erroneously led by the villainous Iago to falsely believe that his wife Desdemona has been unfaithful, many innocent people consequently die most tragically. Iago, Jack thought to himself, would make an ideal lawyer. As the theatre curtain fell that night, Jack was smiling and feeling much better. He now knew that he had to be Iago, and that the American justice system had to be his Othello. But whom, he thought, would he sacrifice? Who would be become his Desdemona?
With his home video camera in hand, Jack sets out on a journey to personally document the shocking injustices of the U. S. criminal justice system. Jack smiles, “I'll cause the murders of two completely innocent people before this film is over.”
Unnervingly provocative, cruelly realistic, and savagely funny, RIPPING OFF OTHELLO is the portrait of Jack Ketch, a man who seizes this crucial moment in the history of man’s incivility to man to detonate the comfortable myths by which American society has justified the killing its own citizens. His argument is tantamount to tossing a hand grenade into every courtroom in America.
Producer: Jason Ross Jallet
Producer, Screenwriter and Director: B. P. Paquette
