'Shouting Fire' eyes free speech

Is the right to free speech in post-9/11 United States guaranteed all of the time in all places?

Or are U.S. citizens' First Amendment rights only available some of the time in some places?

Or is freedom of speech in America hardly ever possible without first meeting certain conditions?

Filmmaker Liz Garbus relied heavily on her father, well-known trial lawyer Martin Garbus, to try to vet those questions in her HBO Documentary Films production "Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech.

It's one of this year's Sundance Film Festival selections.

"Shouting Fire" is packed with Garbus' interviews of heavy hitters from academia and law as well as average but ambitious, outspoken people whose struggles with free speech became national headlines, either because of something they said or wrote that offended others or raised suspicions about their loyalty and devotion to their country.

Garbus' film dredges up clips of disquieting anecdotes from the McCarthy era, the publishing of the Pentagon papers and other historic events that have challenged what the First Amendment truly means (or doesn't mean) and how much it really protects free speech.

At the very least Garbus has created a critical and compelling glimpse into the nuances, complexities and abuses (from all sides) of what most people would consider a free and clear right.

The film doesn't exactly grab its viewers by the throat, but it's well worth its role as a catalyst for further study and debate over what role the First Amendment ought to play, which for the most part, as Garbus alludes to at the end, is being argued by lawyers.

E-mail: saspeckman@yahoo.com