While in Utah to shoot "In the Line of Duty: Siege at Marion," director Charles Haid had a random encounter with one of the subjects of the made-for-TV movie.
While shopping at a health food store in Heber City, Haid struck up a conversation with a young woman. When she asked him what he was doing in town, Haid explained that he was directing a movie based on the standoff between the authorities and the Singer/Swapp clan in Marion."She said, `My name is Heidi Singer,' " Haid related.
"I said, `Oh boy, I don't know whether we should be talking.'
"And she said, "I don't think that would be a good idea because you're doing something about their side of the story.'
"I don't know if that's necessarily true," Haid said. "As a director, you are responsible to all sides of the story."
Which is not to say that "Siege at Marion," which airs Monday, Feb. 10, at 8 p.m. on Ch. 2, makes the Singers and the Swapps out to be heroes. Nor does it mean that Utah and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints come out looking like villains.
The movie tells the tale of the 13-day standoff in 1988 between law enforcement officials and members of the Singer/Swapp family - a standoff that resulted in the death of one officer, the wounding of Addam Swapp and the imprisonment of Addam Swapp, Jonathan Swapp and Vicki Singer.
"From the very beginning of this project, the most sensitive issue to me was the way the church was going to be portrayed," said Haid, who's best known for playing Officer Andy Renko on "Hill Street Blues." "I didn't want to go back to the `crazy Mormon' sort of thing that was sometimes portrayed."
Representatives of the LDS Church, as well as law enforcement officials, were consulted on the script. For legal reasons, there were no interviews with members of the Singer/Swapp family.
"The first thing I said when I read the script was that the one thing I cannot do is distort the teachings of these people," Haid said.
The director, though not a Mormon, is familiar with Utah and the LDS Church.
"I became fascinated with it when I bought a house up in Sundance," he said. (A house that he has since sold because Sundance was "becoming a rich suburb of Provo," he said.) "I'm very impressed with the church's emphasis on family."
There are plenty of references in the TV movie to LDS scriptures and leaders.
"(Swapp) certainly spent a lot of time in the press spouting from Doctrine and Covenants and the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. He liberally used their writings toward hisown end. I tried to make it very clear that this was indeed what he was doing.
"It was very important for me to make it clear that Swapp (played by Kyle Secor) was not a church member. That he took church teachings and distorted them to his own ends," Haid said. "The whole story is about ideology gone wrong."
Indeed, there are several references to the Singers and the Swapps having been excommunicated from the LDS Church. And to the fact that their Mormon neighbors weren't exactly happy about being linked to them.
At one point in the script, Deputy Utah Public Safety Commissioner Doug Bodrero (Paul Le Mat) tells FBI agent Bob Bryant (Dennis Franz), "This whole Singer/Swapp thing is a very sensitive issue to the local townspeople. It's embarrassing to them if the country perceives of Swapp as a member of their church."
There are several other references to the fact that Swapp is outside the LDS Church.
"We make the point that these are excommunicated Mormons. They're fringe," Kaufman said. "The good people of Utah are represented extremely well."
As a matter of fact, the group that comes off looking the worst are those protesting on behalf of the Singer/Swapps - people advocating leaving them alone while the narrative clearly shows members of the family not only blowing up the church but firing weapons at law enforcement officers.
(The other group that suffers is, alas, the news media, whose members are made to appear mainly concerned with getting better parking places.)
The movie opens with the final days of John Singer, his defiance of court orders and his death at the hands of law enforcement officials. It's even staged so as to explain why he was shot in the back, a version that the Singer/Swapps would surely dispute.
Actually, the opening is a little fuzzy for anyone not familiar with the story. Working under the time constraints of a two-hour TV movie, there isn't enough time to clearly explain the circumstances leading up to Singer's death. But it does set the stage for the events that follow.
This is the fourth "In the Line of Duty" telefilm, and Kaufman has produced all of them. He sees a common thread running throughout the series.
"In all of the `In the Line of Duty' movies we have tried to get into the humanity of the situation. To look at those on the wrong side of the law and those on the right side in a human manner," Kaufmann said. "I think it makes it much more interesting. You can give them their own words so you can understand where they're coming from.
"We give the Singer/Swapps the same chance. But that doesn't mean they were right."
The TV movie does attempt to present Addam Swapp's side of the story. The script is drawn mainly from court and police records, including the Singer/Swapp version of what went on in that farmhouse during the seige.
And that doesn't necessarily work to the family's advantage. The portrait that emerges is of a group of deluded religious zealots who put their young children in danger's way waiting for an armed conflict that will bring about the resurrection of John Singer.
The concern for those children sets up the main conflict for law enforcement. The telefilm paints a picture of extreme restraint on the part of the FBI and others, for fear that the innocent children would be harmed.
That's the most startling portrayal in "Siege at Marion" - the number of times officers could have shot Addam Swapp down but didn't.
"You keep asking yourself why Swapp would go out on his porch and fire into the night and (the authorities) never responded. They never shot back," Haid said. "They were afraid that if something happened to him something would happen to the children."
The authorities were also dealing with an unusual suspect.
"It's relatively easy to handle somebody who goes out and robs a 7-Eleven, but it's a little more difficult to deal with somebody who believes that he's getting messages from on high," Haid said of Swapp.
The filmmakers had the cooperation of the law enforcement figures involved in the standoff, but what emerges is not a portrait of heroic figures who knew just what to do. Bodrero and Bryant, as well as figures like John T. Nielsen and Gov. Norm Bangerter, are shown struggling with the issue of how to take Swapp into custody without causing harm to the children.
"They went through tremendous moral searching every day about what they could do to bring this to an end and harm the children as little as possible," Haid said.
Unlike so much that appears on television, "Siege at Marion" does not paint the characters in black and white. The conflict is between two sides that both believe they're in the right.
In one of the final scenes, just before the killing of Officer Fred House (Ed Begley Jr.) and the shooting and capture of Swapp, one of the family members is heard singing the hymn "Do What Is Right."
"The words epitomized what both side felt - `Do what is right let the consequence follow.' Both sides felt they were doing the right thing. There was no swerving, no compromise."