Patrol: I feel like, especially in my generation, there’s this backlash against Christian cheese.
Winter: Look, nobody starts out to make a bad movie. Everyone starts out with good intentions. People have differing skill sets to do that and different reasons and purposes.
I think that movies are better at entertaining people than transmitting content. And I think when we try to convince people of the truth of the Gospel, movies aren’t the way to do that. That’s where you can get in trouble. It would take tremendous skill to make a movie to do that. And I look at movies that just touch on it a little bit.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Ben-Hur. I just saw it—I watch it every Easter. It’s a powerful movie. And you never see Jesus’ face, you never hear him speak. The conversion process that happens for Judah Ben-Hur is after he stands at the cross and sees Jesus, he comes back to Esther, his then sort-of girlfriend, and says, “When he spoke, I felt the sword fall from my hand.”
And you know from that three-hour journey you’ve been on that that’s a big deal to him. And that’s his conversion; it happens off-screen. But you begin to see the results of that, it changes who he is and how he acts. Those are powerful, entertaining stories that make you question why. It would take a very, very skilled filmmaker that could figure out how to do that and be evangelistic without being cheesy. I can’t imagine at that moment what that movie would be. It’s better at asking questions. It’s better as an art form.
Borders Stores Are Hand-selling Like the Old Days
The big dogs at Borders Group have developed a company network to get select books into the hands of their employees in order for them to recommend them to local shoppers. It’s the same idea you might see at a small, independent bookstore. You buy a couple things or shop there regularly, and the store owner says, “Hey, have you heard of On the Corner of Bitter and Sweet? It’s debut novel, like the kind you seem to enjoy, and I love it.” That’s called hand-selling. Publishers have given Borders credit for making the four previously selected hand-sellers into best-sellers.
Never Satisfied
From Dan Springer of Fox News: “For decades, environmental groups have talked about ‘big oil,’ painting the petroleum industry as greedy and destructive. Now similar language is being applied to renewables. Instead of eco-friendly green power, increasingly it’s ‘big wind’ and ‘big solar.’ . . . many local activists say we need to slow this rush to renewables or risk trading one power problem for another.”
No joke.
A Warning to Non-Fiction Writers
This could happen to you.
Don’t do as I say, or as I do
Being a Democrat means never having to say you’re sorry. But everybody else does.
Here’s a Townhall Blog post by Greg Hengler, with a video clip of Harry Reid explaining, among other things, that it would be awful of the Republicans to do the same things Democrats have been doing to them for many years, and plan to do again next time they’re out of power.
It’s perfect Leftist logic—If you act like me, you’re an awful person.
(By the way, this is an argument every victim of abuse is extremely familiar with, which is probably one reason why I react so strongly to it.) Continue reading Don’t do as I say, or as I do
Happy Birthday, Michael Palin
Today is the birthday of Monty Python’s Michael Palin, born in 1943. At some point after his birth, he said, “I am not a great cook, I am not a great artist, but I love art, and I love food, so I am the perfect traveller. . . . I always wanted to be an explorer, but – it seemed I was doomed to be nothing more than a very silly person.”
The Authentic Francis Schaeffer
Hunter Baker reviews a biography on Francis Schaeffer. He writes about Schaeffer:
The man who cared enough to tutor a little boy with Down Syndrome is also the man who told his church in St. Louis that he would resign if a black person ever came to his church and felt unwelcome. The budding intellectual who answered the existential questions of college students in Europe is also the agitator who took up the cause of the unborn and became arguably the finest shaper of and advocate for a potent evangelical critique of modern culture.
Happy Cinco de Mayo
Calling His Own Shots
Obit Magazine on Jack Kemp: “Kemp wasn’t one of a kind: The quirky and individualistic Barry Goldwater, for whom he volunteered in 1964, was his ideological forerunner. Ronald Reagan, in whose Sacramento office Kemp once worked when Reagan was California’s governor, shared his famous passion for supply-side economics: a stratagem for eternal American prosperity that involved a radical cut in taxes and – somehow or other – a government both flush with cash and raring to spend it. But Kemp was unusual in one special way: He never sacrificed any of his personal beliefs, however sound or loony, for either expediency or personal advancement.”
The article also says Kemp advocated returning to the gold standard. I wonder if that appeals to more people today with our current president’s attack on our economic stability.
The Warren Adler Short Story Contest
The Warren Adler contest is taking short stories now through July 13. This year’s theme is “Short Fiction in Varied Genres” and there’s a $15 admission fee.