Heroes in Storytelling

I gave a talk this weekend to the San Diego Christian Writers Guild. The talk was on heroes in storytelling and in society - why we need them and what they should look like. Lots of people asked me for my notes, and as I only had my computer with me, I told them I would post the notes here. Sorry if what is here is too sketchy. It may be that this was one of those talks where you had to be there.


I. Intro


II. Some signs of the times

a) Last year for the first time, American high school students listed as their #1 Hero "no-one." (and I don’t think they are being too cynical. Because really, who should be a hero today?) And Is it good or bad that kids have no heroes?

b) An interview with one of the hoards of fans on the news the night of Paris Hilton’s release from prison. “Paris Hilton is my hero – she’s so glamorous and famous.” (Hmmmm... in the words of The Princess Bride, "I don't think you know what that word means.")

c) Where twenty-somethings in the 1940's found a hero in Rick (Humphrey Bogart) in Casablanca, today's coming of agers are more likely to want to be Napoleon Dynamite – where the new heroism is just to be able to look the world in the eye and spit. It’s some version of be true to yourself… But what if “yourself” is really screwed up? Would you want your kids to be true to themselves if they were nuts?

III. Why should we care if there are no heroes?

a) What does a kid (and by extension, a society) look like who has heroes? Idealistic, hopeful, imitative, open, eager to please, reverent, grateful

“A boy doesn't have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn't like pie when he sees there isn't enough to go around.”
Edgar Watson Howe

b) What does a kid look like who has no heroes? Cynical, haughty, suspicious, jaded, irreverent, entitled, self-absorbed.

“Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes.” Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)

c) As a child, a hero provides a teaching example of a life worth living. In fact, the “no greater life” of one who gives his life for his friends.

d) As an adult, heroes should engage us in a holy rivalry; to shame us into being more generous and tireless in doing good. Mother Teresa shamed me into facing what a schlep I am. In some ways, because she could pick a maggot ridden poor person out of a gutter, I was able to be kinder to the annoying guy in the next office.

e) In a society where the family has broken down, the need for heroes becomes even stronger. (Can I please just appeal to the Baby Boomers out there to try and make the last years of your lives heroic. Just heard the other day fromone of my students how her 53 year old father just walked out on the family – two teens at home and an eight year old – and moved in with his 26 year old receptionist. He told his daughter he was bored and feeling unfulfilled. Enough of this nonsense! We don’t want to hear about your need to be having fun anymore! We need you to be brave as you face your elderly years – you will be wrinkled and sickly and forgetful – and your heroism will be to be uncomplaining, and wise and solicitous and serene for the rest of us! “ heard on the radio the other day, “70 is the new 30!”

"One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being." May Sarton


e) But it is also true that not all stories need to be hero stories, and that adult should be able to handle a lot more ambiguity. At the end of The Brothers Karamazov, Alyosha makes a huge inward step, by shedding his protective idealism and accepting the complexity of life. “Hurrah for Karamazov!” I get that reading Harry Potter/fantasy is diverting and on some level edifying, but if all the grown ups are reading about Harry fighting dragons, who is left to be reading Crime and Punishment?

IV. What is a hero?

a) A story will be illustrative here.... (I found this on the Internet somewhere, but there wasn't a writer credited, so to whomever write the following, thank you!)

The time is about four in the afternoon of January 13, 1982. The place: Washington’s National Airport, blanketed in snow and ice. After several delays, Air Florida’s Flight 90 had finally received clearance to take off and was roaring down the runway. Like his fellow passengers, Arland Williams, a forty-six-year-old senior examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, was just getting settled in for the flight when something went wrong. After a dramatic shudder, the Boeing 737 smashed into the Fourteenth Street Bridge and fell into the icy Potomac.

Once the initial shock passed, onlookers could see a piece of the plane ís broken-off tail section afloat in the river, with four people clinging to it. Then a fifth person bobbed up to water’s surface and was pulled to the tail section. Given the freezing conditions and their distance from shore, survival was uncertain at best.

At 4:20, a U.S. Park Police helicopter arrived on the scene. Hovering over the floating debris, they lowered a line to Bert Hamilton, one of the five. Hamilton grabbed the line with all his strength and was soon being lifted out of the water and whisked through the wintry air to safety on shore.

The helicopter returned and dropped its line to Arland Williams, who quickly passed it to Kelly Duncan, a flight attendant. Duncan was carried safely ashore. The helicopter returned and dropped the line once more to Williams. This time he passed it to Joe Stiley, a severely injured passenger. By now, all the victims were suffering badly from the icy exposure, and it was vital to get them ashore as soon as possible. Stiley grabbed another passenger, Priscilla Tirado. A second line was dropped this time, and it was passed to Patricia Felch.

As the helicopter again lifted higher in the air, it became evident that too much had been attempted in one trip. Both Tirado and Felch fell back into the water during transport. When the helicopter rushed back to rescue Tirado, she was too weak to take the line. At this point, an onlooker standing on the shore, Lenny Skutnik, leaped into the icy water and swam out to get her. The helicopter then proceeded to where Felch had fallen, and Rescue Officer Gene Windsor dropped into the water to attach a line to her.

Four lives had been saved. Now, thirty minutes after the crash, the helicopter returned to the floating tail section for Arland Williams, who had repeatedly passed the life-saving line to others. Williams was gone. His heroism had cost him his life. Gene Windsor wept as he described what Williams had done that day in the middle of a freezing river: "He could have gone on the first trip, but he put everyone else ahead of himself. Everyone."

b) (from Heroes.com) What sets heroes aside from the rest of humanity is the willingness to assume a personal responsibility for public problems. As I will use the word, responsibility is assumed, not assigned, undertaken rather than imposed. I am interested in responsibility as a function of declaration rather than duty. This book is about people who take on responsibility where no one else would regard them as responsible.

c) So in a story, a character to be a hero must assume responsibility for something that is not theirs by assignment. But it falls to them in their mind.

d) And it seems clear that heroism always has to involve someone dying so others can live. Now, there are many kinds of death.

1. Luke Skywalker has to die to his sense of being in control. He also has to risk his physical life.

2. In Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddel has to die to his ego and his plans for the future by being willing to lose the Olympics and not run in the race on Sunday.

3. In The Fugitive, Dr. Shepard risks his life and freedom to save a child he happens to meet while he is on his quest at the hospital.

4. In Casablanca, Rick needs to lose the woman he loves.

5. CLIP from One Against the Wind

e) And because a story needs to be better than the real, the stakes of a character have to be higher. The risks to himself must be bigger. The good for the world more urgent.

V. The kind of heroes Hollywood too often provides are not doing the job that the audience needs in its longing for heroes. Too often, these are the kinds of things we see set up as the lead character/the one in the movie to whom we are supposed to relate:

a) People who are purely about self-survival. Napoleon Dynamite.

b) People who are in the service of a false good. Million Dollar Baby or ER Christmas episode in which people euthanize other people. Like it is ever a heroic idea to murder someone!

c) People who aspire to nothing outside of their own pleasures. Knocked Up and Superbad.

d) People who become worse than their rivals. Kill Bill. The Brave One.

e) Comic book heroes. Which are perfectly appropriate for kids, but weird and ultimately unsatisfying for grown-ups.

f) People with disordered souls. Craving some evils in some quarters. The Departed. Or the doctors on ER who in the later seasons have become self-absorbed, whining narcissists. It's the Bill Clinton problem in which we are asked to believe that you can be a lie and cheat on a small scale, but that it won't effect the decisions you make on a big scale. As my pagan Hollywood agent told me once, "People who will screw anyone will screw everyone. Cheaters cheat."

g) Hollywood creatives are very often jaded. Because most don’t have the example of the Crucified Jesus, they are very suspicious about the idea that people can really do selfless things. They are also bloated with false goods, so that they can’t be sure anymore if it is better thing to save a stranger because who can say whose life is more valuable? But I think the real reason we so many schleppy heroes on the screen these days has to do with the being shamed by the good thing I mentioned before.

“The presence of the just one is obnoxious to us. He reproaches us with our laziness and failures to live up to our training.” Isaiah

h) So, btw, if you are in a committed relationship to evil, I suspect you will lose the ability to write a selfless character. In the same way that if you smoke pot on the side, it is really hard to tell your teenager not to. (As long as you hate your sin you might be able to do it. But there is no voice of authority like purity. Ref. Lancelot in Camelot.)

i) There is a positive side to Holywood's desire to create heroes with a dark side. It is coming from a rejection of melodrama and sentimentalism. SENTIMENTALISM IS THE PROBLEM FOR US CHRISTIANS. We want to show that God is basically in charge of the world so everything is really okay. We want to give God the benefit of the doubt.

j) Facing the Giants is anti-heroic because it costs the hero nothing. The Christianity depicted in the movie is a rejection of the cross and presents a fantasy religion in which believing in Jesus means no suffering. “Give me some of that Jesus stuff!” The truth is Christianity promises that we will suffer without despair...and probably we will suffer more than others!

k) Flannery: “Sentimentalism is the one inexcusable defect for the Christian storyteller because it is an overemphasis on innocence.” We know that there must always be original sin in the story. No human person is perfect and immune from temptation.

VI. So here is the paradox: The world needs heroes from us as writers. It needs examples of people to model our lives after. But we have to tell the truth for adults and show that heroes are also human beings with failings.

a) Here’s the trick: your story hero can and must have weaknesses, but the character must be consistent in the conviction that leads him to his heroic act. As Aristotle says, in the Poetics, we don’t need unity of character in a story – that is, a story in which all of a characters problems are resolved – but to be a hero, a character has to have an almost supernatural understanding and commitment to the value that will allow him to embark on his mission in the story.

b) You have to figure out in your story, what is the characters’s dawning, and defining conviction. Then, you have to make sure that he/she is consistent IN THAT CONVICTION. She may be, as in One Against the Wind, snippy and proud, but she is absolutely unconfused about the fact that we are to save each other from being killed.

c) This kind of conviction can not be contradicted by his defects or you undermine the hero and make his choices seem random.

d) So, in Million Dollar Baby, the character of the coach is anti-heroic, because his one vision was as a coach “You never give up!” And he had already given up on his daughter before and now he had a new daughter. So when he euthanises her, it shows he never really got the one lesson of his life. (Now, the movie suggests that letting go of his coachly convictions was a growth for him, but that is twisted and bad writing. It was his one understanding to give to the world.)

e) In The Departed, the character is lying and cheating with another man’s fiancée. Well, why is it worse for the mob to be lying and cheating then? Who is he to try and stop them? And the suggestion that he would have the moral energy to do risk his life to stop some men from doing what he himself is doing on the sly is absurd.


VII. Things That Are Not Heroic:

a) To have an illness. To be a victim. To have a bad hand dealt to you. HEROISM is in still serving others with an illness or bad thing.

b) To survive your own iniquity. (In the Bill Clinton sense. I heard a lady on TV say that she admired Clinton because he was "a survivor." Well, by that standard, you could admire roaches.) HEROISM for a person in habits of iniquity would be in full repentance, and in heading back into the sewer you once created to repair it.

c) It isn’t heroic to have a great talent or skill. To be able to run fast or sing well. It might be heroic to develop that talent to your utmost and at great price – as long as it is in response to the cosmos and not for your own glory.

d) It is not heroic to fight for the wrong thing. To build a business or buy a house or paint a fence or go on a trip or make a million dollars or win an award.

e) It is not heroic to fight using disproportionate means. Someone attacks your son, and you nuke their country. The whole vengeance thing is essentially anti-heroic.
f) It is not heroic to do an evil to achieve a good: Torturing someone to save the U.S.

VIII. The world needs from us:

a) The conviction that there is something worth dying for. That suffering is not the worst thing that can happen to us.

b) The conviction that some things that people are dying for are the wrong things! (Money or fame or to be a size zero...)

The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold. Kahlil Gibran


c) Another conviction the hero brings is that there is good and evil in the world. The hero story is a direct attack on moral relativism which, Pope Benedict recently said was the wrong idea that is at the heart of the decay of Western civilization. The only thing that explains Ahmadinijad at Columbia is that there is no more good and evil in the world. If everything is relative, then we can listen to a man in a suit share his ideas about how the Holocaust didn't happen, because who are we to judge the fact that he has murdered hundreds of American soldiers, and has imprisoned scores of Iranian journalists and dissenters, and that he has killed and tortured so many homosexuals that they no longer exist in Iran? I mean who are we to judge him, right? Just because we find those behaviors repugnant might be our problem – like the way we don’t really eat eel here. Right? See, we aren’t going to be able to hold off the conviction of Islamo-fascism with yawning relativism.

d) The mystery of immortality.

“A man of courage is also full of faith.” Cicero

e) That being a hero is not a unique call, but a universal one.

f) Being a hero doesn’t come out of nowhere. That you can’t be a hero in big things if you are unheroic in little things. You will not be up to the big moments unless you have made virtuous habits, and have cultivated a broad respect for others. And most of us are schleppy and lazy in our normal moments...

“We can't all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.” Will Rogers

“It's choice - not chance - that determines your destiny.” Jean Nidetch

“A man must indeed be a hero to appear such in the eyes of his valet.” Thomas Carlyle


VIII. Let’s create a hero story. From your own life. What is there that you have stumbled over that made you say to yourself, " Somebody ought to do something about that?"

a) What would be a heroic choice/task for you to take on?

"The cowards think of what they can lose, the heroes of what they can win." J. M. Charlier

b) What scares you about it? (Or, why don’t you do it today?…”Well, I have kids.” Well, I have a job.” “Well, I have a pain in my foot.” “Well, I’m not rich.” “Well,…”)

"Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared." Eddie Rickenbacker

"Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway." John Wayne


"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear." Mark Twain


c) What miracle would have to come about to allow you to achieve this goal? What are the obstacles that will have to be overcome? If it doesn’t require a miracle, it isn’t big enough.
“People will never stop doing THAT.”
“That is a problem that will never go away.”

d) What good will you have to see killed to do your goal?

“Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.” F. Scott Fitzgerald

e) Has to be something good for the world, not just for yourself or your own. There has to be an aspect in which the good that is coming back to you is unknown.

f) Can’t be something that relies on other people doing it for you. It has to be obvious to you that you just have to do this thing, regardless of whether you are fitted for it, because somebody has to do it and it is in front of you.

g) Can’t be something that just needs somebody to write a check or getting a law passed. Those don’t require you to get down into the depths of yourself. Don’t require you to have to die.

IX. Test example: Yesterday, I saw that story about the little child who had been filmed being molested. And the bell went off in my head for the umpteenth time. “Pornography. Her molester was making his own pornography.”

a) I used to have an office opposite the teen canteen….”Somebody ought to do something to help those kids.
b) Task: To end the porn industry in the San Fernando valley.

c) What scares me: To be around that level of sin and degradation. To get killed by the people who make $$$$$ in this business. To be laughed at and even hated for trying to take away people’s rights to their “first amendment freedoms” (As though, by the way, the first amendment covers allowing you to exploit other people for your own self-expression.)

d) Obstacle: It’s too big. It’s in the shadows.

e) Action plan: To gradually create a climate in which porn is unacceptable - to associate it to women’s rights… To stop shows like “The Girls Next Door.”….. To pressure Madison Avenue to stop the pornification of women and children in ads… To make it a felony to ship obscenity overseas and inter-state…To address the addiction… To buy out the producers… To regulate the industry severely… To make the guilds shun people who moonlight in porn…. To give the actors other work… To save some of the actors, and then send them as missionaries back to those trapped in the industry…

f) So, what is your heroism? Write that story.

X. A Poem by Leigh/Darion.... Is this too hokey for us today? What's wrong with us?

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To be better by far than you are
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless,
No matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know, if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world would be better for this
That one man scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

YES!!!

HA HA, New York! Thou dost sucketh.

See Barb in San Diego

I'll be here this weekend. It's always a wonderful conference and they have an amazing track record of succesful writers coming out of their programs and small groups. It's an honor to me that they keep having me back year after year, and I always value the opportunity to try out on the assembly whatever new idea is starting to come together in my brain.

This year, my keynote will be on the paradox of writers who are Christians trying to create heroes. The problem comes in with figuring out how to make somebody bigger and more virtuous in order to be inspiring, and yet not slipping into sentimentalism, which as Flannery said is inexcusable for a Christian as an over-emphasis on innocence.

I am going to talk about why having heroes is important, especially in children, and how our heroes should evolve as adults. Also, what makes someone/a character truly heroic? Then, we're going to talk about how many of the lead characters in our post-Sexual Revolution cynicism movies aren't complex or tragic heroes (ie. people oriented toward the good but with a fatal flaw), but anti-heroes (people confused about the good).

I really don't know where it is going to resolve, but I do have some good clips and quotes to share, so it will minimally be fun for the writers.

The War Bogs Down

My comments here are going to seem too strident mostly because of Let Down Syndrome. For months, I have been eagerly anticipating Ken Burns' new doc on WWII, The War. I was thrilling that the experience of watching the piece would bring me back to the really perspective changing wonder that I experienced in Burns' classic The Civil War.

The first two episodes of The War had a huge audience of other people like me who were hoping and longing for something great again from Burns.

But what a disappointment.

In The War, Burns has made the mystifying mistake of trying to make the problems of four little people (in this case, four little American towns) matter more than a hill of beans in the face of the century-defining struggle unfolding in Europe and in the Pacific. The cool thing about The Civil War was how wonderfully educational it was about the War. (The "smart" factor as Jan "The Maven" would say.) The series was made charming by the personalities of the historians, and the characters they were channeling in their anecdotes. In this new piece, The War I'm not learning anything historical. Burns missed the lesson of the first season of The West Wing which was that the audience only gives a hoot about the offices in the West Wing because of their proximity to the Oval Office. Somebody over at Liberty Film Festival agrees with me, so I must be right!

We’re 21 months into the war and I don’t think General Omar Bradley’s been mentioned even once. What made Burns’ Civil War doc so compelling were the personalities of the players: Sherman, Grant, Lincoln, Lee, and McClellean. Normal people are just that: Normal. Normal isn’t interesting. Where are the historians? Where’s The War’s Shelby Foote?

All the drama and personality of WWII is being ignored for the dit-dit of those who stayed home, dealt with rationing, went to the movies, and got jobs as welders? It’s like watching Burns doc on Baseball but it’s all about the people in the bleachers. I may not make the whole 15 hours.

I don't think I will either. Rats. And the new Bionic Woman is lame too. So I guess I'll have more time to read this Fall.

Valerie's in a Show

Valerie Nicolosi stars in The Italian Lesson
A one woman opera by Lee Hoiby
Produced by Opera Providence
Conducted by Timothy Steele
Directer By Peter Sampieri

Friday October 26, 2007 8pm
Sunday October 28, 2007 3pm

At the Columbus Theater
270 Broadway / Providence, RI

http://www.operaprovidence.org/

Hoiby’s "The Italian Lesson" turns one of the most popular of Ruth Draper's character sketches into a one woman operatic monologue and feat of vocal and theatrical brilliance. It offers a brief window into the hectic life of a New York society matron. Written in 1925, when Draper was 40 and at the height of her creative abilities, the monologue was originally referred to in letters as "The Busy Mother." "Busy" is something of an understatement. While studying The Inferno, the matron, among much else and with the assistance of a long line of servants, plans a dinner menu, gossips with friends, quells disturbances by her passel of troublesome children, arranges for riding lessons, dentist's appointments, dancing classes and gymnasium visits for said troublesome children, greets a new puppy, sends her husband's golf clubs and clothes to meet him at the train station, arranges a care package for the injured son of the night watchman, reviews appointment schedules with her secretary, finds guests for a box at the opera, instructs a painter in changes to a child's portrait, gives away concert tickets, tells a schoolteacher to drop mathematics from her son's curriculum, flirts with her lover, orders a new lampshade cover and has a manicure. The matron notes that Dante, like Shakespeare, "seemed to know the things that always would be true." So did Draper, and like the work of those writers, her monologues are "filled with quotations and great general truths."


Valerie Nicolosi, who will be portraying The Busy Mother/Ruth Draper, began her music and acting studies at the Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Natick, MA. She received her Bachelor’s in Vocal Performance from the Eastman School of Music, and her Masters in Vocal Performance from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, TN. Mezzo Soprano Valerie Nicolosi has enjoyed a dynamic operatic career around the country and the globe. She has received critical acclaim for leading operatic roles with a variety of regional opera companies around the country including Lake George Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Shreveport Opera, Ashlawn Opera, St. Petersburg Opera, Raylynmore Opera, Commonwealth Opera, Augusta Opera, Cape Cod Opera and Opera Theater of Connecticut. In September 2002, Miss Nicolosi debuted in the title role of Rossini’s La Cenerentola with Opera Providence. A favorite for pants roles, she has sung the role of Cherubino in Le Nozze Di Figaro with Abilene Opera, Knoxville Opera, and Dayton Opera. She continues to sing leading and supporting roles with various opera companies around the United States. Roles include Dorabella in Cosi Fan Tutte, Rosina in Barber of Seville, Angelina in La Cenerentola, Hermia and Oberon in Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hansel in Hansel and Gretel, Olga in Eugene Onegin, Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Suzuki in Madame Butterfly, Stephano in Roméo et Juliette, La Ciesca and Zita in Gianni Schicchi, and Cupid in Orpheus and the Underworld. This past Fall Miss Nicolosi sang the title role in Gustav Holst’s Savitri with Lexington Symphony. Miss Nicolosi is a Liederkranz Competition finalist and prize winner, and was awarded the Richard F. Gold Career Grant for Young Singers. She has appeared as a soloist with the Indian Hill Symphony, Knoxville Symphony, Chattanooga Symphony, Rhode Island Civic Chorale and Orchestra, Hartford Festival Orchestra, St. Alban's Symphonia, and the Boston Ballet. She is also well-known for her inventive song recital programs which make the classical song repertoire more accessible to contemporary audiences and are popular on a wide variety of venues around the United States


Visit ArtTix at
www.ArtTixRI.com
or call 401-621-6123

Performances at the Columbus Theatre
270 Broadway, Providence, RI


2007-08 Season Prices

Subscription packages - 10% discount:
Golden Circle Premium Seating in orchestra or mezzanine: $162.00
Orchestra front sides or middle: $94.50
Orchestra rear or general mezzanine: $54.00
on sale as of Thursday, July 12th

Single Tickets:
Golden Circle Premium Seating in orchestra or mezzanine: $60.00
Orchestra front sides or middle: $35.00
Orchestra rear or general mezzanine: $20.00
on sale as of Monday Oct 1st, 2007

Student Rush tickets: 50% off 1/2 hour before curtain
Senior: 10% off single tickets
Groups: 20% off groups of 10 or more

Jesse James Scores a Bulls Eye

This is a really great film. And the more you know about cinematic storytelling the greater you will think it is. From the aspect of craft, Assassination is beautiful in all of the aspects that matter: writing, direction, performance, score, cinematography, production design, sound design. (That is, each of its parts its whole, harmonious and radiant (ie. communicative), and then the amalgamation of the parts is harmonious.) And then from the aspect of world-view, the film radiates a powerful and universal truth. Even more rare, the film manages to integrate theme into the method of storytelling, most notably in the style of dialogue and cinematography. And it has lyrical imagery! And it even uses ambient sound to highlight the theme! Watching this film, my critic cup ranneth over.

The subtextual title of the film could be: "Living in Sin." The film illustrates the destruction wreaked in human lives from habitually living in a state of spiritual rebellion....in a really funny way sometimes. My friend and I were laughing very loud at times at the absurdity that becomes the life of the person who, as St. Bernadette says, "loves their sin." But way beyond just showing the banality of living in a committed relationship to evil, Assassination does a cool thing in making the point - particularly through the style of dialogue - that human beings trying to live out the Genesis lie "you shall be like God," end up as transparent and ridiculous phonies. It was really cool. BTW, the film is based the book of the same name written by the very smart and committed Catholic writer, Ron Hansen. Of course, I came home and ordered the book immediately as I'm sure one out of every two viewers will too.

Where to start? Okay, how about the cinematography....





Beautiful frames all the way through. The pallet is frequently colorless...just like the fruits of sin. And then, several times, they did this really cool thing of showing landscapes through a narrowed lens that was clear in the middle but fuzzy all around. It seemed to me that living in sin similarly distorts a person's moral, spiritual and even intellectual vision.

There were several breathtaking images - the bucket (of iniquity) running over, the fades to the blackest of darkness, the Darkened doorways - but my favorite was "the wheat and the tares." I say no more! Just love it when you see it.




Everything they are saying about Casey Affleck stealing this movie from Brad Pitt is true. ("Wow," I thought, "Someone in the Affleck family has genuine talent." It's so nice when something in the hype of contemporary life turns out to be authentic.) Casey is great in this movie. I was wondering if being in the shadow of the lesser talented big brother Ben contributed to Casey so ably fleshing out a resentful man in another man's shadow. But anyway, he perfectly inhabits the idol-worshipper who alternately is facinated by and hates his idol. It's delightful to watch him because he is so good.

Brad too is great here, spot on in fleshing out a person who has chosen to begin his hell on earth. He is paranoid, perpetually exhausted, emotionally unstable, and frighteningly unpredictable in his rages and cruelty. He is definitely a human being though, who yearns to love and be loved, but he is a human being caught on the underside of a large snowball rolling down a mountain. He can't stop the momentum of his own evil choices.

The supporting players are also wonderful, most notably the guy who plays Liddel. He was fabulous as the mysogynist who rolls out pretentious dialogue.

But a discussion of casting and supporting players leads to one of the two missteps in the film, this one being a huge misstep. Did I say huge? Because I meant HUGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Who had the unbelievably inappropriate idea to cast fire-breathing Democratic partisan James Carville as the Governor of Missouri? As my friend said, "They just demolished the fourth wall with a nuclear weapon." Terrible, stupid, distracting call. In a tableau of wonderful performances, Carville was stiff and weird, regurgitating lines that sounded like they were being read off a tele-prompter. And this was particularly egregious because the governor's character has a key line in the film that underscores the narrative's essential theme. I think "casting James Carville" is going to replace "jumping the shark" as a new euphemism for doing a stupid thing just because you can.

The other misstep in the film had to do in almost everything in the movie after Jesse James gets killed. They were rushing around trying to do to much and ended up splashing the subtext all over the page. The filmmakers needed to lose about fifteen minutes of this film, and it should have been all the moments in which they made Robert Ford have to tell us how he felt about killing Jesse. It was so much better in the rest of the film in which we could wonderously find the clues and put them together.



But overall, this is an Academy Award worthy piece in many categories - acting, directing, cinematography and writing minimally. It's the first really Oscar-worthy project I've seen this year.

(But I'm wondering why we aren't seeing more raves about it everywhere. And I haven't seen one TV ad. It can't be that because next year is an election year, the attention and the Oscars just have to go to the crop of anti-war propaganda films, can it? I hope not, because that would be an injustice to this piece that deserves plaudits.)

Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford is a must see for movie-loving grown ups. (The violence here is harsh without being voyeuristic. There really isn't a lot of it, but it might be too much for kids. There is no sex, but there is some lewd talk appropriate to the theme.)

P.S. Go here for a much more thorough review of the technical elements of the film.

A Severe Mercy - The Movie Website

Origin Entertainment has just launched an official web site for our feature project of A Severe Mercy. It has lots of neat pictures of Van and Davy, and also the settings of the story that give a sense of the what the look of the movie will be - (from the web site:)

"A Severe Mercy is the kind of project entertainment executives dream of. Based on an international bestseller, it also carries the tremendous name-recognition of C.S. Lewis, who plays a major role in the story. It is an epic love story and highly cinematic, taking the audience from the rolling hills of Virginia to the attack on Pearl Harbor, to the blue waters of the Caribbean, to the ivy-covered arches of post-War Oxford."

If you have read the book, you know that the most compelling thing about the story is not the visual arenas in which it unfolds, but the interior world of the love stories between Van and Davy and then, each of them with the Christian God. (A treat for those who have read the book....that picture on the top left is Davy's "sin picture".)

We are off to the East coast this weekend to tell people who can help about our hopes for this project. Please do keep us in your prayers.

A Severe Mercy Nights in DC and Philly

This coming week, Origin Entertainment will be holding two informational nights about our plans for the development of the feature adaptation of Sheldon Van Auken's A Severe Mercy.

The nights will be in:

Saturday, September 15 - McLean, VA

Monday, September 17 - Philadelphia, PA

The evenings will be about 90 minutes long, and will feature two parts. The first part will deal with general information about the process of financing, developing and distributing a feature film in Hollywood. The second part will be about Origin Entertainment and A Severe Mercy.

If you would like to attend either evening, please send an email to Jennifer@originentertainment.com

Announcing: Hollywood RCIA

We are in the process of organizing our annual RCIA (that's Rite of Christian Initiation, but the bulk of our attendees are already Christians and are on their way to becoming Catholics) program for entertainment industry people, and we need help to make the program known to anyone you might know in the business whom God might be calling into the Catholic Church.

We start October 6th at Family Theater and will continue meeting on Saturday mornings until Pentecost. The program is specially geared to people in the business. We are trying to fill a gap that exists in current parish programs, by creating a program that constantly references the discipleship demands of being an artist and professional in Hollywood. (If candidates decide to become Catholic at the conclusion of the program, we work with their local parish to have them formally enter the Church.) The program, styled as more seminar/discussion than lecture, utilizes the Catechism of the Catholic Church and ecclesial documents, but also literary works like Brideshead Revisited, The Power and the Glory, and Silence (Shushaka Endo). We already have five candidates for the Fall, but would like three or four more so we have a good discussion group.

Who is right for the program? Basically, the first part of the program (from October to February) would be enriching for anyone with some spiritual curiosity and desire to deepen their understanding of theology. We find that many folks from non-Catholic Christian backgrounds, while knowing parts of Scripture very well, have not really studied any theology, so this first part of the program fills a void for them. From February to Pentecost, we focus more explicitly on the sacraments, liturgy and specifics of the Catholic theology and culture.

So, the ideal person to invite would be anyone who is seeking a spiritual home and a deeper understanding of Christianity and the Church. Others would be people in the business who are in the process of marrying - or, well, falling in love - with a Catholic. Also, we always have Catholic observers in the class who benefit from attending the classes as a refresher (or introduction...sigh...) for their faith.

Here's what we need from you:

1) Pray about your circle of contacts, gulp deeply, and then mention the program to whomever has been kind of asking you questions about God for the last few years. Give them my email: brnicolosi@aol.com and we'll take it from there.

2) Forward this on to other Catholics in the business.

3) We need some financial help for the program. Those of you who have attended the program in the past know that we take the class on retreat every year at Serra in Malibu. We provide them Bibles, catechisms, some other texts and prayerbooks. The program requires quite a bit of coordination, and we would like to offer some one of our helpers a small stipend for their service. We need about three thousand dollars basically. If you would like to help with the expenses, send a donation to Family Theater, with "For Hollywood RCIA" in the memo line:

Family Theater Productions
Attn: Hollywood RCIA Program
7201 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90046

4) Our wonderfully generous Clayton Emmer, who has been coordinating the program for several years, is having to step down this year. If any of you would like to help us out - fulfilling many spiritual works of mercy! - please do send me a message.

5) Please take a moment right now to pray for everyone receiving this message, and for those who will be part of our RCIA program this year.

Thanks so much. God bless you, and all your works for the Kingdom.

Act One in Grand Rapids

--------------- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ---------------

ROAD TO HOLLYWOOD STARTS IN GRAND RAPIDS, MI –
SCREENWRITERS’ WORKSHOP PLANNED

Each year, hundreds of aspiring screenwriters flock to Hollywood with scripts in their hands and stars in their eyes. This year, Hollywood is coming to them. Next stop? Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Act One, Inc., a Los Angeles-based training program for writers and other film industry professionals, is partnering with Compass Film Academy of Grand Rapids to present the Act One Screenwriting Weekend, a conference for professional and aspiring screenwriters. The workshop, slated for October 19-20, 2007 at Trinity Christian Reformed Church, is an intense, practical overview of screenwriting basics, the current film market, and the Christian’s responsibility to engage popular culture.

Participants will study the craft of screenwriting – from story development and structure to character, dialogue and screenplay format – with a group of accomplished Hollywood professionals, including screenwriter, producer, and Azusa Pacific University Associate Professor Dr. Thomas Parham (JAG, Touched By An Angel), and screenwriter/author Chris Riley (After The Truth, The Hollywood Standard).

“Grand Rapids has a rich history as a center of Christian art and thought,” says Conference Coordinator Lauri Evans Deason. “And we’re thrilled to join the Compass Film Academy in providing new inspiration for local writers who share our common goals of artistry, professionalism, and spirituality.”

The seminar begins at 1:00 p.m. Friday with a session for registered participants, and continues all day Saturday. Friday evening features the Hollywood Insiders Event, a keynote address and panel discussion with the faculty, open to anyone interested in film and its influence on popular culture. The registration fee, which includes study materials and lunch on Saturday, is $175 for anyone registering before October 1, 2007. After October 1, the cost to attend is $195. Discounts are available for students and groups of ten or more. Tickets for the Hollywood Insiders Event (which begins Friday at 7:00 p.m.) are $10.

Further information and online registration is available through the Act One website at HYPERLINK "http://www.actoneprogram.com" www.actoneprogram.com or by calling 323-464-0815. Space is limited, and early registration is encouraged.

Act One, Inc. is a non-profit, interdenominational training and mentorship program designed to train people of faith for careers in mainstream film and television. The organization is endorsed by the Catholic Communications Commission, Catholics In Media Associates, Premise, The Hollywood Prayer Network, MasterMedia International, and several colleges and universities.




MEDIA REQUESTS AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

lauri@actoneprogram.com
323-464-0815 x14

Renewing the Dialogue Between the Church and the Arts

Here was a basic outline for a talk I gave tonight in Cincinnati...

---------------------

In his Letter to Artists (2000) Pope John Paul II called for “a renewal of that fruitful dialogue that used to exist between the Church and the Arts.”

Clearly, you cannot have dialogue without a forum, a message, and without a speaker. Our investments in Hollywood as Catholics should be geared to establishing and fostering all three of these.

A “forum” – The Church in Hollywood needs a place from which it could host ongoing dialogues with the creative people who set the global entertainment and media agenda. We need a site around which Catholics in the industry could gather to network, pray together and support each other. We need a chapel for the arts. We need a theater in which to host premieres of good work. We need a think-tank which could provide media with commentary on cultural topics. We need a training ground for artists and filmmakers to learn to integrate their life as believers wiuth their work as professionals.

A “message” – In order to have a dialogue, we need to have something relevant and valuable to say to Hollywood. The Church needs to commission her scholars, philosophers and ethicists to brood over the whole arena of art, storytelling and entertainment, so as to translate theological and Scriptural principles into useful guidelines for Hollywood creatives.

A “speaker” – We need to prepare apostles for Hollywood who can bring the presence of God into the entertainment industry. We need to provide spiritual and ethical formation to those Christians who are currently in the industry. We need to raise up articulate spokesman who can question and challenge Hollywood from within, in the network, study and agency sets and offices.

Here's a little blip from this week's Daily Variety. Amy Snow, the writer here, is an Act One alumna. Kudos Amy!
_____________________________________


Paramount nabs 'Kept Men'
Spec comedy penned by Fellowship scribe
By MICHAEL FLEMING

Paramount Pictures has acquired the spec comedy "Kept Men," by Amy Snow, for Double Features partners Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher.

Pic revolves around three down-and-out pals looking for a shortcut to riches, who flaunt their youthful assets at a charity auction in hopes of becoming kept men.

Shamberg and Sher will produce, and Steve Crawford and Matt Luber of Nine Yard will be exec producers.

Snow came out of the Disney Fellowship writers program.

She's repped by Endeavor and Nine Yards.

"A Severe Mercy" Night in Philadelphia

On September 17th in Philadelphia, Origin Entertainment, will be hosting an informational evening about "Christians Investing in Culture" and also to introduce our recent feature project acquisition, A Severe Mercy.



We have created this night - which we plan to replicate in several cities around the country - to help inform potential investors about the process of mounting a feature film project, and to give them some good questions to ask the filmmakers who are looking to spend their money.

Some topics that we will cover include:

- What does Origin mean by "transformative entertainment" and how does it tend toward an overall goal of cultural renewal?

- How can some innocuous projects foster clout for Christian filmmakers, and why clout is a more strategic goal than a strategy geared to investment on a project-by-project basis.

- What is the Development Process and why is it so expensive? What are talent attachment fees, Guild minimums and how do you create a buzz? Why are stars worth the money they cost?

- How does a movie's budget get set? How does movie financing come together?

- What to look for in a production company team, BESIDES the fact that they believe in Jesus? Which parts of the team probably need to be believers, and which roles in the process can be considered doorways for evangelization?

- Why a coherent strategy for distribution needs to be a contingency of investment.

Then, Part II...

- Who is Origin Entertainment, and what is our thing among Hollywood production companies?

- Why are we so excited about A Severe Mercy and what makes us think it could be like A Chariots of Fire for this generation?

- How can people be part of bringing projects like A Severe Mercy to the screen?

The evening will take place at 7pm at the International Institute for Culture in Philadelphia. Representing Origin Entertainment will be our Founding partner and CEO, James Volk, our Corporate Consultant, Dick Lyles, PhD, and myself.

If you would like to find out how to attend this meeting or a future one in Chicago, Washington, Detroit, Boston or Los Angeles, please send an email to Jennifer@originentertainment.com.

Please do keep Origin, and A Severe Mercy in your prayers.

See Barb in Providence?

I will be back home in CT for a few weeks starting August 15th. If anybody wants to mount some kind of forum, I am probably available.

Send an email to barbara@originentertainment.com

Something to do in Cincinnnati?

I have a speech in Cincinnati on the evening of August 14th. But I fly in the night before and, except for a fifteen minute radio interview, I have nothing to do all day on the 14th. If anybody wants to pull together some kind of impromptu lunch or coffee for that day, I am up for it... as of this moment.

Send me an email if you want to make a plan: barbara@originentertainment.com

Live Free Plays Well

I am off to a conference in Wichita today, but I wanted to register a thumbs up for the latest Die Hard sequel now in theaters. Live Free or Die Hard is great fun with fleshy, funny characters and a great national crisis plot. It felt all too real that terrorists might disrupt our whole societal infrastructure just clicking away on computers. The film is a fun rush - losts of visual thrills, great stunts, and good fun traveling yet another punishing heroic adventure with Bruce Willis' great character, John McClane.

Wicked Reprise

Thanks to Karen Hall's obsession, I got to see Wicked again tonight and I got even more out of it the second time. I find it very clever and layered, although Karen and I were fighting in the inter-mission over how many of the sub-plots and characters have a deeper symbolism. (I want to know what the animals being silenced ultimately means, and Karen basically responds to that question, "Oh, will you shut up?" I guess that makes me the silenced animal? Is it too late to be a gazelle?)

I'm not sure exactly what the ultimate theme of the play is, but I do know that there is a strong theme about how it is in holding of our differences in tension that allows us to grow. This is true between individuals, and in a broader way in society. If you bring in the idea of good and evil, it's a reworking of the tares and wheat growing up together parable. It is certainly true in drama that you need the darkness to probe the light. Friendship, in Wicked is two very different people accepting each other without having to remake each other in their own image. That dynamic of acceptance allows both friends to become better versions of themselves.

There is a lovely song in the play that comes near the end and is all about this. It is a haunting moment because it is lilting music and a great paradox.

"For Good"
(from Wicked, music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz))

I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn

And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you:

Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good

It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you
You'll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend:

Like a ship blown from its mooring
By a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a skybird
In a distant wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you:
Because I knew you:
I have been changed for good

And just to clear the air
I ask forgiveness
For the things I've done you blame me for
But then, I guess we know
There's blame to share
And none of it seems to matter anymore

Like a comet pulled from orbit as it passes the sun.
Like a stream the meets a boulder halfway through the wood.
Like a ship blown from its mooring by a wind off the sea.
Like a seed dropped by a bird in the wood.

Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
I do believe I have been changed for the better?

And because I knew you:
Because I knew you:
Because I knew you:
I have been changed for good.

Both times the song had me musing on the friends in my life who have changed me for the better, and for whom I am very grateful. (Listening R268? God love ya -) The play doesn't show the point of friendship as being remaking our friends. It isn't us being tactfully corrective that is the grace here. It's the power in sheer delight. Being delighted in propels you into being better. In a paradoxical way, being embraced as you are gives you the power to be able to change, as in grow.

Anyway, I liked Wicked again. It isn't the deepest play I've ever seen - I think Phantom has a more coherent symbolism and theme - but it definitely has a thing to it.

Act One Coming to DC

--------------- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ---------------

ROAD TO HOLLYWOOD STARTS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. – SCREENWRITERS’ WORKSHOP PLANNED

Each year, hundreds of aspiring screenwriters flock to Hollywood with scripts in their hands and stars in their eyes. This year, Hollywood is coming to them. Next stop? Washington, D.C.

Act One, Inc., a Los Angeles-based training program for writers and other film industry professionals, is partnering with the Fellowship of Christian Filmmakers to present the Act One Screenwriting Weekend, a conference for professional and aspiring screenwriters. The workshop, slated for September 21-22, 2007 at McLean Bible Church, is an intense, practical overview of screenwriting basics, the current film market, and the Christian’s responsibility to engage popular culture.

Participants will study the craft of screenwriting – from story development and structure to character, dialogue and screenplay format – with a group of accomplished Hollywood professionals, including screenwriter and Executive Producer Dean Batali (Buffy The Vampire Slayer, That 70’s Show) and screenwriter, producer, and Azusa Pacific University Associate Professor Dr. Thomas Parham (JAG, Touched By An Angel).

“Our nation’s capitol has provided a backdrop for countless Hollywood stories – it’s a great place to gather storytellers,” says Conference Coordinator Lauri Evans Deason. “And we’re thrilled to join the Fellowship of Christian Filmmakers in providing new inspiration for local writers who share our common goals of artistry, professionalism, and spirituality.”

The seminar begins at 1:00 p.m. Friday with a session for registered participants, and continues all day Saturday. It concludes with the Hollywood Insiders Event, a screening and panel discussion with the faculty, open to anyone interested in film and its influence on popular culture. The registration fee, which includes study materials and lunch on Saturday, is $175 for anyone registering before August 15, 2007. After August 15, the cost to attend is $195. Discounts are available for students and groups of ten or more. Tickets for the Hollywood Insiders Event (which begins Saturday at 3:00 p.m.) are $10.

Further information and online registration is available through the Act One website at here, or by calling 323-464-0815. Space is limited, and early registration is encouraged.

Act One, Inc. is a non-profit, interdenominational training and mentorship program designed to train people of faith for careers in mainstream film and television. The organization is endorsed by the Catholic Communications Commission, Catholics In Media Associates, Premise, The Hollywood Prayer Network, MasterMedia International, and several colleges and universities.


MEDIA REQUESTS AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

lauri@actoneprogram.com
323-464-0815 x14

P.S. They tell me thatt here is a special discount for people who register before August 15th. Hurry, click!

Emily Monday (...a day late...rats...)

576

I prayed, at first, a little Girl,
Because they told me to --
But stopped, when qualified to guess
How prayer would feel -- to me --

If I believed God looked around,
Each time my Childish eye
Fixed full, and steady, on his own
In Childish honesty --

And told him what I'd like, today,
And parts of his far plan
That baffled me --
The mingled side
Of his Divinity --

And often since, in Danger,
I count the force 'twould be
To have a God so strong as that
To hold my life for me

Till I could take the Balance
That tips so frequent, now,
It takes me all the while to poise --
And then -- it doesn't stay --


Here's my re-arrangement and filling in of the poem to get at it's meaning:

576

I prayed, at first, (when I was) a child, because they told me to --
But stopped, when (my life experiences taught me) how prayer would feel to me (if I were God).

Imagine if the Being we call God, looked around each time my Childish eye (presumed to ) fix full, and steady, on his own, in Childish honesty -- and told him what I'd like, today, and parts of his far plan that baffled me --(you know, how his Divinity becomes obscured and gets a bad rap when it gets mixed up in the material world)

And often since, in Danger, I count the force 'twould be to have a God so strong as that to hold my life for me. (But I am a grown up now and know that God doesn't do that.... this is Emily suffering through her God problem.)

(And I have no idea what this last stanza means. Anybody help out?)

Till I could take the Balance that tips so frequent, now,
It takes me all the while to poise --
And then -- it doesn't stay --

No Dawn in Rescue

I really wanted to like Rescue Dawn, a movie now in theaters. I loved the director's Werner Hertzog's recent documentary Grizzly Man and was looking forward to seeing the same psychological insight brought to bear in the amazing true story of Vietnam P.O.W., Dieter Dengler. But, alas, Rescue Dawn was astoundingly uninsightful, as the incredible tumble of true story details crowds out any effort to actually create a story here.

A story is something that has meaning. It is communicating some kind of lesson about human life. The storyteller selects details that support that meaning. This is how stories are "better than real." The lessons of real life are mostly unknown to us because we have a perspective that is limited by time and access. Stories correct these problems and allow us to apprehend kharma.

Like pretty much every bio-pic about an extraordinary character, Rescue Dawn's main challenge was having too much story. It's interesting how most made up stories that come across my desk for the screen, end up not having enough story. But true stories almost always have too much to work with. So, in this project, the filmmakers were in such a rush to squeeze in all the cool memories that Dieter had about his nightmarish experience getting shot down, tortured, imprisoned and then escaping from the Viet Kong, that they don't have any time to make sense out of it all for us. When I was leaving the theater with my group of five female friends, all of whom work in the business, the most oft-repeated comment was of the "What was that about?" variety. We spent several minutes afterward trying to come up with some theme that could pull together all the events in the film. We came up with that Rescue Dawn is about how a human being can survive pretty much everything if only he has...what? But this was the problem. The filmmakers didn't seem to know.

Dieter's character lacks an arc. He doesn't change at all from the beginning of his horrific experiences to the end. He just survives. A story would have identified the thing that Dieter is living for that allows him to survive. Is it love, or patriotism, or faith in God, or friendship, or passion for life that allows Dieter to keep on struggling? The film makes a wave at each of these, but never takes a position on how Dieter needs to grow to survive. Is isn't enough to expect the viewer's to root to have a character's body saved. We want to know that his soul has been saved, and the lack of this is ultimately what makes Rescue Dawn fall flat.

Hence, the movie is a harrowing litany of the details of one man's life, that left me never feeling real empathy for him. In the mad rush of getting beaten and starved and chased and shot and starving and pulling slugs off his body and watching friends get killed, Dieter remains spiritually inaccessible to the audience. I mean spiritually here in the sense of human spirit, not religiously.

I find this a perplexing misstep from director Hertzog, because he managed to make such a profound statement about the human spirit's longing for meaning in Grizzly Man. That project summed up for me the thesis of Fr. Benedict Groeschel that, "If you don't give people the good God, they'll make themselves a bad one." Rescue Dawn has a hundred times as many dramatic events as Grizzly man, but not a tenth of the story.

The production elements are okay. Clearly, they didn't have enough budget to tell the story better. The paltry number of actors used in the prison camp, and the reliance on the jungle as the principle set made the low budget very obvious. The acting from Christian Bale and Steven Zahn (who lost forty pounds to play the role!) were as best as can be expected considering that they too didn't know the point of their character's adventures. The rest of the acting was uneven and, in the case of the Laotian cast, pretty bad. I recall being annoyed at the score at one point, finding it over the top.

From a writing standpoint, I thought the whole prison camp sequence was over-long and actually got boring for lack of information. It relied too heavily on the occasional moments of Viet Kong brutality to keep the pacing going. I thought the ending was unsatisfying, because, again, it just felt like the movie stopped, but didn't end, in the sense of telling me what the point of the whole journey had been.

Parents and the squeamish should know that there are disturbing - although mostly unbloody to keep the PG-13 rating - sequences of torture and of what men will try to eat when they are starving. Think living squirmy things. There is a lot of talk about bodily excretions and some vulgar language.

I can't recommend Rescue Dawn. It will fade fast and you won't have missed anything by missing it.

The Real Magic of Harry

Christopher Close-up producer Tony Rossi has compiled a thoughtful piece about the real source of attraction in the Harry Potter saga for contemporary young people. Tony puts together the observations of writers nancy Brown and Mike Hayes to suggest that the reason harry is a hit is not because the stories are about the occult, but because they present a vision of community, and a sense of mystery, to today's young people who are starved for both.

Here's a snip.

Harry and friends band together anyway to learn spells that can help them fight “the Dark Arts.” Their secret meetings and common goal forge a bond between them that goes deeper than anything they’ve experienced before. Through commitment, trust and friendship, their spirit of community becomes a force to be reckoned with much like Tolkien’s “fellowship” in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

That fellowship and love for his family & friends is also what drives Harry to make the right choices. Harry is a complex hero who frequently struggles with the darkness inside himself especially in his final battle with Voldemort in “Order of the Phoenix.” It’s a struggle we all go through at various points in our lives. Do we follow the path of least resistance and give into our darker impulses? Or do we choose to follow “the better angels of our nature” even when it involves some form of sacrifice? When we in the non-fictional world have family, friends, and a God who loves and supports us, it gives us a better chance of choosing the right path.

I agree. Check it out.

Once More With Feeling...

Here is a copy of a letter I just sent to someone who sent me a screenplay to critique. I am putting it here because, it seems, some messages bear repeating. And repeating. And, uh, repeating.


------------------------------------

Dear __________________,


Yes, as I noted in my initial message to you, you should definitely get Chris Riley's book so that you can rewrite your project as a screenplay. I will tear up your check as my opinion is that my advice would not be helpful to you at this stage. If you seriously undertake a study of the screen art form, you are probably at least a year away (I'm being optimistic here) from having a script that would be ready to shop around.

You should find a small group of other screenwriters with whom you can meet regularly to advance your skills. You need to read books like Story, by McKee, screenplay (by Syd Field), Making a Good Script Great (by Linda Seger), and Playwrighting (by Louis Catron). A course or two (or more!) in screenwriting at a local college would help you tremendously. Check out Act One's website (www.actoneprogram.com) and other on-line resources for screenwriters.

Basically, what I am saying is that writing for movies is a serious and studied profession that takes years to master. You need teachers and mentors the way any artist would. Imagine if you just woke up, read a book, and then decided to declare yourself an architect. What kind of buildings would you be able to realistically create? Movies are multi-million dollar enterprises, that involve hundreds of professionally trained people, not unlike multi-million dollar construction projects. And the writer's screenplay is the essential lynchpin of the whole project. It tells everybody on the team what to do.

You note in your message that you have had "interest from a producer" on this project. What I actually think you might have is kindness from a producer, who wants to be encouraging to you. But, if you had real interest from the producer, the project would be optioned by now and locked down.

My feeling after years of experience in this industry is that no producer who really knows what they are doing would take on your project in its current manifestation. There is no way to figure out how long your piece would be or how much it would cost. No professional director or actor or cinematographer or production designer or casting director, etc. would read beyond the first few lines, because the project is so unprofessionally written. You do not have industry standard formatting. When one flips through the script, it seems to be all speeches and no choices/actions. There are no visual descriptions, discernible plot points, character arcs, or sub-plots. It reads as very preachy and what we call "on the nose" in Hollywood. You need to take your writing skill beyond this very beginner level.

Please do persevere with your aspirations. I just encourage you to roll up your sleeves and do what you are doing with seriousness, intelligence and sacrifice. I will keep you and your project in my prayers. Good luck and God bless -

Barbara

Wicked good!

Don't have time to do a full review here - but I wanted to add my belated "thumbs up" to the pile of accolades for the musical Wicked. I saw it yesterday at the Pantages Theater here in Los Angeles and found my self marveling because it actually has a story to go with all the wonderful spectacle of it. The story is good. And the charcters too. And while the music didn't strike me as great, it is good enough to add to the overall entertainment experience.

I'll try to write more about it soon. Do catch it if you can.

Emily Monday

[NOTE FROM BARB: Probably my favorite.]

#664

Of all the Souls that stand create --
I have elected -- One --

When Sense from Spirit -- files away --
And Subterfuge -- is done --

When that which is -- and that which was --
Apart -- intrinsic -- stand --

And this brief Drama in the flesh --
Is shifted -- like a Sand --

When Figures show their royal Front --
And Mists -- are carved away,

Behold the Atom -- I preferred --
To all the lists of Clay!

Phoenix Never Quite Rises

I have come to think of reviewing Harry Potter movies the way I ended up feeling about reviewing the last three Star Wars movies - with a sense of duty, but little enthusiasm. I have only read the first book in the Rowling series, and so I sense that I am watching completely different movies than the folks who are walking into the theaters with 2,000 pages of supplementary story information.

My experience of watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and really the last two movies in the franchise, is vague appreciation for the stunning visuals, but also narrative disinterest engendered by the certainty that these movies really aren't for me, as a non-reader of the books. The movies are visual tableaus of beloved imaginings for those who have read the books and walk into the theater already caring.

My experience watching Order of the Phoenix was like an acount of my sisters, Alison and Valerie, watching the NBC series Heroes. Here's the story in dialogue form as it was told to me.

Alison and Valerie stare at a television screen.

Alison: Who is that guy?

Valerie: I don't know.

A few minutes later...

Alison: Why did she just do that?

Valerie: I don't know.

Still, a few minutes later...

Alison: Wait a minute, how could that happen?

Valerie: I don't know.

A few more minutes later...

Alison: What does that mean?

Valerie: I DON'T KNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!


Anyway, I felt like Alison in my Thursday screening of Order of the Phoenix. Why Dementors in Muggleville? And why has the Ministry of Magic has gone all federal bureaucracy? And, why is Harry always moody? And who is she? And him? And him? And her?....... etc.

Having stipulated the above, here are some comments proceeding from my criticly duty to try and offer some kind of review of Order of the Phoenix.

The production value is, as with all the films, stunning and wonderful. There are beautifully realized fantasies over and over through the two hours (and then some...it felt long to me).

The acting is great, as always, with the cream of the British academy all dropping in for what are effectively cameos. The most notable of these were the two scenes that Emma Thompson gets in the film, in which she manages to still make an emotional impression.

So, what's it all about, Harry?

The theme that seemed to emerge in the last moments of the film is that evil can not be avoided, but must be engaged and overcome. A secondary theme is also present in which relationships of love and friendship are better than power and domination, and, we suspect, ultimately more powerful. As with all the movies, I did not see any evil or dangerous themes in the movie. I do not think that Harry Potter is in any sense subversive from a Christian standpoint, and as the above themes emerge as the story heads towards its climax, I can't see how the Harry haters are going to hold their turf. It has long been embarrassingly obvious that J.K. Rowling is no Philip Pullman, in that Rowling's narrative orientation is toward the good, true and beautiful.

The weakness in this latest movie was all in the script. There was just too much story from the book for the writer to service effectively. I was disappointed by the non-existent development of the supporting characters in the movie. Ron and, my favorite character, Hermione, might as well have not even been in this movie. Everybody but harry ends up being frozen in place in terms of growth.

People tell me that it was a remarkable accomplishment to squeeze as much as they did in to the movie here, but achievement or not, I was still confused and hence emotionally unengaged much of the time.

For those concerned about their kids, there is no sex, language, vulgarity or graphic violence in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I didn't find it particularly scary. It plays like Return of the Jedi in terms of the violence being various folks getting banged around and slightly fried by lazer beams.

I recommend the movie for those who like the Harry Potter series. For those who aren't followers of the books, the movies will not be harmful, and are entertaining for their effects and style. Whatever.

Not a Mighty Movie

I went to A Mighty Heart yesterday afternoon, and somewhere around the mid-point I fell asleep. I jolted awake, ashamed of myself for not feeling more at the story of an American murdered by terrorists, and momentarily distressed that I had missed something important. But the film was still plodding on unaware of me, as it meticulously reconstructed all the different Ahmeds and Mohammeds and Sarifs and Aris who had played a part in the kidnapping and beheading of journalist, Daniel Pearl.

The movie has a very restrained point of view, which doesn't work from a craft standpoint. It spends way too much time in the minutia of the disappearance and pursuit, especially because everybody in the theater knows that Pearl is going to be found dead eventually. The film spends way too little time demonstrating how either Daniel Pearl or his wife Marianne have "a mighty heart." Just being murdered by blood-thirsty Al Quaeda thugs or being related to someone who is murdered by blood-thirsty Al Quaeda thugs, doesn't make one mighty. It does make one a pawn in a larger game, but the film doesn't do much with that notion either.

I was waiting to see Daniel Pearl, or his wife, Marianne, reach out in some heroic way to the Muslim murderers, and in so doing, help those Muslims find their humanity. Presumably, if we treat blood-lusting monsters like people, they might be drawn into acting human. It's worth a shot, because even if we die naive, we might still go to heaven for the attempt (as long as the angels don't find us in contempt for stupidity...terrorism is so complicated).

Anyway, the film has a note at the end that it is dedicated to Pearl's son, Adam, who was born after his father was murdered. I found that confusing. There is very little about Daniel Pearl in the movie. Just a lot of quick flash backs as Marianne (played with a lot of pacing and staring by Angelina Jolie), remembers her husband in quiet moments here and there. I can't see wanting a son to watch a film that makes much of the vile human footnotes who participated in butchering his father.

There were other odd choices in the movie, that I think are the result of either political correctness or downright terror of the terrorists who are, after all, the providers of the tragic story here. For example, there is a scene in which the good guys from the Pakistani government, who are desperately searching for Pearl, torture a jihadist for information. I thought it was an odd choice, because the movie also makes the choice not to show any of the torture and beheading of Daniel Pearl by the bad guys.

I think by doing this, the movie was maybe trying to say that there are no real bad guys or good guys in the global war on terror. The prevailing "Hate Bush" culture has gotten so bad that everybody is saying insane things like the U.S. is just as bad as the guys who did 9/11, so who are we to judge the guys who beheaded Daniel Pearl? I mean, maybe they had a good reason, right? Maybe U.S. foreign policy forced them to cut off Pearl's head? And maybe all they had around was a butter-knife? Hey, isn't it really a kind of arrogance to say the jihadists are evil?

But no one sane in the audience really believes that, so why even try to make the case? Or in the case of the movie, not make any case, about goodness or evilness. I'm officially closing my mind on this one: People who cut off other peoples' heads with butter-knives or with anything else, own the 'We're Bad Guys" franchise.

I also think the choice was odd from another aspect. Why show a scene of a happening that is at best speculative - the torturing of a terrorist by the Pakistani government. But then NOT show a scene that is certain - the beheading of an innocent journalist. If they were trying to be respectful of Pearl, they ended up making a movie in which the only act of violence that ends up on the screen, is by the good guys. We don't see any jihadist violence in A Mighty Heart. Where's the fairness doctrine when you really need it?

There are an awful lot of people running in and across the screen in A Mighty Heart, but few of them take on any real meaning for the audience. I took this frenzied whizzing by of actors to be the film maker's way of giving us Marianne's disoriented POV in the two weeks between her husband's abduction and his murder. But it really doesn't add anything to the project as entertainment.

Note here that entertainment doesn't always have to be fun. But it does always have to be entertaining. That is, it has to get and hold a viewer's attention. A Mighty Heart seemed to think that I would care about the mystery of how Al Quaeda snatched Daniel Pearl. I didn't care about that. I wanted help to fathom what Pearl's death means to me, and to all of us. The film makers didn't say anything about that. Either because they don't know, or because terrorism has worked its paralyzing black-magic on them.

Jolie's performance was solid, especially given the fact that the script gives her little to do but dial phones and stare at counter-terrorism agents. There was a really great performance by the guy who plays the head of the Pakistani police. Dan Futterman had too little screen time as Daniel Pearl to say much of anything about his performance.

What interest there was for me in the film came from the B-roll of life in Pakistan. The word "fetid" comes to mind. Watching the pans of over-crowded, ugly, Arab ghettos reminded me of my recent visits to the Palestinian areas of Israel. The best argument against Islam is the way it leads Muslims to live. How do they not see it?

But in the end, A Mighty Heart fails because of lack of point of view. I don't think you can make a movie about an atrocious evil and hold back on point of view. Everything in the humanity of the audience rebels against it. Pass.

"Isn't it hard for you to kick against the goad?"

I did enough gloating for a year in my earlier post about the Pope's new Motu Proprio. So, I'm not going to gloat here about being right about the grinding and gnashing of teeth already coming from the G.H.C.W.L.A.L.T.F. (Grey-Haired Catholics Who Long Ago Lost Their Faith).

But, in truth, they're off. Here are a few choice snips from a GHPWLALHF (Grey-Haired Priest Who Long Ago Lost His Faith) twisting in the wind in a blog post he entitled, "Moto Proprio Madness". "Madness". The madness of the Vicar of Christ. I point it out just in case someone out there thought I was exaggerating about the disdain with which the GHCWLALTF have always treated the rest of us. In the name of the general good, of course.

The new Motu Proprio reflects clearly the rather idiosyncratic opinions of Joseph Ratzinger, opinions that have always been controversial and divisive.... [NOTE FROM BARB: Please note the hackneyed GHCWLALTF tactic of define and dismiss, a.k.a. "We call you names, so then, we don't have to listen to you."]

...Here the aspiration of many bishops to offer a “creative liturgy” to their people, is discredited.... [NOTE FROM BARB: See, the creative part of the liturgy is Jesus changing the bread into Himself. All the GHC'sWLALTF efforts to be more "creative" than Jesus at the liturgy have been obscenely inappropriate. Like watching Ellen Degeneres do her dancing at the Moscow Ballet.]

There is no mention of inculturation, or of a return to biblical sources.... Nothing about the pain of the many faithful who have not been provided with creative, inculturated liturgy, but with sawdust texts, hopeless sermons, wretched music, etc. [NOTE FROM BARB: Is it really possible for a GHPWLALHF to duck responsibility for the "wretched music" in the Church today? Are you kidding me?! You guys were the ones who shoved down our throats the Music Ministry People waving their hands in the air and croaking, "To Taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaake Each MO-ment and Livvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvve Each Mo-ment in Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeecae E-ter-nal-lyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy....."??? You gotta own the bodies of your rebellion, buddy.]

Nothing about learning from the Anglicans, who do all these things so much better than we do. In short, both diagnosis and remedy seem very narrow.... [NOTE FROM BARB: More name calling. Now the Pope is "narrow." But the Anglicans are super smart and good!]

...The Anti-Defamation League has rightly condemned the restoration of the prayer for the conversion of the Jews.... [NOTE FROM BARB: Because we do not wish that all people come to believe in Jesus? What you really meant to say here was, "What can we expect from a Pope who was in the Hitler Youth? People who like the Tridentine mass are all anti-Semites." Define and dismiss 101.]

...there are indications that the Motu Proprio is designed to undercut episcopal authority... [NOTE FROM BARB: Oh, no! Not people questioning authority?!!.... I suppose it is too obvious to say that someone might consider this GHP'sWLALHF blog post to be designed to undercut Papal authority. No, that's too obvious. I won't say it.]

...The Rev Keith Pecklers, a Jesuit liturgical expert [NOTE FROM BARB THE GHCWLALTF EXPERT...That's all, just wanted to balance out any whiff of the argument from expert authority.], said: ‘The real issue here is not limited to liturgy but has wider implications for church life.’ He added that proponents of the old Mass ‘tend to oppose the laity's increased role in parish life... collaboration with other Christians and its dialogue with Jews and Muslims.’” [NOTE FROM BARB: Because people who resist the GHCWLALTF are fearful, bigotted and racist. Define and dismiss. But really, is this guy really claiming that allowing the Mass of Bl. John XXIII is going to foster clericalism and bigotry? What is it with this generation that they always demonize in the worst political extremes, anyone who disagrees with them? Enough already. Can't you all go and pray somewhere while you wait for death?]

...Some French bishops have expressed their resolve to remain firmly in charge of the liturgy of their dioceses, and have been immediately denounced by neocaths as contumacious. It is bad governance for a Pope to appear to ride roughshod over his own bishops and his most enlightened advisers. [NOTE FROM BARB: Oh, so that's what JPII meant when he asked the French bishops, "Eldest Daughter of the Church, What have you done with your baptism?" It was all a papal euphemism for "you Frenchies are my most enlightened advisors.]

...The Motu Proprio will be greeted by many, deplored by many, as a blow to the authority of Vatican II.... [NOTE FROM BARB: No doubt the same people who distorted and misrepresented Vatican II for their own GHCWLALTF ends.]

...Somehow the Tridentine Mass is supposed to have an aura of holiness that will spread to the Novus Ordo as well. This is weak and illogical thinking. [NOTE FROM BARB: No reason given. Just because the GHPWLALHF says so. Oh, and note that the Vicar of Christ (author of something like 60 theological texts, has a weak and illogical intellect.]

I could go on, but what is the point? Just, please parse all the crap like the above that you are going to hear in the media once we get past tonights "The Planet is God" festivities.

Not a Motu too soon...

"You said you want a revolution,
Well, you know..."

The long, cold winter of trying to be everybody else has ended. We've decided to try being Roman Catholic again.

Read it and weep, all ye liturgical innovators with your Barney music and your leotard ladies and your pita breads and your, "Hi everybody, I'm Fr. Joe, your presider! Welcome to our celebration!!!"

I'm calling to mind just now all the stern-faced, liberal ideologues of my whole ecclesial life - ruthlessly trampling on every aesthetic or reverent impulse in the name of - what the hell was it again? Oh yes - in the name of making me feel special. Got to get rid of all that damn stiff, formalism and tedious piety! Well, I imagine you are all feeling a bit moribund today. I know you've all been tedious for years. But we understand why you are going to be whining in the media for this one last time in the next few days. It must be incalculably hard having your mortality thrust inexorably in your face. The Church you thought you killed has resurrected before your eyes. It is going to live past you. You are officially now a sad footnote in the Church's two millennial story.

And Mom, this is going out to you, and all those like you who have been suffering long these many years. You stayed when it seemed like the Church had left you. You never stopped praying, while bearing the insult of so much liturgical absurdity. This is your day! Read it and laugh!

Viva la Papa!


P.S.

In: Smells and bells and lingua Latina, baby!
Out: Rubrics as suggestions.
So five minutes ago: The faith community as god.
Phrase to try and work into conversation this week: lex orandi needs to flow from lex credendi




Saturday, July 07, 2007
Apostolic Letter
In the form of “Motu Proprio”
SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM

BENEDICT XVI

It has always been the care of the Supreme Pontiffs until the present time, that the Church of Christ offer worthy worship to the Divine Majesty “for the praise and glory of his name” and “for the good of all his Holy Church.”

As from time immemorial so in the future the principle shall be respected “according to which each particular Church must be in accord with the universal Church not only regarding the doctrine of the faith and sacramental signs, but also as to the usages universally handed down by apostolic and unbroken tradition. These are to be maintained not only so that errors may be avoided, but also so that the faith may be passed on in its integrity, since the Church's rule of prayer (lex orandi) corresponds to her rule of belief (lex credendi).”

Among Pontiffs who have displayed such care there excels the name of Saint Gregory the Great, who saw to the transmission to the new peoples of Europe both of the Catholic faith and of the treasures of worship and culture accumulated by the Romans in preceding centuries. He gave instructions for the form of the Sacred Liturgy of both the Sacrifice of the Mass and of the Divine Office as was celebrated in the City. He made the greatest efforts to foster monks and nuns, who militating under the Rule of St Benedict, in every place along with the proclamation of the Gospel by their life likewise exemplified that most salutary expression of the Rule “let nothing be given precedence over the work of God” (ch. 43). In this way the sacred liturgy according to the Roman manner made fertile not only the faith and piety but also the culture of many peoples. Moreover it is evident that the Latin Liturgy in its various forms has stimulated in the spiritual life very many Saints in every century of the Christian age and strengthened in the virtue of religion so many peoples and made fertile their piety.

However, in order that the Sacred Liturgy might more efficaciously absolve its task, several others among the Roman Pontiffs in the course of the centuries have brought to bear particular concern, among whom Saint Pius V is eminent, who with great pastoral zeal, at the exhortation of the Council of Trent, renewed the worship of the whole Church, ensuring the publishing of liturgical books amended and “restored according to the norm of the Fathers” and put them into use in the Latin Church.

It is clear that among the liturgical books of the Roman Rite the Roman Missal is eminent. It grew in the city of Rome and gradually down through the centuries took on forms which are very similar to those in vigor in recent generations.

“It was this same goal that as time passed the Roman Pontiffs pursued, adapting or establishing liturgical rites and books to new ages and then at the start of the present century undertaking a more ample restoration.” It was in this manner that our Predecessors Clement VIII, Urban VIII, St Pius X , Benedict XV, Pius XII and the Blessed John XXIII acted.

In more recent time, however, the Second Vatican Council expressed the desire that with due respect and reverence for divine worship it be restored and adapted to the needs of our age. Prompted by this desire, our Predecessor the Supreme Pontiff Paul VI in 1970 approved for the Latin Church liturgical books restored and partly renewed, and that throughout the world translated into many vernacular languages, have been welcomed by the Bishops and by the priests and faithful. John Paul II revised the third typical edition of the Roman Missal. Thus the Roman Pontiffs have acted so that “this liturgical edifice, so to speak, …might once again appear splendid in its dignity and harmony.”

However in some regions not a small number of the faithful have been and remain attached with such great love and affection to the previous liturgical forms, which had profoundly imbued their culture and spirit, that the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, prompted by pastoral concern for these faithful, in 1984 by means of a special Indult Quattuor abhinc annos, drawn up by the Congregation for Divine Worship, granted the faculty to use the Roman Missal published by John XXIII in 1962; while in 1988 John Paul II once again, by means of the Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei, exhorted the Bishops to make wide and generous use of this faculty in favor of all the faithful requesting it.

Having pondered at length the pressing requests of these faithful to our Predecessor John Paul II, having also heard the Fathers of the Consistory of Cardinals held on 23 March 2006, having pondered all things, invoked the Holy Spirit and placed our confidence in the help of God, by this present Apostolic Letter we DECREE the following.

Art. 1. The Roman Missal promulgated by Paul VI is to be regarded as the ordinary expression of the law of prayer (lex orandi) of the Catholic Church of Latin Rite, while the Roman Missal promulgated by St Pius V and published again by Blessed John XXIII as the extraordinary expression of the law of prayer (lex orandi) and on account of its venerable and ancient use let it enjoy due honor. These two expressions of the law of prayer (lex orandi) of the Church in no way lead to a division in the law of prayer (lex orandi) of the Church, for they are two uses of the one Roman Rite.

Hence it is licit to celebrate the Sacrifice of the Mass in accordance with the typical edition of the Roman Missal promulgated by Blessed John XXIII in 1962 and never abrogated, as the extraordinary form of the Liturgy of the Church. The conditions laid down by the previous documents Quattuor abhinc annos and Ecclesia Dei for the use of this Missal are replaced by what follows:

Art. 2. In Masses celebrated without the people, any priest of Latin rite, whether secular or religious, can use the Roman Missal published by Pope Blessed John XXIII in 1962 or the Roman Missal promulgated by the Supreme Pontiff Paul VI in 1970, on any day except in the Sacred Triduum. For celebration in accordance with one or the other Missal, a priest does not require any permission, neither from the Apostolic See nor his own Ordinary.

Art. 3. If Communities or Institutes of Consecrated Life or Societies of Apostolic Life of either pontifical or diocesan rite desire to have a celebration of Holy Mass in accordance with the edition of the Roman Missal promulgated in 1962 in the conventual or “community” celebration in their own oratories, this is allowed. If an individual community or the entire Institute or Society wants to have such celebrations often or habitually or permanently, the matter is to be decided by the Major Superiors according to the norm of law and the particular laws and statutes.

Art. 4. With due observance of law, even Christ’s faithful who spontaneously request it, may be admitted to celebrations of Holy Mass mentioned in art. 2 above.

Art. 5, § 1. In parishes where a group of faithful attached to the previous liturgical tradition exists stably, let the pastor willingly accede to their requests for the celebration of the Holy Mass according to the rite of the Roman Missal published in 1962. Let him see to it that the good of these faithful be harmoniously reconciled with ordinary pastoral care of the parish, under the governance of the Bishop according to canon 392, avoiding discord and fostering the unity of the whole Church.

§ 2. Celebration according to the Missal of Blessed John XXIII can take place on weekdays, while on Sundays and on feast days there may be one such celebration.

§ 3. Let the pastor permit celebrations in this extraordinary form for faithful or priests who request it, even in particular circumstances such as weddings, funerals or occasional celebrations, for example pilgrimages.

§ 4. Priests using the Missal of Blessed John XXIII must be worthy and not impeded by law.

§ 5. In churches, which are neither parochial nor conventual, it is the Rector of the church who grants the above-mentioned permission.

Art. 6. In Masses celebrated with the people according to the Missal of Blessed John XXIII, the Readings can be proclaimed even in the vernacular, using editions that have received the recognitio of the Apostolic See.

Art. 7. Where some group of lay faithful, mentioned in art. 5§1 does not obtain what it requests from the pastor, it should inform the diocesan Bishop of the fact. The Bishop is earnestly requested to grant their desire. If he cannot provide for this kind of celebration, let the matter be referred to the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei.

Art. 8. A Bishop who desires to make provision for requests of lay faithful of this kind, but is for various reasons prevented from doing so, may refer the matter to the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei”, which should give him advice and help.

Art. 9, § 1. Likewise a pastor may, all things duly considered, grant permission to use the older ritual in administering the Sacraments of Baptism, Matrimony, Penance and the Anointing of the Sick, as the good of souls may suggest.

§ 2. Ordinaries are granted the faculty to celebrate the sacrament of Confirmation using the former Roman Pontifical, as the good of souls may suggest.

§ 3. It is lawful for clerics in holy orders to use even the Roman Breviary promulgated by Blessed John XXIII in 1962.

Art 10. It is lawful for the local Ordinary, if he judges it opportune, to erect a personal parish according to the norm of canon 518 for celebrations according to the older form of the Roman rite or appoint a rector or chaplain, with due observance of the requirements of law.

Art. 11. The Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, erected in 1988 by John Paul II, continues to carry out its function. This Commission is to have the form, duties and norm for action that the Roman Pontiff may wish to assign to it.

Art. 12. The same Commission, in addition to the faculties it already enjoys, will exercise the authority of the Holy See by maintaining vigilance over the observance and application of these dispositions.

Whatever is decreed by Us by means of this Motu Proprio, we order to be firm and ratified and to be observed as of 14 September this year, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, all things to the contrary notwithstanding.

Given at Rome, at St Peter’s, on 7 July in the Year of Our Lord 2007, the Third of Our Pontificate.

BENEDICT XVI


____________________
1. General Instruction of the Roman Missal, third edition, 2002, n. 397

2. Pope John Paul II, Ap. Letter Vicesimus quintus annus, 4 December 1988, n. 3: AAS 81 (1989) p. 899.

3. Ibidem.

4. Pope St Pius X, Motu Proprio Abhinc duos annos, 23 October 1913: AAS 5 (1913) 449-450; cf. Pope John Paul II, Ap. Letter Vicesimus quintus annus, 4 December 1988, n. 3: AAS 81 (1989) p. 899

5. Cf. Pope John Paul II, Motu proprio Ecclesia Dei adflicta, 2 July 1988, n. 6: AAS 80 (1988) p. 1498.


(This unofficial translation has been prepared by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for the Liturgy. Only the Latin original of the Apostolic Letter may be considered the official text.)

New Online Catholic Newspaper

I checked out this site and found it very cool. It is like a Catholic Drudge. I'm adding it to my sidebar.

-------------------------

Pewsitter.com is a unique Catholic news web site that was launched earlier this year.
We are based in the U.S. and the preponderance of news on the site is from the U.S,
we do feature Catholic related news from around the world.

The news on the site comes from two sources. The main source is from the conventional secular and Catholic press. We scour the news every day and put on Pewsitter those stories about the Catholic Church, faith, religion and the important moral and spiritual struggles of the day.

The second news source is the Catholic lay faithful. The concept behind the site is to enlist an army of "pewsitters" to be the eyes and ears for Pewsitter - hence the name. By submitting newsworthy items to Pewsitter, the laity can help shape and influence the Church and be a powerful force for positive change.

Pewsitter's initial focus will be on the national and international news on its home page. Its mid term objective is it to feature the Catholic news of the day within each of the 189 Catholic dioceses throughout the U.S

We would very much appreciate your assistance in getting the word out about Pewsitter. Here are several ways in which you can help us:


1. Place a link to our site, from your site, in a prominent place
2. Send an email to any opt-in email lists that you might have, encouraging other
faithful Catholics to go to the site and to begin to use it.
3. Volunteer to assist us with this endeavor
4. Keep us in your prayers.

May God bless you.

Regards,

James Todd
Founder, Pewsitter.com

Parody as Prophecy

This is funny. I predict that it is not too far off of what we are going to see in the media this weekend.

My opinion on the Motu Proprio: I am so happy for my Mother and her friends. They have been longing for this for decades. Personally, in another decade or so, I think we will all be ecstatic to have access to the Mass at all. I don't think we'll be getting stuck on which Rite is better.

(Hat tip to Sarah.)

News from Dappled Things

Dear Ms. Nicolosi,

It is a joy to share with you the news that Dappled Things Catholic literary magazine is now officially a printed journal! We have just released our SS. Peter & Paul 2007 issue, filled with the best prose, poetry and art by young Catholics that you can find, well, just about anywhere. We hope you will help us spread the word. To mark this important milestone we have prepared a veritable literary feast for our readers. This quarter's edition features a bouquet of prominent Catholic authors -- Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and Michael D. O'Brien among them -- discussing the works of literature that have most profoundly affected them. Fr. Neuhaus ponders the meaning of Catholic literature:

"A neglected aspect of the Catholic imagination, however, is the aversion to being carried away by flights of spiritual fancy. Put differently, there is an adamantine Catholic insistence that the connections be tied to the particulars of time and place. This is nicely illustrated in Evelyn Waugh's Helena."

Then there is "The Builders," a dazzling poem by a promising new author about the Spartan sacrifice at the Battle of Thermopylae:

"The gate was almost finished.
In those thirsty hours, a taut rack of earth we raised
With much labor. We packed the soil with shield-butts.
Waist deep in horse-flies, we stretched our lances—
Protean, slender bronze. Our cloaks were red and wet,
The air was old and saline by the end."

In "Happy Hills," a powerful short story by Jonathan McDonald, the meaning of motherhood faces the test of the modern world:

"Christine realized she was pregnant in late March of last year. Two mornings of vomiting and a pregnancy test taken over her lunch break confirmed it. She thought she could already feel the intruder glacially eroding her uterus. The tube looked like a cheap toothbrush, and she'd kept it under her counter at Kaki-Dans. She kept pulling it out every two minutes to confirm the two purple lines on the end. Positive. She'd turned twenty-one three weeks ago. There wouldn't be many legal consequences for the drunkenness, but manslaughter by alcohol-induced miscarriage might be harder to pull off. She'd probably just end up with a retard, even dumber than James."

St. Blog's favorite Matthew Alderman delights us with a meditati on on Botticelli's unattainable women:

"I just moved into this place, my first real apartment for my first real job. At the moment, I only possess five books—a strange sort of poverty. I'm waiting for the rest of them to get shipped up here, once I finally figure out where to put the bookcase. Four of the five I bought only two days ago, a ten-dollar, four-volume pocket-size set of the complete works of the painter Sandro Botticelli. I found them in a used bookstore in Cooperstown, wedged in at the end of a low passage amid faux nineteenth-century signage, baseball memorabilia, and Federalist bricks. And now I am contemplating, in the slow pale light of afternoon, all of Botticelli's women—Madonnas and saints, goddesses, aristocrats, and other men's mistresses."

There is also excellent new art and photography, and for those of you interested in the continuing saga of the motu proprio, you might want to drop in to our archives and read up on the eastward position of the priest -- Mass said ad orientem -- that is such an important part of the traditional rite.

And after you've had the chance to take it all in, please stop by our forums to share your thoughts with other readers!

In Christ,

Bernardo Aparicio
President, Dappled Things