the following is fiction.
fiction — though rarely factual — is often True.
“oh… hi.”
“hi!”
the next thing was a pause. i know it was probably only a split-second, but it felt like an hour. as all blood rushed to my brain, i feared whatever look i must be giving her. my brain scoured for social info on how next to proceed. nothing instinctual was there.
“what are you doing here?” was all i came up with.
if you love film or if you are a Christian, you’ve got to read this post by Blue Like Jazz filmmaker — musician-turned-director Steve Taylor:
The Christian Movie Establishment vs. Blue Like Jazz
“One of the most consistent criticisms I got as a recording artist came from fellow Christians saying, “Why do you do these songs criticizing the church? Why would you go airing our dirty laundry for the public to see?” And, of course, that same criticism had been leveled at Blue Like Jazz.
This perspective has always amused me, as if the public thinks we’ve got our act together perfectly, as if they don’t already see the hypocrisy in our midst. They just think we’re too dumb to see it ourselves.
Which is why the image of a guy in a confession booth finally confessing the truth started my six-year-long quest to make Blue Like Jazz.
When we tell the truth – even the uncomfortable truth – the truth sets people free.”
the whole article is totally on point.
if you haven’t seen Taylor’s first feature The Second Chance, you should check it out; i really enjoyed it. i’m really looking forward to Blue Like Jazz (and not just for the Bear on a Bicycle scene).
i hope that there are a lot of angry patrons. if the film stirs the pot, people will become disappointed and angry with their anger and disappointment in life and seek something higher.
encouraging that search should be the aim of every filmmaker who proclaims the name of Christ.
UPDATE: interesting update to this story as director Steve Taylor receives an unexpected phone call from Alex Kendrick of Sherwood Pictures.
everyone’s seen the David. it graces the covers of books, postcards, and aprons. it’s been copied at varying sizes since it was first sculpted. it’s a seminal piece of art history, and it currently stands in the center of the Accademia Galleria in Florence, Italy, preserved for every tourist to come and surreptitiously snap pictures with their cellphones while loud, angry Italian museum guards yell unintelligible curses at our smiling, faux-naïve faces.
to see it in person is really something else.
i was in Europe in the summer of 2008. in Italy, i was completely by myself in Florence for about 8 days, doing research for a screenplay i was working on at the time. i did very few touristy things, but seeing the David before i left was a must.
parabolos is my motion picture production company. through it, i hope to turn vision and message into tangible work, sharing myself through process and product from story development to the final master of the film. i believe using cinema is the strongest way to deliver Truth that inspires thought and encourages reflection in people, particularly in today’s America.
parabolos (pronounced par-ah-bah-lahs) is an ancient Greek word which means, “venturesome, reckless, dangerous”. the para- (para-) prefix can mean “aside”, “alongside”, or “to the side”, and the bolo root means “i throw”. quite literally, the word means “thrown aside”. consider our idiomatic expression “throwing caution to the wind” as a parallel construct.
it may evoke ideas of its relative, parabole (par-ah-bah-lay), where we get our English word parable; a parable is a story “thrown alongside” a truth so that people may more easily understand it.
from a lesson on Model Spiritual Servants by John MacArthur:
“That word parabolo came to have some interesting usages. In the days of the early church after the New Testament era, there was an association of men and women who got together and took the name ‘The Paraboloni’ which meant ‘The Gamblers.’ They took as their hero Epaphroditus who gambled with his life. And it was their aim and their mission to visit the prisoners, to visit the sick, especially those with infectious, dangerous, communicable diseases. It was their mission to unhesitatingly, unflinchingly and boldly proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ in every environment without any hesitation. And they called themselves, ‘The Paraboloni, The Gamblers.’
It is also interesting to note that in A.D. 252 the city of Carthage had a terrible plague and the heathen were so frightened of the germs that were in the bodies of the dead that they literally bagged them somehow and hurled them out of the city, not wanting to touch them for burial. Cyprian the Christian bishop gathered the congregation of the believing church together and the church members took their bodies and in a gracious act of human kindness buried the dead bodies of the plague-stricken people. And according to the historians as well, they nursed even the sick people, coming close enough to them to touch them in that plague-infested city, risking their lives to save some in the city and God used them as a tremendous potential, as a tremendous force really to reach people for Christ because of their love.
Whether you’re talking about The Paraboloni who gambled with their lives in an infectious disease environment, or whether you’re talking about Epaphroditus their hero who gambled with his life by going at a hostile culture with all he had in the service of Jesus Christ, that kind of self- sacrificing example is marvelous.”
through parabolos, i hope to live a thrown-aside life in order to tell the Story that this generation so desperately needs to hear.
my 2nd year directing class under the instruction of Janos Kovacsi was a life-changing experience. Janos gave a lot of wonderful instruction, a lot of which i have shared with my students over the years, and now hope to share here with my readers.
one of the best tools i learned from my time at NCSA was the director’s worksheet. in this post, i’ll explain the worksheet, give you an example, and links to some downloads.
