Let Me Tell You So

I haven’t been able to get director Daniel Karslake’s For the Bible Tells Me So out of my head since I saw it on Monday. What a great movie! This is why documentaries exist, to illuminate, educate and, most of all, entertain. Not only did I not get preached to by this examination of the religious Christian right and their thoughts on homosexuality, I actually started to feel like my years spent going to a Lutheran church weren’t so misspent after all.

No two ways about it, religion is a divisive subject in this country, and the irony there is certainly not lost on either me or Karslake. His film takes great pains to keep an open mind and to use an even hand. But he also never looses sight of keeping his audience watching, either, the film so much fun it’s easy to forget you’re actually viewing a documentary.

I interviewed the director the other day about his film, only a morning after the screening and just hours after he had learned his documentary had acquired a distributor. He was, needless to say, in a very good mood. Most of what he had to say you’ll have to wait until October to read, but his comments in how he managed to persuade Bishop Gene Robinson (and if you don’t know who that is then you certainly don’t watch the news enough) to be in the picture are just too priceless to wait until then to publish.

“I had figured out how to get through all of [Gene’s] lines of security,” stated Karslake, “because he was so widely protected. There were a couple things that were incredibly fortunate. First he has seen some of my work on In the Life, and that was a very huge thing, and then we sort of spent 10 minutes getting to know one another a little bit.”

“It was then he looked at me and asked, ‘So, why are you here.' And so I said I have these three things I would love for you to help me with. One is not a lot. The second is a lot. The third one you are probably going to throw me out, but, let me just ask you.”

“So, then I asked him the three things: sharing email stories of people with me for the film, help us by coming to this fundraiser in Los Angeles so we could raise a million dollars for [the production] and start to appeal to the gay and lesbian audience because I knew that is where we were going to get our money and to let me tell his story and follow him for the next 18 months and shoot everything. And, through the whole period where I was asking him these three things he was looking increasingly bothered.”

“He looked at me and said, 'Okay, you want one, two and three,' recounting what I had asked and saying them in a real disdainful disconcerted sort of way and I was sure he was about to throw me out his window. And, then he said, taking his time, ‘Well, let me just answer with a blanket… yes.’ And I, didn’t burst into tears, but I know I did start crying.”

“Not uncontrollably, but I was just so shocked! I asked him if he really said yes and he said giggling and with the rye little smile he has, “You thought I was going to say no, didn’t you?’ And [this] is what made this film a reality. Not only did he say yes to doing the film, he also said yes to helping raise the money. He’s become an incredibly dear friend and advisor and we talk about a lot of what is still going on, talking about other ways to talk about the really ridiculous crap that’s in the Anglican community now.”

“But, if there is one person who is clearly responsible for making this movie happen then it is [Gene].”

Again, you’ll have to wait for the rest of the interview in October. Until then, keep For the Bible Tells Me So in the back of your mind. This is certainly one motion picture no one no matter what their political persuasion should miss.

Speaking of not missing, I took a break from SIFF last night to take in Ocean’s 13 and I am so happy to report George Clooney and company have breezily returned to form making this the first part three of the summer I was actually glad to have seen. While not as winning as the first film, it definitely makes up for the rather lackluster second chapter, the whole gang returning to whip up a frothy Champagne brew of giggly good times I couldn’t help but smile about. Check out my review on the main site Friday.

As for SIFF, I’m still trying to figure out why the film festival cheered Korean director Sang-soo Hong as an Emerging Master in 2003. Not that his latest Woman on the Beach is bad, it actually had some amazing moments of dramatic impact, it’s just that it tends to sort of sit through ambling on neutral. Almost nothing of interest happens in this two hour drama of a film director trying to write a screenplay over a weekend while messing up the lives of some of the pretty young women he meets. It’s boring and not very imaginative, the insights found in the director’s script fairly obvious and not terribly interesting.

Oh well. C’est la vie. Hopefully tonight’s screenings will be more interesting.