We’ve been talking about our Mormon heritage and pioneers this week on Doves and Serpents. To continue this theme, I had a lot of grand ideas about this Rogue Cinema post. I was going to write about Mormon Film Pioneers! Mormons who are film pioneers or Mormons who are pioneering Mormon Films! Since Richard Dutcher released “God’s Army” in 2000, dozens of films have been made by Mormons for Mormon audiences. Surely, that movement is worth noting, right? Right.
The only problem is that I respect the effort, the idea of Mormon Films, more than I’ve enjoyed any of the films themselves. The output of most Mormon filmmakers has been full of stale inside jokes, after-school special lessons and an almost cynical sentimentality. These films have largely been mediocre commercial enterprises driven by an audience looking for unchallenging, good clean fun.
Not that I object to good clean fun. But when I think of films that might tick all the boxes a faithful member is looking for in a film — a G or PG rating, a spiritual or moral message and respect for the values of the audience — what comes to mind is Pixar, not Mormon Cinema. Mormon Cinema may be able to boast the ratings, but it lacks the humanity, the spiritual thread that runs through films like “Finding Nemo” or “Up” (the opening minutes of that film get me every time) or even something like Wes Anderson’s “The Fantastic Mr. Fox.” These films respect their audience, but they are not driven by the audience, they are driven by story and character. And in telling particular stories they tap into universal experience — the fierce love of a parent for a child, how to let someone grow up, how to survive loss, or the importance of family and friends.
By this standard of judgment, Jerusha and Jared Hess, the writers and director of the surprise 2004 hit “Napoleon Dynamite” are the most successful Mormon filmmakers working today. The Hess duo wore their Mormon heritage lightly and focused on telling a story. Arguably, filmmakers such as Neil LaBute or Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “Milk” and “Big Love” are also telling stories that have been impacted by their Mormon backgrounds. However, in the cases of LaBute, Black and Dutcher (not to mention actors like Aaron Eckhart, Katherine Heigl or many others) there has been conflict between being Mormon and being an artist. LaBute left the church shortly after leaving BYU, Black has spoken openly of the pain of growing up in the Mormon church as a gay man (and narrated the documentary “8: The Mormon Proposition”) and Dutcher, who had a well-publicized exit from the church, has spoken many times about feeling boxed in by his role as the “Father of Mormon Cinema.” The last three have been pioneering filmmakers, but they’ve struggled with the tension between their faith and their art, ultimately finding that they could not be true to their art or to themselves as active members. I think the question remains of whether the authoritarian, obedience-driven culture of the church can ever allow space for artists to tell their stories with freedom and integrity.
But I think there are other pioneers out there. Filmmakers who come from a Mormon background who are interested in telling stories that arise from their heritage or faith, but have a universal appeal, something that goes beyond the niche market of a few states in the Intermountain west. People who are tackling the challenge of mixing art with their faith. In coming months on Rogue Cinema, we will be seeking out and spotlighting Mormon Film Pioneers — those writers, artists, documentarians and directors that are exploring their humanity and faith with honesty and thoughtfulness. Because I believe we have stories to tell and if we don’t do it, it will be done for us.
Napoleon Dynamite is the most successful Mormon film by active members. Gentlemen Broncos, the third Hess film was a disappointment, however. I haven’t seen Nacho Libre. Their initial success may not be easily replicated.
For ongoing success, Big Love has to take the prize.
How about a Mormon filmmaker putting The Lonely Polygamist on film? But maybe the novel’s popularity has made the likelihood of a low budget Mormon production slim.
“We will yet have our own Alfred Hitchcocks and Orson Welles.” I wish President Kimball had said that
In the past I thought that just as Mormon authors have wildly succeeded in fantasy/sci fi, so will Mormon filmmakers succeed in this arena, but I’m not so sure now (although Battlestar Gallactica should count for something).
I’ll be going to see The Book of Mormon musical in a week. Won’t surprise me at all to see this in film format in a couple of years, so I’m afraid you may be prophetic here.
Could it be that we Mormons cling so tightly to our theology that we end up trying to make life conform to our ideas of what it should be, rather than the other way around? If we are incapable of seeing and appreciating life on its own terms, how can we possibly create art that reflects those realities?
@Brent, why are you saying we’re incapable of seeing and appreciating life on its own terms? Not sure I like that assertion . . .
For example, I recently had a conversation with a member of the church who cited the Family Proclamation as evidence that intersex folks don’t exist. It was a stunning example of assuming that the real world would, of course, conform to the black-and-white boxes outlined in the proclamation (i.e. gender is an inherent trait, etc.). This individual was, literally, incapable of seeing the real world because of his insistence of seeing only through the lense of our theology.
O-key dokey . . .
That seems like a pretty extreme example. Don’t sell church members short or paint them with such a broad brush (= “incapable of seeing and appreciating life on its own terms . . .”). Or, don’t judge all church members according to this bizarre conversation you had with a very uninformed person.
That’s my theory of why Mormons excel in business (and in other related fields), but as a group, our art doesn’t earn us any bragging rights. “In the world, but not of the world” is a handicap–I think you have to be “of the world” to reflect it back in art. I could be wrong, or course.
“Incapable” may be too harsh, but I don’t think uncomfortable would be. Life is messy, full of paradox and people are complex. I think great art tackles that, looks into “the things within things” as Alice Munro says. To use the analogy from Brent’s recent cheap seats post, I think Mormon films and a lot of our art are interested in describing the vase and keeping experience in a tidy container rather than exploring the flowers or water inside the vase. Of course, that is not a criticism that applies only to Mormon films. Loads of Hollywood films (the vast majority of comic book action films, anything that Kate Hudson has been in that is not Almost Famous etc,) are the same. At this point, Mormon cinema has been driven by commerce, filling the needs of a market of people hungry for films that don’t violate the ratings standards and so the artists censor themselves. But censorship — imposed by yourself or others — always takes a toll. My brother and I were talking about this subject — the difficulty of creating if there is a real or imagined censor looking over your shoulder — and we were wondering if it is possible to create art under these circumstances.
Anne Lamott, in her book “Bird by Bird”, talks about “writing as if your parents are dead.” In other words, not censoring yourself. Art is about being honest and censorship is basically a lie. It serves to hide and omit and when the true calling of any artist is to expose and be inclusive.
Love that idea, Joe–writing as if your parents are dead. Thanks for sharing.
Joe, love, love, love Anne Lamott and “Bird by Bird.” She has hugely informed my thinking on writing and art.
“I think the question remains of whether the authoritarian, obedience-driven culture of the church can ever allow space for artists to tell their stories with freedom and integrity.”
I started a group on Facebook–and later got an endorsement from my Bishop to turn it into an official group in our ward–with the purpose of providing validation and encouragement for LDS artists who want to create serious art with integrity and honesty.
tinyurl.com/ldsarts
I’m an LDS filmmaker and I’ve been very frustrated by the shallow “product” that’s being churned out by Mormon-movie factories who call themselves “filmmakers” but are little more than hacks pandering to a demographic with little or no taste in film or any kind of art.
http://youtu.be/t3pbJjNU3tg
Very cool, Joe. BTW, I don’t think this is an issue just for Mormon filmmakers because, as in the case of your Bishop, there will always be people in the church who are encouraging and inclusive. I think this is an issue for any filmmaker who identifies strongly with a religious, ethnic, racial or other group. Are you a filmmaker or a Black filmmaker? A woman who directs or a woman director? As an artist, how do you negotiate your own vision and how it impacts upon or is impacted by the values of the group you identify with?
I object to your characterization of Richard Dutcher being in the same class as Neil LaBute or Dustin Black. He was very much a believer when he made his LDS films. I think you’ve misconstrued what he meant when he said he felt “boxed in” by the perception of being the father of LDS cinema. That sounds like an artistic sentiment, not a religious one. Certainly the Mormon audience is legendary for making even its faithful artists feel boxed in by their ridiculously shallow definition of “appropriate” entertainment.
(If you can provide an actual quote or two that puts the “boxed in” comment into context and shows that I’m wrong about this, please share!)
I don’t find your definition of LDS artists that excludes Dutcher to be at all useful. Evidence for that is the astonishing and silly conclusion drawn from it that “Napoleon Dynamite” is the only successful LDS film. Particularly when the film had nothing to do with Mormons.
Dutcher’s three LDS films are thoroughly LDS, and it takes an impressive amount of contortion to exclude them.
D. Michael Martindale, You are absolutely right that the career trajectories of Dutcher and LaBute and Black are very different. I only grouped them together as serious filmmakers who are no longer active. The “boxed in” idea is certainly an artistic one (although, I would argue that it is difficult to tease apart the spiritual, artistic and cultural life of any individual, just as I could argue that any filmmaker with a Mormon background, active or not, is still a Mormon filmmaker). And, I took the “boxed in” idea from quotes like this in the L.A. Times:
So, why did I bother making any distinction at all? I’m interested in the question of whether an active Mormon, following the cultural contstraints, can make films that are spiritual or good. I realize that both of those qualities are highly subjective and there is a strong argument to be made that Dutcher was able to do both in his explicitly Mormon films, especially in the case of Brigham City, which I think is Dutcher’s most successful film as an artist and a solid indie outing. Here we get into my opinion, which I should have made much clearer in the post by drawing a greater distinction between Dutcher and the film movement he spawned. I think that Dutcher is a promising, interesting filmmaker and one I will follow. However, with the exception of Brigham City (and I haven’t seen Evil Angel) I find a lot of his characters shallow and many of the moments melodramatic or emotionally manipulative. For me, the effort has been more interesting than the product.
“I’m interested in the question of whether an active Mormon, following the cultural contstraints, can make films that are spiritual or good. I realize that both of those qualities are highly subjective…”
The key word there is “subjective” because all art is subjective. I’m an active Mormon but I don’t follow “cultural constraints” because I’ve come to understand that Mormon culture is not the same thing as the Gospel of Christ. The Gospel does not constrain me the way the culture tries to. The Gospel frees me to explore my own humanity through my art and by doing so, relate to the rest of humanity. God would not have given any sort of talents to anyone, were they not expected to explore and develop them. By engaging my artistic drive, I am magnifying the gifts our Heavenly Father has given me. As Julia Cameron once said, “Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.”
“I don’t find your definition of LDS artists that excludes Dutcher to be at all useful. Evidence for that is the astonishing and silly conclusion drawn from it that “Napoleon Dynamite” is the only successful LDS film. Particularly when the film had nothing to do with Mormons.”
This raises the important question of just what is Mormon cinema. I’d favor the most inclusive definition, that is, any film by Mormons (whether active, Jack, former or otherwise) or about or influenced by Mormon themes.
Thanks for the provocative conversation, everyone. I’m new here and stumbled across this site just because of my eleven-year infatuation with Mormon film. I have way too much to say about it, so I’ll try to just make two comments.
First, on definitions and scope. Is ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ a Mormon film? ‘Evil Angel’? ‘White on Rice’? ‘Johnny Lingo’? The ‘Twilight’ series? I personally try to draw as broad a circle as possible because I think understanding how Mormonism influenced or influences artists as diverse as the Hesses, Neil LaBute, Dutcher, Christian Vuissa, T.C. Christensen, etc. is a profitable way to understand both those individual filmmakers better and the entire relationship between Mormonism–in its broadest sense–and cinema. Looking at the borders can help us understand the center, and vice versa. So, in that sense, I’m interested in everything Dutcher continues to do–and I probably subconsciously still think of him as one of “our” filmmakers, even if he wouldn’t appreciate that label. I’m working on a book on Mormon cinema, hopefully out early next year, and I wrote a chapter on this subject (it’s called “What Is Mormon Cinema?: Defining the Genre”) that was published as an article in Dialogue in 2009. I spent fifty pages trying to figure out one clean definition for Mormon cinema and wound up failing, because it’s a shifting, subjective, evolving entity. That, however, is one thing that makes it so interesting. I found newspaper articles from the 1910s talking about “Mormon films,” but they were referring to titles like ‘A Victim of the Mormons’ and ‘Marriage or Death.’ So the definition has changed, but ‘Mormon film’ is still an incredibly interesting entity, even if a lot of the individual films fall short.
Second, as a filmmaker I, like Joe, am extremely interested in issues of censorship and especially self-censorship. In fact, I talk about this in that article, how the Mormon community imposes a weight on artists to depict idealized versions of the community when communicating with outsiders. So, many Mormons were upset with Dutcher for showing immature missionaries or priesthood ordinances, but Muslim, African-American, and other groups place the same burden of representation on “their” filmmakers. So, yes, we’re not alone. Mormon filmmakers hence start to create films that won’t offend and hence will succeed in this very small and fragile niche market. It’s easy to then bemoan that they’re selling out, but it’s harder–for me at least–to remember that this IS a very small and fragile niche market and filmmaking is a VERY expensive art form. It’s necessary to make your money back if you ever want to make a second film, and my impression of what has seriously dried up Mormon cinema since 2005 is not the artistic quality, or lack thereof, in the initial films after ‘God’s Army,’ but the fact that there were no investors left. No one would put up the money because the films weren’t making their money back. So doing what you need to do to get a “broad enough” audience might not be that bad. But are you selling out? It’s an eternal dilemma for Mormon filmmakers, just like all filmmakers need to negotiate art and commerce.
That said, I do think that within the Mormon niche market there’s a smaller niche of people who are willing to be engaged by intelligent, challenging, honest Mormon-themed films. It’s even smaller than the already small Mormon market, so films aimed here would probably have to be microbudget productions, costing $20,000 or much less (including publicity and distribution). That’s the audience I’m aiming for with my first feature next year, about the sexual and spiritual coming of age of a Mormon girl in New York, and it sounds like Joe is kind of thinking the same thing. I like the idea of writing or creating as though your parents are dead–I just had that thought the other night when musing over my screenplay: “Yikes, my parents are going to see this. // Well, just ignore that. Make it as though they’re not going to see it…” etc. And it’s hard to do, because as an active, believing Latter-day Saint I do find any cultural “restrictions” to be really deep within me, even if, as someone said, they are just cultural and not doctrinal–and even if I think I can make a more moving, spiritual film by honestly addressing issues like sexuality that usually don’t get covered in Mormon films. Anyway, it’s harder than it sounds. Here’s a quote I just read in ‘Time,’ of all places, from actress Viola Davis:
“The thing about the African-American community compared with the white community is, we are more concerned with image and message than execution. I don’t play roles that are necessarily attractive or portray a positive image. They are well-rounded characters. When you squelch excellence to put out a message, it’s like passing the baton and seeing it drop.”
Sound familiar? Sorry for being so lengthy, but it’s something I’m thinking about many times a day. Joe, I’m trying to build up membership in the LDS Filmmakers’ Network – http://www.ldsfilmmakersnetwork.com/ – that you some of your peers may be interested in. It’d be great to hear more about your work, or anyone’s else’s. And, if I’m including shameless self-promotion (sorry!), anyone who wants to know more about my film and book can check out http://mormonfilm.com. Thanks!
Randy, I’m so glad you found us! Thank you for the thoughtful comment. This really struck me:
I think the relationship between the cultural and the doctrinal are very tangled and the roots run deep. One thing I thought about as I was reading your response is that it is hard to “write as though your parents are dead” when we come from a tradition with as much focus on eternal families as we do. Your parents are never really dead, but sealed to you for eternity. Much harder than it sounds.
Thanks, Heidi. Reading it now it all sounds a little morbid, talking about dead parents, but the point is writing as though your internal censor–who or whatever that is–is moribund. If you can do that–or I feel that if I personally can do that–then the cultural/doctrinal distinctions won’t matter so much; they’ll work themselves out.