LDS FILM FORUM. Randy Astle and Gideon Burton presented papers and
thoughts on the history and future of the movement. It was an
outstanding session. Here are some highlights from Randy's speech:

- Sunstone is contemplating launching a film festival of its
own
- The AML (Association for Mormon Letters) has added film as a
specific subgenre
- Both Irreantum (AML's publication) and BYU Studies are
planning theme issues on the topic of LDS film
- Randy is writing a book on the phenomenon, and is also
teaching a related class at BYU
- AML is working on a comprehensive, online database for all
things relating to LDS film and literature; here's the URL:
http://mormonlit.lib.byu.edu/
- Christian Vuissa has begun an organization, a foundation for
LDS filmmakers, sort of like a co-op (I mentioned this earlier and
will post more about it later)
- AML is available at www.aml-online.org
- Randy's basic viewpoint is that the LDS cinema movement is
much bigger than just the current and latest trend, and that if the
current trend is indeed changing, it doesn't mean that the whole
movement is dying
- Randy showed us a clip chronicling the SLC premier for the
film Brigham Young, in the production of which the Church played a
significant role. The premier was so much larger than anything
today, with more than 100,000 people participating, and seven sold-
out SLC theaters, huge parades, and much fanfare. So to say that
Dutcher is the founder or originator of Mormon cinema is misleading;
Mormon cinema was HUGE in Salt Lake City in 1940.
- Randy says there have been a number of periods or eras of
Mormon cinema, each of which lasted for roughly 24 years. The
current era began with God's Army. In each of the eras, which Randy
describes as waves, there's the initial surge in which the wave
washes over the beach, followed by the recede mode, in which the
wave returns to the larger sea before being followed by other
waves. We are currently in a "purge" mode, in which only the most
committed will survive. The movement as a whole, like the sea
itself, will survive.

A few snippets from Gideon Burton's presentation:
- His paper is entitled Mormon Sacramental Cinema
- He describes the many similarities between attending an LDS
sacrament meeting and going to a theater to watch a film
- Mormon movies shouldn't be so narrow as to only aim to
entertain or proselyte; they can become worship services, almost
like sacrament meeting
- The idea that we need more large-scale productions is
wrong. People like John Lyde do great stuff for budgets of $3k to
$5k. (I loved hearing this part.)

Both Randy's and Gideon's papers will be published later this year
in BYU Today.

DAVE HUNTER. Dave is Kurt Hale's partner; the two of them own
HaleStorm, as well as HaleStone Distribution and Stone Five Studios,
which is the new huge production facility they're building in the
Provo riverbottoms area. Some snippets:

- "Deseret Book gives us grief over EVERYTHING we do – but
then, people start to buy our stuff, and eventually our things find
their way onto Deseret Book's shelves."
- "If you want to learn about the Church, go call the
missionaries. If you want to be entertained for an hour and a half –
or maybe not even entertained – if you want to go spend $7, go
watch one of our films."
- Dave had, pre-HaleStorm, a real estate development company.
He still owns it. He says 99% of his personal income derives from
it, while 1% of his income comes from HaleStorm, yet he spends 99%
of his time at HaleStorm, and 1% of his time with the real estate
company.
- He says that Home Teachers was a bad movie, and he's the
only one he knows who likes it. Even his close family members told
him how much it stunk.
- He says that the "brain damage" they go through to make a
Mormon film is about equal to what it would be to make non-LDS ones,
so they're going to do that from now on, to attract a bigger
audience.
- "When we sell 150,000 videos of Singles Ward, we think we're
pretty much hitting the entire market."
- Stone Five studios will be completed in 1 – 2 months. It
will be used for non-LDS, yet family friendly entertainment. The
name derives from the five stones David gathered to slay Goliath,
symbolic of the David-and-Goliath struggle HaleStorm will have in
competing against industry giants in Hollywood and elsewhere.
- Dave loves living in Utah County, which he says is "for
sure" the hotbed of Utah film activity, not Salt Lake. He has five
kids and loves to ski and live in Utah.
- The sound stage alone in the new building will be a mammoth
9,000 square feet. The location is 300 West and about 3500 – 3700
North in Provo, across the street (east) from Noni (sp?)
- The entire studio was built debt-free.
- HaleStorm is looking to acquire a couple of Mormon-audience
films in the next month or two; they're in talks with the filmmakers.
- Dave admits that rock versions of LDS hymns are cheesy, but
he says, "When we redo the hymns, we sell 60,000 to 100,000 copies
of albums; when we don't do hymns, we sell 3,000 copies."
- Because Dave and Kurt own the rights to these music CDs,
they make good royalties from their sales. They make almost nothing
from the sales of HaleStorm films themselves.
- If filmmakers approach them with good ideas, HaleStorm might
advance, say, $100,000 or so in the form of a "distribution advance"
which will come available when the filmmakers have found enough
private investment money to match it.
- Distribution: Wal-Mart is a bear to work with, though
totally vital. It took HaleStorm two years and various trips to
Bentonville to get into Wal-Mart stores. Anything that doesn't sell
at Wal-Mart within a narrow time window has to be returned or
destroyed, at HaleStorm's cost. It's like selling on consignment.
They sell to Wal-Mart at about 50% of the retail price. Officially,
about 66% of all DVDs worldwide (not just HaleStorm's, but
everyone's) are sold through Wal-Mart. It's the number-one place to
be.
- HaleStorm regularly gets checks in the mail from theaters
for movies like Work and the Glory (with which they had nothing to
do).
- They passed on the opportunity to distribute Saints and
Soldiers; Excel picked it up. Dave admits it was a mistake.
- Dave cites the usefulness of ldsfilm.com, and Preston Hunter
specifically
- He says the LDS film movement is dying: Where there used to
be ten films per year, now it looks like there will only be one or
two per year. The excitement is gone.
- The New York Times ran an article on HaleStorm a while back;
since then, they now get 20 – 30 unsolicited scripts each month.
Kurt used to read every one; now they hire someone to do it, because
it takes too much time.
- Promotion of a typical HaleStorm film: about $500,000, of
which $200k is spent in Utah and the rest outside of the state.
- Other than with the Singles Ward, whose theatrical run
resulted in $80,000 in the bank when it was done, HaleStorm has
always either lost money or broken even on theatrical runs.
- They outsource their animation needs to Sandman Studios in
Orem.


LIFESONG. This is a BYU mentoring project in which students and
professors from various departments collaborate to create novels and
films based on those novels. We watched some moderately interesting
clips, including a few from "Fire Creek," their first feature (which
was shot for "under $100,000").

RICHARD DUTCHER. I chose to miss Take A Chance, which I desperately
wanted to see, in order to attend Richard's presentation, which was
given to an audience of several hundred. Dutcher's speech was
amazingly passionate, animated and (probably) controversial. I
loved it. He looks like he's put on a little weight, though only a
few pounds. He has a full beard and moustache, and he strode onto
stage wearing a black sports jacket and jeans. After a few swigs
from his Coke, he launched into his diatribe, which was full of
passion and feeling, often punctured by intense gesticulations with
his hands and sometimes his whole body. Here are some tidbits:

- On the original November release for States of Grace: The
first weekend was ok (in per-theater gross), the second was better,
and the third was best; they started selling out shows. Then Sony
told theaters to kick States of Grace off the screen and show Rent
instead, threatening that if they didn't do that, Sony wouldn't let
them show Spiderman 3 this summer. States of Grace was therefore
removed.
- Dutcher said that the reopening on January 20 was going
fairly well. Several 7 PM showings had been sold out. He literally
begged us to go see it, to support him. He explained how critical
this weekend was for him, and for the movie.
- For the rest of the time, he said he would discuss the
question that's most on his mind these days: "What is it about
Latter-day Saints that makes us want to take neither cinema nor
Mormonism very seriously?"
- He said his hands-down favorite movie in 2005 was Capote.
He described how, when he was much younger, movies used to be toys
whose sole purpose for him was entertainment, until he saw a German
movie from the 1930s titled The Blue Angel, and his life was forever
changed.
- He described what went into making God's Army, and what his
views were at the time. His initial vision was that in 5 to 8 years
after the release of God's Army, Mormon cinema could become THE
place where spiritual/inspiring/thought-provoking/instructive movies
worldwide originated. It was a very exciting time for him.
- Now, five years later, he's become very jaded and cynical
about that vision. As to the future of LDS cinema, he says there
are two possibilities: The first is that "maybe it's gone," or
maybe there never was an LDS cinema genre or movement to begin
with. The second is that the few good films that come out will be
hopelessly covered by a mountain of mediocre products. He talked
about how Deseret Book doesn't really have any good art or
literature on its bookshelves; instead, it panders to the pop
mentality of the masses and churns out high numbers of wishy-washy
stuff that's mostly not worth reading, and which is completely
calculated to make money for the company.
- In spite of his cynicism, Dutcher urged LDS filmmakers
everywhere to do better.
- He says that the most frightening thought for him is that
maybe what we see on the shelves at Deseret Book is all the Mormon
Community is capable of creating. He had always thought that, as a
people, we have the spirit and enlightenment of God and should be
producing the best, most powerful art in the world, rather than the
miserably mediocre stuff which permeates our outlets and homes today.
- "What is it about Mormonism that produces what you see on
the shelf at Deseret Book?"
- Speaking at BYU the other day, Dutcher was only a little
surprised when a student publicly called on him to apologize for
making God's Army. I'm very much used to it by now, he says.
- During the making of God's Army, Dutcher and his family
lived, for a time, on his Chevron card, buying milk and groceries
from the gas station.
- "As our theatrical grosses diminish, we lose any influence
we may have had in Hollywood."
- "It's like using our sex organs as toys – they're fun, but
they can be used for so much more." (The audience gave a very
nervous chuckle at that one.)
- After Dutcher watched Mel Gibson's The Passion of the
Christ, as he was exiting the theater, he saw a poster for The
Passion on the wall, right next to a poster for The Best Two Years
(a film which Dutcher says he likes a lot). But as he compared the
posters and thought about each film, he came to see that every frame
of The Passion, from the first to the last, is about Jesus Christ.
Where, Dutcher asks, is Christ in the Best Two Years? There's a lot
of heart and humor and humanity and a little about Joseph Smith, but
nothing about Jesus in the whole movie. No wonder, Dutcher says,
that people think we're not Christians.
- When Dutcher wrote God's Army, he was sure that the part
where the rebellious elder, standing at the fridge one night, asks
whether the general authorities have just been lying to us ("What if
it's all just a big lie?") would be the most highly controversial
part of his film. He's now talked with literally thousands of
people about God's Army, and not one of them has ever brought that
up. But many, many Church members have expressed how offended they
were that he portrayed an elder on the toilet, and that he showed a
missionary awkwardly receiving a hug from a grateful teenage girl
whose dad was going to let her get baptized. There's something
wrong with that picture, Dutcher says.
- Asked whether he will continue to make LDS films, Dutcher
says he's going to be forced not to. (At this point an audience
member verbally chastised him and said that, as the father of Mormon
cinema, Dutcher had to stick to his guns no matter how unfriendly or
unsupportive his audience was, because Mormonism needs him.)
Dutcher said he's still committed to what will be his $12 million
tribute to Joseph Smith (which, he said, will probably be hated by
75% of members of the Church), but that he can't commit to ever
making other LDS films again. "It's all changed so much," he
said. "It's really iffy."
- He quoted Steve Greenstreet's blurb about States of Grace
(from the poster) to us.
- He said that five years ago, theaters were packed, there was
lots of excitement and buzz, and now the landscape has totally
changed. He hears people say, "oh, great, another Mormon movie.
Whatever," all the time. The audience has become very jaded.
- Dutcher brought up a question of ethics, asking, "How do we
go out and raise money from investors, knowing the film will
probably fail?"
- He said that States of Grace cost $800,000 to make.
- The problem, he said, is that Mormons see movies as mere
toys, and they see their religion as sacred. You don't mix the two.
- The term "crossover" drives Dutcher nuts. He thinks that
the watering down of LDS films in order to seek a wider "crossover"
market is a form of selling out, "not being true to their own
portrayals." He sees the many generic changes applied to what would
have been blatantly LDS films (he calls it non-Mormonizing) as
simply seeking nothing but money.
- "Why do we have to go outside our own community for
validation?" he asks.
- When asked, he said that the Church's new Joseph Smith film
did have something of a negative impact on his own Joseph Smith
project, though he remains committed to it.
- He says we have a bad habit of pointing our fingers at
whatever group makes LDS movies, saying they are to blame for the
industry's current problems. He says he's been critical of
HaleStorm in the past, but that those movies would be much more
enjoyable to him if they weren't all we had. He says the real
problem is filmmakers and artists (other than HaleStorm) who are
capable of creating great art but aren't doing it.

For whatever it's worth, I was riveted by Richard's entire speech,
fascinated to see his level of frustration and outrage and
dedication, especially after having seen States of Grace the night
before. This was a presentation I'll probably always remember and
draw upon. He changed my thinking on some very key (for me)
points. This alone was worth the cost (in money and time) of
attending the festival.

PICADILLY COWBOY. Tyler Ford's first feature, shot entirely in the
UK, was surprisingly good. I had the opportunity a while ago to
read an earlier version of the script, which was already quite good,
but the film was even better than I thought it would be. It's not
profoundly life-changing, nor is it laugh-till-you-cry funny, but as
a sweet, gentle romantic comedy, it's a real crowd pleaser. Jaelan
Petrie does an excellent job in the lead role, and all of the
characters are likeable and believable. That the basic premise is
hugely clichéd and utterly predictable doesn't even matter; it's fun
just to watch what the characters do, and how they react to things.
The cinematography looks very good, the music is great, the acting
is excellent, the script is completely LDS. Great job, Tyler. Here
are a few of Tyler's answers to some questions:
- The budget was "a little over or under a million dollars"
- He hopes the film will be in theaters this fall
- Only six members of the Church were associated with the
production
- There is no distribution deal as of yet; they're shopping it
- The target audiences is the LDS market, though Tyler doesn't
see the film as "heavily LDS" and therefore inaccessible to
nonmembers
- It was shot in 35 shooting days on a Sony Cine Alta HD
camera at 24 fps
- They plan to transfer it to film next month

KIRBY HEYBORNE. I was bummed to miss out on Kirby's two hour acting
workshop. If anyone in this group attended, I'd love to hear how it
went. Anyway, you may be aware that Kirby released a music CD last
year. He sang and played guitar for awhile before the screening of
The Return. It was a little embarrassing, because he had two songs
left to play and they told him he could only do one, so he got about
two minutes into a version of Come Sail Away (the old Styx hit) when
the house lights went down completely. He had been reading the
music from a stand and couldn't see when it got dark, so in the
middle of a line, he stopped playing and said, "and that's the end.
Thank you." We all laughed and clapped, and the lights quickly came
back up, but Kirby quickly exited the stage. I wonder if he was
offended? Christian Vuissa came on moments later and thanked Kirby
again and invited him to come back on for another song or two, but
Kirby didn't show. The ironic thing is that it took another five or
ten minutes to get the projection system ready to go, so we all sat
there and waited, without music. We could have been listening to
Kirby's excellent performance, but I suppose maybe he got his
feelings hurt or something. Anyway, he was a total professional, as
always.

THE RETURN. This screened to a crowd of several hundred people, and
the audience definitely seemed to like it. [MAJOR PLOT SPOILER] I
enjoyed it too, though I wasn't blown away by it. There was a
significant twist near the end which apparently most people didn't
see coming; unfortunately for me, I did, so it wasn't as impactful
as it could have been. Still, the production values were excellent,
and the story was interesting and poignant, if not overwhelmingly
cool. My biggest issue is that the protagonist, who dies in a car
crash but is given sixty days back on earth to try to get his mom
baptized, never ever tells anyone – not his fiancé, not his best
friend, not his mom – about the fact that he only has sixty days.
Why not tell them? I know if it was me (or most anyone else, I
think), I would immediately tell at least my family and friends
about the experience. There's no real reason I can think of to keep
such a thing a secret, especially since it ends up causing so many
problems for the guy during his two months. But of course, if he
did tell everyone, the plot would be very different, and there would
be no movie. Anyway.

Michael Allison, the director (who looks like a very friendly 50-
year-old bearded hippie) says they shot the whole thing in 15 days,
which is pretty amazing. It was shot in HD and will later be
transferred to film. The production budget was just over $325k
(when the producer guy, whose name I've forgotten, mentioned this,
he started to cry). They have no distribution as of yet and are
actively seeking a distributor. I noted that all of the HaleStorm
people were at the premier, watching closely. Could this end up
being a match made in heaven? Could The Return be one of the two
LDS films Dave Hunter alluded to? Inquiring minds want to know . . .

POWERLESS. This movie blew me away, not because it was such a
wonderfully great film, but because it looked and sounded so good,
easily comparable with almost everything else screened at the
festival, and it was all done (in the UK) for under 5,000 pounds.
Current exchange rates put the British pound at 1.78 American
dollars, which means, in very rough terms (exchange rates vary, of
course) that the budget for Powerless was probably under $10,000,
which is both amazing and exciting to me.

The entire movie was shot on a one-chip mini-DV camera (the kind you
can get at Best Buy, says Matt, the director) using the director's
immediate family and friends as cast and crew. It has shown
favorably at a number of film festivals in the US, and they're
currently shopping for distribution. It's not specifically aimed at
the LDS market, as there's nothing blatantly Mormon in the script,
but it's definitely family friendly.

[MINOR SPOILER ALERT] The movie concerns some siblings who must
fend for themselves in their countryside house (the filmmakers'
actual home in western Wales) after some sort of terrorist attack in
London causes all electrical power in the UK to go out for months.
The lack of power causes anarchy in the streets, a general panic
(all of which is described, not shown) and a lot of dead bodies
(only one of which is shown). Really the loss of power is only the
setting in which the real story is placed, which concerns how the
siblings must learn to get along and trust each other in order to
survive. Other than the utter ridiculousness of the premise (would
the UK really ever go for months without electricity, in spite of
the millions of engineers who live there, and the British army, and
the UK's ties to powerful allies such as, say, the USA?), it's an
interesting little story, though it's fairly predictable and not too
moving. The best part of the project, though, is that the movie
looks as good as it does, and more specifically, that it SOUNDS so
good. They did ADR and Foley for everything, meaning virtually none
of the original sounds, including the dialog, were used. It was all
re-recorded by lip-syncing in the studio, after the shoot.

The filmmakers plan to release a "How to Shoot a Pro-Looking Movie
for Under 5,000 Pounds" DVD to accompany Powerless. The movie was
actually shot over a period of 1 ½ years. They actually only wrote
one act of the screenplay. The rest was shot without a script,
mostly ad-libbed (something Matt doesn't necessarily recommend for
other wannabe filmmakers.) Powerless looks and sounds much better
in a theater than the clips on the Powerless website make it appear.

WRAP-UP WITH CHRISTIAN VUISSA. Christian made a few concluding
comments and points:
- Next year, the festival will have access to both the Scera's
big screen and the smaller one, which will be wonderful.
- Also next year, the awards ceremony will be more of a gala
event, fancier, with more celebrities, almost like Mormon Oscars
- The latest Kirby film, Pirates of the Great Salt Lake
(Christian directed, I think?) will premier in two weeks in San
Francisco, of all places
- Christian has a new screenplay that Kirby has expressed
interest in. It might be done by this time next year.

And that's it. I think my fingers are going to fall off, and I'm
getting carpal tunnel. Better close for now. Adios.

- Perry