Addison Road

What if it sucks?

I mean, what if it’s a real turd?

I mean, Opie has made some really good movies. I thought Cinderella Man was totally underrated and got schnookered at the box office. Apollo 13 remains one of the single most repeatedly watchable movies ever made. I cry every time those damn parachutes open.

Forrest makes some pretty good ones too, while I’m thinking about it. He’s one of the few guys who is just about watchable in anything. I think he’s the Jimmy Stewart of our generation. I hear he’s a decent fellow, too. Married, kids, the whole nine. Our friend Zack has an odd connection with him, and reports that he’s down to earth and easy to get along with.

So, these guys are pretty bankable, and you’ve got Sir Ian, who could act the white pages, the cute french chick who gave us all a French fetish in Amelie, and even Leon, for pity’s sake. You’ve got academy award winners and industry moguls behind the best selling fictional book… ever.

What if it sucks?

Will the church… again… have made a big fuss about a movie that implodes in on it’s own silliness? Often, when Hollywood tackles the issues that are near and dear to their hearts, they implode. Take abortion, for example. The Cider House Rules was perhaps the single most painfully simple and obvious author’s message movie in the past ten years. There is a serious film to be made about the abortion debate, one that shows the torment that women really go through as they make a choice like abortion; one that depicts the impact this issue in people’s lives. Cider house wasn’t it. I was openly guffawing during Delroy Lindo’s big speech about the people who didn’t make the rules never living in the cider house or some horseshit. It was just painfully bad. It was like watching a crap Billy Graham film from the 70s, except that instead of accepting Jesus at the end, you got to have a dangerous back-alley abortion. There are tracts available for both.

All this to say…

I have been resisting DaVinci for awhile. Our interim pastor really wanted to do a series on it. I fought him, protesting that we were just going to be like every other church in Southern California, clamoring to be significant. I suggested a series covering the early church, the selection of the canon, and the rise of Catholicism after Nicea. I suggested not mentioning the movie at all. “People will get it…” I said.

Well.

We are doing the series. I have been a good boy. I read the book, finally. I am in the dialog. I am checking my facts, and making my arguments.  He’s been doing well, and there have been several conversations started that are beneficial and healthy.
But I have to confess… if all this comes down and it turns out this movie is just a piece of crap that bombs, and we all have not a lot to talk about come monday morning, I will be amused to no end.

Dear Christians: Jesus Christ said the gates of hell couldn’t and wouldn’t prevail against His church. Don’t you think we could just chill out about the movie that Opie and Forrest made?