From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V2 #201 Reply-To: aml-list Sender: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk aml-list-digest Tuesday, October 21 2003 Volume 02 : Number 201 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 15:47:28 -0600 From: Christopher Bigelow Subject: [AML] (SL Trib) Larry H. Miller as Movie Mogul Movies: Could Larry H. Miller become Mormon Cinema's Louis B. Mayer?=20 By Sean P. Means=20 Salt Lake Tribune Columnist=20 Larry H. Miller makes an unlikely movie mogul.=20 He's too honest, for starters. He admits when he is wrong, as he did to filmmaker Richard Dutcher during a press conference Thursday. By his own admission, he gets emotionally involved in his investments. He chooses the movies he backs not just for their potential financial return, but for content and the quality of the people making them.=20 Clearly, the guy wouldn't last a week in Hollywood.=20 But the auto dealer, entrepreneur and Utah Jazz owner could become the Louis B. Mayer of Mormon Cinema -- just when the genre needs him.=20 Miller said Thursday that for years, people presented him with movie scripts and asked him to invest. "I don't blame them for coming to me with scripts and requests for financing, if they don't blame me for saying 'no,' " Miller said.=20 Miller avoided the movie business for 20 years, he said, in part because "I don't understand that much about it." Where in most fields a quality product -- a car or a basketball team, for example -- will bring in customers, it doesn't always work that way in movies. Miller said he still can't figure out why "Brigham City," Dutcher's follow-up to "God's Army," received better reviews than "God's Army" but made less money.=20 In 2000, Miller saw "God's Army," the first of the Mormon Cinema genre, at a critic's screening at his Megaplex 17 at Jordan Commons. "I saw him in the film, then I saw in the credits that he wrote it, produced it and directed it. I thought, well this is a pretty interesting guy," he said. "Then I noticed this guy in a baseball coat, handing out press packets." That's when Miller met Dutcher.=20 Miller soon hooked up with Dutcher, investing in "Brigham City." On Thursday, Miller announced he will put in "a significant amount" for Dutcher's next two films, "God's Army 2: States of Grace," and Dutcher's dream project, "The Prophet," an epic biography of LDS Church founder Joseph Smith.=20 This follows close on the heels of Miller's announcement that he will bankroll, to the tune of $7.4 million, an adaptation of the first book in Gerald N. Lund's LDS historical saga, The Work and the Glory.=20 Miller is not the only NBA owner branching out into movies. Last month Mark Cuban, the internet tycoon who owns the Dallas Mavericks, bought Landmark Theatres, an art-house chain with 55 theaters nationwide. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Cuban holds a 5-percent stake in Lions Gate Films, and he and business partner Todd Wagner also have invested in a production company and in Magnolia Pictures, the indie distributor that this year released the Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning documentary "Capturing the Friedmans."=20 Miller is choosy in the projects he backs. "I go largely by the feel of the whole project," he said. "It's a combination of a belief in what's being done, and a hope that it can be financially successful. In a free-enterprise economy, it's a simple equation: If you aren't successful in financial ventures, you don't earn the right to keep doing them, and I don't care if you're selling cars or owning a basketball team or making films."=20 Supporting Dutcher and Lund, a personal friend, was comparatively easy. "With Richard and with Gerry, I'm not just betting on the film content -- I'm betting on the person doing it," Miller said.=20 Miller aids Mormon Cinema in other ways. His Megaplex theaters have booked several titles, and Jordan Commons is the preferred premiere site for LDS filmmakers. ("The Book of Mormon Movie," for one, had its gala premiere there in September.) He made a cameo in "The R.M.," and allowed that movie to shoot several scenes at Jordan Commons (that's the Mayan doubling as "Book of Mormon Burger").=20 Leigh von der Esch, executive director of the Utah Film Commission, is happy to see Miller in the movie business. "You look at Jordan Commons or the Delta Center, and you see Larry has a vision for sports and entertainment," von der Esch said. "He can carry that into motion pictures." The timing couldn't be better. Mormon Cinema, I feel, is in danger of being run into the ground by amateurism -- an overload of nickel-and-dime movies where the message, no matter how uplifting, is buried under cheap production values and community-theater acting. Miller's emphasis on strong content, and his ability to put real money behind projects, are just what the genre needs right now.=20 -----=20 Got a question about the movies? Send it to movie critic Sean P. Means: The Salt Lake Tribune, 143 S. Main, second floor, Salt Lake City, UT 84111, or e-mail at movies@sltrib.com.=20 - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 20:02:07 -0400 From: Sam Brown Subject: [AML] familiar pronouns and prayer Hello, What's fascinating about the current language of prayer maintained by conservative Protestant groups (and the LDS) is that by fixing an archaic familiar (also, strictly speaking, singular) pronoun we run the risk of making what was once familiar now excessively formal and archaically poetic. To double-check, I looked at the Greek of the Lord's Prayer, and there it is definitely the second person singular, hence "thou/thy." But in current English, the singular (informal) is "you" while the plural is "you all," "y'all," or something along those lines. We do not reliably have a formal second person. While I don't mind the use of archaic poetic forms to distance the language of prayer from that of mundane social transactions, I think it's inaccurate to represent the current choice of "thee" as informal or intimate. Less educated people, in my experience (and they're a key constituency of the Lord's focus), find the phrases distancing and strange: they want the intimacy implied in the original text and find it absent in old English poetical pronouns. Many LDS I know would feel alienated by the formal, stylized prayers of high-church and progressive preachers, and I think some of our members and friends feel the same way about our focus on "thee/thou." There are few things sadder than a missionary sanctimoniously informing an impoverished woman in the ghetto that God would prefer that she not continue to address him in intimate, familiar terms, that her prayer is somehow substandard for lacking bizarre-sounding pronouns with which she has almost no acquaintance. (I speak from regrettable personal experience.) So my vote is for different approaches in different environments: use "thee/thou" in Utah contexts and "you" in other settings. And if the audience will bear it, by all means, employ other poetic approaches. God is worth all of the language we can muster and I suspect is delighted with all our earnest offerings. He may even appreciate the occasional worshipful haiku. - -- Yours, Samuel Brown, MD Massachusetts General Hospital sam@vecna.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 17:40:49 -0600 From: "Clark Goble" Subject: RE: [AML] Pictures in homes BTW - anyway our esteemed moderator can put a filter on his email client so that the =3D3D20 characters are removed? I'm not sure what your = email client is set to, but those are getting pretty annoying. It appears to happen on any email which doesn't add a \n at line 70 or so. However most email clients don't use line breaks and only put a \n at the end of paragraphs. The =3D3D20 make the paragraphs very hard to read. Anyway, back to the topic. [Ed: The list emailer has a couple of inconvenient format "features". One is that it inserts carriage returns at 72 characters per line so messages sent with 75 or 78 characters per line will look odd unless I edit those linefeeds out. Second is that it doesn't do extended characters so words like cafe and cliche often come through as caf=3DE9 = or clich=3DE9. I'll see if I can't find a filter to remove line feeds (the =3D20), but the presense or lack thereof is dependent on the email as = sent by you (all).] ___ R. W. ___ | As you said, the discussion was specifically about pictures of=20 | General Authorities in the home, not temples. ___ Allow me to use this as a take off on a related topic. I really *hate* most LDS art. Yet my wife loves them. You know, those pictures done in almost a photo-realistic style of Jesus holding a child or so forth. To me they are poor art, don't convey much emotion and just come off as contrived. Compare this to the great masters of the Renaissance. So here's the problem. We want to decorate our house and of course have some nice religious pictures. She doesn't like impressionist art or anything like that. i.e. no Minerva Teichert or so forth. She also thus far hasn't liked anything of Michaelangelo or any of the other classic Renaissance painters. She likes one of my Van Gough prints: the one of the cafe in Paris. I'd really like to find some pictures we could agree upon. Why oh why is our LDS art so...trite? Anyone out there have any good suggestions? - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 19:16:45 EDT From: Jacob Proffitt Subject: [AML] Hooray for "Holywood" (comp) From: "Richard Johnson" or "Moe-wood," as in 'hood English for More, short for Mormon, and pointing cryptically to our embarrassment of riches (or is that an embarrassment of embarrassment?)? To make the thing scan (and in tribute to our erstwhile Deseret News columnist,) How about MoeMoewood. Richard B. Johnson, Husband, Father, Grandfather, Actor, Director, Puppeteer, Playwright, Writer, Thingmaker, Mormon, Person, Fool. I sometimes think that the last persona is the most important- and most valuable. Http://www.PuppenRich.com - -------------------------------------------------------------- From: "D. Michael Martindale" > From: "Jared Walters" >=20 > How about "Mormonwood"? How about "Naryawoody"? - --=20 D. Michael Martindale dmichael@wwno.com - -------------------------------------------------------------- From: RichardDutcher@aol.com In a message dated 10/17/03 4:42:10 PM Mountain Daylight Time,=20 lauramaery@writerspost.com writes: > I'm interested in > knowing why it is Br. Dutcher objects to the term Mollywood. I find it > quite clever. >=20 I suppose if I were a 13-year-old girl I'd like "Mollywood." But I don't wear=20 pink, I don't keep stuffed animals on my bed, and I don't pee sitting down.=20 (Well, alright. Sometimes I do pee sitting down. BUT NOT VERY OFTEN!) Brother Dutcher - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 19:17:01 -0600 From: Steve Perry Subject: Re: [AML] Pictures in homes On Monday, October 20, 2003, at 05:40 PM, Clark Goble wrote: > Anyone out there have any good suggestions? Try some of Walter Rane's work... Steve Perry - -- skperry@mac.com Hear the latest edition of "The Cricket & Seagull" at: http://www.meridianmagazine.com/radio - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 19:30:55 -0600 From: Steve Perry Subject: Re: [AML] Pictures in homes On Monday, October 20, 2003, at 07:17 PM, Steve Perry wrote: > On Monday, October 20, 2003, at 05:40 PM, Clark Goble wrote: > >> Anyone out there have any good suggestions? > > Try some of Walter Rane's work... I also really love Brian Kershisnik's work, but you'll have to work harder to get the message, so it may not be for everyone. Steve Perry - -- skperry@mac.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V2 #201 ******************************