Mormon movies for the public

Any interest ex-Mormons may have in Mormon culture/ideas is turned against them by devbout Mormons. "They just can't stay away from the church," said as though no one could failed to be drawn in by the church's magnetic spirit, even those who claim to disbelieve or even revile it. My dad's always secretly pleased when I'll watch some Mormon movies during a visit home. I think they're one of the most bizarre manifestations of the church's public face. They indicate in a certain way how the church wants to present itself to the world, and who they think may be interested in the "peculiar people" that are Mormons.

BYU productions made tons of crazy hilarious short films back in the '70s that mainly get watched in Mormon seminary classes and while kids wait to do baptisms for the dead in the temple. The most memorable are:

Johnny Lingo (not to be confused with recent theatre release 'The Legend of Johnny Lingo): A small Polynesian island buys wives with cows. Prettier brides-to-be are bribed by greater numbers of cows, averaging five or so for a choice looker. Mahannah, an undrconfident lass who hides in trees while belittled by her father, is considered the least likely to get hitched. (Quote the line "Mahannah, you ugly, get down from that tree!'" to someone raised Mormon for a laugh-filled cultural bonding moment.) Women swoon in the presence of area stud Johnny Lingo, who (shocker) asks Mahannah to marry him in exchange for TEN cows. Local women shit their grass skirts. It turns out when Mahannah isn't crying and covering her face with her uncombed hair and palm fronds, everyone agrees she's "worth ten cows if she's worth a hoof." Moral: Treat women like they're worth ten cows, and they'll turn into ten cow wives. Consequently, devotionals and fireside discussions for young women on how to be "ten cow wives" (wait for returned missionary to bring you a corsage and take you to see "Finding Nemo").

Uncle Ben: Orphaned kids are adopted by their kindly, alcoholic uncle Ben. There's some unmemorable alcohol-related conflict, after which his cherbic kindergartener niece asks him not to be such a drunk. He says urgently, "If you want me to--I will if you want me to!" Later that night, Ben sits in the basement for no reason and stares at a bottle of the hard stuff as his hand struggles toward the bottle and back to safety. All the time his intonation "If you want me to--I will if you want me to! If you want me to--I WILL IF YOU WANT ME TO!" loops echoes. He never drinks again. The cute girl grows up and, in a flash forward, asks the BYU dean to specially thank her non-drunk uncle at her graduation. Cut to graduation. The dean asks "all the uncle Bens in the audience" to please stand, and tells a story of Ben's courage and sobriety. Moral: don't be a drunk.

Here's another one whose title I can't recall. An old lady who lives alone in the boonies is comforted only by the sweet little girl next door and her monomaniacal obsession with mail from her grandkids. Every day she chats with the mailman, and every day her progeny fails to deliver. One day, the mailman comes, finally with a letter from the grandkids! She dies as she clutches it to her heart. Good thing she didn't open it, becuase the letter said the kids were going to put her in a retirement home. Moral: write your grammaw. This one often got followed up with envelopes and stationery, so you could write your grammaw right then and tell her, "Sorry."

Some of BYU's films were adopted from urban legends/popular stories. An example of the former: boy is convinced he is going to die after giving a blood transfusion to his little sister. Moral: Be like Jesus (that's what church teachers seemed to get out of it, anyway). "Cipher in the Snow" is an example of the latter ( a copy of the story is here: http://www.teenlit.com/teachers/cipherin.htm). Unpopular, quiet boy who fails his classes and is ignored by his parents falls down dead into the snow while exiting a school bus. Teacher concludes he died because the kid thought of himself as a zero. Moral: That shouldn't happen to kids.

Another is "Mr. Krueger's Christmas" (a real sentimental tearjerker) with the elderly Jimmy Stewart, who I believe had converted to Mormonism by then. He plays a lonely widower who has no one on Christmas, and imagines (in an enormously depressing scene) that he's ice skating on SLC's temple square and conducting the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I could have sworn he died in the end, since so many of these films ended that way, but IMDB informs me it ends on a cheery note: traveling carollers invite him to turkey dinner. Moral: Old people are really lonely. That's the underlying theme of a lot of these movies.

Starting with 2000's "God's Army," Mormon directors have been distributing Mormon-centric films nationwide. Mormon people are of course enormously happy about this development, some of whom somehow think it's a fulfillment of the prophecy that all will gather on the mountain of Zion in the latter days (some also thought the SLC olympics fulfilled this --- LDS signseeking is omnipresent and annoying).

Mormon movies tend to fall in three categories. Richard Dutcher writes/acts in/directs serious films about contemporary LDS people and their problems ("God's Army," "Brigham City"). Christian Viussa has made a cottage industry of producing small, lowbudget films full of jokes only someone steeped in LDS culture would understand (four to date: "Single's Ward," "The R.M.," "Home Teachers," and "Baptists at Our Barbecue"). Will you find Viussa's films funny? You might not even if you do understand their titles. I have consciously avoided films in the third category: adaptations of historical LDS fiction and non-fiction.

Dutcher is by far the best LDS director, for what that's worth. Mormons thrilled as the movie was reviewed favorably nationwide ("Michael Medved said he liked it," my dad proudly noted). I think the Onion had a good take on it: http://www.avclub.com/content/node/4298 "...[Dutcher] stops just short of suggesting that these pious kids in starched shirts and ties might have flaws beyond bad moods and a yen for dumb practical jokes." The review's a bit easy on the film, actually. One example: the black missionary in the film explains his conflict regarding the church's denial of many important church priveleges/titles to black people until 1978. Bringing this fact up is way more daring than most Mormons would be willing to do, but his explanation's as lackluster as ever. "I just prayed about it and knew God's plan was right" (a paraphrase). One kid in seminary showed this segment of the film as a devotional in seminary, and followed it with this testimony: "See? God has a plan." That's about the worst cop-out ever, as an explanation, since it can be used to explain anything. This part of the movie really seemed to affect everyone in fucking white whitey whitebread southeastern Idaho. "We actually like black people (even though there aren't any in town). Quit being so sensetive about it." It's a great topic to make Mormons very defensive--forget trying to trick them on their "magic underwear" as evidenced in another earlier thread, for all the Momo-baiting wiseacres in the audience.

"Brigham City" is my personal favorite because it's just so damn bizarre, while still carrying the intensity of a good thriller/crime story. It's also directed by Dutcher, who plays the town bishop/sherrif (that's right, bishop of the only local ward and elected sherrif of the town). Local redhead girls are getting murdered in a town that's slow on even issuing speeding tickets, and Dutcher has to crack the case. The movie's tone is so painfully serious that everything in it, even the spiritual parts, is hardcore creepy. In the middle of all his dpression and sleuthing, Dutcher throws in scenes of regular boshoppy tasks: blessing the sick, passing the sacrament, and other sacred LDS rituals, in the midst of finding dead bodies on the outskirts of thown. The juxtaposition kills me, especially since these scenes only seem to be included to show non-LDS folks that Mormon rituals aren't actually so weird after all. The investigation is even more awkward since virtually everyone in town is LDS and questioning them as suspects is tantamount to saying he doesn't believe they've repented of things they confessed in his office as a bishop (not thatb anyone confessed murder anyway). He first starts out by entering the town's only bar (sparsely populated) in one of the most painful scenes ever. People are thought of as being suspects for puchasing cigarettes at the gas station --- any non-LDS behavior leads to a questioning. The strangest search scene features the bishop, warrant in hand, insisting on opening the closet of a young Mormon man who still lives with his mother. The accused is so insistent that the closet stay shut, for such a long argument, that by the time the sherrif finally opens the closet, I was ready for it to be full of little boys, or dead little boys. No, it's full of racy VHS tapes. The accused and his mother cry in shame for an unbearably long amount of time.

The murder part of this film is also shocking, and leads to even harder questions about inter-Mormon relations than "God's Army." But I think it works best for outsiders to see the horrible hot pressure in LDS communities to conform, to hide their flaws, to put on their good Ensign magazine faces and pretend nothing is wrong. It definitely doesn't come off as a pro-Mormon film, even though after it was released, watching it was a popular social excursion for church groups. Mormons didn't respond to it as dearly as Dutcher's first movie.

"Napolean Dynamite," it should be noted, is not officially a Mormon movie, but fucking A have Mormons ever embraced it. It's a fairly accurate caricature of social dynamics in a small Idaho school. The irony of it is, the kids laugh at all the assholes who are mean to Napolean, and don't realize they're the same person. It's a heartless movie for and about a heartless community. All I can say is I'm glad I'm not involved in the church, or I'd have to hear that chapstick quote every day. Letters from my brother, who's on a mission in Mexico, are peppered with quotes from Napolean & his peers. His fellow missionaries are praised for their ability to imperonate Kip. His "Vote for Pedro" patch confuses his Mexican neighbors, which confuses my missionary brother. 'How could people not know Napolean Dynamite?' The movie gives LDS kids another movie to reference endlessly besides "The Princess Bride," so I'm sure it's sort of a relief not to hear people saying "Has anybody got a peanut?" all the time.