Jesus People Nashville!

If you’re reading this, you probably already know that JESUS PEOPLE did a premiere in Nashville last week during Gospel Music Association (GMA) week. We wanted the chance to present the film to a Christian audience and couldn’t think of a better time to do it than this annual convention of Christian artists, radio stations, managers, publicists, labels, and media.

We wanted somewhere cool and kitschy and found the perfect venue in the Belcourt Theater in Hillsboro Village. Specializing in indie films and centrally located in an artsy part of town, the Belcourt was a perfect location for us! Our theater had about 350 seats available.

Though we had all worked tirelessly on inviting people, working our connections in town and the industry, and doing everything but begging people to come out (I may have begged a little…), we felt good about our expected crowd, but these things are always uncertain. Our RSVP’s indicated we would have a solid showing, but we still didn’t know exactly how many people to expect (Would artists follow through on their RSVP? Would people show up who had seen the Belcourt’s ad on their website? Would everyone decide to go to a random showcase at the last minute?).

The screening was planned for 7:30 p.m. sharp, with doors opening at 7:00. When we arrived on site at about 6:20, there were already people lined up outside the doors! … Okay, so it was, like, three people, but it was still a line! Artists were also showing up early, though many of them decided to hang out at a restaurant down the street until doors opened (can’t blame them for that!).

Speaking of artists, it was really encouraging to see friends like Scott Dente, Greg Long of Avalon, and Ben Cordonero of Salvador come out to support me and the project. Other artists included Aaron Shust, Cindy Morgan, Wayne Kirkpatrick, Steve Taylor, Margaret Becker, Tammy Trent, and many others! (I’m sure Dan and Jason can add more to the list!) We also had a really nice turn-out of label reps and publicists.

All in all, there were somewhere between 250-300 people in the audience…not too bad! The theater felt really full and you could feel the energy in the crowd from the first moment.

We all went into the screening knowing that the potential for offense was present. Obviously, the film is not made with the intention of being offensive, but you never know how people will react when jokes hit really close to home. Maybe they’ll be the rock stars who count “This Is Spinal Tap” among their favorite films or maybe they’ll be Scientologists who cry cease-and-desist on the creators of SouthPark. You just never know.

For this particular screening, it seemed like the jokes were well appreciated. People laughed from beginning to end – and not just chuckled here and there, but literally howled with laughter at some lines and situations. Granted, there were also a few audible gasps and a few moments of uncertainty (“You’re a big boy for an AIDS baby!”), but overall, I think people had the exact reaction we were hoping for – they thought it was funny and it made them think.

All in all, I felt really great about the whole evening. Who knows what will “come of it” in a business sense (Was there anyone in the audience who could distribute the film? Will we all become household names over the next few weeks? How many of those in attendance would actually buy a DVD?), but the night was a success and it was my pleasure to be part of it.

On a personal note, this may be the end of the JESUS PEOPLE road for me until something happens with distribution. At this point, I’d have to pass on any major travel (getting pregnanter by the day and all…), so unless we do another screening in the South (ahem, Charlotte, ahem!), this may have been my last opportunity to see the film with a large audience (again…until the awesomely major distribution deal comes through, of course!). Working on the movie, meeting and making friends with the people involved, and having the opportunity to see it through to completion has been one of the highlights of my life. I feel so honored to have been so randomly included and can’t imagine a better “first film” experience.

So, thanks. Thanks to all of those who attended not just the Nashville screening, but the others we’ve done as well. And thanks especially to Dan, Rajeev, Jason, Damon, Edi, Lindsay, Rich, Joel, Karen, Chris, Kevin K., Sambrells, Katie, Jim, Garrett, Kevin C., Mandy, Ryan, and Pete. You guys were and are awesome.

Peace. Out.

I vs. We

I’m currently reading “The Enchantress of Florence” by Salman Rushdie. I’m about 50 pages in and haven’t quite decided if I’m enjoying it or not, but the passage below really struck me as I was reading. I’ve recently been thinking more about community, what it means to be part of a community, and how much responsibility I have to the (chosen and unchosen) communities in which I find myself. There’s a lot more than that discussed here (ideas about class, monarchs, and more), but I’ve italicized the items that particularly spoke to me. These questions have stuck with me over the past few days. In particular, I’ve been going over the self-as-community line. It’s ended up leading to thoughts like…Should my first thought of myself be as an individual or as a part of something greater than just my self? Can I be a community all to myself (based on the plural selves idea)? Where are the healthy boundaries between “I” and “we”?

I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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[The emperor], Akbar, had never referred to himself as “I,” not even in private, not even in anger or dreams. He was – what else could he be? – “we.” He was the definition, the incarnation of the We. He had been born into plurality. When he said “we,” he naturally and truly meant himself as an incarnation of all his subjects, of all his cities and lands and rivers and mountains and lakes, as well as all the animals and plants and trees within his frontiers, and also the birds that flew overhead and the mordant twilight mosquitoes and the nameless monsters in their underworld lairs, gnawing slowly at the roots of things; he meant himself as the sum total of all his victories, himself as containing the characters, the abilities, the histories, perhaps even the souls of his decapitated or merely pacified opponents; and, in addition, he meant himself as the apogee of his people’s past and present, and the engine of their future.

This “we” was what it meant to be a king – but commoners, he now allowed himself to consider, in the interests of fairness, and for the purposes of debate, no doubt occasionally thought of themselves as plural, too.

Were they wrong? Or (O traitorous thought!) was he? Perhaps this idea of self-as-community was what it meant to be a being in the world, any being; such a being being, after all, inevitably a being among other beings, a part of the beingness of all things. Perhaps plurality was not exclusively a king’s prerogative, perhaps it was not, after all, his divine right…[I]t was accordingly inevitable that the men and women over whom he ruled also conceived of themselves as “we”s. They saw themselves, perhaps, as plural entities made up of themselves plus their children, mothers, aunts, employers, co-worshippers, fellow workers, clans, and friends. They, too, saw their selves as multiple, one self that was the father of their children, another that was their parents’ child; they knew themselves to be different with their employers than they were at home with their wives – in short, they were all bags of selves, bursting with plurality, just as he was. Was there then no essential difference between the ruler and the ruled? And now his original question reasserted itself in a new and startling form: if his many-selved subjects managed to think of themselves in the singular rather than plural, could he, too, be an “I”? Could there be an “I” that was simply oneself? Were there such naked, solitary “I”s buried beneath the overcrowded “we”s of the earth?

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Peace. Out.