Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

I believe God has given us a vision and it’s very clear and now we’re seeing that vision fulfilled before our very eyes… If you ask me, this was the message of Christ — it was to dream big…

I wanna do something like the Titanic. Either it sinks, and it’s the biggest flop you’ve ever seen in your life, or it sails and it just blows everybody’s mind.

- Pastor Richard Gazowsky

I sit and ponder… is this a joke? Is this serious? This can’t be real. I mean, could somebody (hell, so many somebodies!) be this delusional and not be under a doctor’s care?

Did you see Lost in La Mancha? (If not, you should.) This looks like a smaller scale disaster of the same sort. I doubt I will feel as much empathy for the travails of the director of the film within this film as I did for Terry Gilliam in Lost in La Mancha because Gilliam is, at least, an artist. This subject of this documentary, on the other hand, is obviously a loooooooooooooooooooon. If you know me, you gotta know that this film will be at the top of my list of films I hope to see at After Dark!

From a SXSW ‘07 interview that Eric Snider did with the documentary’s director, Michael Jacobs:

Snider: How did this film get rolling at the beginning? Give us a brief history from writing to production to post….
Jacobs: I read an article in a local publication about a Pastor who had a church production company, and was going to make a biblical science fiction movie that would redefine the Hollywood epic. So I went to church like a good Jew and found myself sucked right into this bizarre yet addictive world of Pentecostal filmmaking. I was granted access to record their world and I never looked back. Until I had to edit 130 hours of material. 18 months, 4 test screenings, 6 arguments with my editor, and 100 really bad nights of sleep later and I had an 88 minute documentary that reflected the vision I had for the doc on my first day at church.

Apparently Pastor Richard Gazowsky received a message from God (not this one). And God told Rich to make a biblical science fiction film. Huh. Go figger. I must confess that it never even occurred to me that God might be a movie buff. I wonder what God’s favourite movie is. Use the comments section if you have any ideas…