MARTIN'S TBN WATCHby Martin Wagner, your smilin' A.E. cohost
MARTIN'S TBN WATCH
by Martin Wagner, your smilin' A.E. cohost
Hello again, Trinity fans--you are fans, right?. I'm back, after a much needed summer vacation. Well, in point of fact, I wasn't really on vacation (had a quite a lot of work to do, in fact, including setting up a new website as an outlet combining two other hobbies: book reviewing and science fiction; if your recreational reading tastes run to fantasy and SF, go here), but at the very least it was a vacation from TBN. And I can't tell you how spoiled I've gotten, kids. Three months without loud clothes, bad music, and Benny Hinn's scary hairpiece. It's enough to make you believe in Heaven!
But I've returned, and just in time, too. As a subscriber to TimeWarner Cable's digital channel lineup, I now have the joy of TBN 24 hours a day (prior to the channel realignment, TBN had to time-share with Odyssey, which I fondly refer to as the Alf Rerun Network). Not only that, there are now four other full-time Christian television networks running alongside TBN, which ought to sadden anyone truly concerned about the prevalence of anti-intellectualism and superstition in America today. Some of these are TBN wannabees, others barely have production values greater than that of your local access channel. But they're there. Oh happy day. Whether or not I choose to discuss anything on any of those channels remains to be seen; but for now, let's see what they've been up to at the House of Crouch, shall we?
Because you, uh, demanded it...Omega Code 2!
In his frantic quest to become a Hollywood player, Matt Crouch, president of TBN's oddly named film production company Gener8Xion Entertainment, decided to hold nothing back when it came time to make a sequel to 1999's The Omega Code (see my January column). The stated aim of Omega Code was to transform movie theatres into churches, converting millions to Christianity who have no desire ever to walk into a church. It might have worked (and even that's a stretch) if Omega Code had been a good, or even reasonably watchable, movie. Trouble is, when your film is, in the words of Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide, "glorified direct-to-video cheese that somehow wangled theatrical bookings," it's the kind of thing that puts a damper on your proselytizing plans.
Matt Crouch, however, never got beyond that opening weekend when Omega cracked the top ten (at #10) with the highest per-screen average of that particular weekend's top twenty films. That's spelled "blockbuster" to him and presto, a sequel went into development. Since that's what all major studios do with their big movies, it only made sense for TBN to follow the same pattern.
Step one: More money!
Jeff Dee, our illustrious A.E. host, has this theory that religion is really just entertainment. I don't know that I quite agree with that, but I understand his point. Sure, devoutly religious people take their beliefs frighteningly seriously (if the number of obscene phone calls we get from Christians on the show is any indication), but it might be more accurate to say that religion is entertainment that doesn't know it's entertainment. If the purpose of entertainment (as distinguished from, say, the fine arts) is escapism, providing its audience with a way out of their humdrum, day-to-day lives for a couple of hours, then it's easy to see people who are intensely religious as seeking escapism 24/7. The more a person wraps himself up in his religious beliefs, the more those beliefs play a part in that person's everyday decision-making processes, the more you're looking at a person who has taken the bold first step towards living in their own world, and fleeing the real one. Entertainment, all the time. And TBN has catered to that for 28 years.
TBN's cinematic extravaganzas seek to carry that principle over into the world outside your living room. And yet there's nothing like seeing weird, supernatural beliefs depicted in a strictly literalist manner to make you realize just how kookball they can be. At $20 million, the reported production budget of Megiddo: Omega Code 2 is more than twice that of its precursor and will probably make the film one of the highest-budgeted independent productions of the year. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon only cost $15 million, but then, the average Adam Sandler fartfest runs in the neighborhood of $50M. So what did all of the extra money go to? A-list stars? Better craft services? Not hardly. If you said "CGI special effects," you win the kewpie doll!
Megiddo is TBN's attempt to create a summer event movie on the order of Jurassic Park or The Mummy Returns. The Mummy Returns, incidentally, is an interesting point of comparison, for in a lot of ways they seem to be similar films. Both TMR and Megiddo rely heavily on digital effects and action scenes to propel their narratives. TMR gives you animated mummies out the wazoo; Megiddo features all sorts of digital devastation (including a destruction of the Roman Collosseum perhaps more intended to evoke memories of Independence Day than to serve as any kind of payback for all those lions way back when), plus a climactic appearance by a fully computer-generated Satan. If there's one point at which you could draw a distinct difference between Megiddo and The Mummy Returns--and there are several; I just need the one to make my point--it's that TMR knows it's a fantasy film. Megiddo doesn't. Megiddo thinks it's true.
You begin to realize the distance between the mind of the rationalist and that of the Christian fundie when you consider that Matt Crouch and the folks behind Megiddo honestly think that this CGI Satan represents a real guy! He's not just some cool villian out of a video game, folks (and the shots I've seen on TBN look exactly like Playstation game screenshots, gang; of course, to be fair, they may have been unfinished), he's the real deal, an actual arch-enemy of the human race who exists in a real place called Hell with all his little pitchfork-wielding imps. And once you see him on the movie screen, you're going to be so freaked out at the horrible reality of Satan that you'll convert right away. Uh-huh.
It reminds me of a comment some Christian made on alt.atheism not long ago, to the effect that all you had to do was read the New Testament and Jesus would become real to you. I suppose if I read a Spider-Man comic book, Spider-Man will become "real" to me, too.
The problem, as I'm sure most of you have already seen, is that a CGI Satan isn't going to make an atheist believe Satan exists any more than the CGI dragon in Dragonheart made us believe dragons exist. A special effect is a special effect, and however convincing it may appear onscreen, however well it may serve the film's storyline, it's just a special effect; the minute someone starts believing that a special effect is a real thing, you're looking at serious mental illness. But although TBN knows that its target audience is the Christian moviegoer, they continue to place great emphasis on their wish for everyone to bring their "unsaved" friends. As good or bad as it may turn ot to be as a film (and since I haven't seen it, of course, I hasten to point out I'm not judging its dramatic merits here), Megiddo, in the end, can't possibly be anything more than entertainment. It will take a lot more than a movie to present a convincing argument to an atheist.
Step #2: Who do we get to direct?
As someone who's very involved with film myself, I began
to take a real interest in who Matt Crouch might have chosen to direct this
cinematic epic of his. Obviously it wouldn't be an A-lister; even if guys
like Tony (Top Gun) Scott or John (Die Hard) McTiernan were
in fact a) Christians and b) available, TBN couldn't afford them. So who
would get the job? Clearly, since the script involves complex battle scenes,
explosions, and visual effects, you'd think a producer might want to get
a director whose track record evidenced some experience with such things,
right? Right. So Megiddo's director, Brian Trenchard-Smith, is all
the more puzzling a case.
A quick IMDb search on Trenchard-Smith introduces us to a guy with a quarter-century of filmmaking experience, at no time during which has a theatrical release of any significant note appeared with his name on it. Instead, his filmography is loaded with made-for-TV movies, episodes of TV shows, and low-budget, direct-to-video schlock, very little of which strikes one as being particularly Christian. Now, none of this is damning in and of itself, it's just strange. After all, I can imagine that there must be a decent number of eager young Christian filmmakers out there who'd love to take a crack at a big production like Megiddo, and even if their past films consist only of little video movies on the shelves of Christian stores, at least they'd be no less qualified than Trenchard-Smith.
So my curiosity was piqued. And, like any good writer (he said modestly), I went for answers where I thought I could get them: I called Gener8Xion Entertainment and, putting on my journalist's hat, asked them why a director known for films like Atomic Dog, Night of the Demons 2 and Leprechaun 4: In Space struck Matt Crouch as being The Director for Megiddo.
I ended up talking to a nice fellow who identified himself
only as "Roosevelt" and who seemed to have a good sense of humor
as I rattled off the absurd titles of previous Trenchard-Smith opuses, which,
if you took a look at the man's IMDb bio, isn't exactly Kubrickian in stature.
Roosevelt told me, in a halting tone that kind of made it sound like he
was making it all up as he went, that Trenchard-Smith's track record didn't
really enter into the decision-making process. Trenchard-Smith, said Roosevelt,
"has Matt's heart," and could give Matt what he was looking for
on film. All of which points to Matt Crouch being a hands-on, control-oriented
producer who simply looks for a director who will follow instructions, rather
than pursue his own artistic muse like those hoity-toity big name A-list
bozos like Fincher and Cameron.
Okay, fine, but that still comes down to track record, doesn't it? So now the question was, can Brian Trenchard-Smith direct a movie well at all? Can he create palpable dramatic tension? Can he line up a shot? Can he engross you in the storyline so that you are able to overlook other weaknesses in the film; say, an indifferent performance or a flawed script? To answer this question, I just rented one of the guy's movies. In my humble estimation, I must say...I hope Matt Crouch didn't pay too much for Brian Trenchard-Smith's services.
The movie I found (I had to look; it's not like video stores section off a Trenchard-Smith section like they do for Hitchcock) was a little made-for-TV sci-fi product called Atomic Dog. The story is essentially a dopy 1950's B-movie updated to the late 90's. A janitor's puppy is abandoned at a nuclear power plant when it is shut down for "low level radiation leaks." Instead of doing what he'd do in real life, which is suffer a protracted and agonizing death, the puppy grows into a Superdog with human intelligence and the ability to leap nine-foot fences at a single bound. Some years later a family moves in to a house in town, evidently not caring that it's just down the road from an evacuated nuclear plant. Atomic Dog turns up one day and lures away the family's golden retriever, whom he impregnates. (Insert joke here.) Mama dog wanders home, gives birth, then dies, making it all a bit depressing for family viewing. Then Atomic Dog comes back and tries to claim his pups, and all heck, sorta, breaks loose.
Okay, stupid story, though it means well. (Atomic Dog isn't bad, just misunderstood.) The problem for me was that the film was technically agonizing. Trenchard-Smith's compositions are utilitarian to a fault (indeed, it's probably too flattering to call them compositions at all), and his approach to the scare scenes was utterly conventional. Uh-oh, is Atomic Dog hiding in the closet? Quick, open the door! Whew, he's not in there...look out, here he comes from the other room! Really, there wasn't any direction going on at all in Atomic Dog; it was just the work of a guy following a shot list and yelling "Action!" at the right moment.
In the end, Trenchard-Smith's pedestrian work made it obvious why he was chosen to direct Megiddo. What producer wouldn't want a director who simply does what he's told?
Step #3: Sell that puppy!
Finally, we get to the part of the column where my Christian readers and I usually see eye-to-eye (yes, I have some). And that is: what's annoying about TBN's cinematic exercises is that they claim to be altruistic efforts to spread the gospel, but in fact are really motivated by the same thing motivating every other movie production company in the world: the almighty dollar. I'm not saying that there's nothing at all to TBN's desire to use their films to proselytize. But with $20 mill laid out for this adventure, TBN really has something serious to lose if the movie fails to play well. Even for TBN, $20 million is a lot of money, particularly with a potentially devastating copyright and trademark infringement lawsuit over the first film still pending in the courts. (January column again.) The mainstream press categorically ignored Gener8Xion's last movie, Carman: The Champion; the film did less than $2 million at the box office. And the non-TBN-produced Left Behind, with twice the hype and twice the screens (over 800 to Megiddo's 400), opened at #17 and barely cracked $3 million, although it had already made its money on home video. (Interestingly, Roosevelt made a remark during our conversation that sounded like a thinly veiled smear of Left Behind, to the effect that Left Behind was the kind of film most people think of when they think of Christian movies, and they wanted Megiddo to be "different.") Conventional wisdom in the business dictates that a movie needs to bring in anywhere from twice to three times its production costs to turn a profit; this would mean a $40 million to $60 million box-office take for Megiddo. Not inconceivable, but history doesn't favor them. To do that kind of business a movie really needs a star and a thousand-screen rollout. Then again, who'd have thought some cruddy home video about three idiots lost in the woods would have turned into a colossal blockbuster? You never know.
I personally think Megiddo will be a hoot. Even if the CGI Satan alone weren't hilarious enough, you get Michael York, an actor so hammy he practically has the Oscar Meyer logo tattooed on his forehead, saying lines like "Chaos only makes things a little more [pause] interesting" and "Oh, I'll always have a chance [raise eyebrows] in hell" and, in perhaps the movie's biggest laugh-getter, yelling at God to "Bring it ooooonnn!" while comets rain down on the city surrounding him. (How could God miss?) Honestly, could Megiddo be any dopier than your average summer idiot-movie? No. But it won't be any smarter either.
I'll wait for video.
Next month's column will be posted 10/7/01, so I'll see you all again then. And don't forget to watch Jeff Dee and myself on The Atheist Experience every Sunday afternoon at 5 PM on TimeWarner Cable Channel 16 in Austin!
Go without gods,
Martin Wagner
© 2001
martinwagner66@excite.com
