An open letter to Ken Harris about
his letter to Kieth Merrill
From: Preston Hunter
Webmaster www.LDSfilm.com
I did not agree with everything Kieth Merrill said in his article yesterday, but I also disagree with many of Ken Harris’ suggestions.
If we did things Ken’s way there would never be any LDS Cinema. Ken would have insisted on waiting for Spike Lee to come around instead of letting Oscar Micheaux or Melvin Van Peebles make any films. The problem with that is, Van Peebles would not have been able to do what he did had it not been for Micheaux, and Spike Lee would not have been able to do what he has done had it not been for Van Peebles. Make no mistake about it: the early films of Micheaux and Van Peebles (and maybe even their best films!) were inferior by the production standards of the day. These films do not necessarily speak to a broader audience. They don’t necessarily hold up when looked at
today.
But they gave voice to a people, and they broke barriers on the Silver Screen – barriers that needed to be broken. Blacks were broom pushers, maids and comic relief before black filmmakers made their own films. Micheaux, Van Peebles and probably Spike Lee are all insufficiently talented and well-funded for Ken Harris’ standards. But fortunately for black moviegoers and black filmmakers, they went ahead and did the best that they could anyway, without waiting for the approval of Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock
and Akira Kurosawa.
I would ask of Ken Harris, where are the realistically portrayed Latter-day Saints in films going to come from? Brigham Young: Frontiersman was released in 1940. That’s over fifty years ago! In between then and the beginning of LDS Cinema in 2000 with the release of God’s Army, what did we see of ourselves from Hollywood movies? Very little, and essentially nothing good. A polyandrous wife in Paint Your Wagon. A porn star in Orgazmo. A polygamist serial killer in Messenger of Death. The butt of Ellen DeGeneres’s jokes in Goodbye Lover. A closeted senator in Advise and Consent. but mostly just nothing. Hollywood movies have Catholic heroes, Jewish heroes, Protestant heroes, GLBT heroes, Feminist heroes, and more aplenty. And the unspoken open secret is: these characters are usually in films made by Catholic filmmakers, Jewish filmmakers, Protestant filmmakers, GLBT filmmakers, Feminist filmmakers, etc.
You can wait all you want, but unless Latter-day Saints make their own films, they’ll be in for a long, long wait before even two percent of Hollywood movie characters are Latter-day Saints, to match the two percent of the United States population that we comprise. Now, Ken may not even be thinking about Latter-day Saint characters. He
may only be thinking about Latter-day Saint values. But when he suggests that Latter-day Saint filmmakers must hone their craft before moving “inside” the Hollywood entertainment industry, he’s simply ignoring history. Latter-day Saints are inside, and they’ve always been inside. That’s where Hollywood’s family-friendly films and well made films with good values come from: Latter-day Saints and others with ethical, spiritual, religious values.
Latter-day Saints were there helping direct, write and craft essentially all of the early, middle period and recent Disney animated films, all of Disney’s first forays live features and TV series. Two of Disney’s “Nine Old Men” were Mormons, as was the creator of Disney’s live action empire, as is the current president of Disney animated features. Lady and the Tramp, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Melody Time, Fun and Fancy Free, Bambi, Fantasia, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Pinocchio, The Black Cauldron, The Fox and the Hound, Mulan, Swiss Family Robinson, The Shaggy D.A., Old Yeller-Latter-day Saints were involved in making all of these. And TV shows as well: “Eight is Enough,” “The Waltons,” “Zorro,” “Little House on the Prairie,” “Promised Land,”.”Flipper.” “Diagnosis Murder,” “Gunsmoke,” “How the West Was Won.” This is just scratching the surface of Hollywood productions where Latter-day Saints were involved in doing their best to convey their values. A lot of it might seem schlocky or kitschy by today’s standards. But not all it have been mediocre.
Should all of the Latter-day Saints who worked on these productions have refrained from doing so, simply because they had not yet achieved a zenith in their artistic capabilities, along with studio-proof, uneditable prestige, which would allow them fulfill every letter of Pres. Kimball’s challenge?
None of these films and TV shows were successful in transforming American culture as a whole and spawning the new golden age of sophisticated artistry and positive values that Brother Harris and myself both hope for. But Latter-day Saints were there in the past, and they are there now, doing what they can to counterbalance the negative and dark impulses of many others in Hollywood, usually working alongside people not of our faith, many of whom are also trying to do the right thing according to their own standards and abilities.
