Posted on 01/24/2006 7:58:18 AM PST by presidio9
A television network tried to tackle religion once again, with the same old results.
NBC's controversial program, "The Book of Daniel", about an Episcopal priest named Daniel Webster who is a pill-popper with a drunken wife, drug dealing daughter, gay Republican son, and bisexual aunt, has been canceled.
You just can't make a show about "Any family USA" these days, can you? Once again, middle America gets a slap in the face.
Jesus was also a recurring character on the program. It's really too bad that the program was canceled before NBC could produce the obligatory "tonight, on a very special 'Book of Daniel'" episode where Jesus confesses his bulemia to his psychologist (Randolph Mantooth).
Goodbye to yet another shot at a fictional television program revolving around religion. Networks have tried it before, with hideous results. The more recent have included "Jesus: The Miniseries" and "Noah's Ark", which struck a factual iceberg and sank off the coast of Artistic License.
Why are so many of these movies and shows so wildly off-base and borderline insulting to any Christian?
When you consider how many of these shows come to be, it isn't surprising. This is why Mel Gibson avoided any big production companies when he made "The Passion of the Christ", but the money made by "The Passion" lures others, who should avoid it, into the genre.
At this very moment, a conversation is taking place somewhere near Hollywood. A large production company is putting together a film that we'll call "Jesus: The TV Show". The planning is going something like this:
A producer's phone rings and a speakerphone button is pushed.
"Mr. Hollywood here. Talk to me!"
"Hi, Mr. Hollywood. It's Joe Screenwriter. We've finally started production on the 'Jesus' show, and I thought you'd want to hear the finished script Rubenstein and I came up with."
"Sure. Who do we have playing Jesus, anyway?" Mr. Hollywood asks.
Papers flip, then Screenwriter says, "Matthew Perry has agreed to do it."
"Dennehy," Mr. Hollywood wonders. "What happened to the Brian Dennehy deal?"
"Well, everything was fine until Mr. Dennehy put on the sackcloth robe for run-throughs. I don't know much, but I do know that Jesus shouldn't have plumber's crack."
There is a long pause as Mr. Hollywood thinks. Joe Screenwriter can hear a pencil tapping on a pad of paper. "OK, Perry's fine. Why don't you let me hear the outline of the script you're working from ... and the Cliff's Notes version. I've got to go bail out Winona Ryder again. Good Lord, how many Saks blouses does one woman need?"
"Not sure, sir," says Screenwriter as he picks up his rough draft for "Jesus: The TV Show," flips in a few pages and begins the outline.
"In the first scene, Jesus is born, but He's not the person everyone thinks. He's actually the son of Hebrew slaves. His mother, Jochebed, played by Shelley Long, is ..."
"Wait," Mr. Hollywood interjects. "Are you getting your stories mixed up? Wasn't the mother of Jesus named Mary?"
"No, I think that was Job's mother."
"Oh."
"Anyway," Screenwriter continues, "after Shelley gives birth to Jesus, she puts the kid in a basket and sends Him down the river." Screenwriter flips a page. "At this point we're having a little subplot involving a love affair between two characters named Matthew and Sheena. Matthew is a stone carver and Sheena is his lover who, while Matthew's away carving stones, decides to explore her own homoerotic fantasies with her neighbor. Ann Heche is playing the part of the neighbor."
"I hear Heche is a complete nut job." Mr. Hollywood points out. "Can we work with her?"
"I'll put it this way," Says Screenwriter, "We could have spent $4 million to get Heather Graham, but Heche would take the part as long as we agreed to give her $50 in euro coins, a gumball machine and have a priest from the Raelian cult grant her eternal youth."
"I'll take a bargain over stability any day," points out Mr. Hollywood, as he sits back in his chair and takes another puff on a cigar. "Go on, Screenwriter."
"To make a long story short, the polar ice caps melt due to global warming, which was induced by severe ozone depletion caused by Bethlehem's Republican mayor having months earlier lifted the town's long-time ban on leaf burning. The melting ice caps flood the planet, and this prompts a guy named Jack to build an ark."
"Jack's Ark?" Mr. Hollywood questions sarcastically.
"The name 'Noah' tested horribly in focus group," Screenwriter quickly explains.
"Gotcha," Mr. Hollywood shoots back.
"So," Screenwriter continues, "the boat gets built, and Jack, the two lesbians and a bunch of animals float around for a while, get their shirts wet a lot, and make shallow and mindless social commentary in a cheap attempt to forward a liberal Hollywood political agenda."
"When does Jesus come back into play here?" asks Mr. Hollywood.
"Down the line a bit, when the people on the Ark discover Him still floating in the basket and pull Him on board. Also, in sticking to the literal interpretations of the Bible, we've got Jesus feeding five loafers with two fishes, inheriting the earth from the meek and stuff like that."
"I love it!" opines Mr. Hollywood. "It's absolutely brilliant! OK, hit me with the ending."
At that moment, a janitor, who had been outside the door listening, angrily barges in and puts forth a plea: "Have Jesus sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate and led to a cross to be crucified. The last scene should be of Jesus being resurrected three days after His death and ascending to heaven to act as Savior for all mankind."
"Buddy," says Mr. Hollywood, motioning toward the door, "in this business, we deal with facts. You do your job, we'll do ours."
EXACTLY! These shows are INTENDED to demean and disparage Jesus Christ, Christians and the Christian morality that poses such a problem to most in Hollywood.
Remember that these are series, television product written, produced and enacted by, almost routinely, incredibly liberal people -- particularly most actors and distribution employees (the executives who fund and develope the series themselves) -- and that most of those regard Christianity and Christian morality to be laughable, at worst, and worthy of "proving hypocritical" at best.
Thus, they respond favorably to projects pitched to them by liberals, projects that make them laugh, entertain THEM, things that disparage and ridicule conservatives, Christians, Christian morality, things that depict the very same things that they fantasize about when they're dreaming of their evenings...
It's an industry that is not conservative and tends to evaluate conservativism as synonymous with "bad" and thus, what they produce and staff and enact ends up being immensely foolish if not outrageously awful to most of the rest of the country.
Hollywood, the film and television series, mostly entertains themselves. It takes only one conservative with talent to influence toward the better the rest and most of the industry just wants to keep their jobs, so, it's a case of influencing for the better one show at a time, when and as possible.
The rest -- as mentioned here, this thread -- dies off because they never maintain viewer interest, and worse, their advertisers actually gain bad mention by even affiliating with the shows.
Recruiting students for film and other creative arts programs from areas outside of L.A. and N.Y. and Boston would be a good place to start to effect change, in my opinion. Along with recruiting faculty with good moral values to staff film schools...what's there now is...well, it's liberalism compounding liberalism with a large dose of "yeah, karl marx/castro/che" thrown in.
All of them? Wow.
I must be dreaming.
You're wrong about Will and Grace...it was successful, even in the Conservative States and I have a theory why...Gays were portrayed as stereotypical, sex-obsessed narcisists. Just the way middle-America likes to think Gays are. Plus, it was a very funny show. I once asked a gay friend of mine why the gay community was so fond of the show, since it did depict them in a somewhat negative light. He said that they were just happy whenever a gay character is introduced into the mainstream. So there you have it.
Excellent, succinct observation. I would also ad homo-exhausted. At this point I'm just sick and tired of it.
Daniel - fine, no loss.
The other two series both had long runs, and W&G had announced previously that this would be their last season, so it's not a cancellation.
"...Excellent, succinct observation. I would also ad homo-exhausted. At this point I'm just sick and tired of it...."
And the homos suffer from an extreme case of heterophobia.
Sometimes I wonder if people understand the word "GONE".
The intention of the producers of "All in the Family" was to mock "Archie," who was the stereotypical conservative. I recall reading years ago that the producers were horrified to learn that most Americans were sympathetic to Archie, and hated "Meathead."
"Commander in Chief" can't be far behind?
..now where was that official announcement from? The link on the blog doesn't work.
Yes, but leave it to NBC to replace it with another piece of garbage.
Sorry if I erroneously read 'victory' into your post. :)
It's been cancelled? Good news!
Touched by an Angel was for mystics and angel-worshippers. The show never proclaimed Christ - just this amorphous god that would send angels to help out certain people. The shows theology was flexible, at best.
7th Heaven is ok.
But 3 Wishes? Since when are Christians supposed to believe in "wishes"? The title alone shows that it's trying to be Christian-lite, and merely "inspirational".
And don't get me started on TBN...oh brother...
Face it, contemporary forms of media aren't meant to entertain devout Christians. Hollywood keeps trying to get it right, but they fail every single time because they fail to understand the basic precepts of Christianity and moral absolutes.
Aiden, We are the ones acting like grown ups. We didn't watch your silly show. Now go look for another job.
Like an earlier poster said, it's not just a lack of understanding, it's contempt. Hollywood would hire Hitler to film "Exodus".
I especially enjoyed the "Noah's Ark" scene when the pirates attacked the ark. That was about the point I finally gave up on network TV.
"Clueless" is way too generous a word to use when 99% of TV/Hollywood people try to depict Christian topics.
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