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sustain!
Richard Dutcher is a Mormon filmmaker. But please don't call him that. It's a label he once wore with pride, but no longer. When his films God's Army (2000) and Brigham City (2001) were big hits with Mormons, he was hailed as arguably the finest director yet to emerge from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS).
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Some day, church leaders also will understand the power and potential of film.
Imagine the potential of images to convey the deepest, most sacred doctrines of Mormonism.”
Richard Dutcher in Provo Daily Herald 4/13/04
Mr. Dutcher then goes on to say that he has left the church. I suppose he came to think his films were more important, and that he was more important. I wonder if film has any potential “to convey the deepest, most sacred doctrines of Mormonism.”
kenb
I am still a big fan and will buy the DVD, but I feel that Dutcher is becoming too convinced of his own skill to continue to learn from others' reactions to his films.
I do like the Best Two Years though... It's got some of the same problems, but I thought the music was great, the message was good (despite the slapstick along the way), and darn it, Holland is just fun to look at.
I hope his life goes well.
I don't support this. Not because he's decided to leave the church, but for other reasons:
(1) His statements (hear and elsewhere) make it clear that Dutcher has just been using LDS status as a way to make money (the length of time he has been "disaffected" depends on which interview you're reading and who he's talking to). He remained amazingly Mormon...just until Larry Miller pulled the cash back. (2) He's not been entirely honest in the whole pursuit of the dollar. Did you love his "Well, yea, I tell Mormons it's a sequel so they will buy tickets, but I tell non-Mormons it's just another movie so THEY will buy tickets? (3) He has, for some time, impugned all other LDS filmmakers and elevating himself as some kind of unapproachable pillar of film making. Huh? (4) He harps on the idea that LDS folks turned from his films BECAUSE they had been so let down (after his incredibly stellar presentations) by every OTHER filmmaker--never seeming to consider the idea that maybe some of his movies stunk. (5) He claims to be portraying some kind of real, honest version of Mormondom (that, he also claims, no one else had the ethical backbone to do), while at the same time making films of utterly extreme LDS positions as well as NON-LDS positions. (I first heard the "come home with honor or don't come home at all" story as a MILITARY story as a kid--now it's the heartless missionary parent.) It's not just real-life. It's extreme all around. (Wasn't it the bishop in Brigham City who was the killer?) (6) The extreme positions he presents--those that he loves to deem "edgy"--are not much more than looking for the worst possible way to present Mormons. (7) So much inaccurate stuff in the stories that it's kind of incredible. (Did you catch the senior companion who approved baptism for an implied murderer--after about an hour's worth of interviewing?)
I saw States on opening night, due to a request from Dutcher's wife to a group we mutually belonged to. I found a few things interesting and well-done (particularly the contrast between the "death circle" and the "confirmation circle." Most I found to be so over-the-top as to be ridiculous and some offensive.