New Political Documentary Fall 2010: Grilled Cheesus and Other Observations

Deliver us from Evil is a tough subject.

If you're a Go-To-Church-Every-Sunday kind of Catholic, seeing your belief system sullied by pedophiles preying on families of good faith is hard to take. To absorb that a representative of the Church can cause that degree of widespread gut-wrenching hurt is almost impossible as it goes directly against everything a good Catholic is supposedly taught. Top it off with the Higher Ups willfully ignoring, at best, to intentionally covering up, at worst, such behavior can make one question their lifetime belief system.

And therefore most times it's easier to ignore than to accept. (Totally off topic, but that's why I refused to read any baseball related material after the Giants lost on Friday night.)

For non-Catholics it's abhorrent behavior minus the crisis of faith. Slightly easier to comprehend, albeit still sickening.

While the movie's focus purports to be Oliver O'Grady and his ~20 years of abuse, Amy Berg also touches on Cardinal Roger Mahoney's role in allowing O'Grady to continue with the Church despite repeated violations.

And that, my friend, is making an enemy out of a formidable wide-reaching organization.

So here you have a controversial film that more likely than not Catholics don't want to see (although they should), victims of abuse probably don't want to relive, and then maybe a large portion of the rest are saying this has nothing to do with me. How do you promote it? Or more importantly, what impact do you want the film to have?

According to the film's web site, the director, "after a lot of deliberation" decided to put something online. She expresses "interest in your thoughts on this subject". Unfortunately it appears she's not maintaining such a hotbed of conversation and the comment section is closed though I've come across several broken links that imply stuff was once there. And that is a downside to multiple outlets to promote distribution or discussion: Upkeep. Years ago in an interview an indie musician was describing the process of maintaining a fanbase given his lack of wide distribution. It took him ~6 hours a day to "converse" with fans via web, email, social media. He noted it was a trade off; yes he had control of the message and distribution but it was also a lot of time spent making sure everyone was happy.

According to this video Amy Berg took on the topic after four years of following the story for CNN. It was her convincing O'Grady to be interviewed on camera that the film had the punch it needed. So I interpret that, as does the interviewer, as her following a story rather than a life long passion a la Father Tom Doyle.

As far as promoting the movie, it appears that Amy Berg chose the Festival route as well as doing quite a few online interviews. I'll attribute that to the still nascent "rulebook" of interactive/social media promotions.

As far as the crazies, the discussion groups about the movie I've come across including beliefnet.com, catholic.com, philvaz.com are all for the most part very civilized. But notably are also third party conversations. I can't help but wonder if that's a function of early adoption or the sites themselves. According to the catholic.com discussion, Lionsgate.com did have a discussion forum on the movie, but that too is gone.

Sorry this isn't pithy. Or humorous. Or witty.

The topic is a tough one. My mom's an avid Catholic and I'm, well, more like Kurt in Glee's Grilled Cheesus episode. The half dozen conversations we've had on the topic have always left me more confused than enlightened. But it's her belief and my choice.

Meanwhile the questions seemed much more "write a business plan involving social, online, digital media to promote a film" than "how do you feel about the right or left winged discussion forums".

Mandatory Citation:

"Viral distribution is about creating something with enough entertainment value that someone wants to share it with a friend. Nobody knows what makes something go viral. That’s what makes it so challenging. We’re in the silent film era of the online medium. "

Gregg Spiridellis, The Future of Web Video

PS. Go Giants!!!