Movie Churches is confused: Is this old or new?

Hail Caesar (2016)
I’ve watched the Coen Brothers’ Hail Caesar a number of times, but this time I watched it after watching some of the Biblical epics satirized in the film, particularly Quo Vadis and The Robe. Among other things, Hail Caesar presents a compelling argument for why such films are so very bland.

The film follows Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a studio fixer whose job is to keep the worst antics of the studio’s stars out of the newspapers and to ensure that the studio’s releases don’t offend the “average American.”

The film opens in a church, with Eddie in the confessional booth. Eddie is a frequent occupant of the confessional, concerned about his smoking habit and white lies to his wife but showing very little concern for the lies and crimes that are a part of his job.

His current task is to make sure the studio’s new Biblical epic, Hail Caesar, is not offensive to religious audiences. As a Catholic, Mannix naturally thinks of bringing in a priest but adds, “Let’s also invite a Rabbi and a Protestant padre of some kind.” Which he does, along with an Orthodox priest.

Mannix addresses the clergymen (and they are all men): “We don’t want to send it to market except in the certainty that it will not offend any reasonable American, regardless of faith or creed. Now that 's where you come in. You’ve read the script; I wanna know if the theological elements of the story are up to snuff.”

The response of the Eastern Orthodox priest (Aramazd Stepanian) is not really to the point, “I thought the chariot scene was fakey. How is he going to jump from one chariot to the other, going full speed?”

Mannix is trying to sell the men on the power of movies to educate and exhort people (“Yes, and entertainment,” he adds with a winning smile) and particularly on this production which he insists will be the best telling ever of the story of Jesus. 

Again, the Orthodox priest answers, “Perhaps, sir, you are forgetting the telling in the Holy Bible.” 

Eddie answers, “You’re quite right, Patriarch. The Bible, of course, is terrific.” (High praise indeed.)

Eventually, Eddie asks, “As for the religious aspect, does the depiction of Jesus Christ cut the mustard?”

The Catholic priest (Robert Pike Daniel) answers, “Well, the nature of Christ is not quite as simple as your photoplay would have it.”

“How so, Father?” Eddie asks.

“It’s not the case, simply, that Christ is God or God Christ…” The priest responds.

“You can say that again,” explodes the rabbi (Robert Picardo), “The Nazarene was not God!”

“He was not not God,” the Orthodox priest interjects.

“He was a man!” the rabbi insists.

“Part God,” adds the Protestant (Allan Havey).

“No, sir!” answers the rabbi.

“Rabbi, all of us have a little bit of God in us, don’t we?” asks Eddie, seeking common ground.

When the Catholic priest insists the important thing is to show that Jesus is the Son of God, the rabbi responds that God doesn’t have children. The priest answers, “God has children.”

The rabbi gets sarcastic, “What? And a dog? A collie, maybe? God doesn’t have children. He’s a bachelor. And very angry.” 

The Catholic priest answers, “No! No! He used to be angry!” 

The rabbi asks, “What? He got over it?”

The Protestant butts in, “You worship the God of another age!” 

“Who has no love!” adds the priest. 

“Not true,” the rabbi responds, “He likes Jews.”

(I must interrupt here to say the theology of the Catholic priest and Protestant minister is going to dock them some Steeples in our clergy rating. Christianity actually teaches that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New are one and the same.)

The Catholic priest makes another shot at explaining Jesus to Eddie saying, “It’s the foundation of our belief that Christ is most properly referred to as the Son of God. It’s the Son of God who takes the sins of the world upon Himself, so that the rest of God’s children, we imperfect beings, through faith, may enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Not a bad little Gospel presentation.)

Eddie asks, “So, God is...split?”

“Yes! And no,” says the Catholic priest.

“There is unity in division,” says the Orthodox Priest.

“And division in unity,” says the Protestant.

“I’m not sure I follow, padre,” says Mannix.

“Young man, you don’t follow for a very simple reason,” the rabbi tells him, “These men are screwballs.”

Now I wouldn’t call these men screwballs, but for Christian clergymen, they seem to have a pretty poor understanding of Christology, or at best aren’t very good at explaining who Jesus is. Orthodox Christianity teaches Jesus was and is fully God and fully Man. None of the Christian clergymen expressed this doctrine.

Perhaps the real problem was the Christian clergymen going along with the idea of a presentation of the Gospel as uncontroversial. According to the Apostle Paul, the Gospel has always been a scandal, a stumbling block for the Jews, and foolishness to the Gentiles.

To tell a story of the Gospel in a way that is uncontroversial neuters the story and makes it rather dull. But Eddie’s concern is making money for the studio and protecting the business. Even though his Catholic faith is important to him, he doesn’t consider staying true to the Gospel as part of his job.

But that is one of the most endearing things about Eddie, his devotion to his work. Throughout the film, he considers leaving the studio and taking a more cushy and financially lucrative job in the aerospace industry, but a talk with his priest (as far as we can tell, not the priest in the focus group) reminds him that his job makes people happy and God wants people to be happy. So he stays at the studio because he believes it is what God has called him to do.

So while the presentation of the clergy at the studio meeting is less than impressive (though quite funny), the care that Eddie receives from his priest keeps the Movie Churches rating for the church and the clergy in the film at a rather respectable Three Steeples.

Crime Month Reminds us: YOLO

You Only Live Once (1937)

“Father Dolan is for everybody!” 

It’s hard to find a more ringing clergy endorsement than the words of Eddie Taylor (Henry Fonda) in praise of the prison priest in 1937’s You Only Live Once. The film is the second American film made by the great Austrian/German director Fritz Lang, who had already made great films in Germany like Metropolis and M. 

Though baptized a Catholic as a baby, Lang had Jewish heritage and he worried about the rise of the Nazis. This fear intensified when the regime began to censor his films, so he left Germany for the United States in 1933. It is interesting that Lang’s first two American films are quite critical of the American justice system, almost as if he was testing whether he would be able to practice the freedom of expression that was becoming impossible in his homeland. After making Fury, he made this film, the story of an ex-con who falls in love and marries his public defender’s secretary (echoed in the Coen brothers’ Raising Arizona where an ex-con marries a prison guard.)

But that ex-con, Eddie Taylor (Henry Fonda), can’t keep a job. The man that hires him out of prison uses the first possible excuse to fire the “jailbird;” Eddie is frustrated that he must rely on the income of his wife, Joan (Sylvia Sidney). He is tempted to return to a life of crime, and his former gang offers him a job. He resists the temptation, but when his former gang's heist goes wrong and six men are murdered, the gang frames Eddie for the killings.

Eddie is convicted of the murders and sentenced to death by electrocution, bringing him back to Father Dolan (William Gargan), the chaplain at the prison. At the start of the film, Father Dolan urged the parole board to give Eddie a chance and helped him gain his freedom.

Now that Eddie's back in prison, Father Dolan encourages him not to give up. He urges him to hope in his wife and hope in God, but Eddie becomes increasingly bitter. Father Dolan assures Eddie that he will be going to Heaven (with a Universalist theology which is quite different from my theology and is rejected by Eddie -- for very different reasons from mine).

The night before his execution, Eddie receives a gun that's been smuggled in, and Eddie takes hostages. As he tries to escape, investigators on the outside discover evidence that clears Eddie of the murders. Eddie is granted a pardon, and the warden tells Father Dolan. The priest tries to convince Eddie that he's been granted his freedom, but Eddie thinks it’s all a trick to make give up his gun.

With Father Dolan as his hostage, Eddie makes his way to the prison gate. When gunfire breaks out, Eddie inadvertently shoots the priest. If Father Dolan should cry out that he's been shot, the guards will come down on Eddie. Instead, the priest decides to remain quiet and give Eddie a chance to escape and live his life. Father Dolan acts out the words of Jesus in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this; to lay down one’s life for a friend.”

Early in the film, when Eddie’s criminal friends argue that Father Dolan was just another cog in the prison system, Eddie said that the priest was concerned about everyone, including the cons: “Father is for everybody!” And that is why the priest earns our highest Movie Churches rating of Four Steeples.

On the Small Screen in North Dakota

From what I could find, there are a dozen films set in North Dakota; just three of those were actually filmed in the state.  Fortunately, one of those three is the film the film we watched. It’s also the one film people are likely to have heard of, the Coen brothers’ Fargo. Much of the film takes place in Minnesota, but the title tips the film into North Dakota territory.

The film tells the “true” story of a botched kidnapping that leads to murder. There are many seedy characters in the film, from the sleazy car salesman to the bubble headed prostitutes to the killers themselves. But one delightful character reminds the audience that there is good in the world: Frances McDormand’s Oscar winning role of Marge Gunderson, an extremely pregnant police officer who handles the case.

The film also won Ethan and Joel Coen an Academy Award for best screenplay for dialog such as Marge’s lecture to a killer on the sordid nature of his crime: “And for what? For a little bit of money? There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’tcha know that? And here ya are, and it’s a beautiful day. Well, I just don’t understand it.”

There is no church or clergy in the film, but Marge and her husband affirm the presence of grace in the world.

Most North Dakota films weren’t filmed in the state. For example, 1932’s The Purchase Price, in which Barbara Stanwyck plays a torch singer who becomes the mail order bride of a North Dakota farmer, was filmed on a California studio.

Also filmed in California were two films starring John Wayne that are set in North Dakota. 1940’s Three Faces West was a contemporary film about Viennese refugees from the Third Reich who come to North Dakota and are aided by the Duke.  The other, Dakota (1945), is a Western where Wayne’s wife wants to live in Fargo while Wayne’s character wants to go to California (of course, the Duke secretly has the last laugh, because they are actually in California the whole time).

Other Westerns set in North Dakota were also filmed in different places. 1956’s 7th Cavalry, a Western about the aftermath of Custer’s defeat (starring Randolph Scott) was filmed in Mexico. And 1952’s Bugles in the Afternoon, another Custer Western set at Fort Lincoln (this one starring Ray Milland), was filmed in Utah.

Surprisingly, only one major theatrical feature has been made about the Lewis and Clark Expedition: 1955’s The Far Horizons. Two of the three major characters were very well cast, Fred MacMurray as Captain Meriwether Lewis and Charlton Heston as Lieutenant William Clark. And there is one awful piece of old Hollywood casting, the Native American heroine, Sacagawea, was played by Donna Reed. No filming in North Dakota; the film was made in Wyoming and California.  

A film set in a variety of states which I’ve been tempted to include in previous posts is Disney’s 1994 adventure film, Iron Will. It’s the story of a young man who tries to save his family’s North Dakota farm by participating in a dog sled race from Winnipeg, Canada, to Saint Paul, Minnesota. Shooting took place in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and even Montana, but not South Dakota.

Two horror films have been set in North Dakota. 1993’s Leprechaun, starring a pre-Friends Jennifer Aniston, is about a little green man who will kill to get his gold back. It was actually filmed in California. And 2007’s The Messengers, starring Kristen Stewart, about an evil force that brings murder and mayhem to a small sunflower farm, was actually filmed in Canada.

1978’s Northern Lights, an independant film about the Nonpartisan League, a Populist movement founded in North Dakota in the early 1900’s, won big at the Cannes Film Festival and has been widely forgotten ever since. But it was filmed entirely in North Dakota. And 2001’s Wooly Boys, a Western starring Peter Fonda and Kris Kristofferson, is widely forgotten elsewhere but remembered fondly within the state -- probably because so many people knew someone who was an extra in the film.

Exorcism Movies -- The Rite

One of my favorite film credits of all time is found at the beginning of the movie Fargo. We see the words, “This is a true story.” We then see a bizarre story of kidnapping and murder. And then, in the credits at the end of the film, there’s the usual disclaimer that none of what we saw was true at all. It was all in fun for the Coen brothers, who wrote and directed the film. The same trick was famously used for The Blair Witch Project, which used an elaborate internet campaign (when the internet was all new) to sell itself as a film made with “found footage.” Don’t mean to spoil things for you, but it was all pretend.

All kinds of exorcism films make the “truth” claim, including this week’s The Rite (2011), which is promoted as “inspired by a true story,” but the end credits don’t disavow the claims. In fact, the end credits note that Father Lucas Trevant (played by Anthony Hopkins) has performed over 2,000 exorcisms, and Michael Novak (played by Colin O’Donoghue) is one of 14 Catholic exorcists in the United States, working out of Chicago.

The vast majority of exorcists in films are Catholic priests. The film The Unborn had an exorcist Rabbi (Gary Oldman) with an assist from an Episcopal priest (Idris Elba), but that’s an exception.

The Rite begins with Novak living at home with his father, a mortician. Their house doubles as a mortuary, so one can understand Novak’s desire to move on. The priesthood is the most affordable option he can imagine. Michael takes admissions tests and does well. He scores highest on psychology and art history and not so well on theology, which seems like it might be a good thing for a priest to understand.

Before taking his vows, Michael does have some questions about becoming a priest, such as, does he believe in God and such. Those seem like kind of important questions, but one night one of the priests from the seminary barely avoids getting hit by a car. The car swerves and hits a woman. The woman sees Michael’s collar and asks for last rites. He comforts her and gives her the rites (in a rather moving scene).

Michael considers dropping out of the priesthood because of his lack of faith, but his superior suggests that instead, he should go to exorcism school in Rome. The classes are taught by Father Xavier, but when Michael expresses his doubts about the reality of demon possession, Xavier sends him to see Father Lucas who is described as a Jesuit, Welsh, and unorthodox.

Michael watches Lucas treat a 16 year old pregnant girl. Michael asks if the girl doesn’t simply have psychological issues, but Lucas tries to convince him by having the girl perform a mindreading trick (like the fortune telling slave of Acts 16). Lucas tries to learn the demon’s name, but the demon is unwilling to co-operate. Lucas tries to drive the demon out, but explains that the process can take weeks or even years. The exorcism does not go well; the girl become violent, choking Michael.

Eventually this woman is hospitalized, and Father Lucas is called in. The woman takes her own life, and , needless to say, Father Lucas is discouraged.

And then Father Lucas is himself possessed by a demon. We see him slap a little girl in a park when she approaches him and asks to have her doll blessed.

It is, of course, up to Michael to exorcise Father Lucas. Seeing the devil in Lucas brings Michael to believe in the Devil, but also in God. He drives out the demon using the traditional ritual. The ritual uses Psalm 91, which was also used in The Unborn. It seems to be the go to Psalm for exorcism.

The exorcism for Father Lucas is successful. Michael really believes now and has found his calling.

An “inspired by a true story” makes one wonder what is true and what is not. For instance, I really wondered about a priest being demon possessed. It seems like a believer would have the Holy Spirit and that wouldn’t happen. But Father Lucas says some days he doubts and doesn’t know whether he believes in “God or the Devil or Santa or Tinker Bell.”

We don’t have to sort out truth from fiction here at Movie Churches, we just take the church as it is on the screen. So while I was impressed by the orthodoxy of the exorcism ritual, claiming the power of the Blood of Jesus for forgiveness and the power of the Resurrection, the chance of a priest being possessed earns some demerits. So we’re giving the Church in The Rite just two steeples.

On the Small Screen in Minnesota

An ongoing complaint here at Movie Churches is that films set in states are often not filmed there. For example, last week only 3 of the 10 films that were supposedly set in Wisconsin were actually filmed there.

I’m sure you feel our outrage about this situation, but we have good news this week. All of the films set in Minnesota were actually filmed, at least partially, in Minnesota. Often, the Minnesota natives (usually the screenwriter) involved with the making of these films insisted. And sometimes the movie was set and filmed in Minnesota because the story was so darned Minnesotan.

Filmmakers Ethan and Joel Coen were both born and raised in St. Louis Park, a suburb of Minneapolis. They’ve made a couple of films, Fargo and A Serious Man, in their native state. But we’ll save Fargo for a future week because it is not exclusively set in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

2009’s A Serious Man is set somewhere in Minnesota, and it follows Larry Gopnik, a modern day Job -- or at least a man who perceives himself as a modern Job. Larry faces a great variety of domestic trials, from a wife seeking divorce to run-ins with the Columbia Record Club. Larry begins to ponder whether God is trying to tell him something. Local rabbis take the place of Job’s friends and prove just as useful. With the most dry of humor, the Coens ask where we can find meaning in life.

There are no answers, but there are some good questions in the film. (And surely the Coens are the only people these days who could get such a film made.)

One of many noted deaths in 2016 was songwriter and musician, Prince. In 1984's Purple Rain, Prince (full name Prince Rogers Nelson) starred in a semi autobiographical story about a budding rock star called “The Kid.” Like The Purple One, The Kid struggles to achieve musical greatness in the city of Minneapolis.

Brook Busey-Maurio, better known as Diablo Cody, was originally from Illinois, but she moved to Minneapolis to pursue a career as an “exotic dancer” and then a blogger. And then she became a screenwriter. Most of her screenplays are set Minnesota, but 2011’s Young Adult was actually filmed there. In it, Charlize Theron plays a writer of youth novels (under a pseudonym) who decides to leave the big city of Minneapolis to visit the small Minnesota town where she grew up. Though she isn’t so young in years, she is in maturity.

Screenwriter Lona Williams, a native of Roseville, set 1999’s Drop Dead Gorgeous in a small Minnesota town. The film features a number of starlets -- Kirsten Dunst, Denise Richards, Brittany Murphy, and Amy Adams -- as beauty contestants in a pageant that turns deadly.

Mark Steven Johnson, a screenwriter and native of Hastings, was fortunate to have the elderly film icons Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon and Ann-Margret star in 1993’s Grumpy Old Men, which is also set in small town Minnesota.

1998’s A Simple Plan was written by a guy from New Jersey (Scott B. Smith based the screenplay on his own novel) and directed by a Michigander, Sam Raimi. But the tale of three blue collar friends who find a million dollars of drug money works well in the background of a cold and unforgiving Minnesota winter.

Though the creators (director Niki Caro, writers Michael Seitzman and Clara Bingham) of 2005’s North Country were not from Minnesota, the true story it’s based on is. It is a fictionalized account of the 1988 sexual harassment suit, Jenson v. Eveleth Mines, filed against a Minnesota mining company. It stars Charlize Theron (see Young Adult) and Frances McDormand (see Fargo when we get to North Dakota).

Outdoor kid's rink in MN in October

The creators of 1992’s The Mighty Ducks are not Minnesotans either. Even star Emilio Estevez is from New York City. (An aside here, but of course Emilio is from NYC and not the Midwest. Is there anyone less Midwestern in the world than Emilio’s brother, Charlie Sheen?) But the film is about youth hockey, and Minnesota is certainly the home of youth hockey in the United States. Fortunately, Disney had the good marketing sense to not set or film in hockey’s other North American home, Canada.

In Wisconsin, we featured several films that began as skits on Saturday Night LIve. While he was a regular on the show, Al Franken created the meek character Stuart who tries to live out the Twelve Steps for a better life. The character was a native of Minnesota, so 1995’s Stuart Saves His Family is set in the state. Franken is a native of New York City. Of course, now he represents Minnesota in the United States Senate. (It’s unfortunate that none of former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura’s films seem to be set in Minnesota. A Minnesota Predator film would have been awesome.)

If you took a survey of what one person best represents the state of Minnesota, Garrison Keillor would very likely top the list. From 1974 until this very year, Keillor hosted a radio show of his own creation, A Prairie Home Companion. It’s a variety show for a great variety of musical talent, from folk singers to classical instrumentalists to country and rock stars. There were a number of recurring characters and skits with idiosyncratic cowboys, a family obsessed with catsup, and a Minneapolis detective named Guy Noir. The heart of the show was the stories Keillor wove about his fictional hometown of Lake Wobegon where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” In 2006, director Robert Altman brought the radio show to the big screen as A Prairie Home Companion, with stars Kevin Kline, Woody Harrelson, Lily Tomlin, Meryl Streep, and, of course, Keillor himself.

Movie Churches during the Great Depression: O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000) and Emperor of the North (1973)

 Sometimes technique very much matters. For instance, today in Movie Churches we have two movies with scenes of baptisms. We never learn the name of pastors or the churches in either film. But one pastor has an effective method of baptizing, while the other gets so much so very wrong.

Now let’s get some technical details out of the way. We are talking about believer’s baptism here. Many churches, particularly mainline denominations, practice infant baptism, like you see in The Godfather, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. These films show the baptisms of people who choose to be baptised.

There are also different ways that churches apply water in baptism. There is “aspersion” which applies to the sprinkling of water on the head (which is suitable for babies, but surely isn’t a real man’s baptism). Closely related is baptism by “affusion”, the pouring of water on the head; which is closely related to “immersion” when water is poured over the head and body. But the kind of baptism practiced in these films is “submersion” where in a person is completely immersed in a body of water (a lake, river, swimming pool or baptismal tank.)

Submersion baptism has the advantage of being cinematic, especially since both films have baptisms in the open air in beautiful places.

In the Ethan and Joel Coen’s comedy,O Brother, Where Art Thou, three escaped convicts stumble upon a church baptism. A large congregation, all dressed in long, white robes, are in line to be baptized in the middle of the lake. (The scene was filmed on location in Alligator Lake near Vicksburg, Mississippi.) The congregation is singing “Let’s Go Down to the River to Pray” even though, as I mentioned, they’re at a lake.

One of the convicts, Delbert, the least bright of the three (not that any of the three is at all bright) cuts to the front of the line and is baptized. The pastor in the film has good baptismal technique. He covers the mouth and nose of the person baptized. He makes sure the person is secure and lowers the person into the water.

Another of the convicts, Pete, is also baptized. But Everett (George Clooney) doesn’t follow along, calling it all part of foolish superstition.

The event changes life for Delbert and Pete, but especially Delbert. Both are excited about the pastor’s assurances that baptism washed away all their sins. Delbert is excited to be cleared of guilt for the robbery of a Piggly Wiggly that sent him to jail, but Everett gives him the sad news that although he might be square with the Lord, he's not right with the state of Mississippi.

But Delbert does change. When the men meet Baby Face Nelson, Delbert knows he can’t join him on his spree of bank robberies even though Delbert thinks it sounds like good fun. (The famous bank robber says, “Jesus saves, but George Nelson withdraws.”)  And when Everett steals a pie from a window sill, Delbert leaves some cash behind to pay for it.

Though we only see the baptizing pastor and his congregation briefly, his ministry has a real impact on the film’s central characters.

The same can’t be said of the baptizing pastor in director Robert Aldrich’s Emperor of the North. In a situation rather similar to the scene in O Brother, Lee Marvin (as a hobo called A#1) joins a baptism in progress to escape the railroad bulls that are pursuing him.

I was not impressed with the technique of this pastor, who's baptizing his congregation in a river in Oregon. There are dozens of congregants, and Marvin also cuts in line to the pastor. But this pastor dunks his people face forward and doesn’t properly cover their mouth and noses, practically drowning people.

No wonder Marvin isn’t transformed and refers to the congregation as “Jesus shouters”. (As he drags another hobo away from the river he makes the baffling statement that he's doing it to "save [him] from the Presbyterians." It seemed more like a Baptist congregation.)

The greatest problem of baptismal planning in the film is in the matter of wardrobe. One of the women in the congregation is only wearing a thin, white robe. The woman is quite, um, well endowed, and after her robe becomes wet… Well, let me just say her presence is the one part of the service A#1 seems to appreciate.

So, based solely on how they conduct their outdoor baptisms, I’m giving the church in O Brother Where Art Thou three steeples and the church in Emperor of the North one steeple. 

Mississippi films on the small and big screens

On the small screen

On our cross country trip this year, we've brought along a black DVD folder. Before we began the trip we made labels with state names and went through our collection of DVDs to fill the slots. For some states, like California, New York, Illinois, etc., there were a multitude of films to choose from. For a few states, we could find nothing (we're looking at you, Delaware).

For a few other states, like Mississippi, we only had one film in our collection that would work. We hadn't watched My Dog Skip for years, when our kids were, you know, kids. A period film, set during World War II in the Mississippi town of Yazoo City, the movie was actually made in Mississippi (though it wasn't actually made during WWII). It starrs Frankie Muniz (of Malcolm in the Middle) as a lonely little boy who grows to manhood with the help of a brave little dog.

There were no churches in the film, not much in the way of spiritual content, but there are certainly admirable people with values of courage, honesty and integrity. So thumbs up for that.

There are a number of films with Mississippi in the title. Mississippi Masala features a very young Denzel Washington as an American who falls in love with an Asian Indian immigrant; it examines the interactions between their respective families. Mississippi Burning is an exciting Gene Hackman study of the Civil Rights Movement which offers the strange historical interpretation that the real heroes of the time were in the FBI.

In our travels through Mississippi, we were able to visit the childhood home of Tennessee Williams in Columbus, MS. Baby Doll, a steamy story based on a short play by Williams and directed by Elia Kazan with Carroll Baker in the title role and This Property is Condemned, one of Robert Redford's first films, were both set and filmed in Mississippi. But two other films based on Williams work, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , featuring Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, and Summer and Smoke, featuring Laurence Harvey and Geraldine Page, are set in Mississippi but actually filmed in other places.

We also visited Oxford, the home of bestselling writer John Grisham. Grisham has written about a variety of places in the South, but his first novel, which was made into a film with Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock, and Samuel L. Jackson, was set and filmed in Mississippi.

Oxford is also the hometown of another more critically acclaimed writer, William Faulkner. The Reivers, a comedy starring Steve McQueen and based on a novel of Faulkner's, was set and filmed in Mississippi. A wonderful low budget film scripted by Horton Foote and starring Robert Duvall, Tomorrow,  is based on a short story by Faulkner and is set and filmed in Mississippi. The Long Hot Summer with Paul Newman and Orson Welles, based on some of Faulkner's short stories, was set in Mississippi but not filmed there.

And finally, a film set and filmed in Mississippi: the Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou will be featured later this year in Movie Churches during Depression Month. We have to pace ourselves.

On the big screen

Our first day in Mississippi was also the last day of Black History Month. We went to the Cinemark Theater in Pearl, Mississippi, to see Race, a film about the Olympic exploits of Jesse Owens. There is a reference to the church in the film: when Jesse proposes to Minnie, the mother of his young child, they wonder if a Christian clergyman will perform the ceremony. Apparently, one did.

Owens was the star who outshone the Nazis in the 1936 Olympics. At the Cinemark, far less impressive stars were functioning as door handles.

Louisana films on the small and big screen

On the small screen

Miller's Crossing isn't set in New Orleans, but it was filmed there. Last week, I wrote about the Coen Brothers' True Grit, which was set in Arkansas but not filmed there; this week's Coen Brothers' film is the opposite of that. It's supposedly set in a Northeastern city, but anyone can see that it's really the Big Easy. Miller's Crossing is a film noir, the dark genre of crime films that began just after World War II with origins in the detective fiction of Hammett and Chandler.

Noir films have been set in New York and San Francisco and, of course, LA --LA as in Los Angeles and LA as in Louisiana. There are no specifically church or religious elements in Miller's Crossing, but like all noir, the doctrine of original sin comes through quite clearly.

Other Louisiana films with noir elements include The Big Easy with Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin, Eve's Bayou with Sam L. Jackson and Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte with Bette Davis.

Some of the best films about the African American experience were set and made in LA (not Los Angeles), including Best Picture nominees Beasts of the Southern Wild and Sounder and Best Picture Winner 12 Years a Slave. Some great women's films have been set and made in LA such as John Sayles' critically acclaimed Passion Fish. There is also Steel Magnolias, which many women love, perplexing many men. There are LA guys' films, such as Swamp Thing based on the DC horror comic, and Walter Hill's action feature Southern Comfort.

And a film with two of the greatest performances ever captured, Vivian Leigh and Marlon Brando's work in A Streetcar Named Desire, is set and partially filmed in New Orleans.

There are many other good and awful films set and filmed in Louisiana, but I'll mention just one more excellent film: Dead Man Walking. This film will kick off a month of clergywomen at Movie Churches (check back for that on Thursday).

On the Big Screen

Mindy and I went to see one of the classic noir films, The Maltese Falcon for a 75th anniversary screening at the Theaters at Canal Place in New Orleans. It's a fancy schmancy place with neighbors like Saks 5th Avenue and Tiffany's. An usher directed us to our seats and pointed out the red button we could press to order food. We ordered popcorn, but popcorn with truffle oil.

As for the film, I sure hope I'm holding up that well when I'm 75.

Missouri films on the small and large screen

On the small screen
Much of Paper Moon (1973) takes place in Kansas, but the destination of the protagonists is Missouri, this week's state. The film opens with a clergyman; a minister conducting a grave side service for the mother of Addie (eight year old Tatum O'Neil in the Academy's youngest Oscar winning performance). A con man, Moses Pray (Ryan O'Neil, Tatum's father), stops by to pay respects and is persuaded to take the young orphan to her aunt in MO.

Pray's go-to con is selling Bibles to widows at a mark-up, and young Addie proves an asset to his credibility. A recurring question in the film is,"What's a con and what's real?" Is Moses perhaps really Addie's father? Is romantic love real? Are the words in the Bibles Moses sells true or as phony as a paper moon? The movie suggests that sometimes we're better off being conned than knowing the truth.

Paper Moon was not only partially set in Missouri; those scenes were actually filmed in Missouri (with the city of St. Joseph submitting to a transformation back to the Depression Era).

Another period film set in MO is the classic MGM Judy Garland musical, Meet Me in St. Louis, but it was filmed in Hollywood studios. The various versions of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie were, of course, set in St. Louis, but none were filmed there.

Various films based on the work of Mark Twain have been set and filmed in MO, such as the 1973 musical version of Tom Sawyer, but I don't think a great adaptation of any of Mr. Clemens' work has yet been produced.

There have been truly great Westerns set and filmed in Missouri (such as The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford), great comedies (such as Waiting for Guffman), great thrillers (like Gone Girl and Winter's Bone),  and at least one great horror film (You'reNext).

And when critics argue about the greatest film ever made, non-Missouri films such as Citizen Kane and Rules ofthe Game are bandied about, but surely a work set and filmed in Missouri, the Patrick Swayze classic, Road House, should be a part of that discussion.

On the large screen
As we looked for parking for the Cinemark Theater in the Plaza, I worried about what kind of fortune we'd pay for parking; but there was no charge for the garage. Not knowing the ticket prices, I soon discovered two tickets for a matinee cost as much as one ticket in other states. So I'm liking Kansas City, Missouri.

The decor of the theater celebrated old time Hollywood, which was a nice lead in to movie we were watching, Hail Caesar by the Coen Brothers. Josh Brolin stars in the film as Eddie Mannix, a studio executive in the Hollywood Golden Age with the job of fixing the messes of the studio's coddled stars.

Blessedly for MovieChurches, the film opens with a scene in a Catholic church. Mannix is giving a confession to a priest who seems rather exasperated by the frequency of the exec's appearances. But that's not the end to the clergy in the film. Mannix's studio, Capital Pictures, is producing a film, Hail Caesar: A Tale of the Christ, and a group of clergymen are brought in to evaluate the Biblical and theological accuracy of the film. The rabbi, the reverend and the priests (Orthodox and Catholic) soon seem more interested in the movie business than Biblical truth.

The critical reception for the film has been middling, so our expectations were lowered entering the theater. But we were charmed and delighted by this film that celebrates not only the Golden Age of Hollywood, but more surprisingly, and ironically, Jesus.