The problem with this documentary movie is that the play at its center is badly written - so bad that hearing just a few lines of it is enough to make me cringe. People have complained that this movie doesn't show the full play, but I'm grateful it doesn't. I assume they included the best parts, so the rest of it must be even worse.
I love Terrence McNally very much as a person, but as a writer he's not that good. His writing is pretentious and clumsy, and it never sounds like real human beings talking. If he weren't gay, weren't a very attractive, compassionate and charismatic man, and didn't therefore have an automatic following in the gay community, I think he'd probably have had to spend his life doing something else.
The bad actors who are putting on the play's 2006 revival in LA don't help any, but the play itself is so leaden and contrived that I don't think ANY actors could bring it to life. What's most disturbing about this movie is not the virulent but oh-so-predictable opposition to it from "Christians" - whose loudest spokespeople are always the stupidest - but the fact that so much energy was wasted on such an embarrassingly bad play. (McNally's claim in this movie - that the opposition from fundamentalist Christians came as a total surprise to him - is not credible. NO one could be that naive.)
That's too bad, because the concept - a strong and loving gay Jesus - is fantastic. I just wish a more talented playwright would rise to the challenge and give us a play that's WORTH fighting for.
I love Terrence McNally very much as a person, but as a writer he's not that good. His writing is pretentious and clumsy, and it never sounds like real human beings talking. If he weren't gay, weren't a very attractive, compassionate and charismatic man, and didn't therefore have an automatic following in the gay community, I think he'd probably have had to spend his life doing something else.
The bad actors who are putting on the play's 2006 revival in LA don't help any, but the play itself is so leaden and contrived that I don't think ANY actors could bring it to life. What's most disturbing about this movie is not the virulent but oh-so-predictable opposition to it from "Christians" - whose loudest spokespeople are always the stupidest - but the fact that so much energy was wasted on such an embarrassingly bad play. (McNally's claim in this movie - that the opposition from fundamentalist Christians came as a total surprise to him - is not credible. NO one could be that naive.)
That's too bad, because the concept - a strong and loving gay Jesus - is fantastic. I just wish a more talented playwright would rise to the challenge and give us a play that's WORTH fighting for.