Tuesday, February 01, 2005
EXTREME GOD!
I've been kicking around an idea in my head for a new play. It's about a small fundamentalist religion in an even smaller town in Middle Of Nowhere, America. Religious, secular, and love hijinx ensue. I was starting to nail it down and make it my bitch, when I read Jon Krakauer's great book, Under the Banner of Heaven. In tracing the violent history of the Mormon church, Krakauer asks big questions about faith, like how a person can believe in and accept a religion that he has intellectual qualms about. My reaction to the book can best be described as BINGO!
If you haven't read any Krakauer, do. Stop reading this shit and go get Into the Wild or Into Thin Air. He writes gritty, non-fiction stories of people who go on larger-than-life adventures, like living alone and off the land in the Alaskan wilderness, or climbing Mount Everest (as he himself did). All of them, whether motivated by pious duty or extreme Mountain Dew-commercial hubris, think they can best the odds based on some extraordinary sense of faith. And usually, they're tragically wrong. Also, some of the scenes are so tense you crap your pants. They don't say that on the book jackets, but it's true.
In Heaven, he shows how Mormons, especially the fundamental/polygamist folk (who the main church wants nothing to do with), have the same kind of bulletproof devotion. There's a lot of blood and disturbing history, all of it worth your time. But it's the most sensational parts that lend themselves to drama.
Take the one splinter-group fanatic who
Or, the book's central character, Dan Lafferty, whose manner of speech reminds me of a David Cross character.
It's easy to laugh him off... until you read how he brutally murdered a woman and her infant because of a kind of Divine calling. I started to wonder what separates the rational person who's really fired up about faith, from the unstable guy with something to prove. At what point do fanatics say to themselves, 'Okay, I know killing is supposed to be all wrong and shit, but dammit if I don't love me some God!'? (As a sidenote, the court ruled Lafferty 'sane').
People won't get murdered in my play. But God will most definitely jump out of an airplane on a snowboard. It's only appropriate.
I've been kicking around an idea in my head for a new play. It's about a small fundamentalist religion in an even smaller town in Middle Of Nowhere, America. Religious, secular, and love hijinx ensue. I was starting to nail it down and make it my bitch, when I read Jon Krakauer's great book, Under the Banner of Heaven. In tracing the violent history of the Mormon church, Krakauer asks big questions about faith, like how a person can believe in and accept a religion that he has intellectual qualms about. My reaction to the book can best be described as BINGO!
If you haven't read any Krakauer, do. Stop reading this shit and go get Into the Wild or Into Thin Air. He writes gritty, non-fiction stories of people who go on larger-than-life adventures, like living alone and off the land in the Alaskan wilderness, or climbing Mount Everest (as he himself did). All of them, whether motivated by pious duty or extreme Mountain Dew-commercial hubris, think they can best the odds based on some extraordinary sense of faith. And usually, they're tragically wrong. Also, some of the scenes are so tense you crap your pants. They don't say that on the book jackets, but it's true.
In Heaven, he shows how Mormons, especially the fundamental/polygamist folk (who the main church wants nothing to do with), have the same kind of bulletproof devotion. There's a lot of blood and disturbing history, all of it worth your time. But it's the most sensational parts that lend themselves to drama.
Take the one splinter-group fanatic who
was fond of roaring at the top of his lungs in public to prove that he was 'the Lion Of Israel'. In one legendary incident that occurred in the early 1950s, he lay facedown in the middle of a busy Salt Lake City intersection, bringing traffic to a halt, and did two hundred push-ups. When the police finally persuaded him to get up off the pavement he proudly insisted, 'Nobody else can do that many. That proves I'm the One Mighty and Strong.'
Or, the book's central character, Dan Lafferty, whose manner of speech reminds me of a David Cross character.
According to Dan, at a certain point Christ gathered all His children around Him and announced, 'I want to have a party that's gonna last for a thousand years. You interested? You want to party with Me on this earth for a thousand years?' And we said, 'Hell, yeah!' So He said, 'Okay, that's the good part. Here's the bad part: you can't have something for nothing... For six thousand years I'm gonna let the earth become hell before I turn it into heaven. And hell, by definition, is where the devil and his children are running shit. So what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna let the devil populate the earth with all of his assholes, and then I'm gonna sprinkle you, My children, on the earth a few at a time. And every hour you spend in this hell-on-earth with the assholes, you're going to be building up credits for the Big Party. It's gonna take about six thousand years, but by then we'll have all the credits we'll need for our party. And then I'll come, and we'll harvest the earth -- basically, we'll remove all the assholes -- and clear the dance floor for our thousand-year party'.... Before the God of love makes the scene, it will be important somehow to help His children -- the children of love -- have their eyes opened to who this cool fucker is who will be coming to befriend them on the day known in the Bible as the 'Great and Dreadful Day of the Lord' (great for His children; dreadful for the assholes)'
It's easy to laugh him off... until you read how he brutally murdered a woman and her infant because of a kind of Divine calling. I started to wonder what separates the rational person who's really fired up about faith, from the unstable guy with something to prove. At what point do fanatics say to themselves, 'Okay, I know killing is supposed to be all wrong and shit, but dammit if I don't love me some God!'? (As a sidenote, the court ruled Lafferty 'sane').
People won't get murdered in my play. But God will most definitely jump out of an airplane on a snowboard. It's only appropriate.
