Wednesday’s specials:
YOURS, MINE, OUR FAITH
Huh. Peter T. Chattaway mentioned today that, lo and behold, Dennis Quaid’s a Christian, and now I wish I’d had a different list of questions when I attended the film junket for In Good Company. He grew up Baptist, and married a Baptist girl from Texas. Whaddaya know. He has some interesting comments here, and I’m just baffled that I haven’t picked up on this before.
AERIAL AMAZES, CHAOS “SENTIMENTAL”
Josh Hurst on Kate Bush and Sir Paul McCartney.
“SAD JOYFULNESS”
Over the Rhine gets mentioned, and Linford gets interviewed, in Free Times today.
STUNT!
Japan’s about to see “Born to Fight.” And it’s got a trailer you have to see to believe. Banzai!
Yeah, Quaid’s profession of faith came as a complete surprise to me, too, when I interviewed him last Saturday.
I wonder if he’s been planning on “coming out” with this or something. I did a bit of web-snooping the night before our interview to see if there was anything out there connecting him with Christianity, but I couldn’t find anything, so I just asked him the “family films” questions that my editor and I had discussed beforehand, and near the end of our allotted time, with few questions left on my plate, I tossed out a question about faith just to see if he had anything to say — and suddenly the interview got a little more interesting.
So interesting, in fact, that I thought I had a scoop — but then I found this Beliefnet story today. My own interview won’t be up for at least another week. Ah well.
The whole thing makes me wish I’d known about this beforehand, so I could have prioritized those questions and given them the space and attention they deserved. And Quaid actually seemed to be more interested in answering those questions than in answering the standard family-movie questions. I wonder if, given that I was interviewing him for a Christian website, he had expected me to launch into those questions right from the beginning.
The thing is, we cover pretty much all films as a matter of course, so we don’t always pursue the testimonial angle unless we have good reason to think that we should; in fact, we had hoped to interview Quaid’s co-star, Rene Russo, whose Christian faith has been a matter of public record for years — but she turned out to be sick, and the publicists offered us an interview with Quaid instead. OTOH, I don’t believe Beliefnet.com covers film so systematically, so if you’re sitting down for an interview with them, it’s practically a given that personal beliefs are going to come up.
Rene Russo is known for her faith?
I remember Quaid talking about his faith when The Rookie came out. At, he did in an interview with my local affiliate (I lived in San Francisco at the time).
The added bonus with Dennis is that he’s completely hot.
Wish I’d known about that Rookie interview!
I first heard about Russo’s faith when The Thomas Crown Affair came out six years ago, and there was a big stink over whether Christians should do nude scenes. I wrote about it here. See also Entertainment Weekly and Terry Mattingly on the The Thomas Crown Affair affair.
Peter,
Thanks for the info. Talk about having a emotional upheaval. I’ve always enjoyed her work. I felt disappointed when she did the topless scene in Crown. Why is it I feel even worse now for having looked at her than I did then?
Actually it is her nude scenes that got her a letter from Pastor Jack Hayford to stop calling The Church on the Way in Van Nuys “her church” as she was doing before that movie. Or so I’ve been told. Everything I’ve seen of hers though doesn’t reinforce she’s Christian at all to me but that doesn’t always mean anything. Personally I find Quaid’s statements more intriquing then anything I can imagine Russo stating.
is anyone else bothered by his universalism? isn’t this pretty much what santana was saying?
Acutally that did sort of stand out to me. But if Quaid hasn’t made mention of his faith before perhaps he was just nervous about whether he was going to offend people (or hurt the marketing of the film) since he hadn’t spoken of this before. Either way I’ll give the benefit of the doubt before I’ll state him wishy washy or something.
CTDeLude
I’ll forgive all of these people but Pat Robertson has got to go.
No holds barred, that’s for sure. I firmly believe Bono is a prophet for our times. I just need to listen.
Excellent speech from Bono. Here’s hoping that Bush has listened and will act.
Preventing the poorest of the poor from selling their products while we sing the virtues of the free market… that’s a justice issue.
[ nod ]
Holding children to ransom for the debts of their grandparents… That’s a justice issue.
[ nod ]
And that’s as true for Western nations dealing with debt as it is for any other nation. There is a reason the Bible repeatedly prohibits the lending of money at interest, even though it does make a certain economic sense.
Withholding life-saving medicines out of deference to the Office of Patents… that’s a justice issue.
Not quite nodding here — not yet, at any rate. Patents and copyrights exist to stimulate creativity, including the creativity that produces new medicines; the people who invest time and money into creating these things need to be assured that they will reap the benefits, at least for a while. We can haggle over how long that “while” should be — if I recall correctly, in American law, copyrights originally lasted only 14 years — but I don’t believe we should scuttle the patent laws altogether. It is arguably because of those laws that these medicines exist at all.
Sorry for being nit-picky, but Illinoise actually came in third in the VV poll, behind Kanye and M.I.A.
Patents and copyrights exist to stimulate creativity, including the creativity that produces new medicines; the people who invest time and money into creating these things need to be assured that they will reap the benefits, at least for a while.
When it comes to drugs, it is difficult to figure out whose creativity patents should protect. Since most research that leads to new drugs is funded by the US government, I think drug companies reap more benefits from patents than is just. When it specifically comes to the HIV-AIDS medicine that Bono is talking about, it would be interesting to ask who was actually investing money and time in the research.
I also don’t want to completely throw out patent laws, but in the drug industry patents have not lead to creativity and new investment in research as much as they have in other industries.
Much of what he said was good, but… like many, Bono continues to misunderstand the differences between the Bible’s commands to individuals versus the Bible’s commands to governments.
Does the Bible command us as individuals to give to the poor, to sacrifice, to help them? Absolutely.
Does the Bible command Governments to give to the poor, etc.? That’s much more debatable, and I’d have to lean toward “no”… unless you buy into Bono’s definition of “justice,” because governments ARE commanded to handle justice. That’s the best argument I’ve heard and one that requires more discussion in Christian circles.