Blue Like Jazz. Now see the movie.

I haven’t read Don Miller’s best-selling book by that name but that’s not because I was waiting for the movie. I just never got around to reading it. But Steve Taylor’s movie Blue Like Jazz is released today and since I will be in San Francisco in a few weeks, so . . . I might go and see it, despite Becky Garrison’s suggestion that we should all sit it out, and despite [or because of] the The Gospel Coalition’s warning that “the evangelical world will FREAK OUT when they see this movie“. Blue Like Jazz might be more suited to Hallmark Channel, as Becky hints, but then I am still interested in low-budget films, especially when they deal with faith journeys and the emerging church. Denver Post liked it.

List of theaters here. Has anyone seen it yet? Did you like it?

Blue Like Jazz Movie

Interesting: Blue Like Jazz film was the top Kickstarter project for 2010. The Business Week article is worth reading:

As for Blue Like Jazz, it raced past its $125,000 goal and raised a Kickstarter film record of $345,992 last October. Taylor’s backer in Seattle, seeing the interest, matched that sum and tacked on a little more. Taylor shot the movie for $750,000 and, thanks to new investors who have come on board, has $500,000 remaining for post-production. . .. “I just didn’t think this was going to work,” he says, “so I said for anyone who gave $10 or more, I would call them and thank them personally.” He’s about halfway through a notebook of 3,300 names.

 

Andrew

Andrew Jones launched his first internet space in 1997 and has been teaching on related issues for the past 20 years. He travels all the time but lives between Wellington, San Francisco and a hobbit home in Prague.

4 Comments

  • Jeremy Myers says:

    I want to see it, but more for Steve Taylor than for Donald Miller or any of the actors.
    Steve Taylor is one of my “formative theologians” in that I think his music formed my outlook on life and much of my core theology. I listened to him non stop for about 20 years… and just recently returned to my roots and started listening to him again.
    Anyway… there are no theaters around here showing his film, or I would go see it.

  • Andrew – I would put Miller and Imago Dei as more in the lines of Rob Bell/Mars Hill – a cooler version of Willow Creek and Saddleback but still in the seeker megachurch model. I don’t see this connecting to the global grassroots groups I keep encountering that used to be emerging but dropped the label as you’ve aptly documented.
    As I have stated over at the discussion re this on my Facebook page, I definitely see this movie as appealing to the US Christian (read “evangelical” market). Hence, it seemed very much out of place at SXSW and probably wouldn’t go over at Slot or Greenbelt that well though I suspect it would kick ass at Cornerstone. 🙂
    But what really got me was 1) Miller’s claims that this is NOT a Christian film when the major audience for this flick are those Relevant readers who go to Cornerstone and Calvin College and 2) using the veneer of “civil disobedience” to market a Xn product. Dunno ’bout you but I don’t equate putting up posters for a movie or going to a screening dressed in a bear costume to real acts of civil disobedience in the name of justice that have resulted in imprisonment and sometimes death.

  • Andrew says:

    thanks Becky. Appreciate your insight. I remember parking our Winnebago on Rick’s driveway in 1999 and talking about his church (Imago Dei). I still keep up with him when I can. A lot of Multnomah students attend his church – yes, not as edgy as most of the churches/communities/orders I am in touch with but a good church nonetheless.

  • BECKY GARRISON says:

    didn’t say it wasn’t a good church – I wouldn’t calling Rob Bell, Donald Miller and the like emerging when they’re clearly embeded in the US evangelical megachurch model. 🙂

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