... ..cash in on the christ ....March 1, 2004   I have known for quite some time I could not prevent the Christian Right from destroying all that is sacred.  But I always figured I could at least cash in on the Jesus-jones before Mel Gibson did.  After all, I am perfectly sane and Mel Gibson suffers from a virulent strain of dementia.  So you can imagine my frustration when Passion of the Christ hit theaters before my own work got off the ground. It was May 1998 when I first realized The 700 Club was not, in fact, a comedy improv troupe.  It took some convincing.  Who would have thought that anyone remotely familiar with the New Testament could take seriously a schmuck like Pat Robertson?  I really thought he was a comedian, like Jack Benny, and that, Ben, the white-haired Negro, was his Rochester.  When it dawned on me Pat wasn't kidding around and that he was making millions, I immediately gave up on mankind and hatched my own selfish, money-making scheme.  I decided to write a screenplay based on the death and resurrection of one Jesus H. Christ. Sobriety was not kind to me, however.  Detoxification made me lose focus and my artistic vision jumped its tracks.  The rough draft took me five years to complete and, at its end, hardly resembled the original concept.  No longer about Jesus Christ, my screenplay was based loosely on the life of Darrell Sweet, drummer for Nazareth, the noxious hard rock quartet from Scotland.  I titled my screenplay Darrell of Nazareth.   Its climactic ending showed Darrell contracting gonorrhea from a groupie named Magdalene while the Nazareth hit remake of Love Hurts swelled in the background. The creative detour cost me.  Before I could rewrite it, Mel Gibson struck and struck gold.  Nothing sells like blood sacrifice and I knew that.  I simply couldn't execute the game plan.  I have no one to crucify but myself.  previous..|..current..|..archives..|..1st quarter index..|..next

©  2004 by the beastmaster