Ed asked below if I’d seen Latter Days and what I thought of it.
I saw the movie at a screening a few days before it finally opened in Salt Lake City on March 26 at our local independent art-house, the Tower Theatre.
It was originally supposed to open at the end of January at Salt Lake’s Madstone Theatre, but Madstone canceled the run before it began because, they said, the movie didn’t meet their standard of quality. TLA Releasing, on the other hand, claimed that Madstone had pulled the movie because of threats from Salt Lake’s Mormon—or conservative—community.
The director of the Salt Lake Film Society, which runs the Tower, had initially passed on hosting the movie, saying it was “awful,” but with doubts about Madstone’s motives and recognizing that there was no venue left for this very Utah-oriented movie, the Society agreed to schedule Latter Days.
As for me, I think Madstone caved to conservatives. They certainly show plenty of other movies that don’t (or at least shouldn’t) meet their standard of quality. I’m glad the Salt Lake Film Society allowed me the chance to see it, even if they thought it was awful. The trailer had intrigued me, and I thought it looked decent.
Boy, was I wrong. The Film Society had it right. Latter Days is pretty bad.
There were high points: Mary Kay Place (the mother) is good, Steve Sandvoss (the missionary) is good, and Jacqueline Bisset (as a friend/mentor) is good. There were also a couple moments of genuine power, and a handful of truly funny one-liners. But that’s it.
The rest of the cast ranges from mediocre and one-dimensional to just plain BAD. The rest of the dialogue is unrealistic, boring, and sometimes stupid. The plot itself jumps around like it’s receiving shock therapy, rather than our beloved missionary. Latter Days is just a cheap, stupid, pandering amateur movie.
The Mormon elements were, overall, pretty accurate, though there was certainly plenty of “dramatic” exaggeration to many things. I quote “dramatic” because those things that were intended to be dramatic just ended up being silly.
The fact that Latter Days is far from a great movie isn’t what offends me. I recognize that movies like this are low-budget labors of love. What offends me is all the stupid queens who raved about the movie afterward. My friends and I stayed for a panel discussion about “programming quality vs. under-represented content” and the audience that night just kept going on and on about how they could relate to the film, how it touched them, how it was so important for struggling Mormons to see this film, how needed it was to fill this gay Mormon media void.
Blah, blah, blah.
Bullshit, I say.
“Sure, it’s not very good from a technical or artistic standpoint,” one guy actually said, “but it’s a story that needed to be told, a story many of us needed to finally see, and that’s why it’s a great movie!”
“But wouldn’t you rather see your story presented in a technically and artistically good movie, rather than this… this… extended sitcom?” I asked.
The answer, apparently, was no.
As long as gay audiences are willing to spend money on mediocre movies, just because they’re gay and we’re all starved for images of ourselves in media, production companies will keep putting out that mediocre shit. Because they can get away with it. Not until we stop allowing the crap (by no longer financially supporting it) will we get quality.
But the audience that night didn’t want to hear that. They were too caught up in seeing hints of their own lives on-screen. Too caught up in the fact that someone finally recognized their struggles and had at least tried to mirror those struggles back and share them with society. Just too caught up in themselves and their own stories to be objective at all.
March 31, 2004 at 12:33 pm
Thank you, Thank you Thank you!!! Finally someone else who wasn’t completely blinded by the hotness of Steve S. I went to see the movie in Chicago. The trailer looked good and the lead definitely was hot. Unfortunately, the movie was awful. A half hour into the movie I was squirming in my seat. It took all of my will power to not walk out. At the point that you were led to believe that Steve had taken his life, I told the friend that was next to me that the only reason for staying until the end.
I had the same question, why couldn’t it be a quality movie with that theme?
March 31, 2004 at 5:54 pm
The way I see it, we can’t be equal until we not only have good movies but bad ones as well. I didn’t think Latter Days was horrible (I’ll be doing my own write-up soon) but it certainly had some moments where it’s immature indie-ness shown through.
I know a good many people from your neck of the woods, some of them Mormon. Sadly I don’t know much about that part of their lives. It’s nice to hear that the Mormon representation was pretty accurate.
April 2, 2004 at 7:23 am
nick writes: The Mormon elements were, overall, pretty accurate, though there was certainly plenty of “dramatic” exaggeration to many things.
then eryk comments: It’s nice to hear that the Mormon representation was pretty accurate.
but film reviewer eric snider has this opinion on his blog: [link]
The filmmaker — C. Jay Cox, an ex-Mormon — does seem to have anti-Mormon sentiment. In fact, it seems like Mormonism is in the film not to examine the personal conflict its gay adherents feel, but solely to rip it apart. Dozens and dozens of details are wrong — wrong in a way that makes the church look bad — and it’s not a case of outsiders not knowing enough about Mormonism to get it right. This is a former insider, someone who KNOWS the facts, intentionally distorting them.
The film not only makes the church out to be intolerant, bull-headed and abusive, but it distorts reality in order to do so! You could stick with the truth and still paint the LDS Church as being pretty intolerant, but apparently that wasn’t enough for Cox, who wanted the church to look downright mean. Even in matters unrelated to homosexuality, he distorts things to make the church appear worse than it is, as in a missionary discussion scene where blacks’ and women’s status in the church are brought up, only to have the missionaries make insensitive, poorly worded responses that no real missionary would ever say.
April 2, 2004 at 10:57 am
I have to disagree that “dozens and dozens of details are wrong.” Like any dramatization, there are inaccuracies (see: Monster), but not that many. I just called them “dramatic exaggeration.” Eric Snider calls them “distorted.”
Like I said initially, based on the audience’s reaction, Latter Days hits home to a lot of gay Mormons. It’s realistic from their skewed perspective - a perspective C. Jay Cox obviously shares. I tried to be objective about the movie, and I wouldn’t say it was realistic. But I maintain that overall, the Mormon aspect (i.e. the reaction of the main character’s family and church in response to his coming out) was “pretty accurate.”
Point is: It isn’t a documentary and doesn’t claim to be. Snider and I do agree, however, that the movie’s pretty awful.
As for making the church appear worse than it is via missionary discussions, I really don’t think there’s any way Eric Snider knows what a “real” missionary may or may not say to an investogator. I’ve known more than one missionary who . . . let’s just say, “didn’t follow the missionary discussions exactly as outlined.”
April 2, 2004 at 11:44 am
Thank you for this post! I saw it in D.C. and I have to say that I didn’t hate it, but it was not different than any other silly gay themed film that I have seen. However, I only rolled my eyes a few times at the heavy-handed-preachy-oh-for-Pete’s-sake-I-get-it-subtext. The fact is that there were a couple of scenes where I actually winced because of the acting. There was one scene between Mary Kay Place and Steve S. that made me laugh out loud. It was terribly inappropriate considering the content of that particular scene, but the acting was so bad that I giggled in discomfort. The opening scene was so badly acted that I actually sat there expecting that the camera would pull back to reveal people watching a porno. But sadly, I just don’t expect better from gay themed films. I have yet to go to a gay film festival and walk away with anything but relief that a film didn’t stink as badly as I thought it would. It continues to be a mystery to me that so many people in theater and entertainment generally are gay and yet we can’t seem to produce anything with a gay theme that isn’t mediocre. Still, they were awfully pretty to look at.
By the way, thank you for posting the picture. I am terribly happy that at least I got a chance to see them.
April 8, 2004 at 5:11 pm
oops, i’m kinda late on this discussion, but…
I would add one sentence to your last paragraph: Too caught up in the hope that they looked like Steve Sandvoss…or could date him.