Obama Report Card: Important Words from Frank Schaeffer

My friend Frank Schaeffer is a passionate advocate for challenging the current state of conservative politics in the United States, and an even more passionate advocate for President Obama.  I admire deeply his personal courage in speaking up, and offering a critique of the movement he helped found.  This has come at a significant personal cost.  I'm posting below in full his most recent article, which offers a corrective to both those on the right who would denounce Obama, and those on the left who feel let down.  I think that Frank's words below, and John Dear's comments about Obama's role in American empire, posted here recently both offer helpful, contrasting lenses through which to interpret this new era in American history.  I'm grateful for Frank's reminders of Obama's significant achievements; and I'm grateful for John's reminders that we should not trust in princes.  Both perspectives deserve serious attention.  I'm looking forward to reading more of both of these important voices in the year to come. (BTW - Frank's new book 'Patience with God' is fantastic - one of the most illuminating reading experiences of the past year.) 'Obama Will Triumph - So Will America', by Frank Schaeffer (Original post here)

Before he’d served even one year President Obama lost the support of the easily distracted left and engendered the white hot rage of the hate-filled right. But some of us, from all walks of life and ideological backgrounds -- including this white, straight, 57-year-old, former religious right wing agitator, now progressive writer and (given my background as the son of a famous evangelical leader) this unlikely Obama supporter -- are sticking with our President. Why?-- because he is succeeding. We faithful Obama supporters still trust our initial impression of him as a great, good and uniquely qualified man to lead us. Obama’s steady supporters will be proved right. Obama’s critics will be remembered as easily panicked and prematurely discouraged at best and shriveled hate mongers at worst.

The Context of the Obama Presidency.

Not since the days of the rise of fascism in Europe, the Second World War and the Depression has any president faced more adversity. Not since the Civil War has any president led a more bitterly divided country. Not since the introduction of racial integration has any president faced a more consistently short-sighted and willfully ignorant opposition – from both the right and left. As the President’s poll numbers have fallen so has his support from some on the left that were hailing him as a Messiah not long ago; all those lefty websites and commentators that were falling all over themselves on behalf of our first black president during the 2008 election. The left’s lack of faith has become a self-fulfilling “prophecy”-- snipe at the President and then watch the poll numbers fall and then pretend you didn’t have anything to do with it!

Here is what Obama faced when he took office-- none of which was his fault:

# An ideologically divided country to the point that America was really two countries

# Two wars; one that was mishandled from the start, the other that was unnecessary and immoral

# The worst economic crisis since the depression

# America’s standing in the world at the lowest point in history

# A country that had been misled into accepting the use of torture of prisoners of war

# A health care system in free fall

# An educational system in free fall

# A global environmental crisis of history-altering proportions (about which the Bush administration and the Republicans had done nothing)

# An impasse between culture warriors from the right and left

# A huge financial deficit inherited from the terminally irresponsible Bush administration…

And those were only some of the problems sitting on the President’s desk! “Help” from the Right? What did the Republicans and the religious right, libertarians and half-baked conspiracy theorists -- that is what the Republicans were reduced to by the time Obama took office -- do to “help” our new president (and our country) succeed? They claimed that he wasn’t a real American, didn’t have an American birth certificate, wasn’t born here, was secretly a Muslim, was white-hating "racist", was secretly a communist, was actually the Anti-Christ, (!) and was a reincarnation of Hitler and wanted “death panels” to kill the elderly! They not-so-subtly called for his assassination through the not-so-subtle use of vile signs held at their rallies and even a bumper sticker quoting Psalm 109:8. They organized “tea parties” to sound off against imagined insults and all government in general and gathered to howl at the moon. They were led by insurance industry lobbyists and deranged (but well financed) “commentators” from Glenn Beck to Rush Limbaugh. The utterly discredited Roman Catholic bishops teamed up with the utterly discredited evangelical leaders to denounce a president who was trying to actually do something about the poor, the environment, to diminish the number of abortions through compassionate programs to help women and to care for the sick! And in Congress the Republican leadership only knew one word: “No!” In other words the reactionary white, rube, uneducated, crazy American far right,combined with the educated but obtuse neoconservative war mongers, religious right shills for big business, libertarian Fed Reserve-hating gold bug, gun-loving crazies, child-molesting acquiescent “bishops”, frontier loons and evangelical gay-hating flakes found one thing to briefly unite them: their desire to stop an uppity black man from succeeding at all costs!

“Help” from the Left? What did the left do to help their newly elected president? Some of them excoriated the President because they disagreed with the bad choices he was being forced to make regarding a war in Afghanistan that he’d inherited from the worst president in modern history! Others stood up and bravely proclaimed that the President’s economic policies had “failed” before the President even instituted them! Others said that since all gay rights battles had not been fully won within virtually minuets of the President taking office, they’d been “betrayed”! (Never mind that Obama’s vocal support to the gay community is stronger than any other president’s has been. Never that mind he signed a new hate crimes law!) Those that had stood in transfixed legions weeping with beatific emotion on election night turned into an angry mob saying how "disappointed" they were that they’d not all immediately been translated to heaven the moment Obama stepped into the White House! Where was the “change”? Contrary to their expectations they were still mere mortals! And the legion of young new supporters was too busy texting to pay attention for longer than a nanosecond… “Governing”?! What the hell does that world, uh, like mean?”

The President’s critics left and right all had one thing in common: impatience laced with little-to-no sense of history (let alone reality) thrown in for good measure. Then of course there were the white, snide know-it-all commentators/talking heads who just couldn’t imagine that maybe, just maybe they weren’t as smart as they thought they were and certainly not as smart as their president. He hadn’t consulted them, had he? So he must be wrong! The Obama critics' ideological ideas defined their idea of reality rather than reality defining their ideas—say, about what is possible in one year in office after the hand that the President had been dealt by fate, or to be exact by the American idiot nation that voted Bush into office… twice!

Meanwhile back in the reality-based community – in just 12 short months -- President Obama: #Continued the draw down the misbegotten war in Iraq (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Thoughtfully and decisively picked the best of several bad choices regarding the war in Afghanistan (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Gave a major precedent-setting speech supporting gay rights (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Restored America’s image around the globe (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Banned torture of American prisoners (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Stopped the free fall of the American economy (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Put the USA squarely back in the bilateral international community (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Put the USA squarely into the middle of the international effort to halt global warming (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics) #Stood up for educational reform (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Won a Nobel peace prize (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Moved the trial of terrorists back into the American judicial system of checks and balances (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Did what had to be done to start the slow, torturous and almost impossible process of health care reform that 7 presidents had failed to even begin (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Responded to hatred from the right and left with measured good humor and patience (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics) #Stopped the free fall of job losses (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Showed immense personal courage in the face of an armed and dangerous far right opposition that included the sort of disgusting people that show up at public meetings carrying loaded weapons and carrying Timothy McVeigh-inspired signs about the “blood of tyrants” needing to “water the tree of liberty”… (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

#Showed that he could not only make the tough military choices but explain and defend them brilliantly (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics)

Other than those "disappointing" accomplishments -- IN ONE YEAR -- President Obama “failed”! Other than that he didn’t “live up to expectations”! Who actually has failed... ...are the Americans that can’t see the beginning of a miracle of national rebirth right under their jaded noses. Who failed are the smart ass ideologues of the left and right who began rooting for this President to fail so that they could be proved right in their dire and morbid predictions. Who failed are the movers and shakers behind our obscenely dumb news cycles that have turned “news” into just more stupid entertainment for an entertainment-besotted infantile country.

Here’s the good news: President Obama is succeeding without the help of his lefty “supporters” or hate-filled Republican detractors! The Future Looks Good After Obama has served two full terms, (and he will), after his wisdom in moving deliberately and cautiously with great subtlety on all fronts -- with a canny and calculating eye to the possible succeeds, (it will), after the economy is booming and new industries are burgeoning, (they will be), after the doomsayers are all proved not just wrong but silly: let the record show that not all Americans were panicked into thinking the sky was falling. Just because we didn’t get everything we wanted in the first short and fraught year Obama was in office not all of us gave up. Some of us stayed the course. And we will be proved right. Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays, depending on your point of view) to everyone! PS. if you agree that Obama is shaping up to be a great president please pass this on and hang in there!

Arthur's Easy to Like

The Feet of Rawiri Paratene

*Continuing my posts from the set of 'The Insatiable Moon', Auckland, New Zealand.

Rawiri (Ra) Paratene is one of the most respected New Zealand actors, known to international audiences as the angry grandfather Koro in 'Whale Rider'; it's been a privilege to watch him work on the set of 'The Insatiable Moon'.  Ra's been involved in the production before it was a script - reading the novel almost a decade ago, and approaching Mike Riddell for the rights.  Mike, being a clever and strategic fellow, suggested that they could make the film together; and I'm sure that periodically each of them looks at the work being done here and now, and thinks how strange and wonderful it all is that the film is finally happening.

Ra told me yesterday that as he read the novel, he really wanted Arthur to turn out to be what he says he is: the Second Son of God; one of the most attractive elements of Arthur's character is that 'he knows who he is.  It's real simple to him.'  One of the most appealing aspects of Ra's performance is how he slips into the role as if he was born to play it.  That's a cliche, of course; but hopefully I can be forgiven, and the cliche offset by the fact that the story of a homeless Maori man with schizophrenia who believes he's God's second son doesn't exactly fit a literary formula.  Ra says that 'part of me roots for people who don't fit in', and that  Arthur is 'a little guy in everyone else's eyes' (despite who he knows himself to be).

There are moments in the film when Ra makes Arthur's eyes sparkle in innocence, or when he rages against social injustice with the attitude of a mad prophet; he embodies this character in a way that I think will move audiences to the place where we become more sensitive to the pain of the world, without falling into unproductive, conscience-clearing sentimentality.  Ra's a gentle bloke, or at least he was when we talked; but the challenge of playing a gentle soul isn't easy: he put it succinctly, saying that 'To act the role, you have to find the innocence within.  There's an evil man and an innocent man in all of us; and it's as hard to play nice as Arthur as it is to be the arsehole grandfather in 'Whale Rider''

One thing Ra finds easier about this role is the frugal way of working - the low budget has forced everything to be done faster than usual; there's a community feel on set, and real pleasure to  be had in working with colleagues like Ian Mune and Sara Wiseman.  The budget is so low that Ra is even walking around without shoes - a decision taken to authenticate the soles of Arthur, and one that Ra wishes he'd made earlier, as it takes a bit of time to harden one's feet to the streets of Ponsonby (streets, by the way, that Ra declares he's enjoying getting to know; as am I - Ponsonby's a fascinating mix of gentrified, aspirational and economically challenged.  There is, as Arthur's dad might say, some potential here...

Ra's approaching the metaphysical, philosophical and spiritual resonances of 'The Insatiable Moon' from the perspective of respect for whatever meaningful tradition gets you through the day.  You don't have to be religious to enjoy this film (in fact, it might help if you're not): but if you're thinking about meaning and life and spirituality, you like the idea that love really does transcend everything else, and, like Ra, you root for people who don't fit in (who Paul Simon would call 'the sat upon, spat upon, ratted on'), most of all, if the notion that really knowing who you are is both a) impossible and b) something to be strived for, then Arthur may very well be the avatar you're looking for.  (BTW, thanks to the time difference here I'll see James Cameron's appropriation of that word tomorrow night - we'll record our 'Avatar' show asap...)

Meantime, we're at one of our last three locations today; Mick Innes, who I wrote about last week is doing his final scenes with us.  And then, three days to go...

The Last Week

First Day of Shooting Above: We're Nearly There...

And so...it begins...Week Five of shooting.  By Friday evening, we'll be done, the actors can come out of character, the director can have a gin & tonic, the director of photography can confirm if what he calls 'all the information' has been collected, and the writer can sit back with a sense of satisfaction at seeing a story that began with chance encounters on the streets of Ponsonby almost twenty years ago turned into the raw material for a film that, we hope, will entertain, inspire, question, and move audiences when the images and sounds that have been crafted here over the past month are shaped by editing and repeatedly finely tuned into something we call 'The Insatiable Moon'.

But before Friday we'll visit several locations, costumes will be changed, makeup will be made, coffee will be slurped, and traffic noise will be contended with.  (On that note can I respectfully ask those delightful Auckland drivers who insist on honking their horns when they see us shooting on location to PLEASE STOP DOING THAT.  We know you're excited to see a real live movie, but we're trying to work.  Thank you.)  At this point, with 80% of the film shot, it's easy for folk to feel tired; little tensions rise and fall; and sometimes we must ask if this thing is ever going to be finished.  I'm sure it's like this on every film set.  The endeavour of making a movie is a crazy thing - gathering a group of people, some of whom are strangers, some of whom are married, to take moving photographs and record sounds of other strangers pretending to be someone else; to create a story by recording these images and sounds in the wrong order; to rely on the skies to rain when you want them to and to shine when you need it; to hope that the heartbeat that began with an idea in a solitary writer's head might find the flesh of actors growing around it, connect through the sinews of cinematography, be encased in the delicate-boned structure of editing, colour-grading, dance to the elegant soundscape that musicians are composing as we speak, and then be set free to make its case in a multiplex marketplace which, we aspire, is ripe for this moon.  Like I said, making a film is a crazy thing.

But we've reached the last week, and the finish line is in sight.  With that in mind, I thought I'd look for films with the word 'last' in the title that might evoke some of what we're trying to do here in New Zealand.  Any more lasts?  Feel free to comment below...

The Last Temptation of Christ: Guy thinks he's God.  People throw stones.

Last Night: People believe the end of the world is coming, some use it as an excuse to have a party.

Last Tango in Paris: Guy and girl try to find the sacred through sex.

Last of the Mohicans: Guy with amazing hair tries to save the world.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Guy searches for eternal life.

The Last Samurai: Guy who stands out teaches people to be nicer to each other.

The Last Tycoon: Guy tells stories, but has unfinished business.

The Last Emperor: Little guy thinks he's important.  He may be right.The l

Cinematic Reality!

Look - the 'New Moon' set's just like the 'Insatiable One!"

I’ve just spent a couple of hours with vampires and werewolves – no, it’s not the annual convention of serious-but-unpaid critics (it takes one to know one), but rather I took the opportunity wearing my other hat as a film writer to watch the new ‘Twilight’ movie and near-namesake of our own little New Zealand film ‘New Moon’, in which various well-dressed neckbiters and lupine creatures with anger management problems compete for the attention of a whiny girl named Bella, and, presumably, for the future of the world.

Bella, the kind of teenager who seems to have no discernible personality beyond complaining about how her 109 year old boyfriend Edward won’t plunge his canines into her skin in order that she might become immortal and pale-skinned too (she doesn’t need any help with the moodiness – if I was a vampire, the last thing I’d want to do would be to give a life boost to the natural span of teenage angst by making her live forever. She needs Oprah, not bitemarks. Now, I’m probably being unfair, and so I should acknowledge that ‘New Moon’ is nowhere near as bad as I had expected; it looks fabulous, Alexandre Desplat’s score is gorgeous, Kristen Stewart does a really rather good job of conveying Bella’s angst; and it will provide some emotional catharsis for anyone who has recently broken up with an immortal being from Transylvania. This is a moot point, however, for I am not here to discuss – and I imagine you are not much interested in – the plot nuances of Stephanie Meyer’s runaway bestsellers and the films that have been made from them. What’s the connection with ‘The Insatiable Moon’, I hear you cry (perhaps)?

Well, other than the semantic common bond via the lunar reference in the titles, both ‘New’ and ‘Insatiable’ moons are stories in which that which is often considered to be unreal becomes real, or in other words, in which magic (of various hues) emerges in a world we already recognize. The ‘Twilight’ books are a metaphor in which some aspects of Meyer’s Mormon faith (particularly sexual abstinence) are explored (none too subtly, I might add); the symbolism is fascinating, if a little clunky (at one point Edward crushes a mobile phone in anger at not being able to communicate with the virginal girl that he loves, under the watchful eye of the lit-up statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro; the fact that he has a rival for her affection whom she seems also to be in love with is undeniably an evocation of earlier Mormon teaching on polygamy; there is much talk of death and the possibility of resurrection is always hanging around). The difference between the ‘Twilight’ stories and ‘The Insatiable Moon’ (other than the fact that we’re shooting on a budget that is less than one-hundredth of what the American vampires get) is that ‘Insatiable’ isn’t metaphor, but it does believe in magic.

The vampires-in-high-school story seems to have come after the desire to project some dogmatic thinking on the part of the writer; the story of Arthur is rooted, first of all, in Mike Riddell’s experience of living and working in Ponsonby over a decade ago, and the interactions he had with a homeless man, who really did seem to believe that he was the second son of God. (Mike once told me that one of the quickest ways to make bad art is to try to impose a message on it before the story has taken on the contours of something so simple it’s near the point of being tautological: it has to be a GOOD STORY.) Now you may not know that through some technological magic of our own, Arthur himself has been tweeting updates from the set – you can find them on this site, but you can also sign up for them here; one of the most interesting comments that our Second Son of God has made lately is that miracles are sometimes hard to notice, because often they’re so small. (His actual tweet? "One thing God told me. Miracles are so small most people miss them.") It’s with this topic that ‘Twilight’ loses its way, and becomes merely another in a long line of attempts at putting the message before the art. It wants to make everything enormous and melodramatic, as if upon every moment of every scene depends the future of life as we know it. There are miracles in ‘The Insatiable Moon’, but they are of the kind that we often fail to notice – a glance, a touch, an act of kindness; the metaphysical happening under our noses, 24/7, on the streets of Auckland, and of course also among the community of passionate ‘Twilight’ fans too.

Last night a few of us had a late dinner at a sidewalk restaurant, after viewing the first rough assembly of the film so far. It was an emotional experience for me to see the gathered unfolding – in albeit rough-edged form – of Arthur’s story, twelve years after I first read the novel. All I can say is this: the story as I envisaged it while reading is the story that is being captured by the film-makers; so many of the performances are pitch-perfect; and there’s a tremendous sense of excitement as the pieces fall into place. While sharing the meal afterward, a bloke invited himself to sit at our table. He said his name was Pete, had a vodka mixer bottle in his hand, and appeared to be under the influence of one substance or another. It was either the beginning of a short night or the end of a long day for him. But he regaled us with warmth and stories – invoking various languages, riffing about Bob Marley and Haile Selassie, forgetting my name and calling me Sean (I guess one Irish name’s as good as another; there is a labyrinth of complexity to why Pete exchanged my Welsh name for an Irish one, without my having told him I’m from Belfast); but there was one thing Pete said which in my hearing began to distinguish itself as just one of those small, quiet miracles Arthur was tweeting about earlier this week. When I mentioned we were making a film, Pete raised his bottle and declared to the heavenliess (and anyone else who may have been listening) two words that I am unilaterally selecting as the motto for this blog, and maybe – if the director permits – the film itself.

‘Cinematic Reality!’ exclaimed Pete, toasting the sky.

‘Cinematic Reality!’ echoed the director, and the writer, and the producer, and the director of photography, while the stick-out-like-a-sore-thumb-what-the-hell’s-he-doing-here-film-critic-from-Ireland thought to himself: This isn’t how Stanley Kubrick or David Lean or Abel Gance made films, sitting at a sidewalk restaurant eating cold chorizo sausage, and being toasted by an uninvited guest. Or maybe it was. Because it felt just perfect, as if Arthur had sent us a messenger to remind us what we were doing.

There’s a hell of a lot of work still to be done, but we’re coming to an end of the fourth and penultimate week of shooting, and the moon seems to be on our side.

‘Cinematic Reality!’

Transcendence and Compassion in Cinema

Mick Innes as 'John' in 'The Insatiable Moon', filming now in New Zealand

I’m in Ponsonby’s red light district on the set of 'The Insatiable Moon' – the portable gazebos we’re using for shade and comfortable eating are the colour of healthy scarlet; appropriate enough, given that today we turn to one of the most troubling scenes in the movie – a scene in which the hidden shame felt by a character leads to disaster. Everyone’s focused on the task in hand: to portray an awful event as truthfully as possible, without exploiting the audience’s emotions, nor denying the fact that human sorrow is real, and touches to us all. If we’re lucky, we might have an Arthur in our lives, someone who sees through the superficial mores of our culture, resists its car rally speed, and offers a human connection in the midst of the awful things that come to us, hopefully only a few times in a full life.

Mick Innes was our featured actor this morning, and it can’t be easy to do what the script requires of him – I don’t want to give too much away, but for instance, he had to be very cold and hold his breath for a long time today. I met Mick last week at his home, an amazing little place furnished with items reclaimed from the street and elsewhere – it’s one of the most character-filled abodes I’ve ever been; and Mick one of the warmest human beings. You know when people talk about someone having a twinkle in their eye? Mick’s one of them – his face may be lined from what I presume include the vagaries of being an actor; but his smile is overwhelming; his coffee welcoming, and despite his passion for sustainable home improvement, there’s nothing recycled about his performance. Trust me. You have not seen the character he plays – called John in the movie – on screen before. He will make you angry and cry at the same time. His character stands for all the people marginalized by their mistakes, and dehumanized by their community; and as a consequence not allowed to live. Mick plays him beautifully; and seeing him do it is a privilege for me as a writer used to only brining a critical eye to bear on a film once it’s made.

This has been the most illuminating aspect of being in the environs of ‘The Insatiable Moon’ – on the one hand it’s an obvious thing to say that critics and film-makers are two sides of a coin; we need each other, but we’re not always very good at communicating with each other. The reasons are fairly simple – each of us may be considered to have a vested interest in outdoing the other, but usually this either produces unhealthy cynicism rather than the kind of creative competition that we’re all supposed to believe is the nexus at which great art emerges; or, more likely, we just don’t talk to each other at all. Warren Beatty asked Pauline Kael for notes while he was making ‘Reds’ – a magnificent film that seems to get better with age – but she went back to New York soon enough; even a great director and the then most respected critic in the English language couldn’t find a way to make it work. So I’m reticent about overstating just what a film critic is doing on a film set (and while our director knows what she’s doing, I can face the reality that I am not Pauline Kael)…

Maybe it can suffice to say that I’m more convinced than ever that film-makers and film critics are, when we’re at our best, on the same side. We both want cinematic art to tell the truth; we want to share stories to the world (or whoever will watch) that reveal something that no one else has seen before in the way that we see it; we want the curtain to rise at whatever megaplex, art house or out house we’re in, and for something of surpassing quality to appear in front of our eyes. That’s not too much to ask, is it? In that light, I’d love to hear from you about your own thoughts of just what this surpassing quality in movies is – what are the transcendent moments of cinema for you? And what performances have granted you access to a world of compassion that made you want to change your life?