Source: Logan Herald Journal, Associated Press, QSaltLake, Associated Press, 8:The Mormon Proposition film website, Salt Lake Tribune
In a still released by
8:TMP producers, a gay couple kiss during a Prop 8 protest at Temple Square in Salt Lake City
A film that has generated the most buzz from Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah is one that has a unique local focus in that ski resort. And it's a documentary rather than a feature film. [See a trailer for the film at the end of this post]
8: The Mormon Proposition (aka 8:TMP) premiered today at the festival. It’s been included in several Sundance must-see lists including one from CNN entertainment reporter JD Cargill. It’s sold out for five screenings at the festival, the Logan, Utah Herald Journal reports. That makes the documentary film even more popular than some of the much-hyped feature films at the festival.
Despite rumors of protests against the film by anti-gay protesters, it opened quietly today before what Associated Press reporter Jennifer Dobner describes as “a friendly audience”.
The only visible protests came from a couple of dozen pro-marriage-equality demonstrators who shouted “Separate church from 8” outside the theater where the film was shown, Dobner reports.
The film argues that the Mormon church’s dominant efforts in the campaign to pass Prop 8 in California is just part of a decades-long political campaign by the church to deny basic rights to LGBT people.
Salt Lake Tribune reports that the 600 people in the audience for the initial screening gave the film’s creator Reed Cowan “two sustained standing ovations”.
In a December press release 8:TMP’s promoters said of their film, “It is to Mormons and their anti-gay allies what Fahrenheit 9-11 was to the Bush Administration.”
The film was made by Utah native and one-time Mormon missionary Reed Cowan and by Steven Greenstreet—also a former Mormon. It has garnered significant pre-opening press coverage for the documentary film, including an Associated Press feature, that’s been published by Washington Post, Salt Lake Tribune, ABCNews.com and other AP subscribers.
Film on Mormon campaign for Prop 8 opens with sellout in Park City, Utah [contd.]
Cowan’s film documents the role of Salt Lake City based Latter Day Saints church—the Mormons—in the campaign to pass Prop 8, but goes beyond that. In a June, 2009 interview with QSaltLake.com, Cowan explained that he started out to make a different film:
Truthfully, this film started out as an exposé on the problems of gay teen homelessness in Utah’s “Zion” and an examination about WHY otherwise loving parents would kick their kids out on to the streets just because their kids are gay. But as the weeks and months unfolded in our project, I began seeing that history demanded our project be larger in scope. Slowly, but with great force, our focus shifted to what I believe is the “touchstone” of Mormon ideology regarding homosexuality ... and that is exclusively Mormon efforts to get Prop 8 on the ballot in California and see its passage. It’s the case against Mormons and what I believe has been a decades-long work to damage gay people and their causes.
Although he now lives in Florida, Cowan grew up in the heart of Mormon country, in Roosevelt, Utah. He graduated from Utah State University in 1997 and worked for several years as a reporter at Salt Lake City TV stations.
The film lays out its case with campaign-finance data, documents, and a range of interviews with politicians, historians, and with those most affected by the outcome, according to pre-release publicity material for the film. Cowan told the Herald Journal that he perused more than 1,500 documents from the church’s archives that he claims show “Mormon determination to quash LGBT efforts for equal rights.” And it’s an effort that began long before Prop 8 in California.
Cowan told the Herald Journal that the church papers left him “more convinced than ever that a series of great wrongs have been committed against so many innocent people and those wrongs originated within the walls of LDS Church facilities.”
On the publicity website for the film, its producers say:
During the fight, the Mormon Church media-engine, including mega-million dollar public relations and political consulting firm support, barraged Californians with a suffocating number of misleading television and radio ads and door-to-door campaigns manned by an alleged Mormon front-group, the National Organization for Marriage.
Although the background focus on LDS church has not been a primary part of the Perry v Schwarzenegger (Prop 8) trial in San Francisco, virtually all of the plaintiffs’ witnesses during the past two weeks at the trial have shown, in different ways, how the Prop 8 campaign targeted LGBT people with misleading messages.
Cowan’s film reinforces that message with personal stories. Among the people interviewed for the film are a gay couple who were married in San Francisco on June 17, 2008, the first day marriages for gay and lesbian couples became—briefly—legal in California.
The couple, Tyler Barrick and Spencer Jones, were both raised in Utah Mormon families and described themselves to AP reporter Dobner as reluctant activists and movie stars:
“The film found us,” said Jones. “We’re just two gay guys from Utah who were able to get married. Our story is really a lot of people's story.”
That story includes extended families who are split on the issue of their marriage. Barrick's St. George-based parents Steve and Linda Stay have backed the couple and quit the church over the issue. Jones’s family remains active in the church and objected to the marriage. In the movie, Jones says his family “refused to find any joy” in his happiness.
In the film, Barrick recounts to Cowan, “When 8 passed, I called my mother crying—why did the Mormons do this to us? Why would our own people do this to us? They have turned their backs on us.”
Barrick is a direct descendant of Mormon pioneer (and polygamist) Fredrick G. Williams, described in 8:TMP press materials as “the right hand man to church founder Joseph Smith”.
In interviews with Cowan, Barrick and his parents compare the current campaign against marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples to the plight of their Mormon ancestors who were chased from state to state because they practiced an alternative form of marriage, polygamy.
“Now, decades later, the Barrick-Jones family is experiencing cultural and governmental discrimination of the same kind that haunted their ancestors,” the film website says. “Only now, they’re at war with their own religion of Mormonism and the people their religion seduced into voting against their union.”
Salt Lake Tribune reporter Sean P Means describes the audience reaction to the film’s premier screening:
Some in the audience cried when hearing stories of gay men and lesbians recounting discrimination they have suffered. Others hissed when Utah Eagle Forum President Gayle Ruzicka appeared on-screen, or when State Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, appeared to declare homosexuality “the greatest threat to America going down.”
While the film was still being edited, Cowan expressed hope in the QSaltLake interview that the screeners for Sundance would select 8:TMP for the festival. “I’m really hoping Sundance screeners give our film a fair look and choose to include it in their upcoming festival,” he said. “Can you imagine the press that would happen if our film were to premiere in Utah at Sundance? It would be explosive! So, Sundance is my first hope.”
He got his wish. Sundance picked the film. Associated Press then picked up on the film with a widely-distributed profile of the film written by Jennifer Dobner.
She notes that the both the location and the timing of the film’s premier is fortuitous:
The film debuts just as a California federal trial over the constitutionality of the ban enters its third week.
"Karma," said Cowan of the timing and the film's inaugural screening in a theater roughly 25 miles from the Mormon church's headquarters.
“There was no other place on the planet where this could premiere,” he said. “This is where the lies came from, this is where the money came from. The sharpest karma that could be leveled on the Mormon church ... it has to be leveled in their own backyard.”
Church officials have not seen the film but have reviewed a trailer and other materials posted online, a spokeswoman for the faith said.
“It appears that accuracy and truth are rare commodities in this film,” [church spokeswoman] Kim Farah said. “Clearly, anyone looking for balance and thoughtful discussion of a serious topic will need to look elsewhere.”
Charges that the film is grossly inaccurate were leveled against 8:TMP long before anyone had seen it, based entirely on the trailer [see below] and on Cowan’s interviews while the film was being made. On a user-generated page at Yahoo.com, a user asked in November—apparently in all seriousness—“8 - The Mormon Proposition movie? Should it be allowed?” The responses came largely from those who said they are Mormons. A slight majority thought that it would be problematic to somehow censor the film, but were certain, without seeing it, that it was all just a pack of lies.
Cowan told QSaltLake in June that the church’s publicity machine had ginned up an “all-out assault” against him—especially after he allowed a Salt Lake City TV station last summer to air parts of an interview Cowan did with with a Utah state senator who told the filmmaker that gay people are the “greatest threat to America”.
In many of the pre-release responses to 8:TMP Mormons play the by-now well worn victim card. An email posted by Cowan on a publicity blog for the film tells him, “I love my church, and yes we believe that homosexuality is wrong, but it really isn’t a question of policy; it is a question of morality,” writes Derrick Clifford. “Please stop targeting us.”
But the power of the publicity machine described in Cowan’s film was evident even in response to the film’s release. A Utah-based anti-gay group, America Forever, which is described in the film as a Mormon front group, sent out 80,000 faxes on Friday denouncing the movie, its makers, and the festival, Associated Press reports.
Although the most of those in the audience for the Sunday screening of 8:TMP at Sundance congratulated and thanked Cowan for his film, the feeling was not unanimous, according to Salt Lake Tribune:
One viewer, who identified himself as voting for Proposition 8, accused Cowan of making a propaganda tract. He criticized the use of ominous music playing under audio of a satellite message in which three LDS apostles issued a call to action to church members. The LDS Church hour-long satellite broadcast never has been made public before now, the movie said.
It’s a charge often heard from detractors before the film opened, but with a twist, because now they can complain about the soundtrack.
Source: Prop 8 film sells out at Sundance | Logan Herald Journal
Film focuses on Mormon role in gay marriage ban | Associated Press (Washington Post)
8: The Mormon Proposition: An Interview with Director Reed Cowan | QSaltLake
Few Protesters Show at Sundance for Prop. 8 Movie | Associated Press (ABC News)
8:The Mormon Proposition | Film publicity website
Moviegoers applaud Prop. 8 film critical of LDS Church | Salt Lake Tribune