Blue Like Jazz the Movie: Some Thoughts

I saw Blue Like Jazz a bit ago, now.  I liked it.  I’m sure you’re not surprised.

I’m biased, but I really liked it, I did.  And I laughed.  A lot.  It probably has something to do with the fact that I was sitting next to

Claire Holt, playing "Penny"

Don, who laughed even at the parts I didn’t get (the sound still has to be calibrated, or something like that).  It was so fun to sit together and watch the movie adapted from his book, with fictional characters based on our lives.  Fun and not as weird as I thought it would be.

I’ve been used to the idea of seeing someone named Penny on the screen for a while now.  Don sent me the screenplay several years back.  I was immensely flattered that he had created such a virtuous character and put my name on it.  I was flattered, and a little dismayed.

I texted Don my thoughts on the movie.  They went something like this:  “I love it!  You did such a great job portraying Reed.  And you made me look like hot shit!”

Don, being ever sensitive to portraying his friends on the page and on the screen, texted me back a worried – I might even say agonized – message.  “You think I made you look like shit? I’m so sorry!”

I had to explain to Don, as I feel I must explain to you, that it’s difficult to be immortalized at the age of 21.  Especially when you are immortalized to fit the dictates of fast-paced, conflict-driven story writing.  Without giving any details away I’ll just say that Penny-in-the-film is a lot more virtuous and dare-devil than Penny-in-the-flesh.

There were several parts where Penny talks about her mother, and these bits made me tear up – cry, even.  I’m not sure what they’ll do to you, but it was difficult to see her struggle with the reality of having a homeless and schizophrenic mother.  But, at least for me, it was liberating, too.  It’s been nine years since I was at Reed and ignoring my mom, and we’ve come a long way since then.  I no longer have to deal with the guilty and shameful feelings of knowing I’ve let my mother languish on the streets with no one to care for her.  I’m glad Penny’s story is no longer my own.

Blue Like Jazz is a good, and above all, funny movie.  I’ll definitely watch it again and again.  I may not have the same response as those who grew up in the church, because that’s just not my story.  I’ll leave it to the rest of you to decide whether it did a good job portraying the struggle to come to terms with one’s upbringing and one’s faith.  For me, I resonated with the struggle to be honest and true to yourself, even when it’s not a popular thing to do.  Truth be told, that’s still a lesson I am learning.

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One final thing:  you should know, Penny in the movie may be cooler than Penny in real life, but I’ll tell you what:  my conversion story is way better than hers!  For that, you’ve got to read the book.  (***OK, when I say stuff like that, it hits me: It’s so weird, it’s so weird, it’s so weird to be immortalized in a book and a movie!!***)

Thanks for reading.

Why You Should Still Give to BLJ

Initially I didn’t really understand why Don and Steve were trying to raise even more money to Save Blue Like Jazz than the amazing $125,000 that was raised in 10 days.  But then a guy named Patrick Pelham, a documentarian exploring faith, art, and you know, the meaning of life, contacted me to say he was interested in hearing my take on the campaign and why the movie should be made.  I was forced to think more about the movie and why it mattered, and I landed on something that really excited me.  I totally agree with Don and Steve  that having enough money to make a better movie and to pay people and all that is important, but there’s one main reason I want to see the campaign reach $200,000:

I want Blue Like Jazz the movie to reach a wider audience than the book.

I love the idea of God using all of us not only to save the movie, but to tell this story more broadly.  I want to see this story and this movie make headlines.  I want non-Christians to sit up and take notice of why so many people have reached into their pockets to make it a reality.  And I want the people who have never heard of Blue Like Jazz to pay attention to this story that I think God is delighting to write through all of us.

You should know that this is the first time I’ve been interviewed on camera about anything, and it’s pretty weird to see myself up on Youtube trying to put my sentences together and make sense.  If you want to watch, here’s  a link to the video Patrick posted over on Youtube.

Blue Like Jazz’s Lesson: Loving the “Other”

I graduated from Reed College in 2002, and a little while later Blue Like Jazz came out.  That was eight plus years ago and in many ways it was another lifetime.  I’m married now, have a 3 1/2 year old daughter, another due in late November, and my faith looks very different than it did when I was twenty-three.

The push to save Blue Like Jazz the movie has naturally got me thinking about Reed, and college, and what it was like to be a new Christian in a place like that.  And of course, how Reed shaped my faith.  The funny thing is that for Don Reed was the catalyst for a marked shift in the way he viewed the faith he grew up with; for me, I had to leave Reed to see my faith mature.

Above all Reed is a place where your preconceptions about the world come under heavy scrutiny.  You learn to live in the grey.  We constantly ask: Why do you believe that?  Can you back it up?  What are your sources? For a postmodern Christian these questions are moot — we don’t try to prove our faith; it just is.  But it does cause people who grew up in the church to look at what their faith caused them to believe about the world.  And that can be very enlightening, as Blue Like Jazz attests.

For me, I had to leave the Reed bubble, get a job, find a church, interact with non-Christians and those damned evangelicals that I guess I became, in order to see my black and white categories fall apart.  Because I was surrounded at Reed by people who thought like me, voted like me, and had the same sensibilities as me, I never really had to confront the “other” and be influenced by their ideas.  I could just categorize them, slap the label Republican (synonymous in my mind with bigoted and unkind) on them, and ignore them.

It looks different for me that it did for Don, but I think this lesson, this learning to cross boundaries, to live with the other, to interact with (dare I say love?) what we reject or dislike, even hate, is what Blue Like Jazz is all about – and, I think, what Jesus is all about.  At least, that’s what I take away, even if it took leaving Reed to truly understand it.

Above all, this is what excites me about the making of Blue Like Jazz the movie.  My prayer is that this movie will be seen by tons and tons of non-Christians, and this is the message they’ll think of when they think of Jesus.

Do you agree?  What’s your hope for the film?