“You’re not in Kansas anymore, Elder.”
I was probably about the last person to find out that Richard Dutcher had left the Church, when I read the Deseret News articles previewing his new movie ‘Falling’ last Friday. Definitely too sad to join the throngs calling him a "loser" on the Deseret News web site.
I have read at least 15 articles on it since then, from local papers to BYU Studies and SL Weekly to Christianity Today and a host of others.
He is a great filmmaker, really without anything resembling a peer in the LDS community, which really makes me sad about it. As he has said, religious communities do not usually produce great art, and now there will be less.
Dutcher’s father was a bartender, an unfaithful alcoholic Pentecostal, and he heard those preachers denigrate film often, and his parents divorced when he was 6. His mother was Baptist, but she remarried a Mormon who later went to jail for sexually abusing kids when he was 8. They all joined the LDS Church when he was 8, but he didn’t feel converted until an experience in Carthage Jail when he was 14.
He went to Hillcrest High School in the early 80s, even after his Mom moved to Kansas. He lived out of his car for much of that time, but earned several scholarships, and took one to study film at BYU. Watching ‘Return of the Jedi’ in 1983, and pondering his own father issues (he had not seen his birth father since he was 6), he decided in the theater, with the help of Luke Skywalker, to go on a mission. He worked in pizza places, oil fields, and nursing homes to save for his mission.
He served in Mexico from 1984-86, and was close enough to a drive-by shooting that the victim died in his arms. He came back and finished film school at BYU, his big project apparently a KBYU production about Eliza R. Snow, wife of both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. He married a sculptor named Gwen in 1988. They now have 7 children that they home school in Mapleton.
He went to Los Angeles for 10 years and tried to make it as an actor and director, working as a substitute school teacher and doing the graveyard shift at 7-Eleven. When his first movie, ‘Girl Crazy’, finally was sold to HBO in 1997, he had lost money. The only way to finally cash in was to add nudity every 7 or 8 minutes for the international distribution, but he refused.
‘God’s Army’, which he spent 4 years raising $300,000 to make, finally came out in 2000, and launched the era of Mormon cinema with it. At that time he had decided to get out of LA, after a decade of “LA Ass-holery” he had been convinced the city was far removed from the act and art of making films, and he had a net worth of negative $30,000. Many wrote angry letters to the Deseret News and church leaders in regards to Sacrament Meetings on screen, priesthood blessings on screen, missionaries behaving like 19 year olds on screen, etc. But the film was a Utah blockbuster, the 2nd highest grossing film in the state that year, making $2.6 million in 240 cities nationwide, and another $2.5 million in its first year out on DVD.
It took him just 4 weeks to raise $1 million for ‘Brigham City’, Larry H. Miller helping out a good deal on that one, and that movie came out in 2001 to great critical acclaim; but not any profit, which baffled Miller. It was PG-13 and violent, but still very popular. Dutcher was in his ward’s Elder’s Quorum Presidency and seen as a prominent member who was doing a lot to publicize the Church, send kids on missions, and draw interest from the general public.
He had launched the Mormon cinema age. The Other Side of Heaven, The Best Two Years, The 3 Work and the Glory movies, The RM, The Book of Mormon Movie, Singles Ward 1 & 2, The Home Teachers, Church Ball, Baptists at Our Barbecue, American Mormon, Mobsters & Mormons, Passage to Zarahemla, everything flooded in, and Larry H. Miller often had up to 4 LDS films going at once in his multiplexes.
Dutcher had a small cameo in Singles Ward, but when he saw it, he wanted to pull his hair out. Most of the rest of the LDS films from the era were much worse. He had become not the father of Mormon Cinema, but its biggest critic. “There was a flood of really crappy movies” he said in one interview, “Most of the Mormon filmmakers are delusional, they think their films would appeal to a larger audience… Most Mormon films are a trifle, a piece of entertainment, something that won’t offend… My idea of Mormon cinema would be films that take a deep, probing look into Mormonism, its history, doctrine, but that’s not what Mormon cinema became. It became something so much more superficial and meaningless.” He was especially frustrated that all the Utahns would approach him on the street and be so thankful that someone was making good family films. “I was like, ‘Are you not paying attention?’”
“I had shown Mormon movie makers that there was a market now to tell our stories. All they heard was that there was market…. LDS filmmakers were interested in film as a business, not as an art form at all.” He went to LDS film festivals and film schools and talked about how faith in movies had always been an angry attack or a sugary promotion. There was a huge unexplored area there, and a wealth of material to work from.
Larry H. Miller had stood by his side in 2001 to announce the upcoming $10 million movie on Joseph Smith, which continually was talked about and scheduled and delayed repeatedly. Preliminary filming had occurred up near Ogden. Val Kilmer had wanted to play Joseph Smith, and scheduling details were being worked out. Dutcher had consulted extensively with Richard Bushman, in his desire to be historically accurate. F. Murray Abraham had wanted to play Governor Ford. Miller’s support went up and down after Brigham City didn’t make him any money on his investment. Word that Miller might be backing out spooked other investors. Supposedly the script, as demanded by some wealthy LDS backers, was nothing fit for Seminary class, and some pulled out. Dutcher to this day has maintained that church headquarters was never involved much at all, and never anything but supportive when he talked with authorities quietly. “Wealthy LDS people are very much like wealthy everybody else”, he’s said. By early 2005 Dutcher had gone ahead and arranged 100% non-LDS funding, and was again trying to align schedules with Val Kilmer.
In the meantime, nearly bankrupted himself from the Joseph Smith non-project, Dutcher released ‘States of Grace’, aka ‘God’s Army 2.’ Reviewed by just about everyone as his best film yet, it bombed at the box office, he thinks because the Mormon film market had been so bad that no one, even in Utah, wanted to see another LDS film. The main character, a Utah bred Elder in LA whose father gives him the old ‘Mormon Doctrine’ (pg. 134) come home in a pine box rather than without your virtue speech on his way down there, diddles when he should’ve daddled down there and the movie gives him “easy” forgiveness, a la Universalist Christian grace, and the movie was controversial in Utah for all of those reasons. “Word has gotten out that my films are a little edgier than the others, and have a little more depth, and are actually about something. And I think the Mormon community just doesn’t have reverence or respect for art. It certainly doesn’t understand film as an art form.”
By this time, somewhere in 2005, he lost his faith in the LDS Church. As best I read it, especially since he wrote ‘Falling’ way back in 1999, and has so much crisis of faith stuff in all of his movies, he has struggled with his beliefs his whole life. His has not been a Bruce R. McConkie life of not one doubt, ever, ever. He has described it as the answer to 1 question, which changed for him that year. He also said “You’re not supposed to ask me that!” when Christianity Today asked him if the Book of Mormon is the word of God. He was very frustrated, as revealed in later interviews, that complex lives and difficult decisions are reduced to inaccurate Sunday School lessons, lessons that are really lies and slanders. His historical inquiries, with Bushman and others, revealed to him that “The LDS community has a long history of character assassination. When wandering sheep stray from the fold, Mormons don’t go looking for them. They grab their high-powered rifle and climb a tall tower and start shooting.”
He publicly announced that he was now a nonpracticing Mormon in the Provo Daily Herald a year ago. “When people ask me if I am a Mormon, I don’t know how to answer. It is a giant philosophical discussion.”
As to his personal falling away, Dutcher has said there is no affair, his wife and 7 kids still go to Church every week, it is not an axe against Church leadership for his Joseph Smith movie falling through, he’s not gay, he’s not a drug addict, he isn’t counterfeiting anti-Banking society notes in Kirtland, no one misspelled his name on a blessing, etc. He does admit he swears, sometimes in anger but usually for fun, and that he really enjoys dark Irish beer. “I’m just a guy making movies, not a Church leader, not the son of Satan. I’m trying to do something that has meaning. I have zero interest in making any Mormons, and zero interest in making any fewer Mormons.”
He has brutally criticized other Mormon film makers for nearly killing the genre (fair for things like ‘The Home Teachers’ and ‘The RM’, but the W&G movies and Singles Ward ones were good, I thought). He did criticize Keith Merrill and the Legacy films at Temple Square (I thought the Joseph Smith one excellent, Testaments okay, and Legacy awful, personally). When Keith Merrill wrote a harsh response in the Deseret News a couple days later, trashing all of Dutcher’s films and the man personally, Dutcher responded online with little more than “Yes, Virginia, there were Danites.”
And so, in conclusion, sad at the Church’s loss of the man who so well captured the dream of Zion in the Church picnics in Brigham City, the hope and energy of missionaries, and the internal conflict of faith we all struggle with, I leave a few of his best quotes
-There may be a scarcity of great LDS art today because too many of us are centered on the things of this world
-Everyone comes to the time when we see the world as it is, not as we’d like it to be… the Mormon judges their films based on what’s not in them- no nudity, no violence, no harsh language? Then it must be a good film.
-A R-rated truth is much better than a PG lie
- Good film is like good journalism, it too comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable
I was probably about the last person to find out that Richard Dutcher had left the Church, when I read the Deseret News articles previewing his new movie ‘Falling’ last Friday. Definitely too sad to join the throngs calling him a "loser" on the Deseret News web site.
I have read at least 15 articles on it since then, from local papers to BYU Studies and SL Weekly to Christianity Today and a host of others.
He is a great filmmaker, really without anything resembling a peer in the LDS community, which really makes me sad about it. As he has said, religious communities do not usually produce great art, and now there will be less.
Dutcher’s father was a bartender, an unfaithful alcoholic Pentecostal, and he heard those preachers denigrate film often, and his parents divorced when he was 6. His mother was Baptist, but she remarried a Mormon who later went to jail for sexually abusing kids when he was 8. They all joined the LDS Church when he was 8, but he didn’t feel converted until an experience in Carthage Jail when he was 14.
He went to Hillcrest High School in the early 80s, even after his Mom moved to Kansas. He lived out of his car for much of that time, but earned several scholarships, and took one to study film at BYU. Watching ‘Return of the Jedi’ in 1983, and pondering his own father issues (he had not seen his birth father since he was 6), he decided in the theater, with the help of Luke Skywalker, to go on a mission. He worked in pizza places, oil fields, and nursing homes to save for his mission.
He served in Mexico from 1984-86, and was close enough to a drive-by shooting that the victim died in his arms. He came back and finished film school at BYU, his big project apparently a KBYU production about Eliza R. Snow, wife of both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. He married a sculptor named Gwen in 1988. They now have 7 children that they home school in Mapleton.
He went to Los Angeles for 10 years and tried to make it as an actor and director, working as a substitute school teacher and doing the graveyard shift at 7-Eleven. When his first movie, ‘Girl Crazy’, finally was sold to HBO in 1997, he had lost money. The only way to finally cash in was to add nudity every 7 or 8 minutes for the international distribution, but he refused.
‘God’s Army’, which he spent 4 years raising $300,000 to make, finally came out in 2000, and launched the era of Mormon cinema with it. At that time he had decided to get out of LA, after a decade of “LA Ass-holery” he had been convinced the city was far removed from the act and art of making films, and he had a net worth of negative $30,000. Many wrote angry letters to the Deseret News and church leaders in regards to Sacrament Meetings on screen, priesthood blessings on screen, missionaries behaving like 19 year olds on screen, etc. But the film was a Utah blockbuster, the 2nd highest grossing film in the state that year, making $2.6 million in 240 cities nationwide, and another $2.5 million in its first year out on DVD.
It took him just 4 weeks to raise $1 million for ‘Brigham City’, Larry H. Miller helping out a good deal on that one, and that movie came out in 2001 to great critical acclaim; but not any profit, which baffled Miller. It was PG-13 and violent, but still very popular. Dutcher was in his ward’s Elder’s Quorum Presidency and seen as a prominent member who was doing a lot to publicize the Church, send kids on missions, and draw interest from the general public.
He had launched the Mormon cinema age. The Other Side of Heaven, The Best Two Years, The 3 Work and the Glory movies, The RM, The Book of Mormon Movie, Singles Ward 1 & 2, The Home Teachers, Church Ball, Baptists at Our Barbecue, American Mormon, Mobsters & Mormons, Passage to Zarahemla, everything flooded in, and Larry H. Miller often had up to 4 LDS films going at once in his multiplexes.
Dutcher had a small cameo in Singles Ward, but when he saw it, he wanted to pull his hair out. Most of the rest of the LDS films from the era were much worse. He had become not the father of Mormon Cinema, but its biggest critic. “There was a flood of really crappy movies” he said in one interview, “Most of the Mormon filmmakers are delusional, they think their films would appeal to a larger audience… Most Mormon films are a trifle, a piece of entertainment, something that won’t offend… My idea of Mormon cinema would be films that take a deep, probing look into Mormonism, its history, doctrine, but that’s not what Mormon cinema became. It became something so much more superficial and meaningless.” He was especially frustrated that all the Utahns would approach him on the street and be so thankful that someone was making good family films. “I was like, ‘Are you not paying attention?’”
“I had shown Mormon movie makers that there was a market now to tell our stories. All they heard was that there was market…. LDS filmmakers were interested in film as a business, not as an art form at all.” He went to LDS film festivals and film schools and talked about how faith in movies had always been an angry attack or a sugary promotion. There was a huge unexplored area there, and a wealth of material to work from.
Larry H. Miller had stood by his side in 2001 to announce the upcoming $10 million movie on Joseph Smith, which continually was talked about and scheduled and delayed repeatedly. Preliminary filming had occurred up near Ogden. Val Kilmer had wanted to play Joseph Smith, and scheduling details were being worked out. Dutcher had consulted extensively with Richard Bushman, in his desire to be historically accurate. F. Murray Abraham had wanted to play Governor Ford. Miller’s support went up and down after Brigham City didn’t make him any money on his investment. Word that Miller might be backing out spooked other investors. Supposedly the script, as demanded by some wealthy LDS backers, was nothing fit for Seminary class, and some pulled out. Dutcher to this day has maintained that church headquarters was never involved much at all, and never anything but supportive when he talked with authorities quietly. “Wealthy LDS people are very much like wealthy everybody else”, he’s said. By early 2005 Dutcher had gone ahead and arranged 100% non-LDS funding, and was again trying to align schedules with Val Kilmer.
In the meantime, nearly bankrupted himself from the Joseph Smith non-project, Dutcher released ‘States of Grace’, aka ‘God’s Army 2.’ Reviewed by just about everyone as his best film yet, it bombed at the box office, he thinks because the Mormon film market had been so bad that no one, even in Utah, wanted to see another LDS film. The main character, a Utah bred Elder in LA whose father gives him the old ‘Mormon Doctrine’ (pg. 134) come home in a pine box rather than without your virtue speech on his way down there, diddles when he should’ve daddled down there and the movie gives him “easy” forgiveness, a la Universalist Christian grace, and the movie was controversial in Utah for all of those reasons. “Word has gotten out that my films are a little edgier than the others, and have a little more depth, and are actually about something. And I think the Mormon community just doesn’t have reverence or respect for art. It certainly doesn’t understand film as an art form.”
By this time, somewhere in 2005, he lost his faith in the LDS Church. As best I read it, especially since he wrote ‘Falling’ way back in 1999, and has so much crisis of faith stuff in all of his movies, he has struggled with his beliefs his whole life. His has not been a Bruce R. McConkie life of not one doubt, ever, ever. He has described it as the answer to 1 question, which changed for him that year. He also said “You’re not supposed to ask me that!” when Christianity Today asked him if the Book of Mormon is the word of God. He was very frustrated, as revealed in later interviews, that complex lives and difficult decisions are reduced to inaccurate Sunday School lessons, lessons that are really lies and slanders. His historical inquiries, with Bushman and others, revealed to him that “The LDS community has a long history of character assassination. When wandering sheep stray from the fold, Mormons don’t go looking for them. They grab their high-powered rifle and climb a tall tower and start shooting.”
He publicly announced that he was now a nonpracticing Mormon in the Provo Daily Herald a year ago. “When people ask me if I am a Mormon, I don’t know how to answer. It is a giant philosophical discussion.”
As to his personal falling away, Dutcher has said there is no affair, his wife and 7 kids still go to Church every week, it is not an axe against Church leadership for his Joseph Smith movie falling through, he’s not gay, he’s not a drug addict, he isn’t counterfeiting anti-Banking society notes in Kirtland, no one misspelled his name on a blessing, etc. He does admit he swears, sometimes in anger but usually for fun, and that he really enjoys dark Irish beer. “I’m just a guy making movies, not a Church leader, not the son of Satan. I’m trying to do something that has meaning. I have zero interest in making any Mormons, and zero interest in making any fewer Mormons.”
He has brutally criticized other Mormon film makers for nearly killing the genre (fair for things like ‘The Home Teachers’ and ‘The RM’, but the W&G movies and Singles Ward ones were good, I thought). He did criticize Keith Merrill and the Legacy films at Temple Square (I thought the Joseph Smith one excellent, Testaments okay, and Legacy awful, personally). When Keith Merrill wrote a harsh response in the Deseret News a couple days later, trashing all of Dutcher’s films and the man personally, Dutcher responded online with little more than “Yes, Virginia, there were Danites.”
And so, in conclusion, sad at the Church’s loss of the man who so well captured the dream of Zion in the Church picnics in Brigham City, the hope and energy of missionaries, and the internal conflict of faith we all struggle with, I leave a few of his best quotes
-There may be a scarcity of great LDS art today because too many of us are centered on the things of this world
-Everyone comes to the time when we see the world as it is, not as we’d like it to be… the Mormon judges their films based on what’s not in them- no nudity, no violence, no harsh language? Then it must be a good film.
-A R-rated truth is much better than a PG lie
- Good film is like good journalism, it too comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable
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