What Would Jesus Buy?

I just got home from the world premiere of WHAT WOULD Jesus BUY at SXSW. It received multiple standing ovations, especially when the audience was treated to a song by the Stop Shopping Choir. It wasn't just because of Morgan Spurlock, a festival favorite, was a producer. The film stands on it's own as a world class fun and informative documentary on the cancer of consumerism.

Focusing on the anti-consumerism crusade the Church of Stop Shopping, director Rob VanAlkemade focuses on the irrepressible Reverend Billy while touching on the facts. At first Reverend Billy simply seems outrageous, but he quickly brings his message home, using comedy. VanAlkemade uses several experts, and even allows Wal-Mart representatives to counter points.

This film is a Must-See before any shopping splurge. And you'll likely find you're going to spend more time researching where you shop and what you buy. Go out of your way to see this one!

What Would Jesus Buy premiered tonight at SXSW in Austin, TX in front a crowd over a thousand people at Austin's Paramount theater. It was very well-received by the crowd. After the premiere, the director, producer Morgan Spurlock, Rev. Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir all appeared on stage to do a song and take questions.

What Would Jesus Buy is a very funny film with a very serious subject (following in the same sort of path blazed by Morgan Spurlock in Super Size Me). The film follows the choir while it tours America between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Both the film and Rev. Billy ask Americans to re-examine their values and really the true meaning of Christmas (and Christianity in America) which should be about God's presence in the world, helping the needy, and loving those close to you. The film implies that in today's America people use Christmas to try to buy love with material gifts rather than to really demonstrate true love to their family and friends. Unfortunately, Christmas has become a celebration not of Christianity, but of America's true religious pagan secular materialism.

The film also takes on the American corporations that exploit Christmas buy selling us junk we don't need. It shows how many Americans are addicted to credit card debt. In particular it takes on Disney and Wal-Mart. It specifically points out the harm done by buying stuff at Wal-Mart that was made by kids working in sweatshops at slave wages in the Third World. It also showed how Wal-Mart undermines local businesses and how Disney markets a world of fantasy and illusion. It does all of in a very humorous manner through satirical singing of Christmas songs and attempting to show people the destructive nature of consumerism. The film is an effective message film with an important lesson that Americans need to hear.

Sometimes the film seemed to bury its message under so much humor that the message seemed to get a little lost amidst the attempt to entertain. It also tended to offer a lot more of a critique of globalization and consumerism without really offering clear answers or solutions. Finally, I think its fair to wonder how effective Rev. Billy's techniques are. Most of the spectators watching their antics looked more befuddled and confused than they did convinced by their message.

Nevertheless, despite these weakness, this is an excellent and important film and I hope that many Americans get a chance to view it and learn from it. It raises more questions than it answers, but just starting a discussion of consumerism would be a step in the right direction.

Incidentally, folks who like this film should also check out the 2006 film (now on DVD) "Freedom Fries: And Other Stupidity We'll Have to Explain to Our Grandchildren" in which Rev. Billy also appears in a cameo role. It links consumerism to American politics and notes the absurdity that after 9/11 Americans were told that the answer to terrorism was to go shopping or the terrorists would win. Both films approach similar issues in humorous ways.

What would Jesus buy? Having written to my local preacher at the tender age of 16 (to renounce formally any connection with a faith that I find repugnant), my answer would probably be, "I couldn't give a monkey's." But lest you be put off this rather entertaining documentary, let me reassure you it is not really about religion. Reverend Billy, its key protagonist, is not really a Reverend. And the Jesus catchline is simply to question your unserving faith to the more mundane god of cash-registers.

Think Michael Moore, Ali G, Aaron Barschak, or Super Size Me. Reverend Billy is a character created by actor-comedian Bill Talen, often accompanied by his accomplished artist-wife Savitri Durkee (Director of the 'Church of Stop Shopping'). Then there's the acoustically accomplished 'Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir'. Think protests in Starbucks, Walmart, Times Square and Disneyland. Rage against globalisation. Consumerism. The ever-increasing debt. Use the feelgood singalong style of modern Jesus-music-churches. Find a tagline line such as 'the true meaning of Christmas.' Get taken seriously faster than you can say, "thanks for the donation" (Billy's organisation is tax-deductible – yes, really).

Reverend Billy has even started to believe in himself. But is the message any good? Before we answer that question, let's ask if it is entertaining. The answer has to be, yes. Bill Talen is no Aaron Barschak, causing public disruption for the sake of it or begging for recognition. Firstly, he's actually funny. An accomplished entertainer, his puns and loaded lines are devilishly perfected. Visually, he looks like a slightly scary caricature of Elvis, shock of blonde hair balancing precariously on a less than angelical face. Wife Savitri coaches him before delivering the gospel: "Keep your eyes open really wide as you say that . . ." Secondly, he can persuade people he loves them before tearing them to shreds. A sort of Ali G on coke. Let us sing to the Lord, he exhorts on people's doorstep at Yuletide. He hands them a carol sheet. After a traditional start, they realise the lyrics they are singing have been altered. Firstly to damn with praise, then to excoriate. Big businesses, and the shopping sprees that support them, cast into hell. His tour bus meets local churchmen who think he's a holy crusader. Disneyworld-goers think he's part of the entertainment - till he gets arrested. Billy has been arrested many, many times.

Thirdly (just like the many churches, sceptics might argue), he pulls people in with enough factoids to convince them he knows what he's talking about. Slave labour in China. The horrors of globalisation. Families facing life-ruining debt brought on by merciless advertising. "Give something that costs nothing!" he exhorts. The highly simplified arguments are enough to arouse the emotions of the Outraged Campaigner in any of us. Enough to grab the brain as it hesitates precariously between thinking and laughter.

Billy walks into a shop and does a 'Laying of Hands' on the cash register. In confessional, he tells a girl she did the right thing for taking a pair of scissors to a dress she was trying on in a store ("It didn't fit"). He 'exorcises' a local Walmart from the nearby graveyard. It's very funny to watch . . . but let's face it, we're laughing at other people's expense. People who are mostly too polite to be as rude as he is to them. Do you want someone disrupting your hard-earned day out at Disneyland? When you're shopping for your kids' Christmas presents, presents you might be lucky enough to afford, do you want a preacher-lookalike telling you it's evil? There is a deep synergy between the Church, Christmas, and the commercialism that mutually reinforces that date in the calendar.

But to more serious issues for a moment. Reverend Billy (or Billy Talen) has his heart in the right place, but this stuff about boycotting goods from sweatshops abroad . . . It has been extensively proved, by trial error sadly, to do more harm than good. It tends to close the sweatshop and drive employees into begging and prostitution. Answers, sadly, are more complex than this juvenile barrage of love-and-peace would have us believe. They involve economic and ethical strategies, not a simple cutting-off of offending parties. Debt reduction is not about preaching the real meaning of Christmas (which Talen, as a strictly lapsed believer, is less than convincing about), but more about education and counselling. His point on 'giving something that you have created, or a song,' maybe gets close. Putting more love than just cash into presents. But his roadshow may be too commercial to sway most film-goers' hearts.

I would hate to be one to judge the Reverend Billy. He might do a Bono and or really make a difference. Or he might just be the lever that lets an ever bigger business concern reinvent itself. That concern, of course, being one of the most powerful financial conglomerates in the USA and the world today: Jesus' church itself.

I am not typically a man who posts reviews of films. In fact, this is my first. But after catching What Would Jesus Buy in the Village last night, I was particularly inspired. This is a great film; well-captured, well-edited, and loaded with moments of unconscionable hilarity. Reverend Billy is both a brilliant pitchman and a devoted activist, and after viewing it, I couldn't agree with his message more. With the holiday season fast approaching, I think you owe it to yourself to learn about the culture of greed that drives our unstoppable shopping, and I would be hard-pressed to think of a better way to do that than viewing this film.

Bill Talen is wacko! This consumer-activist movie was way funnier than I expected. i went because the issue of celebrating Christmas by shopping is one i relate to. Talen's performance-art shtick acting like a Pentacostal preacher did not bother my Christian sensibilities at all, but there were some pieces of chapter-title artwork that blew my mind: the Holy Mother presenting the Christ Child with a tickle-me-Elmo? They were hysterical, creative, topical, surprising, and provocative in the best way. Some went by fast and I'll have to wait for the DVD release to examine them more carefully. (What WAS that demon doing to those poor doomed shoppers anyway?) Full of great interviews, informative "reporting", and Billy's bizarre antics made this way more entertaining than expected. Enjoy!