Audience of One

Audience of One (Director: Michael Jacobs): I’m finally reviewing this utterly unique doc­u­mentary that screened at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival way back in October. I was lucky enough to speak to the dir­ector by phone tonight and though my recording is (at this point) almost unus­able (crappy analog “phone taps”!!), I’ll try to work in some of the stuff we talked about into the review proper.

Richard Gazowsky is the pastor of the Voice of Pentecost church in San Francisco, and didn’t see his first movie until he was 40. But what an exper­i­ence it must have been, for soon after he dis­covered the joys of cinema, he exper­i­enced a “divine call” to make the greatest bib­lical epic ever. Audience of One fol­lows Gazowsky as he takes his con­greg­a­tion along on the almost incon­ceiv­able journey of making Gravity, a sci­ence fic­tion epic based on the bib­lical story of Joseph. Though he’s never dir­ected a film before, Gazowsky con­fid­ently takes the reins, and forms WYSIWYG (“What You See Is What You Get”) Christian Film Works. Accustomed to dreaming big, he announces that Gravity will be shot in 70mm at 60 frames per second. Despite an all-volunteer cast and crew, the pro­duc­tion soon decamps to Italy for some loc­a­tion shooting. Many prob­lems ensue, from bad weather to mech­an­ical prob­lems to a gen­eral lack of pre­par­a­tion. Gazowsky presses on, con­fident that God wants him to com­plete the film.

Michael Jacobs’ camera cap­tures the drama over a period of 18 months, from the con­fident begin­ning through the trials of pro­duc­tion and finally to what appears to be Gazowsky’s very public melt­down. Throughout, the pastor seems like an affable man, albeit a little obsessed with the idea of being a film­maker. Mysteriously prom­ised European funding fails to mater­i­alize, the bills pile up and the erstwhile dir­ector becomes more and more para­noid, sus­pecting the major stu­dios of trying to steal his script. The whole enter­prise spins fur­ther out of con­trol and by the film’s end, it appears that Richard Gazowsky has painted him­self into a corner. His obses­sion is com­pounded by his faith that God wants him to devote his life to making this film.

Though it doesn’t shy away from the reli­gious aspects of Gazowsky’s “quest,” this is really a uni­versal char­acter study. We see the pastor’s mother, a preacher her­self who founded the church, haunting the pro­ceed­ings with a sad look on her face. “I never should have turned the church over to him,” she laments. Gazowsky is a familiar char­acter, reminding me of Klaus Kinski’s indelible Fitzcarraldo and Harrison Ford’s Allie Fox (from The Mosquito Coast). But in this case, Gazowsky’s pride is unas­sail­able since he claims to be doing God’s work. But it also means he can never admit he was wrong.

Jacobs told me that Gazowsky has sup­ported the film and even par­ti­cip­ated in some Q&A ses­sions after screen­ings. But instead of admin­is­tering a much-needed wake-up call, it seems to have re-energized him to con­tinue raising funds to com­plete the film. Despite the immense amount of time and money spent already, only two scenes have been com­pleted, and although they weren’t shown in the film, Jacobs prom­ises to include them on the DVD release.

It seems ironic that, des­pite the title of his film being Gravity, nothing seems to be able to bring Richard Gazowsky back down to earth.

Official site for the film

(8/10)

Tagged as: After Dark, christianity, Documentaries, religion, scifi