Inside Interpreter's "6 Days in August" Fundraising Campaign

[Moksha]

The Relief Society sister in Parowan is asking. (On a related note, a few days ago, she asked me why the Interpreter Foundation has failed to post a single expense report for 2024. I could not answer her question.)

Perhaps it has been reported (13 separate parts?) under very common names (Greatest Film Ever Made, The Days of Wives and Josephs, It's a MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD Board, How The Church Was Won, The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight, Westward Ho The Wives...) to keep both critics and the IRS in the dark. There is such a precedence somewhere.

[Gadianton]

I think the Proprietor is extracting quite a lot out of this site if it represents the "Brigham Hatred" of today, such that this movie is necessary to set the record straight. Does the desperation ring artificial in this solicitation? It's definitely within the norms of conservative fundraising to insist the world is burning and will be all gone soon if the cause doesn't get more support. I just have to wonder, aside from a few comments on this site, where the current attacks on Brigham Young and his succession are coming from? I didn't even know what the succession crisis was until Dan started making the movie and it got talked about over here. I'd probably heard references to it and terminology but didn't care to learn more.

[Doctor Scratch]

I think the Proprietor is extracting quite a lot out of this site if it represents the "Brigham Hatred" of today, such that this movie is necessary to set the record straight. Does the desperation ring artificial in this solicitation? It's definitely within the norms of conservative fundraising to insist the world is burning and will be all gone soon if the cause doesn't get more support. I just have to wonder, aside from a few comments on this site, where the current attacks on Brigham Young and his succession are coming from? I didn't even know what the succession crisis was until Dan started making the movie and it got talked about over here. I'd probably heard references to it and terminology but didn't care to learn more.

It's certainly curious, and he doesn't specify what he means vis-a-vis the alleged "Brigham Hatred." The obvious challenge to BY's authority comes from the Community of Christ, which is why I have pointed out more than once that this project is an avowedly anti-Community of Christ production. But the Mopologists cannot function without enemies, so even if there aren't any actual wolves licking their chops outside the "Sheeple Pen," the Mopologists would invent them.

On a sidenote: without public correction, I am going to go ahead and assume that the "DCPs" line item in the budget is indeed referring to compensation paid to the Executive Producer. It's telling that his usual disclaimer about not collecting "one cent" from the project is completely absent from the document, perhaps because it would be illegal for him to lie about it in this context.

[Gadianton]

The obvious challenge to BY's authority comes from the Community of Christ

Is this the same Community of Christ that will have ten dollars left in the next decade, compared to the LDS church on the way to a trillion? Does the CoC really need to be stomped into the ground that firmly?

[Tom]

The Relief Society sister in Parowan is asking. (On a related note, a few days ago, she asked me why the Interpreter Foundation has failed to post a single expense report for 2024. I could not answer her question.)

Perhaps it has been reported (13 separate parts?) under very common names (Greatest Film Ever Made, The Days of Wives and Josephs, It's a MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD Board, How The Church Was Won, The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight, Westward Ho The Wives...) to keep both critics and the IRS in the dark. There is such a precedence somewhere.

LOL.

[Tom]

The Executive Producer:

… a slightly eccentric Protestant denomination … with an elaborate lay priesthood and some extra scripture.

Is this how the Executive Producer views the Community of Christ? Interesting.

I hope the Executive Producer will post these fundraising documents on the 6DIA website for the public to review and to respond to. Time is running out.

Posted from Achilles, Utah

[Everybody Wang Chung]

How did the budget for this film balloon to over 2 million dollars?! And the Afore is still begging for more money!?

From what I’ve seen so far, this movie is going to be a complete disaster. It sure looks like someone is lining their pockets with hard earned donor money.

It’s too bad the Afore is not being forthright and transparent about the budget/finances. The lack of transparency only puts the project under a bigger cloud of suspicion.

Posted from Dutch John, Utah

[Tom]

How did the budget for this film balloon to over 2 million dollars?! And the Afore is still begging for more money!?

From what I’ve seen so far, this movie is going to be a complete disaster. It sure looks like someone is lining their pockets with hard earned donor money.

It’s too bad the Afore is not being forthright and transparent about the budget/finances. The lack of transparency only puts the project under a bigger cloud of suspicion.

Posted from Dutch John, Utah

Everybody Wang Chung, it feels like yesterday that my soulmate and I spent a glorious week in Dutch John. I hope you had a chance to sup at the legendary Green River Restaurant. The ice water there is decadent. Some of the very best I’ve had.

Posted from Achilles, Utah

[Philo Sofee]

How did the budget for this film balloon to over 2 million dollars?! And the Afore is still begging for more money!?

From what I’ve seen so far, this movie is going to be a complete disaster. It sure looks like someone is lining their pockets with hard earned donor money.

It’s too bad the Afore is not being forthright and transparent about the budget/finances. The lack of transparency only puts the project under a bigger cloud of suspicion.

Posted from Dutch John, Utah

Everybody Wang Chung, it feels like yesterday that my soulmate and I spent a glorious week in Dutch John. I hope you had a chance to sup at the legendary Green River Restaurant. The ice water there is decadent. Some of the very best I’ve had.

Posted from Achilles, Utah

[drumdude]

The afore’s remarks, for what they’re worth:

No, my wife and I receive no compensation — we have received no compensation, and we will receive no compensation — from our time and efforts as the two executive producers of Six Days in August. Our income from the film will not vary so much as a single cent whether fifty million people see the film or nobody does. Both of us do what we do as unpaid volunteers.

Was I or anybody else connected with the film unethically given access to Brigham Young University’s list of donors? No. Neither I nor anybody else connected with the film was given any access at all to Brigham Young University’s list of donors. Did we somehow illicitly obtain BYU’s donor list? No. We don’t have BYU’s donor list at all. I’ve never so much as seen it.

I’ve referred on occasion to recent criticisms of Brigham Young, to which I hope that Six Days in August will offer a contrast. Contrary to the claims of a few on the Obsession Board, I haven’t invented these criticisms. Nor do I have the Community of Christ, formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in mind. Not even slightly. I have in mind accusations against Brigham Young of racism, misogyny, autocracy, and even, ever since the nineteenth-century days of sensationalistic dime novels, of murder. I have in mind the claim that he led an illegitimate and rather Machiavellian “apostolic coup.” Some of these accusations have even come from members of the very Church over which he presided for more than three decades. (LaJean Carruth quite aptly calls them “Brigham bashing.”) And, unfortunately, at least a few readers here will be aware of recent assertions — to me, not only unjustifiable and false but positively revolting — that it was Elders John Taylor and Willard Richards of the Twelve, not an armed mob with blackened faces, who murdered Joseph and Hyrum Smith in Carthage Jail, and that they did so at the command of the president of their quorum. Brigham Young.

Is Six Days in August an attack on the Community of Christ? No, it is not. It is true, of course, that I and the others involved in the creation of the film believe that the Twelve Apostles were the proper choice to lead the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints following the death of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Implicitly, that means that we do not believe that Joseph Smith III was the proper choice. But Joseph III doesn’t even figure in the story we’re telling. He was only eleven years old in August of 1844. Nor does James Strang appear in the film, as he was scarcely so much as a rumor by that date. The major rival to the Twelve in our story is Sidney Rigdon. But, by deliberate decision, Six Days in August will treat even Sidney with respect. Favoring the Twelve doesn’t mean disdaining others, let alone hating them, any more than favoring Beethoven means condemning Brahms, any more than being a practicing Jew means despising Christians, any more than preferring Jane Austen and apple pie entails abhorring cherry pie and Charles Dickens.

Is the Interpreter Foundation at war with, or in a competitive rivalry with, FAIR and Scripture Central? No. Not in any sense of which I’m aware. If we were in a battle with each other, I can’t imagine that Scripture Central would have flown me back to Palmyra, Harmony, and Kirtland two or three months ago to film one of the episodes in their video series A Marvelous Work, or that Jeff Bradshaw (one of the Interpreter Foundation’s vice presidents) and I would have been featured speakers at the annual FAIR LDS conference earlier this month.