I spoke at a small “cottage meeting” on Saturday night, along with the Interpreter Foundation’s fundraiser, Ed Snow, and Mark Goodman, the director of the Foundation’s current Witnesses film project. It was a real treat for me to see two brand new clips from the principal dramatic movie, which is now taking shape. This was the first time that they’ve been shown.
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Mark was very apologetic to the group before showing the two clips, saying that their color was off, that the music was too loud, and so forth, and that this was only preliminary work. However, I have to say that I was quite pleased.
One aspect of the first clip that I like very much:
I’ve seen the criticism that the plates were too heavy, that Joseph Smith could not possibly have run through the woods carrying them.
Well. There were two prop sets of plates at the disposal of the filmmakers. One of them was quite light, for convenience. The second was roughly the weight of the real historical plates themselves. When our people were filming the scene in which young Joseph Smith runs through the woods while being pursued by money diggers who are intent on gaining possession of the Book of Mormon plates, they gave Paul Wuthrich the option of using the lighter prop.
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He tested the lighter set of plates, and then chose to go with the heavier ones so that the scene would be more realistic. Thus, again and again, he had to run down the hill carrying the plates, then climb up the hill once more, then run down the hill, then climb up the hill.
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And Joseph Smith was a young man who spent his days doing heavy manual labor, who never rode in an automobile, who had a reputation for unusual physical strength. If Paul Wuthrich could do it, Joseph could have done it, too.
(Nice dig at the actor there, DCP: this "nancy-boy," living this cushy, modern, 21st-Century life is so obviously weak and spoiled compared to the Great Physical Specimen that was Joseph Smith!)
But this is very interesting: it appears that Dr. Peterson likes what he's seeing because he views it as somehow validating his Mopologetic views. Hey, even though this is a movie, it allowed them to carry out this experiment where they had this actor carrying (for the sake of "realism") an actual, 60-lb. set of fake Golden Plates. (Well...were they 40 lbs.? Or 60? That twenty pound difference isn't insignificant. The image posted to the blog shows the actor with a bundle tucked underneath his left arm. Go ahead and stick a compact, 60 lb. weight under your arm and see how well you fare.) And if the actor can do it, then that means that Joseph Smith could have done it, too! So the delight here seems to lie primarily in the opportunity that the movie provides vis-a-vis "sticking it" to the critics. DCP has nothing to say about the actual movie clips, mind you--he says nothing about the quality of the acting, or the screenwriting, or the editing, or the cinematography. For him, this is solely about the Mopologetic argument that the movie enables. Except, of course, that this is a movie. If I believe that Bigfoot is seven feet tall and weighs 450 pounds, and critics argue that he would be immobile at this weight, and so and to prove this, I find an ex-NFL player willing to dress up like Bigfoot and weigh himself down with additional weight, and, hey, what do you know? He's able to walk and stuff! And this is supposed to support my argument somehow?
And I am wondering what our resident historians think about this (esp. Philo and Grindael): what do you make of the realism and historical accuracy of what has apparently been filmed? I'd be interested in seeing the legitimate, historical documents that support this "chase through the woods with Gold Plates in tow" by money diggers. Is there an account of this that was written by Smith himself? Is this a film that truly has a basis in history and reality? Not that it has to, of course, but it's worth thinking about what the movie is meant to accomplish. I mean, we certainly have to bear in mind that this project is coming from someone who's cinematic dream was to make a film entitled Dan and Bill's Excellent Adventure in Anti-Mormon Zombie Hell. It would appear, though, that for the time being, we are going to have to settle for this "Witnesses" thing instead.