Words From the Filmmakers of...Seeing Red

Feature Article

Superior Moral Values?...That's Crazy...!

After the 2004 election I heard, along with most Americans paying attention after the voting (can't blame those who weren't) that the exit poll shared by most media outlets suggested that George Bush won because he had superior moral values as compared to John Kerry.

The noise in my head, screaming really (that's crazy!!! what values ARE those anyway???) and the debunking of the poll question about morality were roughly parallel streams, but I was still left with the feeling that the Republican party had permanently and irrevocably claimed the ultimate social and political moral high ground, in a country ever more attentive to things moral. Big problem for progressives with a heart for God.

I decided to write an essay, leading to a book, based on the premise that if you asked people questions about what the values are that they base their civic decisions on, they'd answer you honestly, and that those answers collected would become an interesting moment in time story on the life of our nation.

The book idea attracted attention, and while writing I had visions (religious experience???) of people answering these questions on TV. A friend Leah Belsky, already collaborating with me on another nascent movie project jumped at the idea of meeting me in Harrisonburg Virginia, to see if we could actually do this. It should be noted here that at this point I've taken a one week class in digital production, and that the last movie I'd made was in high school (Passion of the Christ forerunner... My best friend was a dead ringer for the commonly pictured Jesus, so we hung him in his back yard and filmed it with a Brownie).

Leah, however, had completed a documentary film making program at George Washington University, and I had a camera neither of us could really use. We were ready. Accompanied by my wife and two daughters, we flew to "the Burg" turned on the cameras, and folks talked. It was as easy as walking and talking.

After the first few months of sitting with the idea and a few hours of tape we decided that the real story was going to be the influence of the "4 million missing evangelicals" who didn't vote in the 2000 presidential election but were dragged to the polls this time by Carl Rove's brilliance, and Jesus, who according to Mr. Rove is a politically active Republican.

The nexus of religion and politics caught fire as a news topic, and we began a journey, along with newly recruited Associate Producers Amrita Das and Elon Green, that would take us a year to complete, and bring us to this point, a movie that is finished, and will never be done, thanks to the passion that so many interested Americans keep bringing to the project, and a topic that evolves every day.

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