October 2003

ARTICLE TOOLS

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HOLLYWOOD VETERANS aren't known for their humility, but William Goldman is an exception. The writer whose screenplays include Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Princess Bride continues to insist to legions of disbelieving admirers that he has no idea why some of his movies soared and others fell flat. It's not just his problem, says the screenwriter of The Year of the Comet and The Great Waldo Pepper. In Hollywood, "Nobody knows anything."

Goldman's famous maxim doesn't just deflate would-be screenwriters. It also cautions anyone who wants to change the direction of culture, including the growing number of Christians who are apprenticing in culturally influential places like Hollywood. Now that Christians are returning to cultural creativity, we may need to learn one of culture's difficult lessons. It's not just that "nobody knows anything" about achieving the cultural leverage to create a blockbuster. No one can even say, ahead of time, which cultural products will advance the cause of the gospel and which will undermine it.

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My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which premiered that Friday night, went on to be the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2002. Nia Vardalos's Greek-meets-WASP comedy is so much fun that it's painful to point out how thoroughly it baptizes, quite literally, the values of postmodern American culture, in which ethnic identity is one more commodity available to assist us in our search for personal fulfillment. In one of the movie's pivotal scenes, sensitive hunk Ian Miller is baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church in order to win the respect of his beloved Toula's traditionally minded father. Fingering the new cross on a chain around his neck, Ian tells Toula, "I'm Greek now."

If a latter-day Screwtape ...