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Salt Lake City Theater Pulls "Latter Days" SLC theater pulls LDS, gay movie Official movie site  Planet Out Story Movie City News Story
Lesbian Alliance Story Latter Days: An Interview with C. Jay Cox  By Jennifer Flowers, Religion News Service The Salt Lake Tribune, 31 January 2004 Film director C. Jay Cox, a gay former member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, usually shies away from his religious background. But he says he wanted to meet a long-gone version of himself while directing his first movie, "Latter Days." "By making this movie, I hoped I would send a message back to that 19-year-old who was so uncertain about himself that everything was going to be OK," said Cox, who went to the Philippines as a teenager on his LDS mission. "But he ended up having just as much to say to me. I was able to reaffirm a lot of spiritual tenets that I've kind of rediscovered because of him, because of the movie." "Latter Days" tells the story of a young, sexually confused Mormon named Aaron who is seduced by a gay man while on his Mormon mission in Los Angeles. While the story is mostly comedic, one of its darker scenes depicts Aaron receiving shock therapy from church members intending to inhibit homosexual desire. The film made waves at several gay-themed film festivals before its official opening in New York and Los Angeles on Jan. 30. But Salt Lake City's Madstone Trolley Square Theater canned the film two weeks before it had planned to screen "Latter Days." Madstone co-CEO, Chip Seelig, said the theater dropped the film because "it lacked artistic merit." Film promoters charged that the theater bowed to Mormons who threatened to boycott and protest at the theater. Church officials declined to comment on the film. Members of Affirmation, an organization of gay and lesbian Mormons, believe "Latter Days" can show many homosexuals who grew up in the LDS Church that they are not alone. "That movie will shake gay Mormons," said Scott MacKay, Affirmation's former executive director. Michael Lambert, MacKay's partner and an inactive LDS member, attended the Seattle premiere. He said the film would generate discussion within and outside the Mormon Church. "From the day you're born, you're taught that you want to find a mate of the opposite sex and procreate and have children, and it's a very important part of God's plan in the church," Lambert said. "Even to the point that in the Mormon Church the only way to get into heaven is to be married to someone of the opposite sex. So if you're gay, well, you're screwed." Tom Lefler, associate chair of the Department of Theater and Media Arts at Brigham Young University, said that while Mormon homosexuals might be "encouraged or delighted by the film," that wouldn't be enough to get the attention of his students. "If you said to most Mormons that this is a film about a missionary who gets seduced by a homosexual, who comes home and gets shock therapy, they'd probably think you're crazy," Lefler said. "It's so atypical. It sounds bizarre." Affirmation members say gay Mormons' alienation from their cultural identity can be one of the most difficult parts of leaving the church. Ben Jarvis, an actively gay Affirmation outreach coordinator whose LDS lineage goes back seven generations to the beginning of the religion, said he understands why some inactive gay and lesbian members of the church would want their children to be raised in the denomination so they could learn about their heritage. "There's a place inside of me that is empty and hollow because the [LDS church] is no longer there, and there's nothing in my life that will ever replace that void," Jarvis said. "My experience in the Mormon community was extremely significant and meaningful in my life. It still is, but having said that, I can never go back to the church." |
www.affirmation.org