Karina on SpoutBlog

Where Jesus Camp played the conflict between contemporary evangelical Christianity and the secular community for liberal-baiting horror, Michael Jacobs takes the route of real-life mockumentary with Audience of One, which debuted at SXSW in 2007 and concludes a long festival run with a run in Chicago last week and its New York premiere this weekend. It’s a lighter approach applied to a culture war battle with somewhat less urgency, but its own less-than-optimistic implications.

Jacobs finds an unwitting star in Richard Gazowsky, second-generation pastor of the Voice of Pentecost church in San Francisco, and the would-be director of Gravity: The Shadow of Joseph, an epic evangelical sci-flick to which he and his churchgoers have devoted their lives and sunk their savings. Gazowsky calls his “studio” WYSIWYG –– that is, “What you see is what you get”; though Richard explains that the name has something to do with battling the “cliques” of both Hollywood and other religious sects, this is one of many instances in which Gazowsky offers a ramble that seems to insufficiently explicate his case. Regardless, under the auspices of WYSIWYG, Gazowsy has assembled a crew that’s an uneasy blending of enthusiastic Craig’s List-sourced amateurs, devout family members/parishioners — none of whom have any experience with filmmaking — and non-believing professional technicians drawn in by the scope of Richard’s vision. Jacobs follows, patiently and without apparent intervention, as Gazowsky leads his clan from pre-production in San Francisco to a disastrous five-day shoot in Italy, then back home, where WYSIWYG sets up shop in a film studio on Treasure Island and ultimately refuse to leave, even after the city has shut off their power for non payment of rent. So basically, it’s just like any indie film production, except that any problem large or small is ameliorated with the faith that “God will save us all.”

Jacobs’ film gets its title from a phrase Gazowsky repeats frequently to remind the crew of Gravity’s desired demographic: they’re making a film for an “audience of one”,  meaning Jesus. And yet he also rallies his troops by promising that their effort will turn WYSIWYG into a launching pad for a pentecostal film industry, declaring that his collaborators will someday usurp the heathen (Jew?) currently running the studios. Their lord is also invoked as a collaborator. When the camera breaks before they commit anything to celluloid in Italy, Richard chirps, “God called us here to shoot this movie, and we’re going to shoot this movie, camera or no camera!”; when, after several hours of tinkering, the camera starts working again, he then uses the language of resurrection to explain it.

It seems notable that Gazowsky spends much of his “production” struggling to realize his vision of ancient imagery set in the future; after all, looking forward to the past is more or less the contemporary conservative modus operandi. But the sanely devout would probably admit that there’s a fault in the logic offered by a WYSIWYG worker, who claims that since the outfit’s past-due bills are printed on paper,  “and god owns the paper, he made the trees,” the production’s best bet is to leave them unpaid until the lord sorts their debt out. Audience of One is a portrait of faith — in God, sure, but also in one’s own standing above secular law as his servant — evolving into a delusion that defies the common social order. Ultimately, potential financing evaporates and everyone who sort of knows what they’re doing abandons Gazowsky in frustration, and as a finished product seems increasingly theoretical, it becomes clear that the only “one” that the project serves is Richard himself.

Audience of One premieres tonight at Anthology Film Archives in New York, where it runs for one week. It’s also available on DVD.