Why You Should Probably Be More Prejudiced
Prejudice is an inescapable concept. We all have prejudices. The question is, are they the right ones?Prejudice is an inescapable concept. We all have prejudices. The question is, are they the right ones?Robert Duvall: Hollywood 'Apostle' who took Jesus seriously
When Robert Duvall died earlier this month, Hollywood lost a legend. Christians lost something rarer: a fellow traveler who gave faith dignity on screen and never apologized for it.
That alone deserves a moment of silence.
'Preaching is one of the great American art forms,' he once said. 'The rhythm, the cadence. And nobody knows about it except the preachers themselves.'
Duvall came from solid stock. His father was a Navy rear admiral; his mother practiced a quiet, practical faith — the kind that had her on her knees at 3 a.m. while her husband dodged U-boats. One morning she mentioned a dark feeling at breakfast. Later they learned that a German torpedo had narrowly missed his father’s ship that same night. For the young Duvall, faith was not a Sunday habit. It was the difference between his father walking through the door and a stranger delivering bad news in an envelope.
Crackling with the Spirit
He grew up moving between bases and coastlines, went to New York, and became an actor. He got good at it, then very good, then extraordinary. Boo Radley. Tom Hagen. Bill Kilgore. He built a filmography that made other actors seem industrious rather than indispensable. He disappeared so completely into characters that finding his way back felt beside the point.
Then came a search that changed everything.
In 1962, preparing for an off-Broadway role set in the rural South, Duvall traveled to Hughes, Arkansas. He wandered the streets, drank coffee in diners, listened to how people talked and moved. One Sunday morning, out of curiosity, he followed a crowd into a small white clapboard Pentecostal church.
What he found stopped him cold.
People were on their feet, singing at full volume — faces lit, clapping, shouting. Tambourines. Snare drums. Joy so physical, so unselfconscious, so utterly unashamed. Duvall, the measured craftsman and trained observer, wanted to join in. “The air crackled with the Spirit,” he would later say. He never forgot it.
Churchgoing
He filed the experience away. Career called. Decades passed. He made masterpieces. In 1983 he won an Oscar for "Tender Mercies," playing a broken country singer stumbling toward grace — a role that resonated because broken men reaching for something better was the only story he ever really seemed drawn to tell.
Through the 1980s and into the 1990s, Duvall kept researching. He visited small churches across the heartland, listened to preachers, filled legal pads with notes. He took his idea to Hollywood and was told — politely at first, then less politely — that no one wanted to watch a movie about religion. The studios passed. Then passed again.
He was frustrated but not defeated.
He used his own money. Seven weeks of filming in Louisiana, casting real preachers and congregants because, as he put it, “true faith is something that’s hard to duplicate.” The result was "The Apostle" (1997), a portrait of a Pentecostal preacher named Sonny — genuinely called by God and genuinely capable of terrible things. A sinner and a servant. Broken and burning. It earned Duvall another Oscar nomination. More importantly, it earned something Hollywood rarely grants religious subjects: respect.
RELATED: James Van Der Beek's message about finding God resurfaces after death: 'I am worthy of God's love'
Living faith
Duvall held his own faith privately. Christian Science by background, contemplative by temperament, he kept his beliefs close and his explanations brief. That was typical for a man of his generation.
What was not typical was the depth of his hunger for the real thing — his insistence on portraying faith as actual, embodied, dangerous, alive.
“Preaching is one of the great American art forms,” he once said. “The rhythm, the cadence. And nobody knows about it except the preachers themselves.”
He knew. And he made sure the rest of us could see it.
Kin through Jesus
Near the end of his long struggle to get "The Apostle" made, Duvall visited six churches in a single Sunday in New York, finishing at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Standing in that packed sanctuary, surrounded by a vast choir, he sang “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” Something broke open in him.
“We’re all kin through Jesus,” he thought — not a concept to analyze, but the living Christ present in the full-throated roar of a Sunday choir. He called it the greatest discovery he ever made.
Robert Duvall was no saint. Neither was Sonny. Neither are we, most of us. But he understood, with the bone-deep instinct of a great artist, that flawed people reaching toward something holy is not a contradiction but a confession.
He told that story beautifully. We should be grateful he bothered. One of America’s finest actors is gone. For 60 years, he proved that the truth about faith is more compelling than anything Hollywood tried to invent in its place.
Tourette advocate's BAFTA slur gets no empathy from stars
It was a perfect Hollywood moment. Perfectly revealing, that is.
John Davidson, the inspiration behind the film “I Swear,” earned an invitation to the recent BAFTA awards gala. The film chronicles the life of a man suffering from Tourette syndrome, a condition that finds the sufferer sharing cruel, involuntary outbursts.
We don’t want to spoil the film, but it’s likely China and India won’t be name-checked enough in the screenplay.
They. Can’t. Help. Themselves.
Sadly, Davidson’s inability to control his tongue tainted the early moments of the ceremony. His swears could be heard in the venue, even though he wasn’t on the stage at the time.
Host Alan Cumming apologized for Davidson’s comments early in the show, noting the cruel nature of the incurable condition. But when Davidson’s racially charged comments bled into the audio feed while black performers Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo took the stage, the reaction was hyperbolic.
Yes, the “N-word” remains a vile reminder of our bigoted past, an awful word that has earned its toxic brand. But Davidson didn’t mean to utter the foul word. He literally couldn’t help himself.
Yet the same artistic community that pleads for empathy and understanding recoiled at the moment. The story has lingered for days in the legacy media. Jamie Foxx publicly called out Davidson, while one BAFTA judge quit after the incident.
They ignored the facts of his condition and embraced their victim status, even though Davidson is the ultimate victim. The real villain is the person in charge of the show’s feed who didn’t bleep out the offending words.
May he or she never work an awards broadcast again.
The kerfuffle punished poor Davidson all over again. And instead of basking in a personal triumph — a movie that asked people to understand and forgive his tragic condition — he got a nightmare he’ll never forget ...
RELATED: 'He meant that s**t': Actors rage after man with Tourette's yells N-word during award show
Pine-ing away
Imagine watching your Oscar-winning wife star in a rom-com alongside a handsome leading man. That’s the reality Dave McCary faces, and it’s all his fault.
McCary is married to “Bugonia” star Emma Stone, and he’s agreed to direct her in the upcoming romance “The Catch.” Her co-star? None other than Captain Kirk himself, Chris Pine.
It’s unclear if the film will have an “intimacy coordinator” on set, but we image Pine will be more than a little nervous when he goes in for a buss. Hope he sets his phaser on, “Hey, it’s in the script” …
Inconvenient Truth 2: Electric Boogaloo
Remember when “An Inconvenient Truth” forced America to do everything possible to stop global war — we mean climate change? Or when “The Day After Tomorrow” and “Don’t Look Up” did the job? Or the dozen-plus documentaries pleading with U.S. voters to do something, anything, about global apocalypse, economic fallout be darned?
No? That’s OK. Turns out we were all waiting for this movie to change everything.
The project, based on the book “Losing Earth,” is set in 1980 and shows climate expects warning the world that something must be done, or else. Filming is set to begin shortly under director Tom McCarthy (“Spotlight,” “Win Win”).
The cast and crew are a who’s who of Hollywood, including Paul Rudd, John Turturro, Paul Giamatti, Jason Clarke, Tatiana Maslany, Matt Damon, and Ben Affleck. The latter two superstars are executive producers on the project.
We don’t want to spoil the film, but it’s likely China and India won’t be name-checked enough in the screenplay, nor any of Al Gore’s “Inconvenient” predictions ...
'View' boo-boo
“The View” wants to be sued oh, so badly.
The dumber-than-dumb ABC show routinely creeps up to the line, only to read a few “legal notes” later to save its skin. And sadly, their collective TDS appears incurable.
The latest example?
Sunny Hostin read an alleged excerpt from the Epstein files that said President Donald Trump had once sexually assaulted a 13-year-old girl. The claim is part of the more preposterous side of the files, wild allegations that have no credibility. Otherwise legacy media outlets would be covering it 24-7 and/or the Biden administration would have leaked it years ago.
How do we know? Later in the show, legal scholar Joy Behar coaxed Hostin to clarify her earlier comments:
I want to be very careful here because these are allegations, and President Trump has consistently — they're unverified allegations, and President Trump has consistently denied all the allegations and any wrongdoing. BUT there was a presentation made by the FBI, and the witness stated that Jeffrey Epstein introduced her to Trump, who subsequently forced her head down and punched her in the head in response to something that she did.
Imagine if Hostin had been “very careful” in the first place.
It’s just a matter of time before someone on “The View” gets a tap on the shoulder to find legal documents in their face.
Gavin Newsom Wants A ‘More Culturally Normal’ Democrat Party. That’s Impossible
Start with the fact that if you have to use a phrase like “more culturally normal” in politics, you’re already weird as hell. That’s California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom. Newsom said in an interview this week on CNN that it’s a substantial liability for his party that most voters don’t share its enthusiasm for transgendering […]Viral Twenty One Pilots Song ‘Drag Path’ Offers A Christian Antidote To Gen Z Angst
What makes 'Drag Path' especially powerful is the way it resonates with young people who may not identify as Christian at all.To Stop The Emerging Anticulture, We Must Escape The Digital ‘Machine’
Paul Kingsnorth's latest book, Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, has the makings of a classic that may help us all rediscover faith and virtue.Self-Obsessed ‘Looksmaxxing’ Culture Subverts Traditional Masculinity
Consider what other ideologies aim to dissociate a person from their body to the point of physical mutilation.Today's top stories
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