Morton Smith Movie

[Secret Alias]

Who knows. As it stands the script is awful. But i will try.

[Peter Kirby]

Morton Smith could be a hell of a bible scholar biopic, if such a thing could exist at all.

[Secret Alias]

It's hard to do this because I never met him. I read Jesus the Magician. I like it. I got my interest in Celsus from Morton Smith. But when you are creating art it is hard to avoid using Morton Smith to be a sock puppet for your own ideas. One of the idea I have for the movie is the entertainment aspect. A magician is an entertainer. If Morton Smith is the "gay magician" as Neusner called him. Let's leave out the gay part. He must have been attracted to the idea of showmanship. So I go back to the mistranslation of "naked man with naked man." Was this about himself (= he was gay), was it an accident or was it a conscious or unconscious attempt to gain notoriety. The Greek monks at Mar Saba in 1983 thought he was interested in making a name for himself. Nothing could be more antithetical to their lifestyle than one man coming in with dozens of cameras, crew etc.

If you want my opinion (and I am sure no one does). I find all the popular talking heads, the pretty or handsome ones in this racket are kind of like Morton Smith in that way. I won't name names. But one of them is a supposedly attractive blonde scholar (I am not big on sickly types). Anyway she's always got to find a way to be "interesting." Find some interesting angle to get published and on screen. There was a period where everyone was doing these religious documentaries and all the better looking scholars were getting on the air. But is this what scholarship is supposed to be? I mean they have this Georgian (not American Georgia) lady with black hair who gets dolled up and plays classical piano pieces. You see her on Youtube. Is that we've all become? Dolled up scholars and dolled up scholarship. Painted ladies and painted scholarship.

I think that will be the angle. Not sure how accurate it is. Was Morton Smith really a media whore? He did the one documentary. But maybe he was attracted to showmanship. It would be really boring if it turned into a hagiography. It would be even worse if he was made out to be this two dimensional "forger" like in Carlson's book (I think people will stay away from DaVinci Code like material in the 21st century) or worse yet Jeffery's monstrosity. So what are we left with? I've always seen this debate as kind of like the Twilight of the humanities. People writing and buying into pulp fiction dressed up as scholarship. But again, I don't know if I am imposing my thoughts and prejudices onto the subject matter. Was he really this devoted scholar the way his supporters claim? I don't know.

I really don't know anything to be honest. I am the kind of guy who just feels attraction to things. Like Shake Shack hamburgers. That Korean burger they have is utterly amazing. That's like everything for me. Either I am attracted to it or I am indifferent. Low quality intellect.

[Secret Alias]

And with his sexuality. The older I get I am like "what does it matter." When you're young you have all these insecurities that "sexualizes" you. Vulnerability. When you get my age walking around wearing the same pajamas all day looking at other people who walk around in pajamas all day. Who wants to have sex? I really get Morton Smith's asexuality. If you look in the mirror and see ugly what's there to get turned on by?

[Peter Kirby]

I'm intrigued by the interaction that Smith had with other scholars, especially the ones that were convinced of Morton Smith's honesty and intent of working through a text that he didn't fully understand, but also the ones who knew him and suspected the worst. For Helmut Koester, who met and interacted with Smith, this was an important personal proof that Morton Smith didn't forge it, even if that proof isn't accessible to us in the same way that it was to Koester. Usually we're dealing with the data as the seemingly-objective other, where nobody can claim a privilege over another person in interpreting the data, but when it comes to the life of a man, that firewall breaks down. Different people have different access to the "data" here.

I like the angle of contrasting the scholarship of the 1950s-1970s era to the last couple decades.

[Secret Alias]

Not this movie about a guy walking through bordellos like Peter Sellers in Being There.

[Peter Kirby]

John Malkovich would be an interesting Morton Smith.

[Secret Alias]

Yes.

[Secret Alias]

But if you are going to make a personal biopic you have to claim to know who Morton Smith was as a person. Who can know that? He had a lot of correspondences. You can turn letters into "in person" dialogues. But then you will be accused of altering history. But who wants to listen to letters being read back and forth for 2 hours?

[Peter Kirby]

Well that's the difference between making a documentary and making a biopic, yes.

It's not a true story. It's based on a true story.