The book that swept the country will not sweep theaters. It’s a sad day amongst many of my friends. After spending a year writing the screenplay, and another year trying to raise money for the movie, everything seems to be on hold indefinitely. There are several reasons we won’t be moving forward, but after writing a book about writing the screenplay, I felt I owed everybody a few takes on why: 1. It’s really hard to raise money for movies right now. In fact, it’s worse than it’s ever been in the history of hollywood. On one hand, that’s terrible for us, but on the other it would have been great because Blue Like Jazz would have had much less competition at the box office. 2. Blue Like Jazz is a very hard film for church-going, evangelical Christians to get behind. The folks who invest in Christian movies were scared to death of Blue Like Jazz. While it has a PG-13 rating, there is language, drug use and a scene where the protagonists put a giant condom on a steeple. To me, it’s the only movie that takes an honest look at a Christian kid coming of age in America, [...]
