Glitz and Glamour

When we brainstormed with the Youth Club about our film project, we received many different thoughts, from Mia’s “Rapping Vicar” (which we will film next week) to Shawn and Nathan—some of our youngest ones—saying, “What if… I were ‘Sausage Man’, and he was… ‘Potato Guy’, and… he could have a sniper rifle…” and so on. Oh, to be a middle school boy again: the Wild West or zombie-ridden frontiers of our minds.

Rebecca writes a murder mystery a la Death on the Nile. She casts and stars, after the as Constable PC Mc’D, sent in to sort out the Vicar’s death. Everyone’s got a motive—the gardener whose flowers the Vicar said were rubbish (compared to his own flowers), the woman the Vicar won’t let eat chocolate because she’s on a diet, a woman steals from the collection plate, and another plays pranks—yet when Rebecca/PC Mc’D delivers her verdict, everyone seems strangely surprised, and everyone has an alibi. It’s then that someone asks, “Where were you?” “He had it coming!” Rebecca/Mc’D cries, “You’ve got me! I’m the famous serial killer of vicars! It’s my job! The Mc’D stands for… McDeath!” Then, as the congregation tries to trap her, the lights shut off, and McDeath escapes… which is another way of saying Rebecca tries to escape through the door, but someone has accidentally bumped into it so she pulls and pulls and then dashes to the bathroom in the back of the shot and ducks in just as the lights come back on, a little black blur in a room the audience will never notice.

PC Mc’D, which we have briefly called “The Mc’D Chronicles”, is the program right before “Thurlby Youth Club Action News”, the rest of our film, which is our way of telling multiple stories within the same medium. Included are retellings of the parables of the Lost Silver Coin (with hand-chiseled chocolate bunnies) and the Good Samaritan, with Sophie, the smallest girl in Youth Club, as the vicious leader of the gang who beats up our traveling salesman: “Give us the bag,” “What a coincidence, because that’s exactly what we want,” “Okay, just don’t beat me up!” “Tough stuff, because that’s what we want too.” It’s a tough shoot, plagued by giggles, but the night’s cold does its part and they become cross with us—me, Ryan, James-on-camera, and Rebecca: the four directors—around the tenth take and suddenly they become laugh-less gangsters! Then we jump up and down because that’s what we do when we get a good take at Youth Club.

One of the most popular ideas is to do something concerning East Enders, and we consider going to the library and renting multiple seasons in order to incorporate their interest with our focus. Then I watch part of one show and immediately wish I were the humanoid figure in Ryan’s latest drawing—the one being held by a T-Rex, screaming “Don’t *#$%@^* eat me!” (literally) while the carnivore breaths tricolor fire and balloons and confetti fall all around—that to continue watching the show. Turns out it’s a Soap Opera that has been running for 25 years (they had a live show while we were here to commemorate its quarter-century accumulation of years) and is known for its dramatic endings and hopping from one couple’s fight to another. After 20 minutes I realize Ryan and I cannot possibly make a skit about this—not only is it obnoxious, but there are also a bazillion different characters—and the kids are sad. That is, until we tell Katherine, the most sad of the bunch, to “Write everything that you like about East Enders, and then read it as fast as you possibly can.” She does, with no shortage of Valley Girl “likes”, and comes off surprisingly awesome. Though it has nothing to do with our storyline, it brings youth alive, and I believe there is something so tangible about God in that. We’ll use it as an East Enders commercial, and as cheesy as our commercial is, it’s not too far off the adverts for the real thing.