Entertainer

Photo of Marty Barrack

The powers that be in Hollywood are socialists. Most actors and actresses realize that they have to go along to get good parts. Only a few stalwarts like Charlton Heston and Katherine Hepburn and Mel Gibson have been strong enough to survive in that choking environment.

But Charlton Heston, Katherine Hepburn, Mel Gibson, and a few like them, have been lights amid the darkness. Think of the movie The Ten Commandments. Imagine for a moment that Moses had been played not by Charlton Heston but by Alan Alda. The heroic dimension, the sense of living in the sight of God and with His judgments, would have been entirely gone. Instead, we might have had a Moses whose chief ambition was sex with all the attractive Israelite women, contrary to the sixth and ninth commandments. Thanks be to God, we had Charlton Heston.

We need not imagine what The Passion of the Christ would have looked like if it had been made by Martin Scorsese. The heroic dimension of the divine Christ’s absolute fidelity to His Final Sacrifice would have metamorphosed into a purely human Jesus who commits mortal sin.

We need many more Charlton Hestons. Many more Katherine Hepburns. Many more Mel Gibsons.

Act One, a program that trains Christian screenwriters, is doing some good work in this area. Christians of all denominations can and should work together to restore a Christian perspective to the entertainment industry.