Easy adaptations

Want to make an easy $101,000? That's what the "San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival" will give away to the "Best of Festival" Jubilee award winner this year.

You know the Bible, right? How hard can it be? Find a friend handy with an AG-HVX200 P2 HD Camcorder, another who has stories, an underwriter, and you're in business.

"Okay, so what does a Christian film look like?" one of you asks over lattes at Starbucks, your pens poised above blank sheets of paper.

"It tells it how it is," replies Johnny. "The Christian is nothing if not a prophet of truth."

"Um (slightly embarrassed), Johnny, I hope you're using the word 'prophet' metaphorically," says Bill. "We don't talk that way in my church…Now where were we? O yes, 'tells how it is.'"

"Excuse me," interrupts Stephanie, "when you say 'tells it how it is,' do you mean we allow foul language and blasphemy, you know, if it's part of the character?"

"Of course not," says Johnny. "That's not necessary to the character. It's just gratuitous, like the obligatory sex scenes? Remember what they did to Pearl Harbor?"

"How would you feel about a scene where this guy travels around with his prostitute, and then when the queer townsfolk want to have sex with him, he offers her to them instead and they have their way with her all night, and then she crawls back to the house and dies on the doorstep and the guy cuts her up into pieces and mails her to twelve counties?" asks Bill.

(Cold silence, and then Bill) "It's in the Bible."

"We might need to talk about distinctions between images appropriate for books but not appropriate for viewing….Another latte please."