The confessional booth made the book famous.
Two years after Brain McLaren’s A New Kind Of Christian hit shelves and started to aid in the shifting consciousness of evangelicals across the country, Donald Miller added his notes on Christian life via Blue Like Jazz. Replacing McLaren’s sometimes cheesy, high-fiving fictional characters that loved to go on long walks and talk theology with the retelling of his own story of moving from conservative Texas to ultra-liberal Reed College in Oregon, Miller played a tune so many Christians were dying to hear. When he tells the story of setting up the confessional booth at the college fair, not to receive the confessions of the largely non-Christian student body–but to confess to them the sins of Christianity and ask them for forgiveness–a light went on in minds and hearts of many who were struggling to understand their faith in the world today. Miller became a living, breathing, new kind of Christian. McLaren wrote a narrative about a new posture toward following Jesus in this world. Miller lived one.
On April 13 Blue Like Jazz will play again, this time as a film. As chronicled in his later book A Million Miles In A Thousand Years, Miller was approached about turning his story into a film. That film is now finally here. (Yes, that means this is a movie based on a book that has another book based on the making of the movie. That has to be a first.)
This film has a character in it named Don Miller, but this is not exactly Donald Miller’s story – at least not in detail. The details are likely closer to the life of some of the readers of Blue Like Jazz who felt like Miller was finally giving a voice to their story. In the film, Don is on a clear path to a local Baptist college when he finds out his mom is sleeping with the youth pastor. Faced with this disorienting news, he jumps in his car and heads for Portland in an act of rebellion. Reed College becomes the site of his further disorientation and subsequent reorientation. Now that the rose tinted glasses are off, what will Don see as being helpful in life?
The film and book are telling the same story: how to leave a brand of Christianity behind without leaving Christianity behind. In that, they have the same heart and soul. We watch Don learn and grow in a fairly typical coming-of-age story. This film has a number of great laughs and clever story telling techniques [the rooster crow made me laugh out loud]. But what Miller accomplished in his book is only partially achieved on the screen. The book felt unanchored to the Christian subculture – as if Miller didn’t care what anyone else thought about the way he was speaking of his Christian faith – it was his story and he was telling it. While the film has cussing, drug use and his best friend at school is a lesbian, the story that plays out on the screen feels filtered. The characters are a bit too polished to feel real.
Maybe the most interesting thing about this movie is not actually the movie, but the world created around it to get it into theaters. This project died a million deaths in a thousand days. Investors came and went with the film never quite rolling. Finally Miller announced its death on his blog. His devoted reader base, which is clearly a big fan of resurrection, decided to take matters into their own hands. One kickstarter.com campaign later and they had raised well over $300,000. The film was already living up to its title. You don’t plan jazz, you create it through improvisation with others, and that’s just what happened.
Now that the film is about to hit theaters for opening weekend, there is even more drama surrounding this comedy. Steve Taylor announced last week on Miller’s blog that the Christian film establishment has it out for Blue Like Jazz, asking for the trailer to not be played before other “Christian” films opening last week (ie. October Baby). At the screening of the film I attended a few weeks ago Miller opened by explaining that they (the production team) are trying to live in the world between bad Christian subculture productions and empty, shallow entertainment. If there really is a fatwa against the film, they can at least rest assured they avoided the first of those two camps.
Here’s what is likely true about the future of this film: It will stand as another touch point for the million-plus readers of Blue Like Jazz who were once inspired by to be a different kind of Christian in the world and are still trying to figure out how to do that. But, despite not having Kirk Cameron in it, it will still feel too Christian-y for the broader audience.
But, that doesn’t mean it is not a good film. In the final scene, after watching Don wrestle his way spiritually through his first year at Reed College, we are brought into the confessional booth with Don. There we witness again what has inspired so many people over the past several years: the confession of the sins of Christianity, by a Christian, to the wounded world around him. And while this may be one of the parts that feels too Christian-y for the broadest audience, it will likely also be the part that feels the most refreshing to those Christians who are still searching for a new way to live their faith. This proving that every time Miller plays jazz, for many of us, it’s worth listening to again and again.