I never liked church as a kid, but when they passed around a petition asking everyone to boycott our local movie theaters if they showed Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation Of Christ, I was **done** with The Catholic Church and organized religion forever. (I was 12.)
I didn't know anything about TLTOC and had yet to see a Scorsese film, but I remember the priest describing the film as "pornographic" and it sounded like bullshit to me. I had no interest in seeing the movie but there was no way in hell I was going to stop going to the movies.
Eventually, when I saw the film a few years later on VHS, it confirmed that they had been lying about the movie, which was better than any sermon I had ever heard. It's basically It's A Wonderful Life but with Jesus seeing what it would be like if he wasn't the son of God.
Of course, my gut feeling that the Catholic Church was lying about something turned out to be accurate. But it made me forever skeptical about whenever people get all worked up about any movie or TV show that they haven't seen yet.
I got really mad when I saw TLTOC, thinking back to how easily everybody in that church was signing that petition; I don't remember if local theater got the film, or if they were even going to in the 1st place. I just knew I would stop going to church the second it was an option.
Of course, within a few years I would also see Life Of Brian, which had come out in 1979; it was more deliberately provocative but also more thoughtful than any of the knee-jerk protests it attracted. I am now always immediately skeptical when a film is being declared an outrage.
Recommended viewing: the TV debate feat. @JohnCleese & Michael Palin vs. pious windbags Malcolm Muggeridge & Mervyn Stockwood-- the latter two spend the entire conversation ducking the serious points being made & engaging in some pretty dull sarcasm...
In hindsight, there was also a fair amount of "Look! Over There!" to these kinds of protests. As long as ppl were mad about these shocking movies that few of the protesters had actually seen, it would distract from the real life horrors the church was actively covering up.
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