Small miracles of the soul: awards alarm entertainment that dignifies - Ministries - Bill Moyers on Father Ellwood "Bud" Keiser

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 20, 2002 by Arthur Jones

Bill Moyers got it right when he described the essence of the Paulist Fathers' ministry to moviedom as not "bellyaching" but "affirmation."

On the stage of the Universal City Hilton this summer, Paulist Productions director Fr. Frank Desiderio nodded in agreement. The setting was the Paulists' annual Humanitas Prize awards--the Catholic version of an Oscar ceremony. PBS reporter and storyteller Moyers--who won the first Humanitas Prize for documentaries in 1977--told the assemblage of big screen and little screen greats and lesser-knowns that the Paulists' initial Hollywood presence, the late Paulist Fr. Ellwood "Bud" Kieser, "believed he was here to do battle with the bastard muses."

Those bastard muses, said Moyers, are "propaganda, which pleads, sometimes unscrupulously, for special causes at the expense of the total truth; sentimentality, which works up emotional responses unwarranted and in excess of the occasion; and pornography, which focuses on one powerful drug at the expense of the human personality.

"Bud took on the bastard muses," he said of his pal of three decades, "because it bothered him that we human beings consume so much nonsense, trivia and violence, and he puzzled on what it was doing to our sensibilities to feed on a steady diet of carnage masquerading as entertainment."

Kieser, founder of Paulist Productions--and later producer of "Romero" (1989) and "Entertaining Angels" (1996), the story of Dorothy Day and the founding of the Catholic Worker movement--then had to decide what to do next.

Moyers, on stage, described Kieser's ploy to the huge audience of scriptwriters, directors and producers that included such screenwriting luminaries as Aaron Sorkin ("The West Wing," NBC), Moises Kaufman ("The laramie Project," HBO), Akiva Goldsman ("A Beautiful Mind," Universal Studios), and Kristine Johnson and Jessie Nelson ("I Am Sam," New Line Cinema).

"Bud didn't go around bellyaching or pointing fingers or telling people to eat their spinach," said Moyers, "He chose instead an old-fashioned, somewhat unfashionable--but not altogether naive--strategy of affirmation.

"He wanted to offer an antidote to vulgarity. Vulgarity to the ancient Greeks was the absence of experience in things beautiful. Bud acted as if life were a continuing course in adult education."

The adults Kieser chose to educate were writing for Hollywood.

His teaching tools were the Humanitas Awards. Moyers was in town to receive the annual ceremony's first "Kieser Award," established following Kieser's September 2000 death.

Added Moyers, Kieser believed "that this medium could dignify instead of debase life, and that in the vast cornucopia of popular cultures someone had the cultivated garden here and there where people could be touched by the beauty of an idea, or honest emotions, something authentic, possibly even to experience a small miracle in the soul. Bud brought many small miracles."

Moyers wasn't too bad at coming up with small miracles either, Desiderio said of the originator of the conversational Joseph Campbell series, "The Power of Myth" and many similar Moyers' projects.

This year's presenters were Steven Zaillian, a Humanitas feature film trustee, and Suzanne de Passe, a Humanitas television trustee. They explained that the trustees for the various categories "for thousands of hours" studied more than 350 scripts and screenings.

This year was the 28th Humanitas ceremony. The presenters' introductions to the winners provide sharp insights into what the multiple panels of judges search for as they watch children's live action and animated movies, Sundance Festival feature films, 30- and 60- and 90-minute made-for-television series segments and television specials, 90-minute PBS and cable presentations and documentaries, and major feature films that this year included as finalists, "A Beautiful Mind," "I Am Sam" and "Iris."

Here's Zaillian describing why "Iris" screenplay writers Richard Eyre and Charles Wood, working from John Bayley's memoir of his wife, were selected for the $25,000 feature film prize: "For showing us the faithful love of a married couple through the better and especially the worst. For the celebration of a classical education that values the interplay of freedom, truth, goodness, beauty and the relation to happiness. For an intimate look at two people deeply in love surrendering their bodies to the ravages of age but never their dignity."

The recipients are asked to briefly respond but not give a big, long "thank you everyone" speech. Some forget. Here's Suzanne de Passe announcing me Sundance award category winner--and Josefina Lopez's genuine brushing-away-tears response--in a behind-the-scenes look at how some movies come about:

"For its portrayal of opposition to oppression, both personal and cultural, for assertion of freedom to seek the fullness of human development and for its affirmation of the dignity of the individual regardless of class, race or signs, the 2002 Humanitas Award and a check for $10,000," said de Passe, "goes to George LaVoo and Josefina Lopez for `Real Women Have Curves.'"