Priest Fights Gangs With ‘Boundless Compassion’

With 3 or 4 Jesus movies clogging up the Christian Film pipeline, I can tell we’re in need of some fresh film ideas.  Wired4Film is only happy to oblige with this very unique, non-bible-drama, non-end-times-drama story that came through the NPR newswire.

It centers around a Priest who has counseled over 12,000 gang members over the last 20 years through his Homeboy Industries Ministry in the City of Angels.

(EXCERPT)  Homeboy Industries is the largest gang-intervention program in the country, serving the needs of thousands of East Los Angeles gang members who are looking for a way to leave the streets behind. Its motto is: “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.” For the past 20 years, the Rev. Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who started Homeboy, has mentored and counseled the more than 12,000 gang members who pass through Homeboy each year to learn job skills, get their gang tattoos removed and attend therapy sessions on everything from alcohol abuse to anger management.

Rev. Gregory Boyle, Homeboy Industries of Los Angeles

In the past three years, Boyle explains, Homeboy moved to a new headquarters to provide more room for the five businesses it runs for ex-gang members. In that time, Homeboy quadrupled the number of people it serves. Now, the operation is in severe financial trouble. On May 14, Boyle had to lay off most of the employees working at Homeboy. He has stopped taking a paycheck.

“We’ve been in trouble since November,” Boyle tells Terry Gross. “We sort of publicly announced and we got from November to here. But what we really needed was that $5 million cushion when we moved to our new headquarters three years ago to really factor that in. We built the building and … suddenly, we didn’t double the people we served. We quadrupled the people we served. The place was packed and the recession only added to the need and the fact that we’re the only game in town. There is no other place that people go to, so it was hard and we sort of needed an angel and we didn’t get it.”

Boyle recently published a memoir, Tattoos on the Heart, which recounts his decision to leave his position at the Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles in 1992 to focus on helping ex-gang members find jobs. He says that he looks at his position as a calling.

“I don’t save people. God saves people. I can point them in the right direction. I can say, ‘There’s that door. I think if you walked through it, you’d be happier than you are.’ “

What are you waiting for?  Go find yourself a good producer, option the rights to the story and then hire a professional scriptwriter!  This story is gold!  It could be the next “Chariots of Fire”!

Oh, and one more thing.  Make it a comedy.  There is PLENTY of mushy gushy heartwearming stuff and gang violence and themes like that in this story to weigh it down emotionally.  So you’re going to have to balance it out with laughs.

Also, do NOT even think about putting Erik Estrada in this film.  I personally will graffiti your name in the Lamb’s Book of Life when St. Pete’s not looking.

You can read the FULL STORY HERE at NPR.org

###

Christian Filmmakers Creating an Industry of Faith

(February 21, 2009) This year’s San Antonio Independant Christian Film Festival attracted the attention of NPR’s Barbara Bradley Hagerty who did a fair story on Christian Filmmaking in general and the SAICFF “revolution” specifically.

(EXCERPT) As Hollywood crowns its favorite movies and actors at the Oscars on Sunday, another group is trying to create a rival movie industry. Fed up with sex and violence in mainstream entertainment, conservative Christians are turning out their own films. And they’ve made surprising inroads.

If you don’t believe us, take this quiz: What was the biggest grossing independent film in 2008? No, not Slumdog Millionaire. Not Milk. It was a movie you’ve probably never heard of.

Fireproof, starring former teen idol Kirk Cameron, was all the talk of some 2,000 Christian movie fans gathering at the San Antonio (Texas) Independent Christian Film Festival in January. This crowd was markedly un-Hollywood, the men wearing jeans and Polo shirts, the women in high necklines and low hems. The lights had hardly dimmed for opening ceremonies when Doug Philips, the festival’s organizer, told the audience they were drawing a battle line in the culture wars.

“We’re here to send a message to the world that we no longer want our children immersed in toxic media which is in opposition to the Lord Jesus Christ,” he announced to the cheering crowd. “Christian filmmaking is coming of age. Christian filmmaking is coming of age!”

Read the full article here at NPR

###