Our first guest blog posting comes from Dave Murphy, who I first collaborated with on the Conscious Living, Conscious Leaving project. Dave has been a sounding board for A Bigger Voice since I started fleshing out the idea late in 2007, for which I’m grateful. Dave is a screenwriter who understands the medium of story to inform us, help us remember, and move us into action. His lens for looking at the world is story. He’s also got a sense of humor that rivals Dave Barry, without the Miami heat. Dave Murphy lives in Traverse City, Michigan. He writes this post about attending their well-known film festival (Madonna attended this year) and seeing the connection to ABV concepts:

The fourth annual Traverse City Film Festival ran from July 29th to August 3rd.  The festival owes its origins and much of its success to controversial documentary maker and Academy Award winner, Michael Moore.

The film fest’s tagline is “just great movies” and it delivers, featuring dozens of quality films that may not make it on the blockbuster list, but have given the event the reputation as a place to see the work of first-rate independent filmmakers.

Director/writer/producer Larry Charles brought his surprise hit Borat to the festival two years ago before it went on to gross over $128 million domestically and over $260 million worldwide.  He returned this year with another comedy, Religulous, guaranteed to insult even more people than Borat managed to offend.

Regardless of one’s views on the central premise of Religulous  – which is that religions are self-fulfilling prophecies hell bent on leading humanity into Armageddon – the end of the film is unusual in that Charles has the story’s narrator, Bill Maher, make an overt call to action beneath a soundtrack of nuclear explosions and intercut with mushroom clouds.  Maher makes a fervent plea to the audience to stop religions’ relentless march towards doomsday.

One of the luxuries of attending the film fest is to watch directors answer questions after the screening.  Larry Charles came on stage and made it clear that this was more than a piece of entertainment:  It’s a cause he believes needs to get traction or we’re all in trouble.

After about 15 minutes of listening to entertaining points from both Charles and the audience, I still hadn’t heard any hint at the discussion I felt was most relevant.  So I raised my hand and had the good fortune of knowing the festival worker who was passing the microphone around.  She brought it to me and I asked:  “You concluded the film with a call to action; what are you doing to support people in that call to action?”

Charles paused for a moment and I’ll have to paraphrase because I didn’t have pen and paper in hand, but he said something pretty close to this:  “Well…we have a website…so you could go there.  And I have a ton of additional quality footage.  I’d love to get a network deal where I distribute that material in half hour chunks. (pause) Next question.”

I was impressed with Larry Charles filmmaking talents and a quick glance at his resume could knock your socks off.  He works with major talent and significant budgets.  He signs distribution deals before he ever begins shooting.  He’s a master of his medium.  And at least in the case of this film, he’s genuinely passionate about a cause that he wants others to join.

But until he – or someone – makes an effort to build a community around this cause, where does it go?  How does it really get traction?

When I checked out the website associated with Religulous shortly after seeing the film, all I found was a trailer to the movie.  A month later as I post this, that’s still all that’s there.

In fairness to Larry Charles, the film isn’t due to be released until later in the fall.  But during this film festival, he had upwards of a thousand people eating out of the palm of his hand just at the two screenings of the film.  Many thousands more saw and heard him during panel discussions and media interviews.  Mr. Charles has center stage now and until a very short time after the film is released.  If you’re looking to lead a cause or at least provoke the conversation, wouldn’t it be helpful to have some tools in place to sustain the discussion and help create the movement you’re demanding?

Is Larry Charles strictly a story teller, or by challenging viewers of his film, did he cross an imaginary line and take on new responsibilities?  If he’s serious about the climax to his film, and knowing the social media tools now available to create virtual communities, is it good enough to tell a story and nothing more?