Speaker 1: Well, hi everybody, it's Steve Hayward here with a special
holiday episode of the Ricochet Podcast. It's just me in
conversation with Rob Long, one of Ricochet's co founders, well
known to nearly all of you, of course, and I thought,
who better to talk about Christmas and the meaning of
religion than our own in house seminarian, And so without
further ado, here's me and Robin. Well, I'm delighted to
have one of Ricochet's co founders, Rob Long, joined me
for this special year end episode. I have for the
longest time been wanting to talk to Rob about this
midlife change from Hollywood to theology, from the studio to
the church, and partly because I mean a fellow Christian,
of course, but also because it parallels the trajectory were
a very good friend of mine who unfortunately passed away
in his early fifties after deciding to leave a variousuccessful
legal career to go to seminary and become more dane. So,
in other words, your story, Rob sounds familiar to me,
And yeah, the reasoning is interesting. But anyway, listeners, you
won't be able to see this, of course, But at
first I thought, what are you lighting up there, Rob?
Is that incense sexual high Church?
Speaker 2: Well, no, I'd be very very much in favor of
it if it were incense. I do have incense in
the house. I had to tell you.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I am kind of an incense freak. This
is a cigar. I was just wrapped up on.
Speaker 2: Friday, exams and papers. I had a bunch to do,
and I'm here to tell you it's very very A
lot of a lot of school is harder than it
was when I was a student last time. I was
a student forty years ago. But it's easier in a
lot of ways. And I am an unabashed fan of AI.
You you plug in your sources, it spits out a
bibliography that's perfectly but perfectly formatted.
Speaker 3: It double checks your footnots for you. I could.
Speaker 2: I sent in up, I uploaded my paper and I
said make sure I didn't, you know, repeat any language
from these sources that I didn't that I didn't cite.
Speaker 1: And I don't know.
Speaker 3: This is maybe boring to people, but I'm just telling you.
Speaker 2: Among the other things i'm evangelizing, I'm evangelizing for AI,
which is probably about That's what I mean that's what's
going to get me into trouble more than anything else.
Speaker 3: Probably.
Speaker 1: Well, anyway, I'm tempting to joke that hopefully it can
catch you from lapsing into any Armenian heresies or something.
But well, right, well, all right, almost all of our
listeners are familiar with you, longtime listeners of Ricochet and
so forth, and that Martini shot and whatnot. But it
just for you know, let's do a thirty second potted biography,
which I think I can kind of do, but add
in what I've left out. You're more and raised in
the Baltimore area.
Speaker 3: Born and then we moved. I moved around a lot.
Speaker 2: So's we're born there, and I'm driving there right now.
I mean, I'm not driving now, and I pulled away,
pull over, but I yeah, I was born there. And
then we lived in Europe and then northern California, where
I kind of spent most of my sort of growing
up times, and then and then went away to school,
and then I was in New England.
Speaker 3: And that's that, you.
Speaker 1: Know, right, Yeah, I see, I didn't know that you
moved around a bunch. I just remembered the Baltimore anchor
and then you went to gale measured in fine arts,
I think, or something like that.
Speaker 3: Oh English, something even more more or less remunerative.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, And then you stuck out for Hollywood, where
you were a great success for a very long time,
and then Hollywood got weird. We may come to a
little of that here at the end, but you've certainly
talked about how the industry has changed a lot on
this show and on your on Martini Shot and so forth.
So it's like a lot of things. It's no longer
the fun it used to be. I can tell that
from afar. Well, so here's the big question. You know,
after all these years working in comedy, mostly in television,
you just decided to go to seminary in middle age
and to become ordained. And so the cynics and haters.
Speaker 3: Wait, thank you, thank you for saying middle age.
Speaker 1: Well, I you know, I'm a few years older than you,
only a few happily, and I'm still clinging in the
middle aged too. But so now the cynics and haters
are going to say, ah, Rob, you know the rhino,
the ones who think of you as a rhino. Is
this a midlife crisis? What precipitated this idea because this
is really a big thing to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm trying to hold on.
I have a little piece of cigar. I'm downside and smoking.
So you know, I'm a writer. I was a writer
for a long time. I still am a writer. And
at a certain point, you want to write about stuff
that's more and more important to you, more and more
important to me. At a certain time, you kind of
want to, especially if you write screen stream plays and scripts,
you want to write about your SI and you want
to write about what's you're thinking about, not necessarily a
dialogue for somebody else. And then I think, I mean,
this is a larger this is sort of a larger
part of why I feel called to this. But these
are big that the big things are still big, and
just because we don't think about them, and or the
culture doesn't think about them, or we trivialize them, doesn't
make them any smaller.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like they always say, like the I preached a
sermon on Sunday, and one of the images I said was,
you know Niagara Falls. There's like a forty million gallons
of water go over the cliff of Niagara Falls every
every minute, and it's like ninety decibels. It's like two
leaf blowers going all the time. But if you live
in Niagara Falls, you just don't hear it anymore. And
I feel like that's kind of how we are about
these big thoughts, like what are we doing here?
Speaker 3: What's our purpose?
Speaker 2: What's our what's our purpose to our our own potential?
Speaker 3: And what's our purpose? What's our what are our.
Speaker 2: What do we call to do with everyone else on
the planet and those I don't know. The place where
people think these things through for me is the Church
and the and the figure that seems to have the
most make the most sense and have the most impact
was Jesus, So you know, start there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this may sound odd, but there are
sent There's two things that most people don't like to
think about. One is the abyss, you know, the terrible abyss,
right right right. But then the other one is God
and for the for the the inherent reason that, at
least in the monotheistic faith traditions, God is unknowable by definition.
We can say more about that if we want, right
and uh and then plus I mean that's just on
the what you might say the philosophical theological level. You can't.
There's a reason we call it faith and reason or
reason and revelation, right right, And yet theology is the
attempt to reason and about God to the extent we can,
and that you know, footnotes to one hundred different books.
Speaker 3: To follow, right, right, right right.
Speaker 1: I agree with you completely, By the way, I'm of
that same disposition. I'm fascinated by both theology and philosophy,
and they overlap a lot. On the other hand, I
can see it's not for everybody. It's kind of a
rarefied inclination. And it's one thing to go to church
every week and read some good books and so forth.
It's another one than to say I'm going to throw
in one hundred percent like you have.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean, I kind of feel like I
don't want to get I don't want to give anybody.
Speaker 3: The wrong impression I am.
Speaker 2: I'm not the biggest fan of theology and I and
I reckon I see the irony there that I am
in fact at a place called Princeton Theological Seminary. Uh,
you know, sometimes I think theology is just a lot
of words we wrote to solve a problem that we
created with our own words. So you know, we're you know,
basically getting ourselves out of a maze that we set
for ourselves. And I think sometimes, you know, you could
I could read have now. I do it now, not
for a living, but I do it now as a vocation.
Speaker 1: I read a lot of.
Speaker 2: Theology, and sometimes I just find myself like, oh my god,
I've read five pages of this and I have no
idea what this person's talking about. And they're not even German,
you know, they're like, this is actually something who speaks
English is the first language.
Speaker 3: So you know, I think the experience of and I sometimes.
Speaker 2: Feel like the other books, the theology, and all the
language we use is a way for us to sort
of navigate and negotiate the you know, the red print
in the Bible and the New Testament, the stuff that
Jesus says.
Speaker 3: So he says these incredibly.
Speaker 2: Impossible things, right, you know, love your nature, people say,
he says, forgive your enemies. Now he doesn't say that.
He says, love your enemies much harder. I gotta forgive
my enemies. Yeah, they're forgiven.
Speaker 3: I can't love them. Give to all who asks, you know.
Speaker 2: All that stuff, give away your stuff if you have
two codes give one away, and so those are pretty clear, right.
So some of theology I think is designed for two
thousand years to figure out what else he might have
meant aside from those really difficult things. Because we're not
doing those things, we're gonna we will try to come
up with some.
Speaker 3: Other things we can do.
Speaker 2: And I look that that's a human that's a human impulse,
that's a human invasion, which just fine, But I kind
of feel like the just to be a slightly Christian
chopiness here for a minute. The singular thing about Christianity
is that Jesus says that you are important. Your unanus
is important, your steveness is important. You will leave the
thought for you, steve for me. Rob Not because we
belong to a tribe or we belong to a culture,
or because we have a dharma or we have a
rank that we need to live out. It's because of
who specifically we are. That's a that is a radical,
earth changing concept. There is that changed human nature, that
changed the way human beings think of themselves.
Speaker 3: And I don't know that seems worth.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 2: I got a couple of years to spend just learning that,
and then if I'm lucky, you know, God willing and
the people consenting. I would like to spend the rest
of my little summers that the Lord is giving me
to to talk about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, I mean, and it's taken up. Actually, I
think we're still figuring out the implications of what you
just said, because I mean I tend to run off
because you know, my backgrounds and political philosophy to the
political dimension, which was the New Testament teaches that our identity,
our worth does not depend on the nation we live in. Right,
And it takes a long time. You know, Machiavelli comes
along and you know, thirteen hundred years later says, well,
well wait a minute, that's really bad, right, that's part
of his complaint.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And then but then you know, in a certain extent
we call the liberal tradition grows out of all that. Right, Okay,
that's that's the subject for another day. But you have
been I think a life along episcopalian.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which which you know with all the intensity of
that that that entails.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well look, I know the jokes are are our
friend Andrew Clayman, who you know, converted from Judaism to
evangelical Christianity. Someone said, or are you an Episcopalian. He said, no,
I'm a real Christian.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he said, but he said, the way you put
it to me, he goes, well, you know, call me
when you are joining a religion with that believes in God.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Right, Well, the reason I brought that up is
it does seem to me that liturgical denominations, you know, Catholics, Episcopalians, Anglicans,
or Eastern Orthodox, they tend to be a much more
part of because of the liturgical form of worship. They
tend to be much more or put much more emphasis
on serious, in depth theological step. I think I think
that's fair to say.
Speaker 3: I think that's probably fair. Yeah. I mean, also they
have a they are.
Speaker 2: They come out of the early Church tradition of doing
exactly that, So they aren't. I mean, you could you
can make the cases of Anglican and some mainline Protestants
are a reformed, but even by being reformed, you're still
choosing the foundation of the suirt So you're going back
to the time. I mean, all the reformers, even the Anglicans,
said well, we're more Catholic than they've lost their way
and we're back to what you know, so less capture. Right,
you don't really not non a nominational churches which are
incredibly vibrant, don't They don't.
Speaker 3: I don't think they have that as there you know
the DNA.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now you use the word. I want to go
back and ask you what is uh? I guess this
is a deeply personal question. You used a keyword to
me anyway when you said called, this is a calling.
Now there's you know, a couple of ways of thinking
about that. One is and I've had a clergy friend
of mine who said, from an early age they felt
they had received the call of God in that you know,
spiritual transcendental sense. By the way, one of them are episcopalian.
Who went into this bishop and said the bishop said,
why do you want to be a priest? Who said,
because I've been called by God? And he said most
of his friends said, you told the bishop what. But
but there's also, I mean, the other way of thinking
about it is it's a it's a consequent logic. And
so you know when when you said called, yeah, how
do you mean or what is that? How is that?
Manifested itself to you?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 2: As a good episcopalian, I am uncomfortable talking about these issues, right,
I mean, then you know, how do you make it episcopalia?
And look at his shoes you mentioned you mentioned Jesus
or money, like that's how you get it. So so,
but I do remember going and talking talking to the
rector of the church I went to in Manhattan I
still go to, and I was talking to her about, uh,
my first time in that church and not not my
first time, but the first time I went to that
church sort of just to go to his service because
I've been there for weddings and stuff, and uh, you know,
the candles were lit on it was a night. It's
a six pm Sunday service. It is beautiful and I
sort of walked in there for I don't know why.
And she said to me, said, so you think maybe
the Holy Spirit was guiding you into the church. And
I said, looked at her, I said, I don't know,
And she said, does that make you uncomfortable that I
said that. He said, yes, it makes me uncomfortable. So
I call the call. You know, Partly I think that
if you can, if you want to deepen your experience
with faith, or you want to eat your experiences as
a writer, you're going to have to get called to
learn something about big stuff.
Speaker 3: Also, I kind of feel like that.
Speaker 2: The the great thing about one of the great things
I should say about the Christian faith is that it's
kind of a what now faith and.
Speaker 3: That you you know, Jesus knows us so well.
Speaker 2: And by the way, I don't think you even have
to believe in the divinity of Jesus to be to
say most of what I'm about to say. He knows
us so well, he knows people so well that he
knows what terrifies us deep down, as you put it, like,
is this all there is? Am I unlovable? Am I unloved?
If my people in the in my life who loved
me knew who I really was, would they still loved?
Speaker 3: Am I alone?
Speaker 2: And Jesus says, okay, in order I'll take I'll tell
you are not unloved.
Speaker 3: You are the loved child of God. You are not alone.
We are all. I am always with you, I know you,
and I love you.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The college for purity, which we say in the Piscopal Faith,
is the God to whom all from whom no secrets
are hid, to whom all all desires are known, and
then finally you are an air to everlasting life. So
I've taken you know, if Jesus is there, he said,
So I've taken care of your big fears.
Speaker 3: Now what so if you.
Speaker 2: Accept that, even if you accept that that is a
destination of a journey that you're on, that full belief experience,
the question is still.
Speaker 3: Is now what?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 3: Now are you going to do with all that?
Speaker 2: And for me it was like, okay, well, if I
believe all that, I guess I should do something with it.
Speaker 3: I guess I should put it into practice.
Speaker 2: And I know you people could put into practice a
million different ways, but mine was like, I want to
write about this, I want to preach about this. I
want to celebrate the foundational prayer of the Eucharistic prayer
that we have, which is kind of all of.
Speaker 3: Those things all wrapped up in one thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's kind of and I and I wish
I could say now listen, I really felt the Holy
Spirit guided me. A God came and like I was,
you know, Jesus sat next to me the bus stop
and told me, here's what you got to do.
Speaker 3: But I haven't. I don't, I don't.
Speaker 2: That is I haven't had that experience, but I definitely
have been led somewhere by something somehow. And I you know,
I turned sixty in June. I'm not gonna I decided
to stop. I've decided to stop tuning that part out.
Speaker 1: Well. I mean, look, I'm all one for theological modesty,
even that even if I'd heard a voice from the
wilderness or from the bush or something, I think I'd
be reloved to say so openly or directly myself. So
I certainly get that. But it's that's one of those
mysteries of faith, right that we have to live with
and and and and accept that we are not going
to be able to conquer that one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and look, if you, if you, if you believe
the first step, which is that you know he's everywhere,
he's inside you, and he's a part of you, and
you just tuned it out, you just need to tune
that part back in, you know, Like I know, you
could be a classic Freudian and still believe that's the case.
I happen to think that it's something more universal, but
the practice of it is the same for me, and
that once once I crossed that line, I'm like, Oka, well.
Speaker 3: What I'm really going to go? I mean, look, I
would love I've told you this before.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I I have a friend of mine who's a who's
a rector of a church on Cape Cod and he's
an old guy's you know, he's grew up in a
Roman Catholic family in Rhode Island, like niney thousand brothers
and sisters and wanted to get married. But he also
wanted to be a priest, so it's really only one
one path for him, which is piscical priest. And he said,
he said, well, why do you want to do this?
And I said, you know, I gave him all those
reasons and I said, you know, and also look, I meant,
I gotta be honest. There's a ten percent of me
wants to wear that collar into a Network comedy.
Speaker 3: Pitch meeting and pitch a show and see what they do.
Speaker 2: And he goes, okay, well that's not as bad as
what I thought you were going to what you should
he said, you should also know this that when you
are gained, they give you a card that you can
put on your dash and you could park anywhere. And
he said, that is not a reason to do this.
But it's not not a reason to do this, like
you know, so all these you know, fuck, I like
to think that's a small portion of my call, but
it's not.
Speaker 3: It's not nothing.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to look at tordienda. I want to
come to Hollywood in the world of the clergy, because
I forget who said it. It might have been Churchill who
said a joke is a very serious thing, and so
I'm trying to But yeah, but I do want to.
I do want to linger on theology what you're doing
right now, and do stay a little bit in chronology.
So like you say, I totally get it when you
say that theology can be kind of off putting in
dance and all the rest of that. So tell me
a little bit about you know, your first year of studies.
Is it what you expected, either academically or theologically. Has
it been hard to learn different languages in Middle Age,
which you know you say you know you can't run
a language after you're eighteen or something. True.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm here to tell you that is that is
absolutely true. You can't, you should not do it. I'm
I'm on Friday. I was sort of like my direct midpoint.
So it's a three year program. I've been in a
year and a half. So Friday last, the fall semester
was over on Friday, and I spent some time struggling
with Greek, and I thought, okay, well, you know, if
you Princeton is a Presbyterian school basically started by Presbyterians
who are incredibly impressive intellectually. And if you are a
Presbyterian and you have a Presbyterian pastor, buy him a
drink or something, because he really he really know stuff.
Speaker 3: You have to know Greek and.
Speaker 2: Hebrew, and to be an Episcopalian you just kind of
don't have to know those.
Speaker 3: You have to be familiar with him. But that's about it,
Like they don't zo test.
Speaker 2: So I struggled through Greek, and I think I might
do Hebrew in an intense short class at some point
between now and the time I graduate, just so I
know a little bit about it and I can look
stuff up meaningfully. So there was that part, and then
there's the other part, which is sort of the classic
dance you know call Karl Barth style theology, which is
interesting and in many cases really compelling and arresting. I
tend to squirrel my way around, so like the you know,
the occasional Karl Barth writings and letters are great, and
I kind of like, oh, maybe I'll just stick with those,
you know, I won't pick up this big book. The
history of the church is fascinating. Of course, that's been
really fun to study that, mostly because it's just an
early church anyway, is just a series of gruesome tortures
and two hundred years of persecution then followed by a
thousand years of political power.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like it's fun to read how quickly they all
they all change the minute Constantine said okay, you're I
want to you suddenly suddenly they got very different. But
I but my classmates, I've been I've been really surprised
by my classmates.
Speaker 3: They're young.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm the oldest person in the I'm the
oldest person in the room, mostly because my professors are
younger than I am too, So so this's that experience
is kind of weird. But it's really fun because they
are If you if you're feeling pessimistic about the future,
you should just come and sit in on a class
because they're sort of thoughtful and compassionate and struggling to
make it all make sense, which in an incredibly Christian way.
I mean capital C and SAC, which is interesting. It's
really kind of I find them. I really admire them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. I I occasionally will dust off some
Carl Bart to try and read and then give up
after a while. But there are two things about it.
I mean, you know, it's the most famous work, is
that what six volume Church Dogmatics, right, Yeah. But one
of the fun things about that is is that he
since somewhere something along the lines of systematic theology is
an oxymoron, and that's why he wrote dogmatics instead of
systematic theology. So that's sort of in clients to I
think what you were saying. And the other thing was,
you know, in German, nothing that matters except we all
use a German word sometimes to make us sound more sophisticated.
He said God's was gone's onder meaning holy other meaning
because God is one, He's not intelligible the normal human ways.
And I've always taken that to heart because that's what
set him at odds against Saint Thomas, Coins and Catholics. Okay,
I don't want to keep out too much on particular things,
but he vacation yeah, I know. Well, all right, me
let me pose the question to you this way, I say,
I actually put those guys down. At one point in life,
I was sort of passingly familiar with some of the
leading theologians who were controversial, like Rudolph Boltmann thirty years ago,
and so I sort of wondering, I'll ask this question
two or three different forms and grab whichever one you want.
Who are in your mind are some of the more
notable theologians writing today or recently who have been If
there are any influences on you or are you I'll
say myself, I'd like to say I'm a C. S.
Lewis Christian who is not a theologian. He was an
apologist and interesting guy. But also, you know, I used
to and still do read Thomas Merton and some of
the contemplatives some oh yeah, right, And so anyway, what
are some of the influences on your religious thinking, whether
you know whether gear drive theologians or more contemplative writers.
Do you have a list?
Speaker 2: Well, I have a list in formation, I would obviously
see us Lewis is there. And it's interesting that people
they I've heard this kind of thing.
Speaker 3: People say, well C. S. Lewis.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're not a theologian obviously, and people always
say things, well as if is this somehow that well
he doesn't have a license to practice theology, like he's unlicensed,
you know, he just does it in his living room. Uh.
Speaker 3: But C. S.
Speaker 2: Lewis has had I think more of a.
Speaker 3: Profound religious effect on people. I think J. R. Tolkien
probably has too.
Speaker 2: I mean I'm not really I mean I struggle through
those books that are not really my thing, but uh,
you are talking about somebody who was deeply, deeply committed
to the story and.
Speaker 3: To the timelessness of the story.
Speaker 1: I liked.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's some Anglican ones that I can think
are really interesting. Standy Howard ass is pretty interesting. He's in.
Speaker 2: At Duke I think, yeah, And then I like, I might,
And then there's like the the more recent Anglican writers
are Rowan.
Speaker 3: Uh. I always gonna say, rohaka sent it. It's not
mister Bean.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: I I don't mean yeah, yeah, just I went out
of my head. Anybody who's trying, anybody who I think
is thinking. Fleming Rutledge is an American and she's written
a wonderful book on on Uh.
Speaker 3: The Crucifixion.
Speaker 2: Uh so all these all this stuff is great.
Speaker 3: I also I also love.
Speaker 2: The the historians with faith. So you know, Tom Holland's
dominion obviously, if you like, if you like, uh.
Speaker 3: The rest is history, Tom Holland's dominion is really wonderful.
I think.
Speaker 2: Also there's a guy, Jeffrey Kreipel, who has written this
book which is.
Speaker 3: Bananas by the way.
Speaker 2: It's called How to Bleed, how to Think Impossibly, and
he it's a very interesting, very it's not dense, but
it's just like it's all over the place.
Speaker 3: It's beautiful, it's.
Speaker 2: Funny and witty and smart and erudite, but it's it's
all over the place.
Speaker 3: And there's a guy named Michael Edwards who is such
an incredible show off.
Speaker 2: He's an American, I know, he's an English guy who
speaks French and occasionally writes in French, which is like, okay,
get out of town as far as I'm concerned. But
he wrote a wonderful book called the uh, the the Poetry,
the Poetry in the Bible or the Yeah, I think
it's called Poetry in the Bible or something like that.
And it's a it's really really brilliant and I'm sweeping
and I like that. I also, by the way, I'm
also like, I think Raymond Brown is great.
Speaker 3: I think and to you right is great. Those are
like more New Testament scholars.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: I just finished the paper, actually just turned it on Friday.
Speaker 2: That I use Raymond Brown and Boltman together talking about John.
Speaker 3: Because yeah, because I think they I think they're right.
Speaker 2: I said this better the paper, But I think they're
right about the historicity of it and how the text is.
You know, what what parts of the text work, what
parts don't, what parts were should have shoved in, and
what parts weren't.
Speaker 3: But I I.
Speaker 2: Don't think any of that matters because I think the
story is fantastic and the construction of the story is
a masterpiece. And the fact that whoever was the final
redactor of that gospel took pieces and put them together.
Speaker 3: There were some are floating around, like the Adulterous Woman
was a piece that was flowing.
Speaker 2: It was in Luke for there there you know, their
manuscripts of Luke where it's there, and took it and
put it right where it belongs.
Speaker 3: Is kind of astonishing. Anyway, that was my theory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, uh, by the way, I've heard of I mean,
some of these people I've reel like, come holl on
an empty right, and I'm actually reading Stanley Harwiss has
a memoir called Hannah's Child that I'm actually a third
of the way through reading right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean his book of sermons. I don't
know if it were all sermons or just essays, but
it's really good. I mean it's really good. I mean, yeah, look,
there's some stuff been there and you're like, Okay, I'm not.
Here's the phrase I usually use because I think it's
the least inceentiary I can easily I can get a
lot of value and meaning out of a lot of
those writers without having to agree with them that the
Paris Climate Accords would have saved the earth.
Speaker 1: Of course, Yeah, that's right. I can overlook that stuff too.
Let me go back, though, we were just saying prompts
this question, which is it took about, you know, moving
the story around to put it in the right place,
to what extent is your long experience as a scriptwriter,
as a person constructing shows. How does that help you
understand these things? But also is it don't say to
your classmates, notice that you have to bring this different
background perspective to things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I'm Yeah, they notice everything I do because
I'm so weird, so strange, this.
Speaker 3: Old man is here.
Speaker 2: What I'm surprised about the story stuff is that you.
Speaker 3: And I listen. I mean no disrespect to these brilliant scholars.
Speaker 2: They know more than I do, and they certainly read
the Greek and I haven't it. Sometimes I find them
struggling with something that is obvious to me, because this
is how you make a story work. So the awkward
jump in John specifically about like, okay, get all this theology.
It's like high flute language. And then there's and then
suddenly he's you know, he's changing.
Speaker 3: Water to wine, and like, well, why is why?
Speaker 2: And John does he go, why is the temple scene
where they're overturning the tables? Why is that in the
first act? Basically right, that's like a and why, Like
it's and people have all these reasons for it. It's like, well,
in the story, you want the story of the person.
I mean not to be Joseph Campbell about it, but
but actually you can be like you have to, you
have to burn the boats, you have to you have
to there's no turning back at the first scene, he's
turning over tables.
Speaker 3: That means the end is in motion.
Speaker 2: And if you're constructing a story, that's where you want
it now.
Speaker 3: The other the other synoptics have it.
Speaker 2: At the end, right, and that makes sense too, But
that's just a different way to tell the story. And
we have four Gospels for a reason. It's not so
we get to pick one. It's because all are true.
And that's also really hard. The the the you know,
the when they go they call it historical historical textual
criticism or something where you're trying to figure out is
this is this the Q source or the P source
or all that stuff. And then, and I was in
my Old Testament and New Testament classes last semester that
was a big part of trying to explain to people
what how to wrap their head around.
Speaker 3: Teasing in one.
Speaker 2: Text who wrote what? And I was like finally had
a raise my hands, say, this is what. This is
called a Writer's Guild credit Arbitration committee.
Speaker 3: And I've been on a million of them.
Speaker 2: Man. What they do is they send you every script,
every version of every script, every version of that story,
every every outline, every every draft that was ever written
by and that with nobody's name on it, and then
the final draft, and you've got to decide who gets
the credit, meaning who gets the money. Basically, and unfortunately
for the Gospel writers, and for the certainly and for
the Hebrew Bible describes there's no money.
Speaker 3: You know, they're not gonna get any money. But it's
not that unusual.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I see this bit comes from that like
it makes It makes total sense to anybody in show business.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm sure the idea must have occurred to you
that your pitch meeting and your caller will be a
sitcom of the writer's room for the four Gospels. No,
I mean, I.
Speaker 3: Believe me. I thought of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I figure you want to right, I want to say,
I want to ask more about that. But before we do,
let's do one last thing from your present moment. You
said you just preached your first sermon. So now is
that something all the students are expected to do as
part of their course of study or is it something
you want to do? So tell us about and then
tell us what you preached.
Speaker 3: Well, there's always a year.
Speaker 2: I think everyone has to do a year of working
in a church, so you have an internship. So I'm
the world's oldest intern at the local Episcopal church in Princeton,
which is right basically on the campus. And so, you know,
I go it and I do little Bible study stuff
when it comes up, and I do morning and evening
prayer when it comes.
Speaker 3: Up, and I help lead a little.
Speaker 2: Monday night conversation sometimes and I just fill in it,
you know, And then you got to preach.
Speaker 3: And so I think I get to preach next semester two.
Speaker 2: And this was the fourth fourth Advent you know, no, sorry,
third Advent, a third Sunday and Advent, which is you know,
it's like, okay, waiting waiting, waiting patients, patience patients, that's advent,
you know. And so that's kind of what I said.
It nicer, but that's kind of where I was, you know,
And it was kind of it was fun. It was
like a like it was fun.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't. I mean, you know, it's not that different.
Speaker 2: You know, you got an audience and you know they
they have to be there, but they don't have to listen,
and you you got to grab them with something and
you got to tell them something they haven't heard.
Speaker 3: Or something they've heard but in a different way.
Speaker 2: And so it's really it's that I've tried to explain
this to the rector, like about running a church and everything.
It's like, like, you know, you know, I've been on five
oh one c three boards, right, and I've also run
TV shows. That's kind of what running a church is,
big sprawling thing where you don't you think you have
a lot of power, but you don't really and you
kind of need all this consensus all the time, and
everybody's staring at you, and uh, you know, a good
major portion of it is just walking around like you
know what you're doing. And he goes, yeah, that's exactly it.
So it's not you know, it's there there. There are
real similarities too. But I suspect that that is true
for many people in many jobs, and I think it.
You know, i'd say this to all my friends and
the people I meet who are my age or younger.
Speaker 3: Some of them like, oh, you know, I asked, I
always kind of wanted to do that, and I'm like,
do it.
Speaker 2: Do it because the church, your church needs you, whatever
church that is, so.
Speaker 1: Uh, you know, in politics, I often remind people of
you know, Ronald Reagan saying, I don't know how somebody
could do this job as president and not be an actor, right, right,
And and you know, some of Winston Churchill's friends and
many of us critics said, Winston, you missed your calling
in life. You should have been an actor. Right. So
in other words, I argue that the most successful people
on the global station politics are people who have a
good instinct and ability to understand the dramatic or theatrical
aspects of human life, especially political life. So yeah, so
you know, some churches overdo the production, you know, like
Robert Schure's Crystal Cathedral. All that leads me leaves me
very cold. But that's why I like liturgical worship. But
what I'm trying to get closer to here is, well,
I've use it as a transition to religion in Hollywood,
and there's two or three ways that can go. One
is are there many religious people in Hollywood? I think
more interesting is the challenge of sub self consciously making religious,
religiously themed films. And you often hear, especially conservative Christians, saying,
why can't we make movies about Bible stories? And sometimes
people will try and they're really bad. Yeah, you know,
and C. S. Lewis used to say, don't concentrate on
self consciously doing a religious message to good art, and
if it happens to incorporate, that's what works. Right, So
as Narnia books for example. Yeah, and then you can
think of there have been some religious movies over the
years that have done extremely well. Ben Her maybe he's
one of the great classics, right, Yeah. And then sort
of out of nowhere, Mel Gibson does The Passion of
the Christ and it's this monster seller, right, a big
box office hit at a studios say we're going to
do something like that, and they try and they flop
at it. And so I don't know what the question
here exactly is. You can see where I'm going with
all this is, Yeah, religion a special problem for Hollywood?
Or how do you make sense of all this? Well?
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I think it's so many, so
many complicated strands. I think one of them is that
just jeven just culturally ethnically, the scrappy entrepreneurs who built
show business bill Hollywood, we're you know, Eastern European Jews.
And they felt and legitimately I think they felt like
we better, we better be careful because this is not
a country that loves Jews that much, and we are
trying to do mass entertainment and most of these people
have never met a Jew in this country, and what they.
Speaker 3: Know of them, they don't like.
Speaker 2: Right, that's kind of what that's been around. So they
were very careful when they did.
Speaker 3: Old Testament and New Testament stories and they and they
did them very faithfully.
Speaker 2: And some of there's are great, you know, the greatest
story ever told her And some are great, right, there's
great old movies. But as that, so that was one
I think strain, which I don't think you can deny.
I think that you have this other part of the
idea that the people in in show business who are
successful they kind of deep down know they're weird now
that like there's something they however they grew up wherever
they grew up, it's weird now they're like they live
in a different world. And so all all the people
who go to church in America and believe are just
kind of strange to them, and they kind of know it,
and they're it's not condescending, it's just an awareness that
these are people I can't really speak to because I've
just you know, I've got a little person running behind
me handing me tiny bottles of water whenever I want them.
There's a great I don't know if you've seen the
movie J.
Speaker 3: Kelly, but in J. Kelly was a really good movie.
Speaker 2: There's a kind of a reard running joke where J Kelly,
so he says, you just you could never be alone,
and he goes, I could be alone. And then the
minute he says that, somebody his bodyguard hands that you
want to here's a water for me, thank you, and
he gets he gets, you know, and so I think
there's that.
Speaker 3: I also feel like.
Speaker 2: I kind of feel like we've been running an experiment
in America definitely, but probably the world, the Western world
in general.
Speaker 3: Uh, what would happen? What? What?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 3: What would happen?
Speaker 2: What would a generation look like in America that was
raised almost entirely in a secular culture, not just in
a culture that repudiates or ignores religion, but our culture
that really has no connection to it at all.
Speaker 3: So culture that doesn't read the Bible, it.
Speaker 2: Doesn't know the story, that doesn't even if it's to
say it's all superstitious nonsense, doesn't even know isn't atheistic.
To be the atheist means you're rejecting something that you
looked at. What would that be like to have a
bunch of people who are now sixty I was born
in nineteen sixty five, for whom it's not like they
don't believe, or they believed, or they believed and they left,
or they just don't. They just don't have any mooring
at all. And and I'm sort of obsessed with that
cohort because I think that cohort is like forty fifty
sixty years old, maybe even older, and they have lived
enough of a life to have felt things and to
have experienced things that faith is. It talks about the
faith addresses and I think there are a lot of
people my age and a little bit younger who are like, well,
what is this all been about?
Speaker 3: And where do I go to think about this stuff?
Speaker 2: So, I mean, that's a long win new question, but
a long whin answer to a question. But so I
think that that's the third part, which is that the culture
in general just kind of I mean, if you were
going to make a.
Speaker 3: First of all, the Hebrew Bible is it's it's crazy.
It hasn't been made. It's Game of Thrones.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, I mean yeah, and it's the parts of
it that you like. Even the game, even the producer
of the Game of Thrones would say, well, that's just
too violent. We're not doing that, So I don't. I
just think it's a we it is. No longer people
were afraid of it. They're afraid of offending you if
they bring it up. They're afraid of I think a
whole bunch of different things. And they go, so why
if you're a show business you always take the easy
way out?
Speaker 3: Why why poke the bear?
Speaker 2: You know, like this just to We'll just talk about
something else. And I think the culture helped them do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you're familiar with Uh. Well,
put it this way. It's it's astounding how many what
used to be household or you know, common cultural expressions
derived the Bible and Shakespeare phrases. We is right, and
to the extent that we've now neglected both the Bible
and Shakespeare. You will bring up some reference and people say,
what what is that? Or some of the Shakespeare phrases
are still commonplace, but people don't know that it comes
from Shakespeare, right, So you know, I've long said that
you really just need to know three not free authors,
exactly three books, Aristotle, the Bible, and Shakespeare, and you'll
be fine in life.
Speaker 3: Right yeah, I mean, actually that's that's true.
Speaker 1: Act I think, yeah, yeah, right, well, this has been fine.
I could talk foreverybody. We don't want to attack the
patients of our listeners. So one last question. I think,
although I should ask anything, I haven't asked you, I
should have or something else that you think listeners should
know about a theological and spiritual excursion you're making.
Speaker 3: I think we have we cover all the heresies. You
know that that is something that happens.
Speaker 2: Like you, you know, I'm in a Bible study and
on Tuesday mornings, and I do this other thing called
ef M, And there's sometimes people like, wait, can I
am I allowed to say this or that or like
and then every now and then it lapse into what
would technically be considered a heresy. But I actually feel
like at this point heresies are are It's a high
class problem to have. It means it means we're talking.
It means we're talking about it means it's part of
the conversation.
Speaker 3: So I say, bring on the heresies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we don't kill each other for them anymore
as much as we used to, so not as right, right, right, Yeah,
So last question on a completely different subject, but it's
on everybody's mind right now. And you seems like you've
known or met everybody in Hollywood. Did you know Rob
Reiner much at all? And I mean, this is such
an awful story, but.
Speaker 3: It's a terrible story.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I didn't. I didn't know him really.
Speaker 2: I met him a couple of times and lovely, lovely guy.
And then there was a period a few years ago,
so I did this thing that I that people do.
I think when a friend of theirs dies and he
wasn't I'm not saying he's a friend of mine. You
go into your email archives and you read your lastic
changes and and I remember doing that when PG Orke died,
like just having going back and saying, okay, what was.
Speaker 3: Our you know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there were you know, and so he and I,
Rob Ryder and I were like a part of a
little group and we were trying.
Speaker 3: He really wanted to do.
Speaker 2: A TV comedy that touched on the kind of all
in the Family's style, not you know, not a reboot,
but like, okay, what did all the family do? It
brought all of these things that people are arguing about
in the home, and I put them on screen and
and he, you know, he's a very thoughtful guy, and
he knew that the strength of all the family was
that the hero was Archie Bunker, and the hero is
actually Bunker, because he's the one with a job, right,
and who fought in the war and had two jobs right,
and was like paying for all the food right, doing everything,
and he kind of and I think he wanted to
do it right. And so we were talking about it
back and forth about what would be like and what
what we have to talk about, and you know, he
was extremely he was extremely sensitive to the idea that
there were things that the people who run the networks
and all those of the things that they were afraid
of talking about, and there were opinions they just were
afraid of, most almost entirely on the right, and that
he just didn't want that. He wanted to make sure
that we went forward with this. That I knew that
he was he was going to fight for all of
that the full truth of the conversation to unfold, because
that's the only way all in the family, and I
think that I admired that. I really admired that. And
I know he was a partisan. I mean, you know
that's what he was. But man, he made some great
movies and he was in our my exchanges with him.
He was a really lovely, thoughtful guy. And I think
real tragedy did. I mean, it's just one of those horrible, horrible,
horrible stories.
Speaker 1: You just you know.
Speaker 2: I think I made the decision maybe last week or whatever,
within two days that you know what I knew.
Speaker 3: I know enough about it now. I don't need to
know anymore.
Speaker 2: I don't I just skipped by those the stories I'm
not I just don't want to know about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Well, let's not end on a total
down note like that, but I have felt like I
had to experience. It's important. It's an important story, I think, Yeah,
I think so, and so Instead let me just uh
then send us out saying God bless you, Rob, Merry Christmas,
and you too, yeah, happy New Year, and uh well,
I'll have to do this again after you're at the
halfway point. We'll have to do this again at the
end of year three, and see where you're heading.
Speaker 2: Next see see if I'm like, yeah, it's all I realized,
it's all crazy. I'm a Hindoo now I'm a practicing Buddhism.
I'll say that that that you know, you're around fussy Anglicans,
which is pretty much a redundant I understand. But I
I have my my you know, we have the big
jokes in the in the seven about what your ministry is,
and people go like, I my ministry is, you know,
making sure that people you only use one font in
their you know, presentations. And my ministry is to sort
of scrape some of the fussiness off of the Episcopal Church.
And one of them is like they you say Merry
Christmas to a fussy act.
Speaker 3: Like, oh you mean happy at that because you know
it's not Christmas, Like, oh, give me a break, Merry Christmas.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna say a Christmas Carol now too,
just to drive you crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Thanks, we'll see you soon, I hope.
Speaker 4: Hey, Merry Christmas.
Speaker 1: B