Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Robert Fowler to advise on Gospel of Mark film

In connection with my previous post on the Gospel of Mark film, I've looked around to see what else I can find, and here is one item of interest:

B-W Professor Selected for Advisory Committee for Upcoming Film

The B-W in question is Baldwin Wallace College and the person in question is Robert Fowler (whose CV also mentions this, right at the bottom). The remarks quoted in the article look spot on to me:
"Regarding the upcoming Mark film, I will have a lot of input on that. I don't know whether to be nervous about them not listening to me enough or about them listening to me too much! It's an awesome thing to consider that my ideas on certain aspects of Mark might end up on a movie screen for the whole world to see! And again, even though I am supposed to be the Mark 'expert' on the committee, I am only one voice, and it is a joint effort of the whole organization, from start to finish.

"Probably the biggest concern I have with the Mark film is that we absolutely must get across to our audiences that Mark's gospel is different from John's gospel. If we do our work right, people who have seen the John film should be mildly (or greatly!) shocked by the differences between John and Mark. They are utterly, utterly different stories with utterly, utterly different portrayals of Jesus. This has been missed by the casual reader of the gospels through the centuries, so we will be doing the world a great favor if we can carefully and persuasively communicate these radically different portrayals of Jesus of Nazareth."
I'd say that that extends to the choice of actor, narrator and probably director too, in relation to my previous comments.

The same article appears on Christianity Today dated over a year ago, on 2 March 2004, so it's clear that this is not fresh news. I'll keep on the look out for anything new. Can any of the advisory committee out there help us out?

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