BROADCASTS.com

b'Our guest for episode #310 is filmmaker Chris White about his new film, Electric Jesus.

CHRIS WHITE has written and directed three micro-budget features: showbiz comedy CINEMA PURGATORIO (2014, co-writer, director, actor), and broken family dramas GET BETTER (2012, co-writer, co-director, actor) and TAKEN IN (2011, writer, director). He co-wrote the screenplay for SIX LA LOVE STORIES (2016), and has written and directed for the multi-award-winning, web series phenomenon, Star Trek Continues. White has write-directed many acclaimed short films-collecting his most recent for a 5-film, "southern gothic comedy" anthology called UNBECOMING (2016, writer, director).

About his fantastic new movie, Electric Jesus, Chris writes:

"I was raised by devout Southern Baptist parents and fully immersed in (and committed to) Evangelical Christian youth culture\\u2014which included Sunday School, Bible studies, summer camps, retreats, choir tours, ski trips\\u2014all of it set to an \\u201880s Christian rock soundtrack.

This immersive religious culture is difficult to explain to many of my friends today\\u2014but it\\u2019s even more difficult to explain why I loved it. The fact that something so alien to most of the world is so vivid in my memory...and kind of embarrassing to talk about now... It makes me feel odd.

Just listen to a Christian hair metal anthem of the era\\u2014let\\u2019s say Stryper\\u2019s \\u201cTo Hell With the Devil\\u201d\\u2014and you\\u2019ll start to understand. Honestly, I don\\u2019t know whether to laugh or cry when I revisit that time in my mind, but either way, there\\u2019s no looking away.

Turns out, my Christian friends and I were a lot more like all of you than I\\u2019d thought. Who can\\u2019t relate to being young and wistful, devoted to a big unifying idea\\u2026and in love? Who doesn\\u2019t remember the moment or the moments when you saw your youth, your naivet\\xe9...your hope slip away?

We\\u2019ve all been young. We\\u2019ve all had plans and dreams and loves that didn\\u2019t work out the way we\\u2019d hoped. And from time to time, we think about it. We remember.

ELECTRIC JESUS was born out of years of looking back, reconstructing, re-discovering moments and memories I\\u2019d long since left behind that suddenly fascinated me. I missed being a Christian youth group kid. I missed the certainty, the comfort\\u2026I missed Jesus.

But then, as I wrote and eventually as we shot the film, a bigger revelation came to me. I\\u2019d been operating under the illusion that my churchy teen years were all about me\\u2014that I\\u2019d been the sole protagonist in an origin story about me\\u2026that coming of age was something that happened to me, while everyone else was just kinda along for the ride...my co-stars.

So that\\u2019s what ELECTRIC JESUS came to be about to me: believing in something so much it all gets too big to fail, all the while completely missing the existentially huge story that\\u2019s happening right under your nose. And only being able to realize that several decades later when it\\u2019s too late to do it over."'