Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?
I saw this documentary at Cornerstone Festival ’05 and I must say I was impressed. After meeting the filmmakers before the screening and finding out that they had no idea what they were doing when they made this movie—neither of them had ever used a camera or run audio before, nor had the editor edited video in his life—I was pleasantly surprised to find myself interested 60 minutes into the film.
Anyone who has ever been to a concert with their youth group, or questioned the line between “Christian rock” and “secular music” will appreciate the subject of this documentary. From emotional God-worshiping frontmen to the most jaded and cynical critics of the scene, the subjects of this film run the gamut. The filmmakers did a fairly good job of keeping even-sided arguments: I could never quite pin down whether they were for or against the Christian rock movement.
Much of the film was shot on location at Cornerstone Music Festival and many of the interviews are scattered between bands in their trailers and fans in the crowd. As the camera lens wanders throughout the festival like a mosquito, each person it lands on pitches in their two cents on topics such as burning your secular music collection, egotistical Christian rockers, and the decades-old “Christian band versus Christians in a band” debate. Between Steve Taylor, MXPX, Pedro the Lion, and Pansy Division, you’re practically guaranteed to see a familiar face at some point, even if you were fortunate enough never to have been to a youth group concert.
The critic in me wants to scowl at the poor lighting and frame compositions, or to roll my eyes at the muddled audio, but in the end, none of those foibles hurt the film. The only actual flaw I see is a structural one. Due to the long-standing nature of the arguments and the sheer number of opinions represented on screen, the talking points become repetitive toward the end of the movie. The last 10 – 15 minutes of the film feel like a stretch to reach feature length qualification… But for these three first-time filmmakers with no background in film, this is an astonishing accomplishment. One can only hope we will see more from them in the future.
Since this is an indie doc, it might be hard to find (it’s not listed at Rotten Tomatoes). It’s currently screening at small film festivals around the country and recently became available on DVD—though you may have to email the filmmakers to get a copy at this point. You can check out the website at rightrightrightfilms.com