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FRISBEE: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A HIPPIE PREACHER A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2006 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
FRISBEE: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A HIPPIE PREACHER chronicles the life of one Lonnie Frisbee. Unless you are a member of the evangelical community, there is probably little chance that you have ever heard of him. Knowing nothing about Lonnie, I initially suspected that this David Di Sabatino documentary about Lonnie's life was actually a mockumentary. This feeling was reinforced as our packed audience kept laughing at many of the events in Lonnie's story.
But, there were so many vintage video clips and still pictures of Lonnie as a "Jesus freak" back in the 1970s that I began to realize that it would be too costly for an indie movie to produce that much fake footage. This guy must be the real deal, I decided, even if his Jesus look, with a long beard and hair, was almost a cliché.
Through the old images and through a long series of talking heads, we learn that Lonnie was a charismatic preacher who could heal people, produce mass falling down and get people to speak in tongues. Etc.
The film follows two completely different aspects of Lonnie's life packaged into the same movie. In the long first part, it feels like one of those homages at the Oscars, with a montage of the person's accomplishments and key events in his live. Frankly, I was rather bored during this whole section. After about ten minutes, I got it. This was a child-like man who had his flaws but who made huge impressions on people wherever he preached. This whole section felt reverential, with not a lot of hard questions being asked.
The second and shorter part of the narrative is much better because some tension is finally introduced into the story. We learn that because Lonnie was gay, a fact mentioned early on in the film and quickly ignored, he was ostracized by his Christian community when they learned of his sexual orientation. Some of the church leaders where he had preached even went so far as to make him an unperson in their version of church history.
I asked the director, who was at our screening, why he didn't cut back on the initial homage in order to focus more on what I found to be the more compelling section of his movie. After initially being rather taken aback by my question, he explained that he made the film for other evangelicals like himself and saw them as his main audience. I thanked him for the insight. It didn't make me like his film any more, but I did gain a better understanding of what this first-time filmmaker was attempting to do.
I think that fascinating movies can and should be made about the evangelical movement. I just didn't find this to be one.
FRISBEE: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A HIPPIE PREACHER runs 1:45. It is not rated but might be PG-13 for thematic material and would be acceptable for kids around 10 and up.
The movie was shown recently at the Camera Cinema Club (http://www.cameracinemas.com) of Campbell and San Jose.
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