Jesus Is Not A Zombie

I shouldn't have to tell you that.

Find below an excerpt from a VERY LONG transcript from the keynote speech that buddy Hart Hanson gave at a 'Future of Story' conference in Edmonton last weekend. And there's some of that, the future of story stuff...but mostly it's Hart just being funny and talking about creating and running Bones or TV writers vs. Artists or writing for mass audiences and so on and so forth. Check it out...very entertaining stuff.

HART: I thought what I’d do is show you a couple things, a couple values, that we put up on the screen in Bones, and discuss, and sort of point out how one deals with the values and hopes to gain a mass audience without completely and utterly writing Sunday School tripe. My apologies to all Sunday School teachers here. Heather, could we run the next…

Clip:
Booth: Voodoo, who’s going to believe that stuff?
Brennan: It’s a religion, no crazier than… what are you?
Booth: Catholic.
Brennan: They believe in the same saints you do, and prayer. What they call spells, you call miracles. They have priests.
Booth: We don’t make zombies.
Brennan: Jesus rose from the dead after three days.
Booth: Jesus is not a zombie. I shouldn’t have to tell you that.


HART: Of all the lines I’ve gotten on American television, “Jesus is not a zombie.” I’m so proud. I was amazed that it went by Standards & Practices.

The States, that culture is a very, very religious culture these days. It’s… a significant amount of it is very fundamentalist. My lead character is an atheist. The female character is a scientist and an atheist. The value that we were talking about there is faith. Not to get too personal, but I tend more toward her than him. I’m a little cranky about religion these days, since about 9/11.

So I put a lot of what I think into Brennan’s mouth. But in the end, because Bones is mass entertainment, the spiritual, religious man gets the last word. Okay, it’s a little subversive to say that Jesus is a zombie. But you know what, Jesus was a zombie – three days […] and then he went and scared people!

We get a lot of mail about Brennan’s offensive statements about God, the pope… I don’t know if anyone watches the show a lot… I make a lot of fun of the pope’s hat, and I treasure every one of them. The funny thing to me is that the same letters will say, “Thank goodness Booth was there to set you straight.” And it’s like, I wrote that, too! Apparently, I’m writing the atheist, but Jesus is writing Booth.


Jesus is writing Booth....nice!


Check out Hart's entire talkey speechey thing plus the q&a HERE.