Synchronicity

Michael Blowhard links to A Chestertonian in Hollywood, an interview with filmmaker Scott Derrickson, who wrote and directed The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

Derrickson also happens to be an avid Chestertonian. Here's his take on Orthodoxy:

I first read Orthodoxy in college and it is, quite simply, the most brilliant and impacting book Ive ever read. I've read it cover to cover at least a dozen times. I was given the book by a philosophy professor who thought it might help me amidst my philosophical crisis. Like I said, I was reading lots of deconstructionist literature at the time and was very much trapped within the modern mental madness that Chesterton describes in that book.

Reading it was like running into a rubber wall—it shot me 180 degrees into the opposite direction and I've stayed on that trajectory ever since. I think that book is not only the best defense of Christianity that I've read but is the best articulation for foundational ideas for thought ever put into a single volume. And again, it's also one of the funniest, most whimsical and entertaining books I've ever read. And given the ideas that it's addressing, it's hard to believe that it was written a century ago. Orthodoxy rescued me, and almost two decades later, I still think that book contains the most ingenious and inspired ideas I've ever read.

Here Derrickson compares the embarrassingly literalist reaction of some Christians to the Harry Potter books to the reaction of some movie critics to his film:

Those books, and to a lesser degree those films, are so beloved because they make people feel that the world is a magical place and yet also a place where good and evil are clearly defined. Christians have become fixated on the so-called “occultism” of Harry Potter that they have missed the larger Christian cosmology they represent. In like fashion, the New York Times called my film “propaganda” because it dared to take demon possession and supernatural belief seriously and the reviewer therefore saw it as Bush-era anti-scientific evangelicalism. Ha! Nothing could be farther from the truth! The point is that reading the New York Times review of my film reminded me of reading a Focus on the Family (James Dobson's ministry) review of Harry Potter—in both cases, the hang-ups and hobby horses of the reviewers prevented them from really seeing the film. Should they take a deeper look what they may find is something that actually supports, not contradicts, their view of the world. .