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Reverend Billy does his thing
in What Would Jesus Buy?
Shop-ocalypse Now
Putting Christmas out of business
WHAT
WOULD
JESUS
BUY?:
Directed by Rob VanAlkemade. Music by Steve
Horowitz and William Moses. Starring Bill Talen
and Savitri Durkee. Werner Film, 2007. PG.
44211
S
omewhere, the man behind Borat is
laughing. After all, Sacha Baron
Cohen only grappled with the fear,
hatred and bigotry of rural America. Gritty
stuff, but by comparison, the Reverend Billy
is on a mission: He wants to kill Christmas by
starving it to death. Actually, he’s convinced
we’re spending far too much money during
the holidays, an urge which flies in the face of
what Christmas is supposed to represent. But
when you realize just how much money is at
stake — America spent $455 billion during
the holidays last year — even a professional
grouch like the Grinch couldn’t take down
the hordes of maniacal shoppers. So what is
Reverend Billy up to?
The conceit of What Would Jesus Buy? is
simple. Billy, who closely resembles the
fallen evangelists he’s trying to pantomime,
is leading his flock from New York to
California via a biodeisel bus. The destina-
tion is Disneyland, a magic kingdom to some,
but to Billy the symbol of all that is wrong
with consumer culture. It should be a mas-
sively chaotic — and massively entertaining
— endeavor. To a limited extent, it is. There’s
an irresistible scene in which Billy uses a
portable confessional to hear the sins of a
young shopaholic; it’s both wonderfully
transgressive and silly, since Billy misses her
point. Awkward confusion settles over a
wealthy suburb when, posing as Christmas
carolers, Billy and company deliver harshly
alternative lyrics. (Joy to the World! In the
form of goods! Consume! Consume!
Consume!) But far too many scenes whimper
out rather than work magic. In Bloomington,
The Reverend Billy is on a mission:
He wants to kill Christmas
by starving it to death.
I mention Borat because What Would
Jesus Buy? is in many ways Borat lite.
Reverend Billy is actually Billy Talen, a co-
median, caterer and former Times Square
resident who watched his New York neigh-
borhood become an amusement park. What
elevates Billy’s act above that of the sky-is-
falling corner preacher’s is the Church of
Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, a group that
boasts 35 men and women as well as a
seven-piece band. Together they sing the
vices of consumerism in churches and per-
formances halls, events that have a wildly
Pentecostal feel, what with Billy fainting
after “exorcising” the credit cards of the au-
dience. But the preferred tactic of this “anar-
chic Mormon tabernacle choir” is to enter a
local Starbucks guerrilla-style, singing or
humming faintly while Billy starts speaking
in tongues about the evils of the corporate
world. The choir members, singing
stormtroopers in red robes, break into elated
song as Billy gets handcuffed and arrested
yet again.
Minn., the group crashes the infamous Mall
of America, a monument to commerce that
last year alone received 40 million visitors.
The choir’s intrusion should be an act of civil
disobedience for the ages, but Billy just ends
up apologizing. A raid on Wal-Mart head-
quarters also fizzles.
As an issue-driven documentary, What
Would Jesus Buy? suffers for its lack of atten-
tion to personality and character. We get a
rough idea of Billy and a slightly murkier
sense of his wife, and the rest of the choir are
pretty much immaterial. It’s a shame, because
anyone who would hitch their wagon to
Billy’s must be somewhat unusual. A choir
member named “Quilty” says he’s worried
about being taken seriously — has anyone
told him he was named after toilet paper? —
but these moments are all too rare. I greatly
admire the courage of Billy and his troupe;
you might disagree with their methods, but
you can hardly debate their message. But as a
movie, What Would Jesus Buy? doesn’t add
up to enough.
ew
DECEMBER 13, 2007 39