For years one of our favorite “Friends of the Magazine” (FOM), Stuart Graves has shared his adventures running around Main Street in Park City searching for celebrities during the Sundance Film Festival and asking them to take, as he says, “an old-school selfie” with his ancient point-and-shoot camera. We call them #stuartselfies. Now in 2023, the Sundance Film Festival has returned. It’s been three years since Stuart has been able to share his antics and portfolio of photos of his face alongside many famous faces. When Sundance called the code in 2022 (at the last minute) and cancelled the in-person festival he announced that he was formally retired from celebrity hunting (although he’s always looking wherever he travels). But like Tom Brady, Stuart just couldn’t stay on the bench and he will be back on Main Street. We’re looking foward to a brand new batch of #stuartselfies. Meanwhile, we asked him to share some of his greatest #stuartselfie hits (and the stories behind them) from over the years. (Click here for his 2023 celebrity adventures.)
“I had my best Sundance Film Festival moment ever this morning. Right after getting this 2nd selfie with Anne Hathaway, I thanked her for all she has done for our community. (LGBTQ). She turned, looked right at me and blew me a kiss. I have to admit, I got emotional.
I said something after taking the 1st photo saying I didn’t think I got it. She stopped and said let’s take another one. :)”“Kathryn Hahn is another who I’ve met several times and has interacted with me on social media. (Once when she was getting wired up for Access Hollywood, she asked me ‘how do my boobs look’?”)“Molly Shannon is my favorite. She has interacted with me on social media and actually knows my name…. swoon. She is the nicest celeb I’ve met and is generous with her time, not just with me, but with everyone up there.” Photo by Rich Kane/Salt Lake Tribune“Elijah Wood was the 1st major star I met at Sundance, and that sort of sealed the deal with the celeb photo craze for me. I’m a huge fan of Lord Of The Rings, and have since met him several times.”“Oscar-winner! Holly Hunter”“Another Oscar winner: Hillary Swank!”“Big stars that I was thrilled to meet. Jack Black, Kevin Bacon, Ron Howard – a Hollywood icon! Jack Black – that hat!”“One of my favorites – Toni Collette”“Big stars that I was thrilled to meet. Ron Howard – a Hollywood icon!”“Because I mean, please, it’s Jason Momoa. The actress in the photo with Jason is Julianne Nicholson.”“Gina Barberi from Radio From Hell had heard Idris Elba was going to be there that year and said please try and get a photo with him. He was in town for just one day, and I lucked out.”“I love meeting musicians. I’ve been an avid concertgoer my whole life, so it was a thrill to meet these folks. John Legend.”
It’s actually happening this time. Seriously. The Sundance Film Festival is returning for 2023 as an in-person event after two years of entirely virtual screenings. From January 19-29, the annual spectacle will retake its historic place in Park City, inundating the community with a reflected, star-studded glow that has been notably absent since January 2020. Even with audiences returning to theaters this year, Sundance is hybridizing the festival and making programming available virtually to ticket holders. It’s a new world for event logistics and expectations, and the cultural winds are shifting as swiftly as ever over the independent entertainment landscape. The Sundance Film Festival needs to find its place in the new era.
The resurgent pandemic scuttled plans for Sundance’s return the past couple of years, but the lessons learned may have forever altered the way we fest. Sundance reported during the pandemic three times as many people viewed films online during the 2021 virtual edition—600,000 audience views—as saw them during the 2020 physical edition. The figure represents a welcome democratization of the independent film viewing experience, as in recent years the festival had become ever-more exclusive. The fame-adjacent, stargazing, an influencer-obsessed culture that has sullied so many cultural pillars—we see you Coachella and Burning Man—lent the purportedly inclusive values of independent film a distinctly insular feel. Needless to say, enjoying the art on its own terms away from the spectacle had its merits.
So, the festival can be experienced in whatever context one prefers, amid the live spectacle or from home, refocusing an emphasis on the programming. Here too, Sundance must chart a new direction as to what stories they are trying to tell and which voices they want to amplify. Part of that direction includes the pausing of this year’s New Frontier programming, which has typically served as an incubator for more experimental forms of art and has recently incorporated virtual reality projects. Further at stake is Sundance’s reputation as a tastemaker, following a debacle in 2022 surrounding the film, Jihadi Rehab.
The documentary made by a white woman, Meg Smaker, about four Muslim men—accused terrorists and former Guantanamo detainees who were never charged—incarcerated in a Saudi Arabian rehabilitation facility, was the source of intense debate regarding representation, consent and who has a license to tell which stories. After intense criticism—some very valid, some not in good faith—Sundance issued an apology that was viewed by some as too late and by others as reactionary. South by Southwest subsequently rescinded its own invitation to the film, showing just how much influence Sundance wields in the zeitgeist.
2023 is a year of reinvention for Sundance. The crowds are back and with renewed scrutiny of what the festival aims to be. How this year’s festival plays out will set the tone for how the institution will impact the culture surrounding independent film for years to come.
How to Attend the 2023 Sundance Film Festival
In-person and online ticket packages can be purchased on the Sundance website. Numerous In-person festival packages are available with prices ranging from $200-$750, and single film tickets will be on sale starting January 12 for $25 each. Online festival tickets, $20 per film or $300 for the Festival Package are also available. festival.sundance.org
From 1976 to 1979, Donny & Marie was a hit cornball variety show featuring the young Osmond duo, Donny, 18 and Marie, 16. If you were a young Mormon growing up in Utah, this show was the original must-see TV, because these famous Osmonds were Mormons, too. In 1976, there weren’t a lot of famous Mormons to point to with pride.
Donny and Marie were it. And, moreover, Donny & Marie was produced here, at Osmond Studios in the south end of the Salt Lake Valley. It wasn’t some Hollywood co-opting of Utah, it was Utah in all its family-friendly, corny glory. At the height of their ’70s powers, Donny and Marie were Utah incarnate, on display for the rest of the world. We watched because all our neighbors watched and because we didn’t really realize how goofy it was.
Each show started out with, yes, an ice skating bit, for some reason, then moved on to groaningly bad comedy skits, more musical numbers, and then the whole “I’m a little bit country, I’m a little bit rock ’n’ roll” schtick. Week after week, Marie would sing a country song alongside Donny (most often in purple), who would sing a rock tune.
But it was fun—good, clean fun—although most of us secretly preferred The Muppet Show, which was somehow more racy. But for me, Donny and Marie were amazing.
They were (and still are) amazing because they taught me about live television.
To explain: My father went to a live broadcast of the show’s Halloween special at Osmond Studios, which improbably featured a performance by KISS (a band that the pearl clutchers in our midst referred to as “Knights in Satan’s Service”). But I was 5 years old, didn’t know much about Satan and KISS was my favorite band. I played their album “Destroyer” on my Burt & Ernie tape player alongside another great album from the era, “Burt’s Blockbusters.” Plus Gene Simmons blew fire! FIRE! Burt liked pigeons and linoleum.
So, there I am. I’m watching our teeny black-and-white TV, in my footie-pajamas, waiting for Gene Simmons to blow fire, and my mother tells me that my father is there, right there, right now. What? Wait. What? The producers cut to a shot of the crowd and there he was, my dad, with his ’70s-guy mustache and perm. Right there. On the TV. My Dad, KISS, and Donny and Marie all together inside the TV. My whole world exploded. Dad brought back an autographed picture of Donny and Marie that I kept on my wall for years. It said: “Keep smiling, Jeremy. Love, Donny & Marie.” I doubt Gene Simmons would have been so nice.
The Sundance Film Festival will return in January 2023 with a fresh crop of films and the ability to screen them in-person for the first time in three years. This year’s programming is as varied and diverse as any year at Sundance, but some themes have started to emerge. This year’s festival will screen 101 feature-length films, most of which will be screened for the very first time at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. The festival will kick off with an event, Opening Night: A Taste of Sundance honoring director Ryan Coogler (Black Panther), writer/director Nikyatu Jusu (Nanny) and comic/host W. Kamau Bell (United Shades of America), and the stars will keep shining throughout the festival.
Two documentaries featuring musical icons will screen the first night of the festival. It’s Only Life After All turns the camera on folk rock duo Indigo Girls, showing the “obstacles, activism and life lessons of two queer friends who never expected to make it big.” Little Richard: I Am Everything is about, you guess it, music legend Little Richard, utilizing both archival and performance footage. Other star-studded documentaries in this year’s lineup include two hollywood origin stories, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie and Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, and another documentary about a young adult author, not a star per-say but a household name, Judy Blume Forever.
Little Richard appears in Little Richard: I Am Everything by Lisa Cortes, an official selection of the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute
The stars turned out for this year’s feature films as well. In the Premieres category, Anne Hathaway stars as a prison counselor in Eileen, set in the 1960s. Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays a novelist whose marriage is in trouble after she learns her husband’s true feelings about her latest book in You Hurt My Feelings. In the Midnight category, Infinity Pool is a horror/thriller about a resort with a dark and violent secret, starring Alexander Skarsgård and Mia Goth. In the U.S. Dramatic Competition, Daisy Ridley of Star Wars fame stars in Sometimes I Think About Dying as a woman whose new relationship is impeded by her fixation on death. Emilia Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor star in sci-fi feature, The Pod Generation, set in a future where couples can “share” their pregnancy via pods. The Pod Generation is also the winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, an annual award for the “most outstanding depiction of science and technology in a feature film.”
Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a still from You Hurt My Feelings by Nicole Holofcener, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
Coming off the success of CODA, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021 and won the Academy Award for Best Picture, actress Emilia Jones is starring in two Sundance films this year. In Cat Person(based on the 2017 short story of the same name published in The New Yorker), Jones works at a movie theater, where she meets and begins a flirtatious relationship with an older man. Fairyland, also starring Jones, focuses on the relationship between a father and his daughter, set in a tumultuous San Francisco during the 70s and 80s. It’s based on the memoir Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father by Alysia Abbott.
Emilia Clarke, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Rosalie Craig appear in The Pod Generation by Sophie Barthes, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
Fairyland is one of quite a few films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival that center on the tension and trauma of intergenerational relationships and the evolving roles people play in the relationship as internal conflict and outside challenges arise. See: A Thousand And One (U.S. Dramatic Competition), The Persian Version (U.S. Dramatic Competition), Bad Behaviour (World Cinema Dramatic Competition), MAMACRUZ (World Cinema Dramatic Competition), Scrapper (World Cinema Dramatic Competition), In My Mother’s Skin (Midnight), Run Rabbit Run (Midnight), A Little Prayer (Premieres), Jamojaya (Premieres).
Emilia Jones and Nicholas Braun appear in Cat Person by Susanna Fogel, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute
There is also at least one film in the lineup this year that has pretty prominent Utah ties. Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Kinda Left Out will premiere in the Kids category. The was directed by Studio C alumnus Jake Van Wagoner and filmed in Utah. One of the other films in the Kids category, Blueback (a film about a mother-daughter relationship strengthened by their shared desire to protect the oceans), is the 2023 Sundance Film Festival’s Salt Lake City Opening Night Gala Film, premiering at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center on January 20.
Jake Van Wagoner and Thomas Cummins appear in Aliens Abducted My Parents and Now I Feel Left Out by Jake Van Wagoner, an official selection of the Spotlight program at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Steve Olpin
The 2023 Festival will take place January 19–29, 2023 with events and screenings in Park City, Salt Lake City and Sundance Resort. A selection of films will also be available online, January 24–29, 2023. In-Person Ticket Packages are currently on sale through December 16, Online Ticket Packages go on sale December 13 at 10 a.m. MT, and single film tickets go on sale January 12 at 10 a.m. MT. Purchase tickets online at festival.sundance.org.
Call for volunteers
The Sundance Film Festival is also looking for volunteers to help with both the in-person and online aspects of the festival. Volunteer perks include seeing films, swag, meals and, of course, getting to be in the middle of the action. The hourly commitment for volunteers is of 32 hours or more, fulfilling a variety of tasks like ushering in a theater, helping with ticketing and helping people get around the festival. In-person volunteers will be able to choose whether they will be working in Salt Lake City, Park City or at Sundance Resort. You can apply to volunteer at the Sundance Film Festival at the Sundance Institute website.
Utah’s landscapes have drawn film makers from around the world to film some of the scariest films. And although there are many more, here are 10 horror movies made in Utah.
Carnival of Souls (1962) Filmed in Salt Lake City, the film has been contemporarily noted by critics and film scholars for its cinematography and foreboding atmosphere. The film has a large cult following and is occasionally screened at both film and Halloween festivals, and has been cited as a wide-ranging influence on numerous filmmakers.
Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) The sequel to William Friedkin’s 1973 film, The Exorcist, stars Richard Burton and Linda Blair. The film unfortunately had a disappointing reception in comparison to the original, but is still worth a watch, particularly if you are planning a movie-marathon.
Warlock (1989) The American cult supernatural horror film was produced and directed by Steve Miner and stars Richard E. Grant. Utah’s iconic Salt Flats appear in the feature. Following its release, the film was compared to The Terminator.
The Stand (1994) The made-in-Utah American TV miniseries is based on the acclaimed novel of the same name by Stephen King and originally aired on ABC in May 1994. The adaptation was filmed everywhere from Pleasant Grove to Ogden. The series won two Emmy awards, as well as garnering a number of nominations for Emmys and Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) The American slasher film stars Paul Rudd and Donald Pleasence. It is the sixth installment in the Halloween film series, three of which were filmed in Utah. The feature shot in various Utah locations, including Salt Lake, Midvale, Ogden, during the winter of 1994-95. The crew was hit by an unexpected early winter snowstorm which complicated production and, as a result, several scenes which were due to take place outdoors were quickly moved to indoor locations. Read our review of the latest installment of the Halloween series.
Species (1995) The American science fiction horror film includes an all-star cast of Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Forest Whitaker, Marg Helgenberger and Natasha Henstridge. Several scenes were filmed in Utah, including the opening scenes, which were captured at the Tooele Army Depot, and a Victorian-era train station in Brigham City. The feature turned out to be a box office success. A theatrical sequel, Species II, was later produced, followed by a book adaptation and two comic book series.
Snatchers (2017) The horror-comedy web series initially premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Seasons one and three were both filmed in Utah, and the show has been likened, genre-wise, to movies such as Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland.
Hereditary (2018) The critically-acclaimed supernatural horror film, written and directed by Ari Aster, premiered in the Midnight section at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Starring Toni Collette and filmed in Utah, the production became A24’s highest-grossing film worldwide.
About the Utah Film Commission As a part of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, the Utah Film Commission markets the entire state as a destination for film, television and commercial production by promoting the use of professional local crew & talent, support services, Utah locations and the Motion Picture Incentive Program. The office also serves as liaison to the film industry, facilitating production needs across the state.
More than 1,300 motion pictures have been filmed in Utah, including Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, Thelma and Louise, and 127 Hours, to list a few. Many episodic series have also filmed in Utah, such as Touched by an Angel, Andi Mack and Westworld. Here’s our list of some of the best.
During the last legislative fight over tax incentives for Utah film productions, Kevin Costner tipped the scales by promising to shoot his forthcoming movie Horizon: An American Saga in the Beehive State if the Utah State Legislature sweetened the deal. The legislature bumped the tax incentive cap in the end, and Horizon began filming in Utah at the end of August. One can’t help but admire Costner’s play here. He’d already proved he meant business by moving production of Paramount’s Yellowstone from Utah to Montana after Yellowstone shot its first three seasons in Utah (reportedly bringing $80 million in local revenue).
It wasn’t a coincidence that Montana had just raised its filming tax incentives to $12 million, and at the time Utah film incentives capped at $8.3 million. Now, incentives as part of Utah’s Motion Picture Incentive Program are on par, capped at $12 million for productions based in rural areas. And the Utah Film Commission is trying to draw more film productions to Utah to show it was all worthwhile.
For the past year, the Commission reports it has been working with city and county officials to enable more rural areas to support productions filming in their regions. The Commission created “The Film Ready Utah” designation as a way to signal to would-be Utah film productions that the designated community can provide a “local support network, access to resources, and…that these communities are ready to support their work.”
The list of “Film Ready” communities already included Kanab, Moab to Monument Valley, Ogden, Park City, Utah Valley and Salt Lake City. This month, 12 other communities joined their ranks, including Box Elder, Cache, Carbon, Davis, Emery, Garfield, Heber Valley, Juab, San Juan, Tooele, Uintah, Washington and Wayne.
“Utah’s film industry is expanding to every corner of our state,” said Virginia Pearce, director of the Utah Film Commission, in a statement. “The Film Ready Utah program gives rural communities resources to match local businesses and unique locations with production-related needs.”
Horizon will shoot on location in Grand, San Juan, Emery, Kane and Washington counties, according to the Utah Film Commission. It’s slated to be a sprawling, epic Western that spans multiple movies. The cast thus far includes Sienna Miller, Jena Malone, Jeff Fahey, Thomas Haden Church, Sam Worthington, Luke Wilson, Jamie Campbell Bower, Isabelle Fuhrman, Michael Rooker and Tatanka Means, with Costner himself starring and directing. There’s no official release date as of yet.
The Commission announced the production was approved to shoot in Utah back in June, along with 12 other projects, estimated to have an impact of $142.5 million on Utah’s economy with about 90% of the projects shooting in rural Utah. Last year at this time, the Commission announced just 7 projects approved to film in Utah. “We’ve seen increased interest for filming in Utah from filmmakers and rural community stakeholders,” said Pearce. “This new rural film incentive allows Utah to attract more film production and remain competitive.” According to the Commission, in the last 10 years, Utah’s Motion Picture Incentive Program generated $463 million in economic impact and created more than 34,600 production jobs across the state.
The new Utah film productions are a mix of features and episodic series with distribution to platforms like Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, FX/Hulu, Nickelodeon and Paramount+ as well as theatrical releases. In addition to Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga, there’s Joy to the World, a new feature from Jerusha Hess, co-writer of Napoleon Dynamite, and an untitled limited series from the creator of Yellowstone, Taylor Sheridan.
Here is the list of approved 2022 productions:
Alma Richards: Raising the Bar Estimated Utah Spend: $879,108 Distribution: Independent Locations: Utah County Logline: “Alma Richards, a lanky, unassuming Parawon, Utah farm boy seemed an unlikely competitor in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden.” The family feature from Traverse Films is about real-life figure Alma Richards, a Mormon high jumper.
Cub Scout Estimated Utah Spend: $1,107,114 Distribution: TBD Locations: Sanpete County Logline: “Scout, a teenage boy mysteriously living alone in the woods, is harboring a monstrous secret.” Cub Scout is set to be a short film, following a successfully funded Kickstarter campaign by Matt Heder (youngest brother of Jon Heder of Napoleon Dynamite fame, who is listed as a producer).
The Chosen: Season 3 Estimated Utah Spend: $1,400,327 Distribution: Self-Distributed Locations: Utah County
Dark Highway Estimated Utah Spend: $4,004,367 Distribution: Independent Locations: Emery County, Juab County, San Juan County Summary: “Dark Highway is an intense thriller about four friends who go on a ghost town adventure to record and “get famous” on Social Media…but it goes terribly wrong.”
Hondo Estimated Utah Spend: $10,271,416 Distribution: Amazon Prime Video Locations: Tooele County Summary: “Hondo is a collaboration between Big Indie Pictures and Amazon Studios. The series is currently in pre-production, but the details are being kept under wraps.” It’s reported to in fact be a cover for the series Fallout, based on the mega-popular Bethesda video game series of the same name. Logline: “The world of Fallout is one where the future envisioned by Americans in the late 1940s explodes upon itself through a nuclear war in 2077. In Fallout, the harshness of the wasteland is set against the previous generation’s utopian idea of a better world through nuclear energy. It is serious in tone, yet sprinkled with moments of ironic humor and B-movie-nuclear-fantasies.”
Horizon: An American Saga Estimated Utah Spend: $53,925,008 Distribution: TBD Locations: Emery County, Grand County, Kane County, San Juan County, Washington County Logline: “Horizon chronicles a multi-faceted, 15-year span of pre-and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American west. Horizon tells the story of that journey in an honest and forthcoming way, highlighting the points of view and consequences of the characters’ life and death decisions.”
Joy To The World Estimated Utah Spend: $8,300,000 Distribution: TBD Locations: Salt Lake City Logline: “Joy is an angel that “welcomes” the recently deceased to the afterlife. Even though she is extremely good at her job she wants to become a “Guardian Angel” so she can help Chad, a lost soul.” Joy to the World is slated as a comedy feature from Jerusha Hess.
Recipe For Love Estimated Utah Spend: $328,268 Distribution: Independent Locations: Salt Lake County, Utah County
Retreat: Season 1 Estimated Utah Spend: $1,407,920 Distribution: FX/Hulu Locations: Emery County, Grand County, Tooele County Logline: “The mystery series follows Darby Hart, a Gen Z amateur sleuth, as she attempts to solve a murder at a secluded retreat.”
The Streak Estimated Utah Spend: $183,500 Distribution: Independent Locations: Salt Lake County, Weber County Summary: A documentary about the 1987 Salt Lake Trappers. The single-A baseball team won 29 games in a row, the longest winning streak in professional baseball history.
Unnamed Green Beans Show Estimated Utah Spend: $10,700,000 Distribution: Apple TV+ Locations: TBD
Untitled Movie Budget: $9,966,336 Distribution: Nickelodeon Locations: TBD Logline: “Movie musical about best friends stuck in a time loop on the first day of summer break.”
Untitled Taylor Sheridan Series Estimated Utah Spend: $40,000,000 Distribution: Paramount + Locations: Summit County, Wasatch County Summary: Slated as a true-crime series about the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey.
Among past Utah productions, here are some upcoming releases:
While much of the media’s preoccupation with Mormon Fundamentalism centers on the FLDS, Under The Banner Of Heaven (adapted from the Jon Krakauer book of the same name) focuses on a small group of budding fundamentalists. Created by Dustin Lance Black, it tells the story of the 1984 murders of Brenda Wright Lafferty and her 15-month-old daughter, Erica, by Dan and Ron Lafferty, Brenda’s brothers-in-law. The brothers had broken away from the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and began practicing a version of Mormon Fundamentalism. They believed the murders were commanded by God in the form of divine revelation they received, also making it a story about what happens when zealotry and strict adherence to violent principles of faith trump all else.
“Under The Banner Of Heaven is not just an examination of Mormonism but an examination of faith in general,” says series creator Dustin Lance Black. He spent a decade working to adapt the book into a film, then TV, then film, then back to TV before we got the FX streaming hit that first aired in April 2022. “It’s not an easy needle to thread—a crime show that also examines faith in America,” explains Black. “Who would want to watch that?”
Photo: MIchelle Faye/FX
“The show centers on Mormonism because that is my lived experience,” says Black, who parted ways with the LDS Church when he was a teenager. “There was passion there to keep the project alive until it could get made. I’m a believer in writing what you know as a fruitful exercise.”
While the Laffertys’ journey from (albeit strict) mainstream Mormons to fundamentalists with violent and tragic results is a true story, Black says the story is not unique. Rather, it is only unique in its specificity. “The core themes of this true story include examining the wisdom of strict interpretations of doctrine,” says Black. “It questions, where is the value in that? Or is it a dangerous path to take?” Whether it is the strict, originalist interpretation of a document that’s only 100 or 200 years old—like the works of Joseph Smith or the writers of the constitution—“this is a cautionary tale about what happens if you do that,” he says.
Black likens the story of the Laffertys to those who wish for a return to the past and its values and strictures. “Under The Banner Of Heaven is a journey back in time to what some folks hope is a better way, but there is no pot of gold at the end of that journey—only ruin.” He hopes the show will shine light into the dark corners of the past to help generate ideas of how institutions and people could now be better than they were. He adds, “I say this more than anything else about the show—when we know better, we can do better.”
That said, he does not believe the LDS Church or any faith should escape accountability for its past. Even he, in some way, feels accountable. “I did not help write the Book of Mormon or settle Utah. I did not make the decisions that made Mormonism one of the most patriarchal faiths in the western world. I didn’t cause the misogyny or racism within the faith. I didn’t do those things…but my ancestors did.”
The show draws a direct line from the history of the Mormon Church to the actions of the Laffertys, who feel inspired by Brigham Young and Joseph Smith to embrace practices like polygamy and blood atonement. It’s a comparison that has made some members of the LDS Church uncomfortable and earned Under The Banner Of Heaven—both the show and the book it’s based on—vocal critics.
Photo: MIchelle Faye/FX
Some criticisms of the show have focused on the trivial, like the Mormon characters’ supposed overuse of “Heavenly Father” in place of “God.” (Most Latter-day Saints are careful to avoid saying God’s name “in vain.”) According to Black, it’s not a mistake or something he got wrong about Mormons. The usage is a direct lift from the writings of Brenda and the Laffertys.
In a 2003 statement, a spokesperson for the LDS Church called Krakauer’s book “a full-frontal assault on the veracity of the modern Church” and religious faith in general, rather than Krakauer’s stated intention to examine how religious extremism can lead to violence. Likewise, Black, as a former Mormon and out gay man, has been criticized as having an axe to grind against the church. For his part, Black says Under The Banner Of Heaven is not a hit piece against the LDS Church. “Some people out there hope for the extinguishment of the faith. That’s not my aim,” he says. “But a lot of people are having a tough time right now, and they’re wondering why their church doesn’t stand up for them.”
“I do hope it puts pressure on the church to change,” says Black. The kind of change the LDS Church made in 1978 when it gave the priesthood to black men and allowed all of its black members to participate in LDS temple ordinances, but “there will be no revelation to make life easier for all Mormons—of all races, genders, sexuality—without shining a light on the past.”
The One(s) Mighty And Strong
In Under The Banner Of Heaven, we see how Ron Lafferty is propelled deeper into fundamentalism by a persistent notion that appears within a number of fundamentalist sects but originated in the early (mainstream) church. Lafferty begins to believe he is the subject of a prophecy by Joseph Smith.
In 1832, Smith wrote, “[T]he Lord God, will send one mighty and strong, holding the scepter of power in his hand, clothed with light for a covering, whose mouth shall utter words, eternal words; while his bowels shall be a fountain of truth, to set in order the house of God[.]” The words were later canonized with their inclusion in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Doctrine And Covenants section 85.
Ron Lafferty was not the first nor last to claim to be the “one mighty and strong” that will “set in order the house of God.” The claimants number in the dozens, a number of fundamentalist leaders among them.
“If it’s canonized it’s as close to God saying it as anything. So, every single Mormon group has an interpretation of it,” says Lindsay Hansen Park. Park, the Mormon Fundamentalism consultant on Under The Banner Of Heaven, created the podcast Year Of Polygamyand is the executive director of the Sunstone Education Foundation, which focuses on discussions around Mormonism.
In Park’s experience within mainstream Mormonism, “you’re the one mighty and strong” was used more colloquially as a compliment, usually directed toward young men. Some believe that the prophecy refers to Joseph Smith himself, who already restored what the faithful call “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth.”
“But for people who find themselves in disagreement with the church but not their faith,” says Park, “that scripture often justifies their beliefs because it says there’s a problem in the church and someone needs to fix it. For a lot of men, they’ve interpreted that as ‘I guess it has to be me.’”
“I’ve met a lot of ‘ones mighty and strong’ in my work with fundamentalism,” says Park.
The prophecy is both canonized within Mormon scripture and remains open to interpretation about what or who it’s alluding to, “and that’s why we see so many break-off sects,” says Park.
Among those who have claimed to be the “one mighty and strong” (or others claimed them to be) are some men who have been excommunicated from the mainstream church and fundamentalists like Jeffs, Joseph Musser, Joel LeBaron, Ervil LeBaron, the Laffertys and Brian David Mitchell. Like the Laffertys, Ervil LeBaron used his claims to justify murders, including that of Rulon Allred, the leader of another fundamentalist sect.
No Utahns were harmed in the writing of this article. The Beehive State's film resumé boasts both John Ford’s iconic Westerns and campy cult horror flicks. Here are our 10…
