I have spent alot of time talking about Woody Allen films on this blog and looking at his worldview. He has a hopeless, meaningless, nihilistic worldview that believes we are going to turn to dust and there is no afterlife. Even though he has this view he has taken the opportunity to look at the weaknesses of his own secular view. I salute him for doing that. That is why I have returned to his work over and over and presented my own Christian worldview as an alternative.

My interest in Woody Allen is so great that I have a “Woody Wednesday” on my blog www.thedailyhatch.org every week. Also I have done over 30 posts on the historical characters mentioned in his film “Midnight in Paris.” (Salvador Dali, Ernest Hemingway,T.S.Elliot,  Cole Porter,Paul Gauguin,  Luis Bunuel, and Pablo Picasso were just a few of the characters.) Check out these trivia facts below.

Here is some trivia about Woody Allen:

There are lots of nice advantages that you get, being a celebrity. The tabloid things, the bumps in the road, they come and they go. Most people don’t have as big a bump as I had, but even the big bump – it’s not life-threatening. It’s not like the doctor’s saying: ‘I looked at these x-rays of your brain, and there’s this little thing growing there.’ Tabloid things can be handled. I just don’t want a shadow on my lung on the x-ray.

I’m just trying to be objective and honest. If you were having a 10-film festival and showing Citizen Kane (1941) on Monday, Rashomon (1950) on Tuesday, Bicycle Thieves (1948), The Seventh Seal (1957) … I don’t think anything I’ve ever made could be placed in a festival with those films and hold its own.

I have an idea for a story, and I think to myself, “my God, this is a combination of Eugene O’Neill, and Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller” … but that’s because [when you’re writing] you don’t have to face the test of reality. You’re at home, in your house, it’s all in your mind. Now, when it’s almost over, and I see what I’ve got, I start to think: “what have I done? This is going to be such an embarrassment! Can I salvage it?” All your grandiose ideas go out the window. You realise you made a catastrophe, and you think: “what if I put the last scene first, drop this character, put in narration? What if I shoot one more scene, to make him not leave his wife, but kill his wife?” [But nine times out of ten, after the screening of the first rough cut,] the feeling is: “OK, now don’t panic.” The other 10% of the time, it’s: “OK. That’s not as bad as I thought.”

My experience has been, with one exception [Midnight in Paris (2011)], that when I do a film in a foreign country, the toughest audience for me is that country. In Italy, they said: ‘This guy doesn’t understand Italy.’ And I can’t argue with those criticisms. I’m an American, and that’s how I see Barcelona or Rome or England. If the situation was reversed, and somebody from a foreign country made a film here, I might very well be saying: ‘Yeah, it’s OK, but this guy really doesn’t get New York.’ And I’d be right. And I’m sure they’re right.

To have been the lead character in a juicy scandal – a really juicy scandal – that will always be a part of what people think of when they think of me. It doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t please me. It’s a non-factor. But it’s a true factor.

[Ageing] is a bad business. It’s a confirmation that the anxieties and terrors I’ve had all my life were accurate. There’s no advantage to ageing. You don’t get wiser, you don’t get more mellow, you don’t see life in a more glowing way. You have to fight your body decaying, and you have less options. The only thing you can do is what you did when you were 20 – because you’re always walking with an abyss right under your feet; they can be hoisting a piano on Park Avenue and drop it on your head when you’re 20 – which is to distract yourself. Getting involved in a movie [occupies] all my anxiety: did I write a good scene for Cate Blanchett? If I wasn’t concentrated on that, I’d be thinking of larger issues. And those are unresolvable, and you’re checkmated whichever way you go.

If you’re a celebrity, you can get good medical treatment. I can get a doctor on the weekends. I can get the results of my biopsy quickly.

[European backers support me when Americans won’t] You’d think that after a hit like Midnight in Paris (2011) – made a lot of money, not by The Dark Knight (2008) standards, but by my standards – there would be some companies that would want to do a film with you. But I didn’t get a single offer. Not one … and then an Italian company I’d been talking to for years was willing to put up money.

Making films is a very nice way to make a living. You work with beautiful women, and charming men, who are amusing and gifted; you work with art directors and costume people … you travel places, and the money’s good. It’s a nice living.

[The French] think I’m an intellectual because I wear these glasses, and they think I’m an artist because my films lose money.

I have one last request. Don’t use embalming fluid on me; I want to be stuffed with crab meat.

Editing is that moment when you give up every hope you have of making a great piece of art and you have to settle with what you have.

I’m very happy doing films. I wrote a novel, but it didn’t come out well and I put it away. I would like to write for the theatre again, and I will continue to write for The New Yorker. But I don’t have to knock myself out to do one film a year – a year’s a long time to make a film. I don’t make these films like, say, Steven Spielberg, where I take three years and a hundred million dollars. My films are much less ambitious. It’s easy for me. I finish a film and I’m sitting around the house and have other ideas; I get them together and I write them. I don’t require much money to make a film, so it’s not hard for me to get funded. And I’m a good bet for an investor, because I work fast and inexpensively. And when the film is released, before you know it, the small amount that it cost, they’ve made back. Then once in a while, if I hit one that is popular – like Match Point (2005), which made a hundred million dollars – then everybody makes a lot of money on it. Everybody except me. [2011]

There are worse things than death. Many of them playing at a theater near you.

I am not a hypochondriac but a totally different genus of crackpot.

My parents both lived to ripe old ages but absolutely refused to pass their genes to me as they believed an inheritance often spoils the child.

Salary

Where Are They Now

(August 2003) Is currently filming his follow-up to Anything Else (2003) in New York.

(November 2004) He is currently directing his original play “A Second-Hand Memory” at the Atlantic Theater Company in New York.

(October 2005) Plays clarinet every Monday night at the Café Carlyle in Manhattan.

(December 2007) European concert tour (Brussels, Luxembourg, Vienna, Paris, Budapest, Athens, Lisbon, Barcelona, San Sebastian, La Coruna) with the Eddie Davis New Orleans Jazz Band.

Related posts:

I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I have done over 30 posts on the historical characters mentioned in the film. Take a look below:

Ecclesiastes 1

Published on Sep 4, 2012

I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular humanist man can not hope to find a lasting meaning to his life in a closed system without bringing God back into the picture. This is the same exact case with Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Three thousand years ago, Solomon took a look at life “under the sun” in his book of Ecclesiastes. Christian scholar Ravi Zacharias has noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term ‘under the sun.’ What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system, and you are left with only this world of time plus chance plus matter.”

Let me show you some inescapable conclusions if you choose to live without God in the picture. Solomon came to these same conclusions when he looked at life “under the sun.”

1. Death is the great equalizer (Eccl 3:20, “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.”)
2. Chance and time have determined the past, and they will determine the future.  (Ecclesiastes 9:11-13)
3. Power reigns in this life, and the scales are not balanced(Eccl 4:1)
4. Nothing in life gives true satisfaction without God including knowledge (1:16-18), ladies and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and great building projects (2:4-6, 18-20).

You can only find a lasting meaning to your life by looking above the sun and bring God back into the picture.

Directions to Nowhere

During my sojourn throughout different parts of the world, I have learned that there are some streets where if you get lost and would like to ask for directions, you should think twice—or rather, ask twice.

“Where is the public library?” you may ask a local who is passing by. “Oh, it is straight ahead, hundred meters away,” he might say.

And so you walk on, and after 30 minutes and way past that “hundred meters,” you realize that the person has given you wrong directions. Then you decide to ask another for what are, hopefully, the right directions. This time, the person whom you ask tells you to go back the way you came from for a hundred meters. “How can this be? I just came from there,” you inform her. However, she insists that she is right and that you should trust her. So you retreat a hundred meters and you are back to where you had started, and not any closer to your destination.

You see, none of those whom you had asked actually knew for sure where your destination is. However, in order to “save face,” they pretend that they do and sometimes do a very good job at it! As they did not want to appear ignorant, they had to convincingly point you towards a certain direction—oftentimes, the wrong one.

Trying to get to your destination on one of these crowded streets is in a lot of ways like how we are trying to live our lives. For most of us, our destination is the place where we will find the answers to our existential questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here?  Where am I going?

We long to arrive at that seemingly elusive place where the yearning of our heart will be satisfied; where our soul will finally find its home and rest. But how do we get there? Which direction do we go? How long is the journey?

Some of us were shown the route of the Great American Dream (also known as the Great Singaporean Dream or the Great Malaysian Dream) where we are told that our pursuit of happiness will lead us to our destination. However, not much farther down the path of a successful career, a lovely family, and a five-room picket-fenced house, we find that we are not getting any closer to where our heart wants to go. The soul continues to seek its home.

Then there are those who have taken the route of pleasure by embracing a certain lifestyle that would gratify one in all kinds of sensuous desires. Like many after him, Solomon, the king who possessed so much wealth and denied himself nothing he desired, found this path only futility in his years of indulgence. He records this poignantly in Ecclesiastes 2:10-11:

“I denied myself nothing my eyes desired;
I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my work,
and this was the reward for all my labor.
Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done
and what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;
nothing was gained under the sun.”

The route of unbridled pleasure is also a misleading course that will not take us where our souls ultimately seek to go.

Then there is the relativist’s way of taking whichever road one wishes, believing they all will lead home. Practical experience with roads that may seem to head in the same direction remind us that they make drastic turns at crucial points and take fellow travelers on farther and farther away from each other. Not all roads can lead to home, it seems.

C.S. Lewis rightly observes that this world will offer us all sorts of things or ways that promise to take us to our soul’s destination, but they never quite keep to their word.(1) After the fleeting moment of enchantment leaves us, we are back to our starting point.

There is, however, one who professes to know the way to our destination. In fact, he claims that he IS the way: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Unlike Eastern gurus who claim that they have found the way and that they could show their followers the way, Jesus self-assuredly declares that he is the way, and that only through him will we find true rest at our soul’s rightful home.

Which way are you taking today to get wherever it is you feel you must go? And who are you asking for your directions along the way? As C.S. Lewis aptly concludes in Mere Christianity, “[L]ook for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in.”

I’Ching Thomas is associate director of training at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Singapore.

(1) C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (London: Harper Collins Publishers, 2002), 135.
(2) Ibid., 227.

Related posts:

Ecclesiastes 8-10 | Still Searching After All These Years

Published on Oct 9, 2012

Ecclesiastes 11-12 | Solomon Finds His Way

Published on Oct 30, 2012

I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular humanist man can not hope to find a lasting meaning to his life in a closed system without bringing God back into the picture. This is the same exact case with Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Three thousand years ago, Solomon took a look at life “under the sun” in his book of Ecclesiastes. Christian scholar Ravi Zacharias has noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term ‘under the sun.’ What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system, and you are left with only this world of time plus chance plus matter.”

Let me show you some inescapable conclusions if you choose to live without God in the picture. Solomon came to these same conclusions when he looked at life “under the sun.”

1. Death is the great equalizer (Eccl 3:20, “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.”)
2. Chance and time have determined the past, and they will determine the future.  (Ecclesiastes 9:11-13)
3. Power reigns in this life, and the scales are not balanced(Eccl 4:1)
4. Nothing in life gives true satisfaction without God including knowledge (1:16-18), ladies and liquor (2:1-3, 8, 10, 11), and great building projects (2:4-6, 18-20).

You can only find a lasting meaning to your life by looking above the sun and bring God back into the picture.

A Shattered Visaged by Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias has been a visiting scholar at Cambridge University. He is the founder and president of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries where he writes and speaks worldwide. The purpose of A Shattered Visage is to address the intellectual struggles a person has in relating to God.

PART I: Man – The Measure of All Things

Zacharias begins by introducing Frederich Nietzche, the man who exclaimed “God is dead”. The main point regarding Nietzche is that he was the first real atheist who was brutally honest about the absence of God leading to violence and hedonism in our pursuit of the ‘Superman’. Afterwards, Zacharias explores various challenges to Evolution and Darwinism (the survival of the fittest) . One example is of the inability to calculate the probability of evolution because we don’t even know the nature of the hypothetical self-replicating system or the nature of the “primeval soup” from which it supposedly sprung.

Building on the atheists claim that there is no morality (right or wrong), Zacharias highlights the impact Nietzsche had on Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini, which lead to the death of untold millions. “Nietzsche considered the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount to be a damning approach to life, for they emphasize the responsibility of man toward the poor and weak of society. According to Nietzsche, a society driven by such an ethic, in effect is controlled by the losers.”

After the death of morality, atheism next eliminates any meaning to life. Yes, states Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes, without God everything is indeed meaningless. The desire to hold onto human life, but the hopeless inevitability of death is the Shattered Visage of Atheism. It is at this very moment where the full value of life over death hits all men. This, says Solomon (Ecc 3:10), is because God has set the desire for eternity in the hearts of men.

PART II: God – The Treasure of Life’s Pursuits

So how can an atheist come to faith in God? Zacharias says it takes examining what we can understand until it leads to what we can’t. “God has put enough in the world to make believing in him a most reasonable thing, and He has left enough out to make it impossible to live by sheer reason or observation alone.” His main arguments to back this up are: 1) Design is proof of a designer. 2) There is a universal sense of morality in every civilization. 3) Observable ‘meaning’ is found in human relationships that we all desire to be ‘good’ and when good not to end. 4) The desire for life not to end is also universal and displays God’s placement of eternity in our hearts.

Zacharias concludes by saying that the heart of atheism is really all about: 1) Not wanting to admit ones need of God. 2) The desire not to be accountable to anyone/thing else.

PERSONAL THOUGTHS

The book is filled with excellent insight and many convincing arguments. Organizationally, I personal found the insights and arguments to be a little scattered. Regarding each chapter he does one of the things that I personally don’t find helpful, and that is giving ambiguous titles that leave you a little unsure of the main point of the each chapter. Though it’s still a good read, if I were only going to recommend one book on the subject this wouldn’t be it.

Related posts:

The Keith Green Story pt 6/7

When I first heard Keith Green in 1978 it had a major impact on my life. Below is his story:

LEGEND

Keith Green

CBN.com – When musician Keith Green died in a plane crash on July 28, 1982, the world lost a special man whose heart was aflame with the gospel message. Before his untimely end, Green took the world on his seven-year spiritual journey. He held back nothing and was consumed with loving Christ and the church.

On October 21, 1953, Keith Green was born into musical talent. His maternal grandfather was a songwriter and his mother studied voice at Carnegie Hall. By five years old, Green played the ukulele and began formal music lessons. He was writing his own music by age 9. Two years later, Green signed with Decca Records. Time magazine called Green a “pre-pubescent dreamboat” who “croons in a voice trembling with conviction.” He was the youngest member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and played on The Jack Benny Show and The Joey Bishop Show. Green was on the cusp of pop music success until he was displaced by another budding teen idol, Donny Osmond.

After a troubled youth, he married singer/songwriter Melody Steiner in 1973. They struggled to financially and spiritually sought after the meaning of life. Growing up in the drug-induced, anti-establishment ‘60s era led them both to reject organized religion and dabble in eastern mysticism.

Green discovered Christ in the mid-70s. As he attended church and delved deeper into the Bible, Green was increasingly troubled by the hypocrisy of Christians. He longed to reach people through his music and drive them back to holiness. With vocals like Cat Stevens and the piano talent of Elton John, Green recorded his first album in 1977, For Him Who Has Ears to Hear on Sparrow Records. The album, produced by Bill Maxwell, was a commercial success. It later earned the No. 5 spot in CCM’s Greatest Albums in Christian Music. Hits like “Your Love Broke Through” (co-written by friend Randy Stonehill) and “You Put This Love in My Heart” encapsulated Green’s relationship with Jesus. It also had 2nd Chapter of Acts’ “Easter Song.” That same year the Greens started Last Days Ministries with a newsletter that reached 22,000 people.

No Compromise came in November of 1978. “Asleep in the Light,” a radio hit, drove home Green’s conviction for the hypocrites in the church. Penning his most confrontational lyrics, he sang: “Jesus rose from the dead / And you can’t even get out of bed.” Green also mourned the lost souls he encountered in Los Angeles in “How Can They Live Without Jesus.”

Green released So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt in 1980. The title track is a light-hearted view of the little things that become obstacles in the Christian walk. He also sang the worshipful “Oh Lord You’re Beautiful” and an ode to laying down his possessions in “Pledge My Head to Heaven.” Green refused to let money be an obstacle in spreading the gospel. His third album sold 200,000 copies, and most of his albums were given away at concerts.

The last album Green ever co-produced was 1982’s Songs for the Shepherd. Stepping away from convicting the wayward Christian, Songs for the Shepherd was 12 tracks of praise and worship to God including “How Majestic Is Thy Name” and “You Are the One.” The eerily titled “Until the Final Day” showed a weary but faithful Green crying out for God’s strength. The “final day” came all too soon when he and two of his young children lost their lives just three months after its release.

Maxwell produced and released two posthumous albums, The Prodigal Son and Jesus Commands Us to Go. In 2001, Green was inducted into the Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame along with Jesus rocker Larry Norman. His wife actively maintains Last Day Ministries. Melody wrote her husband’s biography in 1989 from his journal entries. It was appropriately titled “No Compromise.” It revealed the meaning Green found in his life, which he summed up as: “I repent of ever having recorded one single song, and ever having performed one concert, if my music, and more importantly, my life has not provoked you into Godly jealousy or to sell out more completely to Jesus!”

Courtesy of Last Day Ministries

Here is a picture of my grandson Luke Hatcher with a football he won at the Saline County Razorback Club and it was signed by Coach Bret Bielema.

(I got to write about this meeting that Bielema attended for the Saline Courier and my article is online.) I have had the opportunity to write on sports several times in the past for the Saline Courier and you can find my articles online here, here, here, here, here, and here. Here is a serious article I wrote for the Saline Courier about a family friend killed by a drunk driver which can found at this link and I also wrote about some Arkansas war heroes and those articles can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, and here,

At the Saline County Razorback Fish Fry on 3-27-13 Coach Bret Bielema made it clear he didn’t come to Arkansas to just play in the SEC but to win the SEC.

He made that same point earlier at the halftime of the Arkansas v. Tennessee basketball game in Fayetteville as discussed in this AP article from Feb:

Arkansas football coach Bret Bielema speaks during a time out in the first half a game against Tennessee in Fayetteville, Ark., on Saturday. Arkansas defeated Tennessee 73-60. (AP Photo/Gareth Patterson)

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Bret Bielema wasted little time in playing to the eager crowd.

The new Arkansas football coach picked up the microphone at halftime of the Razorbacks’ basketball game against Tennessee, said some kind words about his first few months in Fayetteville and then laid down the gauntlet — for himself and his coaching staff — to a state hanging on his every word.

“We came to Arkansas for all the same reason,” Bielema said. “We didn’t come here to play in the (Southeastern Conference); we came here to win the SEC. And that’s what we’re going to do.”

The roar of approval was deafening inside Bud Walton Arena. It was exactly the kind of moment, and bravado, that a program still smarting from a season gone south was craving. So far, it appears the masses couldn’t be happier with a coach who prides himself on directness, one who feels like he has plenty left to prove even after leading the Badgers to three straight Rose Bowl appearances.

Bielema making up for lost time on the recruiting trail.

For Bielema, his new job represents an opportunity to step out of his comfort zone for the first time in his career. The former Iowa walk-on who cut his coaching teeth under the likes of Hayden Fry, Kirk Ferentz, Bill Snyder and Barry Alvarez finally has a program all his own.

“In my mind, the reason I made the jump was I wanted to prove something more,” Bielema told The Associated Press. “I came here to win an SEC championship.”

Arkansas has yet to win a conference championship since leaving the former Southwest Conference for the SEC in 1992, falling three times (1995, 2002 and ’06) in the championship game. The Razorbacks appeared on the cusp of joining the SEC’s elite under former coach Bobby Petrino, finishing No. 5 in the country following the 2011 season, but that was before Petrino’s infamous motorcycle accident with his mistress aboard that led to his downfall.

Enter Bielema, who was hired on Dec. 4 to pick up the pieces of a 4-8 season under interim coach John L. Smith.

What Arkansas has discovered in the first two months under its new leader is a coach seemingly unafraid of just about anything or anyone. That includes the rugged SEC, home of the last seven national championships, and critics of his departure from Wisconsin. Bielema has simultaneously engaged his fans and dismissed his critics on Twitter, one keystroke at a time.

“Enjoy life alone,” Bielema responded to one online heckler.

“Hope your children don’t follow you on Twitter,” he wrote to another.

“Why hate? Life is too short,” was still another tweet.

“If someone says something to me, I’m not going to hold back,” Bielema explains. “That’s just how I am in person. If someone comes up to me one-on-one in an airport or a restaurant and says something to me, I’m not going to … I’m not going to shy away from that.”

Bielema insists that his departure from Wisconsin and the Big Ten was never intended to put either in a negative light.

“But when you brag about the situation you’re in, people become sensitive,” he said.

Bielema signed a six-year, $3.2 million annual contract with the Razorbacks. The deal culminated a decade-long flirtation with joining the SEC for the 43-year-old, who was once offered the defensive coordinator job by then-Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville. He sought plenty of outside advice before turning down the Tigers then, and he did the same due diligence about the Arkansas job.

One of the people Bielema talked with before being introduced as the new coach was Smith, whose 10-month contract runs through Feb. 23.

The former Michigan State and Louisville coach was recently named the new head coach at Division II Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., beginning March 1. However, he’s stayed in Fayetteville while serving out the consultant portion of his contract, telling Bielema he was “available at any given time.”

The two, who knew each other from their coaching days in the Big Ten, have talked in detail about the returning players for the Razorbacks.

Smith also gave Bielema “the lay of the land” about Arkansas’ administration and fan base, both of which Smith praised — even after he was often ridiculed online and on the airwaves as the Razorbacks fell from the preseason top 10 and missed a bowl game for the first time since 2008. Smith infamously told reporters to “Smile!” following a 52-0 loss to Alabama, and he said it’s difficult for any coach to keep fans happy over the long term in today’s coaching profession.

“It’s hard,” Smith said. “When you’re on top and then you leave, it doesn’t end well then. If it’s the other case, where it ends because they have to fire you, it doesn’t end well then, either. So, you’re kind of caught as a coach anymore.”

Arkansas has seen its share of less-than-graceful exits during its last three coaching tenures — from Houston Nutt’s paid departure for Mississippi to Petrino’s firing and Smith’s temporary hold on the job. All of it has thrown an aura of instability over a program that had seemed on the rise with the likes of Ryan Mallett, Knile Davis and Tyler Wilson leading the way on the field.

Bielema isn’t concerned about the tide of public support turning on him at Arkansas, saying he doesn’t believe that has to happen. The closest he’s come to a losing season as a head coach was a 7-6 campaign in 2008, his third season at Wisconsin.

The Badgers followed that with three straight years of double-digit wins, and Bielema said the key for him during the struggles was self-analysis and how he handled himself.

It’s a lesson he plans to carry over to the SEC.

“It can turn for other people; it doesn’t have to turn for me,” Bielema said. “I don’t care where you are at in life. Everything is about how you react to what happens. It’s not what happens; it’s how you react to it. I think that’s the part that I know I control.”