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| Fall from Grace | 
| Director: K. Ryan Jones
Actor: Fall From Grace
Studio: DOCURAMA
Category: DVD
List Price: $26.95
Buy New: $10.97
You Save: $15.98 (59%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 61036
Format: Color, Dvd-video, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Running Time: 87 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
UPC: 767685115879
EAN: 0767685115879
ASIN: B00197POYK
Release Date: September 23, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
A fair and balanced look at an extreme group September 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Produced as a school assignment at the University of Kansas, this documentary does an exemplary job of being entirely neutral about a group that causes strong passions.
Westboro Baptist Church and Fred Phelps, under the protection of the First Amendment, travel the country to celebrate the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq, the 9/11 murders, the deaths of Tsunami victims, and various other horrors. They believe that they are justified in this by America 'turning its back on God' by allowing homosexuality.
The documentary has interviews not only with Phelps, but also interviews with the young children who are on the picket lines with the rest of the family. Other interviews are with a cross section of society, including other ministers, the widow of a dead U.S. soldier whose funeral was picketed by the church, students at KU, some of Phelps' children that had broken with the family because if its extremism, and counter protesters. One of the most interesting is a brief shot of foreign tourists commenting about the protest that they had witnessed; they were courteous, yet seemed hilarious and horrified at the same time, as if they had been given a dead rat to eat, and weren't sure if it was a joke of unbelievably bad taste, or if it was serious.
My only criticisms are first, that Phelps' disbarment as an attorney was mentioned, but the circumstances were not explored in any great depth. Second, an expert in scripture was interviewed regarding Phelps' use of verse justifying his actions, but I found myself wishing for more. Third, Phelps had acted as a Civil Rights attorney, and actually received an award from the NAACP, and I thought that including that might be appropriate.
The interview with the director on the bonus section of the DVD, who is as previously mentioned, a then-student at University of Kansas, is almost the best part of the package. It is terrifically interesting to try to reconcile this professional, polished production with someone so young and relatively inexperienced. I very much look forward to what he will accomplish in the future.
I have attempted to be as fair and unbiased during the review as Mr. Jones was during his documentary. I feel it was incumbent upon me to be impartial and....oh, the hell with it. Phelps and his congregation are chimps. They make one ashamed of the human race. What they are teaching to their children to me qualifies as child molestation. As a proud veteran, seeing them protesting at a military funeral and dragging the American flag in the dirt appalls me.
But in a perverse way, the only positive is that this country's greatness is framed by the fact that these bizarre people are protected by the same Bill of Rights that covers us all. Phelps' whoring of the protections afforded by our system of laws simply makes those protections stand out in sharper relief.
Intead , it's just necessary to put Westboro Baptist Church in its proper context; they are aberrations, freaks, and probably not dangerous. Instead of greeting their spewing, smug, sanctimonious hatred with anger, it is MUCH more effective to laugh at them, and then dismiss them as irrelevant.
Looking at Fred Phelps August 21, 2008
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
"Fall from Grace"
Looking at Fred Phelps
Amos Lassen
"Fall from Grace'' is a documentary that looks at the world of hate of Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas. The group has participated in almost 20,000 anti-homosexual demonstrations since the mid 1990's. They carry signs that say "God hates fags" and "Thank God for 9/11". The congregation of only 75 members has managed to gain international attention especially now that they have begun to appear at military funerals and picketed them. The film has interviews with Phelps himself, members of his church and dissenters as well as with two of the Phelps family who left the church and their families.
The film allows Phelps to hang himself with his closed minded rhetoric. We see the ideology of hate disguised as Christianity and the
face of intolerance and the dangerous power of a charismatic leader who causes such pain and suffering. Phelps is despicable and evil and his group takes pleasure in offending. The message that they give out is that God hates pretty much everything and everyone aside from the members of Phelps' church. Director K. Ryan has assembled enough film footage to give some insight into what drives Phelps but the entire picture will never be known. Phelps has succeeded in alienating almost all who come into contact with him to the point that he was thrown out of his own church and had to find an outlet for his anger. He chose the GLBT community as a way to vent.
My only complaint about the film is that it is too short. Even with that the camera never blinks as Phelps spews out his own strange interpretations of what is happening in the world. He is a very sick man who uses his freedom of speech as a way to hate.
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