Why Hollywood Gets Religion So, So Wrong

Sun., Sep. 28, 2008 6:01 AM PDT by Leslie Gornstein

ABC/Mario Perez

I'm confused by Hollywood's habit of using Catholic symbols either in an overly generic way or in a way that any reasonably well informed person knows isn't accurate. Case in point: Lost. The whole Mr. Eko thing just had my skin crawling because of the stuff that was wrong. You don't baptize a baby by making the sign of the cross; you aren't a priest just because you sign a letter.*
—Shane

Usually, when Hollywood has a question of a holy nature, it calls a consultant. For Catholicism questions, for example, script writers, costume people and directing assistants ping a guy named Tod Tamberg, communications director of the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

From what Tamberg can recall, no one from Lost bothered to give Tamberg a jingle in regard to Mr. Eko.

"If they would have called me, I could have told them" what was correct, Tamberg told me today.

Maybe the magnetic fields on the mystery island blocked J.J. Abrams' cell phone while filming the episodes in question. Or the polar bear ate it.

Pretty much every religion offers at least one consultant to keep pertinent films honest. One of them happens to have served as Hebrew coach for an A-list star...

I speak of Ben Stiller, whose Hebrew coach, Hillel Norry, served as a Jewish religion consultant on the movie Keeping the Faith a few years back. And Jamie Foxx's movie The Kingdom had two on-set experts in Islam.

But unless Hollywood actively reaches out to such people—and not at the last minute, either—there's little that religious consultants can do to ensure authenticity, Tamberg tells me.

"Sometimes they'll call me, and they're on a tight deadline, shooting tomorrow or next week," he says.

Speaking of deadlines: Gotta wrap it up and head into the booth to record my latest radio show. See you on the satellites.

* This article has been updated to include the original, more detailed question, which had been edited for space.

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