Why Hollywood Gets Religion So, So Wrong

Consultants try to keep TV and movies accurate on religious characters, but often can't

Hollywood uses symbols in either generic or wrong ways. Case in point: Lost. The whole Mr. Eko thing just had my skin crawling because of the stuff that was wrong.
—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.

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