One of my all time favorite books is Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. The book has the subtitle of “Non-Religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality”. The book’s unique perspective on Christianity really resonates with me.
Back in 2010 Donald Miller and Steve Taylor began work on turning the book into a movie. In spite of a great start, the movie project was put on hold because of a lack of funding.
Several fans of the project decided to use Kickstarter as a vehicle to raise some of the cash needed to get the movie project off the ground. The goal was to raise $125,000 dollars. By the end of the Kickstarter campaign, 4,495 people had pledged $345,992 to see the book turned into a movie.
Depending on how much you pledged, you got different bits of swag. One of the things that everyone who pledged was promised was a personal phone call from Steve to thank us for pledging/donating money to the project.
To be honest, I’d kind of forgotten about the phone call. On Sunday night, I got my call from Steve. You gotta admire someone who wants to make a movie so bad he’s willing to personally call nearly 5,000 people to thank them for supporting the project.
Of course, the call kind of caught me off guard. If I’d have been expecting it, I’d have practiced something more profound to say to a movie director. Instead I mumbled something about how I was looking forward to seeing the movie. Nothing that was going to be memorable enough for Steve to remember, nor to give him a reason to invite me to come hang out with him and movie stars. I guess I blew my shot at my 15 minutes of fame.
The movie is set for release on April 13, 2012. You can see the trailer for it here.
