Serenity Now!

Bill Maher’s movie “Religulous” opened yesterday, October 3rd. I definitely want to see this movie, but that’s not what this post is about. I think Bill Maher has created the most brilliant, imaginative, intelligent publicity campaign for “Religulous” that I’ve ever seen. I’ve always liked and respected Maher for his brutal, and often controversial, honesty. Here’s the trailer for the movie from Lionsgate.

Now, there are many videos, postings and even web sites dedicated to boycotting this film. The best I’ve seen are from a group called “The Rapture Right”, run by brothers Tim and Trevor Christian. Here is their video response to the trailer for “Religulous”.

Tim and Trevor are responsible for both the YouTube video and the web site,
http://www.theraptureright.com/ 
(by the way, the site has a pretty funny Asteroids-type video game you can play)

When I first saw this video response to the “Religulous” trailer, I was shocked at the blatant ignorance of these two. Then I realized that this is part of an amazing and creative campaign to promote the movie. Remember when “Passion of the Christ” was released and the uproar from the religious right? That was the best free press Mel Gibson could have hoped for!

What the Maher camp is doing here is beating the religious zealots to the proverbial punch. I read comments to the Christian’s ‘response’ video on YouTube. It seemed to me that most people were taking this seriously although, there were a number of people who appreciated the satire.

I’m not debating the film “Religulous” or religion here. All I’m saying is that I think this was a brilliant marketing campaign for what looks to be an interesting and controversial movie. 

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