Richard Dutcher, Mormon moviemaker

Dutcher was a down-and-almost-out filmmaker in California when he stumbled upon the idea of making movies for an audience he knew, or thought he knew: Mormons. He wrote "God's Army" based on his own missionary experiences, then moved to Provo to baby-sit the project. Right from the start, he had decided he didn't care if the movie offended non-Mormons; after all, he reasoned, people had been poking fun at Mormons in films for years. This movie was for Mormons. But by the time the final credits rolled, it was Mormons — some of them anyway — who were offended by his movies and bashed him for it in letters to Utah newspapers.

"There's a vocal minority who think I'm a child of Satan, and then there's the non-Mormon community who compare me to Frank Capra," says Dutcher. "You can't be both. I'm just a normal guy. They see one movie, and they think they know the guy. I've been called egotistical and blasphemous. It kind of hurt. It felt like I was being judged by my own people. Suddenly, I was outside the culture to these people. I wasn't one of them. Then it got very personal. They questioned my honesty; they say I just want to make money off the church. People who don't know me at all. It's hard to read about yourself in the paper and have people describe you as something that you're not. They're writing about this character Richard Dutcher that doesn't feel like me at all."

Apparently, it's acceptable to show Catholic Mass or Catholic confessionals or Jewish bar mitzvahs, but to some it was unthinkable to show a Mormon church meeting or a sacrament prayer or a healing. Dutcher of course disagrees.

"You can't tell Mormon stories without telling specifics of Mormonism," he says. "I had no interest in making Mormon doctrine look just like any other Protestant religion. Why would I do that? Why not make it some other religion, like other Mormon filmmakers. There are tons of Mormon filmmakers who are telling Mormon stories and then take Mormonism out of it. It's cowardly and greedy. They do it because they think they'll make more money at it, but they're doing a disservice to their own people."

Though stung by the criticism, Dutcher says the response has been mostly "positive." He says he received "a ton of response" about "God's Army;" many people wrote to say the movie inspired them to serve missions or to be baptized. Dutcher says he even received "positive feedback" from an LDS general authority about "God's Army," "but I don't want to say any more. It's not for public consumption. It was a private conversation. I don't want to use that as a marketing ploy. But it would shut these people up."

This new mix of Mormonism and movies has proved touchy. Dutcher was even taken to task by some Mormons for violence in the murder mystery "Brigham City," although the actual violence was not even shown on camera. Others were offended that he showed missionaries playing practical jokes on one another and acting, well, like 19-year-old boys, never mind that Dutcher served a mission (in Mexico) and wrote the script based on personal experiences.