Jesse A. Schroeder

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A really great night - we saw Call+Response, which is a movie that everyone should go see...really. Here are the reasons:

1. If you love music, there are great live recorded sessions with artists like Matisyahu, Moby, Imogen Heap (my personal fav from the movie), and Switchfoot - great live footage, and great music - visit the website to listen to whole soundtrack
   
2. The issue of the international slave industry is urgent, and the movie offers great information, and a great call to action. It is inspiring, encouraging, convicting, sickening, and overwhelming - see the short YouTube clip below for some stats on international slavery:
3. Independent films need to be supported in the movie theaters! I rarely pay full price ($9) for a movie, but I would gladly pay to see this again, simply for the reason that independent films that address real issues in the world have to be supported. We vote with our wallets and our dollars, and what we pay money to see on the big screen with determine what the industry spends time making movies about in the future.

So after the movie, we walked down the street to Cup O' Joe, which was packed out, mainly because this research group was feverishly interviewing as many people as possible. Their questions centered around movie theater concessions, especially candy. Seriously. Here is a brief sampling of some of the questions we were asked:

• Do you typically buy candy when you go to the movies, and what candy do you buy?
• Why do you buy that candy and not something else? (the obvious answer, "because I like it" was never good enough - they kept asking for other reasons)
• How do you eat your candy? All at once? Do you want it to last through the entire movie? Do you mix it with popcorn or a drink? Do you eat the candy piece-by-piece, or handfuls?
• Do you prefer candy that makes crunchy sounds or that is softer and is quieter to eat?
  
• Do you like the packaging the candy comes in? What other candies do you wish were offered?

I could not stop laughing during this survey! The questions were so specifically bizarre and offered incredibly useless information! We just continued to give basically made up answers because at the end of it all, we each (all three of us) got $20 gift cards to AMC theaters - they were giving out dozens of these gift cards in the coffee shop! And they had a running tab for coffee or pastries! We could order whatever we wanted and put it on the tab for the research group. Wild....

So I was faced with this incredible contrast between an independent film dealing with a global human rights issue, begging people just to care, to get involved, to tell a friend - juxtaposed with some million dollar research group paying for everyone's coffee and passing out $20 gift cards like they were business cards. And I thought about how America is in this totally flipped upside down position where our lives are driven by consumerism and consumer choices. This research group could spend all of this time and money (there were about 6 different people doing surveys, all staying in hotels in town, all flown in from around the country) because some candy company wanted more information on how to package, market, and sell more candy to make more money.

- - - - - The human trafficking of 27 million slaves across the world - - - - - - Selling more candy in movie theaters - - - - - -

In America, these two are one and the same - and in fact, selling candy gets more attention, more money, more effort put into it because the profit is greater. One of the lines in the movie said that people don't buy and sell slaves because they are mean, but because they turn a huge profit. Someone is trying to make more money, and they realized they can make a lot more by forcing someone to work for them for no pay. Someone else realized they can make a lot of money by selling candy in certain shaped boxes with different labels at movie theaters.

"For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil" (ref)

So please, spend your money on a cause that needs to receive more attention. Go see the movie Call+Response. Check out the website - support local films, local charities, and global needs. Vote with your wallet every day for the issues and the causes that are really important. At least more important than whether you bought Junior Mints or Twizzlers.

BTW - thinking about all those serious questions about candy made me think of this great scene from Seinfeld.....