Jesus’ Son

Alison Maclean
United States, 1999

Introduction

  • Jane Ciabattari

    Jane Ciabattari is a columnist for BBC Culture and Literary Hub and has contributed cultural criticism to The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Paris Review, and many other publications. 

  • Christian Kiefer

    Christian Kiefer is the author of The Animals, The Infinite Tides and One Day Soon Time Will Have No Place Left to Hide. He directs the low-residency M.F.A. program at Ashland University in Ohio.

  • ​Tom Barbash

     Tom Barbash is the author of The Last Good Chance,​ Stay Up With Me, On Top of the World, and the forthcoming novel The Dakota Winters. He teaches in the writing programs at California College of the Arts.

featuring

Billy Crudup, Samantha Morton, Holly Hunter, Dennis Hopper,

Denis Johnson’s linked short story collection, Jesus’ Son, is known as one of his masterworks. The introducing authors will discuss Johnson’s work generally, the man personally, and the nature and impact on Jesus’ Son specifically. 

“It’s a real challenge to make a film from a book you love fiercely, but Denis’s voice was our guide,” Alison Maclean said of adapting Denis Johnson’s book of stories, Jesus’ Son. “The delicacy with which this ensemble retains the essence of Johnson’s tales is a small miracle unto itself,” Betsy Sussler wrote in BOMB. “Maclean knows just when to break the rules of filmmaking—skipping back and forth in time, lifting the narrator’s voice from the book—and when to break the book’s form, creating a linear love story on which to hang a vision compelled by fracture. . . . [A] gem of a film.”

FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Elizabeth Cuthrell
  • David Urrutia
  • Oren Moverman
Based On

  • the book Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson

Cinematographer
  • Adam Kimmel
Print Info
  • Color
  • 35mm
  • 107 mins
Source
  • Lionsgate