Periodically over the last year I'd contact some Christian pop culture ministry to line up a visit for research, only to have them say, "Oh, we just had a gal from HBO down here." I pretty quickly found out that the gal was Alexandra Pelosi. I don't know how many of the same places we ended up visiting � Pelosi's project was not specifically focused on pop culture, the way my book is � but I'll find out tomorrow when Friends of God: A Road Trip With Alexandra Pelosi debuts.
Pelosi's insistance on shooting everything with a dinky handheld camera is a mixed blessing, as her diverting-but-not-engrossing breakthrough doc, Journeys with George, showed. It's unobtrusive, which gets her subjects to let down their guard, but the cinematic quality suffers, to say the least. Still, she's got an interesting topic here (I hope), so this should be worth a look. I used to get worried whenever something touching on my own subject matter would hit the market before mine, but my editor kept telling me that we should hope they all do well, to prove there's a audience. So go ahead and check out Friends of God tonight, and in a year or so you can see who captured the material better.
