Slacking Towards Bethlehem: J.R. 'Bob' Dobbs and the Church of the SubGenius (2019)

Slacking Towards Bethlehem: J.R. ‘Bob’ Dobbs and the Church of the SubGenius: Directed by Sandy K. Boone. With Vicki Amorose, Susan Barrows, Trevor Blake, Gerald Casale. The Church of the SubGenius has been called “the most aggressively preposterous theology the world has ever known!” But what is the Church? Filmmaker Sandy K. Boone explores the underground movement that has galvanized the imaginative, the artistic, the nerdy, even the deranged – to examine the simmering dystopia in their culture, and do absolutely nothing about it – except, maybe, poke fun at it all.

“Unlike most Church of the SubGenius content out there, this feels more honest and behind the scenes. Some good interviews of people out of character talking about success, failure and confusion.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe film does an excellent job of covering a sub-section of people in the 80s, 90s and beyond. It talks about the world of eccentrics who donu0026#39;t fit in, finding each other in a pre-Internet world. Music, video, performance art and alienation.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe movie shifts quite a bit post 1998, and itu0026#39;s easy to consider this an inferior section. However, the Church itself went into a sort of hibernation mode/existential crisis at that point and continues to do so. Yet itu0026#39;s still here. The film does a good job covering why, with real world events that forced the organization to reassess itu0026#39;s place in the world.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI would have liked to see a few more things mentioned. Like anything about the Arise! video. Or how the Churchu0026#39;s clipart collage messaging likely helped shape Internet memes. But overall I think itu0026#39;s worth watching to see a little behind the scenes of something that impacted (and still does) the lives of some very interesting and often talented people.”