However, I thought the net was positive in light of how the church had mostly been treated by the media up to that point. Given the liberal/leftish anti-Christian bent of PBS, they could have done a lot worse in representing the church.

I thought they gave the church short shrift in the Margaret Toscano topic. And, at the same time, they made Ms Toscano look bad to faithful believing Mormons who are familiar with the excommunication process. Taken at face value, her segment made me think “She (Ms. Toscano) still doesn’t get it.”

Since you brought up Helen Whitney, and it sounds like you have some communication with here, does she have any plans to release The Mormons on DVD that can have the piece portray what she wanted (instead of the timelimit guidelines and things like that)? Almost like a “Director’s Cut” edition of her documentary?

I kept getting the impression that she wanted to hit so much, but because of time constraints (or maybe the complexity) she was only able to go so deep.

I’ll let my DC peeps know about the showing. Hopefully we can get it out here in the mountains soon.

Helen Whitney told me that her documentary as finally edited didn’t do justice to the race issue–which was not her fault but the fault of the people who had final cut say. Her own director’s cut has lots more detail. And Darius was truly upset that the only thing the final cut of _The Mormons_ kept of his interview was an awful statement he quoted from John Taylor. Anyone who knows Darius knows that he unabashedly bears his testimony regardless of his audience. He did that for Helen’s cameras also, but it was cut. Our doc gives him an opportunity to say what he wants to say.