“Jesus Was A Cross Maker” - Elizabethtown’s opening music
Elizabethtown opens with a surprising musical choice, ‘Jesus Was A Cross Maker.’ This haunting song about a ’sweet silver angel’ compliments images of a helicopter coming in for a landing at a shoe company’s headquarters. Why did Crowe choose it?
I always loved it. It is evocative of Judee Sill, a great singer who’s been forgotten. This was her classic. The Hollies [a British pop band] covered it. This is their caffeinated, poppy version. I liked the contrast of something authentic being said in an almost inauthentic way. Just like our lead character, Drew Baylor. Things with Drew will get deeper and the songs will get even truer. — Cameron Crowe
Psalm 139. It is a prayer, asking God to search us and know us and reveal the aspects of our lives that may be inauthentic. Efforts to hide our true selves from God are futile because wherever we go, God’s Spirit is already there. In fact, no one knows us better than God, the one who created us.
Psalm 139 — A David psalm
1GOD, investigate my life; get all the facts firsthand.
2I’m an open book to you;
even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
3You know when I leave and when I get back;
I’m never out of your sight.
4You know everything I’m going to say
before I start the first sentence.
5I look behind me and you’re there,
then up ahead and you’re there, too–
your reassuring presence, coming and going.
6This is too much, too wonderful–
I can’t take it all in!
23Investigate my life, O God,
find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
get a clear picture of what I’m about;
24See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong–
then guide me on the road to eternal life.
Lawfully and gratefully excerpted from the from the Elizabethtown Bible study at www.hollywoodjesus.com. Craig Detweiler is a screenwriter and author of ‘A Matrix of Meanings: Finding God in Pop Culture.’ He chairs the film/TV/radio program at Biola University in La Mirada, California. He’d like to have the Flaming Lips - ‘Soft Bulletin’ played at his funeral.
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