Read My Year of Flops for Free Online Page B

ingesting ether out of a desire to clean up on William’s double-your-money-back guarantee but continues taking it because he really, really likes getting high. The film balances physical comedy and wrenching drama in the terrifying/amusing moment when a horrified Elizabeth stumbles upon her husband, who has gotten high on his own ether supply. He’s lying at his desk with a look of narcotized contentment, marveling approvingly at the metal rod he’s jammed into his hand. If
Road House
has taught us anything, it’s that pain doesn’t hurt, especially when accompanied by William’s magic elixir.
    William’s creation proves successful in a medical trial, but the Hippocratic Oath forbids doctors from using patent medicines with unknown ingredients, so William must decide between martyring himself for humanity’s sake and revealing his secrets, or holding on to his patents and his shot at unimaginable riches.
    By beginning at the story’s tragic conclusion and working diligently toward the middle,
The Great Moment
ends with William’s defining moment, his decision to sacrifice his own success so that others might be spared pain.
Moment
opens on a sustained note of funereal gloom but rouses itself to become a funny, vibrant, deeply sad look at the way the system fails dreamers and idealists. Paramount took the film away from Sturges, but his playful spirit pervades the production.
    Paramount sat on
The Great Moment
for two years before dumping it into theaters with a trailer breathlessly promising a far-fetchedyet improbably true yarn from “Hollywood’s madcap Preston Sturges, who created that laugh riot
Miracle At Morgan’s Creek
.”
    With its emphasis on raucous slapstick and overheated prose, the trailer is designed to mislead, yet it accidentally tells the truth. The only drama Hollywood’s madcap Preston Sturges directed doubles as a pretty terrific, surprisingly moving Preston Sturges comedy.
    Failure, Fiasco, Or Secret Success?
Secret Success
    Testifying Book-Exclusive Case File: Gospel Road: A Story Of Jesus
    There once lived an icon notorious for the violent nature of his art. He was a dark, troubled soul plagued by rapacious personal demons, a man whose battles with substance abuse were legendary. Yet this tortured soul clung to faith as a life preserver in a sea of darkness. A man of fierce contradictions and even fiercer convictions, this shadowy figure used the power, money, and clout he made peddling bloody entertainment to spread the Gospel.
    Ignoring the most sacrosanct commandment in all of entertainment—Thou shalt not invest thine own money—he sank much of his personal fortune into a supremely risky venture. Ignoring conventional wisdom, he traveled abroad to co-write, produce, and finance a movie about Jesus. Jesus had saved this tormented soul from himself and his compulsions; now he wanted to share that redemption with the secular world.
    We all know how this story ends, don’t we? With the mystery man in question triumphing over the skeptics and doubters en route to delivering one of the most commercially successful independent films of all time. Then he was undone by the Jew-run law-enforcement establishment and a sugar-titted lady cop one drunken night. Ah, but this isn’t a book about winners. It’s a tribute to the losers. So the man in question isn’t Mel Gibson, and the film isn’t
The Passion Of TheChrist.
No, I’m talking about Johnny Cash’s half-forgotten 1973 religious drama
Gospel Road: A Story Of Jesus.
    In the late ’60s and early ’70s, Cash was, in the hackneyed parlance of
Behind The Music,
riding high.
Live At Folsom Prison
(1968) resurrected his flagging career and rebranded him as a proud champion of the underdog. A year later,
At San Quentin
did even better, thanks to a bleakly funny Shel Silverstein–penned number called “A Boy Named Sue.” Cash’s beloved network