Oh yeah. I was crying like a little girl about having to blog more, and my business partners had just offered me a Kleenex.

ME: I can’t…(sob)…breathe…(sob)…in the blogosphere.

THEM: Here’s a tissue. Take the box. It’s a good thing you don’t act in your own movies, because you have zero believability.

This, frankly, hurt my feelings. I started rocking back and forth like Rainman in my Aeron chair, counting prime numbers with my fingers. This seemed to alarm them, as if maybe they’d pushed me too far. I could feel their resolve starting to crumble. Steve: 1 / Intervention: nil

Then one of them waved his Flip videocam in my face and threatened to post the footage he’d just secretly captured. Checkmate.

ME: So what do I blog about?

THEM: Blog about anything. Quantity is more important than quality.

ME: You mean, like mid-career Prince?

THEM: Huh?

ME: Give me examples.

THEM: Well… What would the Most Interesting Man In America blog about? Philosophy? Technology’s two-edged sword? The inner life of the aesthete? The age-old dialectic between art and commerce?

ME: No. No. What’s an aesthete? And no.

THEM: How about we post all those old music videos you directed and you can do a written director’s commentary? That way you can disguise your self-aggrandizement as an act of public service to your ever-shrinking fan base, all while reminding yourself of mistakes not to repeat when you finally make the movie?

ME: Hmm.

THEM (going for the kill): Blogging’s like a beauty contest. And the public is the panel of judges. You’re trying to convince the widest audience possible that you’re pretty.

ME (nodding solemnly): You’ve finally used a metaphor I can relate to.

So that’s the plan. I’m going to blog about stuff we can all relate to, like how I got those twins to cry in the “On The Fritz” video. And maybe I’ll blog about stuff that’s obscure, too. (I’ll shoot for one or two posts a week.) You’re going to tell people I’m pretty. And this will all make for a better movie.

The request lines are open.

I wish you could have been at my intervention yesterday.

I thought it was just going to be another weekly meeting with my business partners to update me on where they’re at raising funds for the “Blue Like Jazz” movie. Those meetings typically run something like this:

ME: So… where are we at?
THEM: We’re really close.

But this meeting was different. There was something in the office air that day. It smelled like a trap.

ME: So… (sniffing the air, eyes darting around the room for clues)… where are we at?
THEM: You need to blog more.

I sprang for the door. Too late – it had been locked from the outside. I briefly considered doing a Jason Bourne through the window, but it was really cold outside and I was underdressed.

So I plopped back down in my chair, exhaled through my nose, then suggested (with possibly a hint of sarcasm) that IF THEY WOULD CONSIDER PERFORMING THEIR NUMBER ONE FUNCTION AND GET THIS MOVIE FUNDED, PERHAPS I’D HAVE SOMETHING TO BLOG ABOUT!!!

Like any good Interventionists, they deftly turned the tables on me. Out came an impressive array of charts, pie graphs and metrics showing how every time I post a new blog, our website traffic spikes, the project’s profile gets raised, we garner more contacts, our streets become safer, and America’s Promise is renewed for generations to come.

I attempted the Humility Defense: I’m not an expert on anything, so why should anybody care about my opinions? They countered with another round of pie graphs proving that I was, in fact, the Most Interesting Man In America. Then they read aloud a personal note from Pope Benedict XVI with words to the effect that “for Steve Taylor to deprive the public of his insights would be considered a Mortal Sin.”

ME: Can I see that note?
THEM: No.

I told them The Pope wasn’t the boss of me. Then I stuck out my tongue and threatened to start being uninteresting just to prove a point. They said they didn’t care as long as it increased traffic.

I felt naked and cornered. I started to cry – deep, heaving sobs like I’d been taught in my Sanford Meisner Acting Technique workshops.

ME: I can’t…(sob)…breathe…(sob)…in the blogosphere.
THEM: Here’s a tissue. Take the box.

to be continued…

Perhaps you’ve asked me for one in the past – your new album, your latest book, your game-changing product, etc. I’ve politely declined after explaining to you that I’ve maintained a non-endorsement policy for years just so I don’t have to pick and choose who to say yes to. My friends all say they understand. I’m pretty sure they don’t.

This non-endorsement policy of mine is, admittedly, hypocritical:
1) I’ve occasionally solicited endorsements in the past for worthy causes. (Thank you, Mr. Campolo, etc.)
2) I’ve never been offered big money to push a product. How would I respond if, say, Steve Jobs needed “Am I In Sync?” to shill the iPad? (Hmm… the more I imagine that commercial, the more I think it’s a perfect fit.)
3) There are a tiny handful of situations where I’ve violated my own rule. The One Campaign, for example. But when Bono says jump…

I tell you all this to set up my non-endorsement of a movie I’d like you to consider seeing this weekend. The producers haven’t asked me for a shout-out, and it’s already been in theaters a few weeks. But To Save A Life is surprisingly good.

It didn’t sound promising going in. Produced by a church. Written by a youth pastor. Directed by a first-timer. Have we not heard this set-up before? Did we not squirm at the results?

But To Save A Life is different. The acting was generally good, especially the high schoolers. The situations were plausible. And despite its miniscule budget, the movie looks and sounds just fine.

But more important, this is a movie that presents a realistic view of the church. The youth group has its share of hypocrites. The pastor’s kid is a pot-smoking reprobate. The basketball star has a conversion experience midway through the movie… then things get worse for him. Yes, things eventually get better, but, as in life, not all the loose ends get neatly tied up before the movie comes to its believably satisfying ending. (Satisfying, that is, unless you’re big fans of that other church’s movies.)

We’ve all heard Voltaire’s quote that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” To Save A Life is not a perfect movie. (And I speak from experience on that count.) But it’s breaking new ground, and it’s good enough that it would be ungenerous to waste any of my non-endorsement picking on its faults.

Go see it, and tell me what you think.

Yes, I let this go on for an extra day or so, but I was having so much
fun reading your guesses.
The Winner of the One-Word Error Prize is Jackie R, who correctly
guessed the shocking truth from page
228 of “A Million Miles In A Thousand Years.”

It wasn’t sweat. It was snot.

I tried so hard to hold it in, but gravity had the final say. And even
though it’s been twenty-eight years since the actual occurrence, just
writing this makes my gag reflex kick in.

Jackie, your prize is a very stylish, very rare “Blue Like Jazz” movie
t-shirt. 100% cotton. 100% snot-free.

Neither did I.

I did, however, just finish reading about myself in Donald Miller’s new book “A Million Miles In A Thousand Years.”

The experience is not easily described. I’ve had it happen a few times in the past, but they weren’t always very memorable books, so I’d tend to skip ahead to the parts I was in, smile or cringe at the passage in question, then stick the book on an upper shelf next to the other books-that-I-won’t-be-reading-but-can’t-sell-at-a-garage-sale-in-case-the-author-drops-by.

“A Million Miles…” is different. I’m not here to review it (yes, it’s superb, but you’ve probably heard that by now). I’m here to relate the exhilaration and terror of opening a book that a million people are going to read and seeing your name in print, over and over again.

Like most of you, I read “Blue Like Jazz” a few years ago. Unlike most of you, I then got to meet and hang out with characters from the book over the next three years. Like Penny. And Laura. And Rick the Pastor. In each case, Don had managed to describe a certain “essence” about them that struck me as absolutely true to the real person. I can’t tell you if every detail in “Blue Like Jazz” is exact. But I know that Penny is exactly the person you’d hope she’d be after reading about her.

And that’s what made my palms sweat as I opened to the first page of “A Million Miles…” As a recording artist, I’d spent years cultivating some sort of public image (it was, admittedly, a small-ish percentage of the public…), then trying, with varying degrees of success, to live up to it. Much of the cultivating was deliberate, some was probably subconscious, and all of it, as Christians should know, is ultimately futile. But Don and I, over the last few years, had spent weeks at a time working together and hanging out. He’d gotten to know me pretty well. And now, in the pages of his new book, Donald Miller was going to reveal my true, uncultivated, private essence. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. And it was too late to call lawyers.

Some random impressions from my reading of “A Million Miles…”:

- I don’t recall ever getting up from my chair. (I have the bladder of a superhero.)
- I do recall laughing out loud. A lot.
- This time, unlike when I first read “Blue Like Jazz,” I knew almost all the characters. And I must say that Don’s portrayal of each seemed true to the person I knew.
- The book was strangely motivational. I’ve taken a few leaps of faith in my life, but reading “A Million Miles…” made me want to take more.

And what about me? How do I come off?

Well… Don’s a gracious guy, so who am I to argue with his flattering portrayal? I come off as quite a bit wiser than I am in real life. I stammer a lot less. He tends to focus on the good ideas I had for the screenplay and thankfully fails to mention the dumb ones. He perfectly portrays my long time friend and collaborator Ben Pearson, who is the glue that’s kept this entire movie enterprise from falling apart. And the details, as I recall them, are pretty accurate – on the first day we really did go kayaking through the snow-covered streets of his Portland neighborhood, etc.

But there is one detail pertaining to me that he got wrong. Maybe it was accidental. Or maybe he was afraid that the raw truth was too horrific for print. I guess I could ask him. But I’m thinking it might be more fun to turn this into a game…

If anyone out there can be the first to correctly identify and post the factual error pertaining to me in Donald Miller’s awesome new book, “A Million Miles In A Thousand Years,” I’ll send you a prize. (I’d send you the book, but I’m guessing that would be redundant.)

And here’s a hint: It occurs in the last few chapters. And it’s a one-word error.

When I first read “Blue Like Jazz” over three years ago, it left me with that same All Glowy feeling your comments gave me – a feeling that I’m not alone, and I’m not delusional, and this book is part of the proof.

Our goal for “Blue Like Jazz” is to make a great movie that leaves the audience with that same All Glowy feeling so many of us got when we first read the book:

We’re not alone. We’re not delusional. And this movie, Lord willing, will be part of the proof.

If “Using Profanity” was one of the Seven Deadly Sins, I’d be feeling pretty good about myself right now. Sadly, it’s not. In fact, I just googled “Seven Deadly Sins” – Expletive Hurling is nowhere on the list, and of the Seven that are, I’m pretty sure I’ve broken them all in the last thirty six hours.

I mention this as a way of easing into a potentially controversial topic in some circles regarding the Blue Like Jazz movie…

The screenwriting software I use has a feature called “profanity statistics” wherein all the expletives in a screenplay are magically counted and displayed in a tally. While the CussCount™ for Blue Like Jazz is lower than Al Pacino’s shootout scene in Scarface, it is considerably higher than all the Pixar movies combined.

For most of you reading this – No Big Deal. You assume that a movie set on the “most godless campus in America” is going to contain some measure of “language.” You don’t want it to be gratuitous, like that final shootout scene in Scarface (although who among us can judge what’s gratuitous when we’re riddled with bullets and high on cocaine?). But you expect, in a movie like ours, to hear a certain number of ****s, ****s, ***es, and possibly even the judicious use of ******* when spoken solely as an adjective.

But there are others of you who question the need for any profanity in Blue Like Jazz. After all, there isn’t any in the book, right? Aren’t there plenty of other movies set on college campuses that are good, clean fun for the whole family?

Good points all. While it’s true that the book managed to skirt the issue via Don’s first person narrative, our movie unfolds in dialogue, not voiceover. And yes, there are plenty of college-set movies you can take the kids to, although I believe most were filmed in black and white and include Flubber in the title.

For those who take issue with this news, please know that I’m sympathetic to your concerns. We, the screenwriters, really wrestled with the issue, and while our hope is that we’ve struck an appropriate balance, we suspect that when the movie’s released, your complaints about too much bad language will be countered by those who wanted more.

In the meantime, we offer this olive branch to fans wanting the language scrubbed: We’re open to your suggestions. Really. Please post a reply with your favorite non-curse word or phrase, use it in a sentence, and we’ll try out the best ones as alternate takes.

And for all you merry pranksters who might be tempted to lace your reply with expletives – don’t be an ******.

Are you just so excited about Blue Like Jazz the Movie that you want to shout it from the rooftops?  While we can’t provide literal rooftops from which you can shout, we are accepting virtual outpourings of love from YOU, our favorite fans.

Here’s the deal:  a lot of people are asking “Why are you making a Blue Like Jazz movie?  How is that going to work?”  We thought the best way to answer that question would be to let you answer it.

So how do you do it?  It’s simple!

1) Record a video of yourself explaining why you love Blue Like Jazz (the book), Donald Miller (the author), Steve Taylor (the director) and (most importantly) why you are so excited about the movie.

2) Submit it to our Vimeo group here.

3) Tell your friends to do the same!

As a part of our efforts to raise money for the film and ensure that we’re developing a screenplay that works for the multitude of constituencies that are required to make a film successful (e.g. fans of Blue Like Jazz and Don Miller, investors, grassroots organizations, studios, the prospective audience, etc.), we’ve asked a number of folks if they would read the screenplay and provide feedback. We know many of you care deeply about how this project is managed and want to see the best movie possible made. Many of the early comments on Don’s blog and our site were more akin to “don’t screw this up!” than “I can’t wait to see the movie.”

Outside feedback on the screenplay has kept us on track and allowed us to quickly recognize where we’ve missed the mark and what we’ve needed to do to shepherd the story to box office greatness.  Below is some feedback from one such reviewer, Gabe Lyons, one of the authors of UnChristian and founder of the Fermi Project that hosts the popular Q conference.  It’s incredibly encouraging to hear this kind of feedback.

From Gabe: