Big Love

The New York Times Magazine has a piece on "Big Love" today.  If you haven't seen the show, give it a whirl.  TV is the best place to see women tearing up the screen and Bill Hendrick's three wives don't disappoint.  Nor does Bill's mother, his sister-in-law, his recently deceased sister-in-law, his compound mother-in-law, Barb's sister and mother, the almost fourth wife.  It's rich in acting, character and story.

A Polygamist's Polygamist

Friday was day two of the Warren Jeffs' trial.  He's the leader of a group of polygamists in Arizona.  I'm a big fan of the HBO show about a polygamist family, Big Love. The issue of forced under-age marriage isn't addressed on the show the way you imagine is the dirty truth. The Jeff's compound profit character, Roman Grant, played with evil glee by Harry Dean Stanton, was supposed to marry a young charge but she stowed away in the Hendrickson's SUV to reek manipulative havoc on greater Utah. That's not how girls raised in a compound are portrayed in the excellent documentary about Warren Jeffs, Damned to Heaven. As a lone investigator into the compounds many illegal activities says in the doc, "You can't deprogram them." All you can do is try and teach ex-members to survive in the outside world. While in the TV world of polygamy, Bill Hendrickson's tenuous hold on family unity, his business interests, and his relationship with a power-giving God are fun to watch, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near Jeffs. One of the lost boys from Colorado City, Arizona, said that Jeffs is actually shy, but power drives him to drone on in a flat monotone for mountains of taped lectures.

Damned to Heaven is in the same category as the wonderful and terrifying book Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer. Krakauer appears briefly in Damned to Heaven. Watch the Damned to Heaven trailer on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1cTk2cJQac