Morgan Spurlock's What Would Jesus Buy?

Christmas Documentary Predicts Shopocalypse

When Bill Talen came to New York City in the late 1990s, he found the city in a state of perpetual consumption. Dismayed at the growing shopping mall mentality, Talen took up a post with the sidewalk preachers as a street performer and a star was born.

Today, he is Reverend Billy and leader of the Church of Stop Shopping, and he's on a mission to save Christmas from the Shopocalypse: the end of mankind from consumerism, over-consumption and the fires of eternal debt!

His film, What Would Jesus Buy? produced by Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me) is hitting theaters now. Here, he preaches about his socio-spiritual transformation, and his ultimate goal: Saving the true meaning of Christmas.

Rev. Billy is trying encourage people to have a creative Christmas this year rather than getting on the interstate in your SUV and listening to the dashboard shout at you Buy! Spend!

You don't have to go that big box store full of sweatshop goods shipped around the world that wastes fossil fuels. Bring gift giving back to your neighborhoods, back to the local, intimate economy, Amen. Stand in your own front door and just assume the best you have to give your loved ones, you already have.

Instead, visit the ma and pop stores, the farmer's markets, the artisans with their wares they've been working with their hands, or the things you may have put in your closet and just forgot about from previous a Christmas.

In What Would Jesus Buy? Billy went across the United States from New York to Disneyland in two bio-diesel buses after leaving Buy Nothing Day in Times Square. They stopped at the Magnificent Mile in Chicago and the Mall of America in Minneapolis and all the way down to the headquarters of Wal-Mart and exorcised their front door.

They went down into Texas, where they had a revival. They headed out west, up and down the strip in Vegas on a flatbed truck and asked Christmas to approach. They went into ssuper-malls in Los Angeles and baptized a child in a Toys "R" Us parking lot, into a life that resists consumption.

They went to Disneyland on Christmas Day. Wal-Mart, Starbucks and Disney were a trinity of devils in the film. Talen started out as a performance artist ten years ago when was opposing Disney in Times Square. He joined the sidewalk preachers there. He pumped up his hair to Elvis proportions and wore a white tuxedo coat and a collar from the local religious supplies store.

He parodied right-wing apocalyptic preachers in The Church of Stop Shopping with "change-alujahs," performances and retail interventions inside big boxes and chain stores. Evangelical Christians are among the biggest supporters of this stop shopping message and of the movie. What Would Jesus Buy? is a question they are asking as well.

Out of the 100 biggest economies in the world, 51 of them are corporations and 49 of them are nation states. Those executives are the angriest and have banned them from all Disney property worldwide, banned from all the Starbucks and the CD has been banned from Wal-Mart.

They had to distribute the film ourselves because everybody was afraid of Wal-Mart; they're famously vindictive, vengeful business people and a lot of the big movie distributors won't touch them as a result. They've entered into the commercial means to get their message across, which some say is hypocritcal.

Visit Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping and the website for the feature film, What Would Jesus Buy?