What Would Jesus Buy? Ask Savitri
Savitri D is coming to town on Friday.
The former Albemarle County resident who helped found the Zen Monkey Project is returning to town Friday to show us her latest project … “What Would Jesus Buy?”
It’s the must-see documentary/comedy that big chain stores don’t want you to see.
Savitri made the movie with her husband, Bill (Reverend Billy) Talen, director Rob VanAlkamade and the one and only Morgan Spurlock. Spurlock made the fast-food industry take notice when he made the Oscar-nominated documentary “Super Size Me.”
“Morgan is very ambitious and a great man,” Savitri said. “I have really come to respect his idea of America.
“He’s from West Virginia. He grew up working class, and he’s an old-fashioned populist. He doesn’t believe in these political divisions.
“He has a hopeful optimism about this country that I don’t always share,” but she learned.
“He told me this film could appeal to Christian audiences, and I was always really skeptical about that, but it’s turned out to be entirely true,” she said. “We have been screening this in churches, and it has generated a lot of discussion in the evangelical movement.
“So he was right. He can see things that I can’t see.
“ ‘Super Size Me’ literally saved lives. We know that.”
We also know that Savitri will be at the Regal on the Downtown Mall for a Q&A after the screening of the new film she made with Spurlock.
Hey, the Brooklyn girl might even tell you about the R&B gospel album she is recording this weekend with the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, or the grant they got to make a TV show for cable access stations.
“I would like to come down an do some work down there,” she said. “But I just haven’t really had a chunk of time big enough.”
It’s been almost three years since she appeared on stage in Charlottesville. It was for the Virginia Film Festival.
“We did a little show with Art Wheeler, the great Art Wheeler, at the old IGA there,” she said. “I guess the IGA is gone now.”
Yep. The shopping world changes.
But we’re glad Savitri D is coming back … if only for a day.
Posted by Mary Alice Blackwell at 04:39 PM. Filed under:
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Mary Alice Blackwell was a sportswriter for 11 years before turning in her scorebook to cover cops and courts. The Virginia Tech Hokie joined the staff of The Daily Progress in 1987 and has spent the past dozen or so years writing about actors, musicians, artists, authors and, occasionally, her running buddies. 
