About Greg & Jenn Wright: Greg and Jenn Wright have been married since 1999, and share passions for God, drama, literature and movies (among other things). In 2003, they were honored as Best Actor and Best Actress in a production of While the Lights Were Out at Redwood Theatre in Redmond, Washington; since then, health issues have kept them off the stage. Freelance writers and editors, they both have degrees in Literature and Theology, and are proud to be members of Harambee Church in Renton. Greg is Writer in Residence at Puget Sound Christian College in Everett, Washington, and is the author of 
Notre Dame Report
November 15, Greg delivered a lecture at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana, as part of the Center for Ethics and Culture's Fall Catholic Writers Lecture Series. This year's featured writer was J. R. R. Tolkien, and Greg was invited to speak specifically on the film adaptations of Tolkien's work. The title of Greg's talk was "Missing the Spirit: The Scouring of the Shire, Tolkien's Catholicism and Peter Jackson's The Return of the King."
The focus of Greg's lecture was twofold: first, how the excision of The Scouring of the Shire in the LOTR films neuters the theme of mercy in Tolkien's work, and how director Peter Jackson's failure to understand Tolkien's faith led to a very different depiction of mercy in the films. The lecture, which closed out the series, was well received.
Other speakers in the weekly lecture series included Baylor's Dr. Ralph Wood, author of The Gospel According to Tolkien, and Joseph Pearce, Writer in Residence at Ave Maria College and author of Tolkien: Man and Myth (among many other scholarly works). We met Dr. Wood at the conference in Birmingham, England last August, and Greg corresponded with Mr. Pearce while researching his first book.
Prior to the lecture, we had dinner with eight of Notre Dame's undergraduate students, to give them a chance for some extended Q&A about Tolkien and the movies. More Q&A followed the lecture, and the evening concluded with a signing of Greg's book, Peter Jackson in Perspective.
While we were in South Bend, we had lunch with Tom Price, another of the Hollywood Jesus reviewers, and Greg did an extensive interview with the local paper.
We also did a live segment on The Harvest Show, an internationally syndicated Christian TV program, and were interviewed by the program's hosts about The Chronicles of Narnia. It was the first TV appearance for both of us! What a hoot. And thank God that He didn't allow us to embarrass Him on live global TV! After the live show was taped, Greg did an additional taped segment about Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings.
It's good the ministerial end of the trip went well, because the travel end was not so hot. We had to rebook our flight the night before our departure because the rescheduled layover in Chicago got so short that United considered it an "illegal connection." After a not-too-with-it phone booking agent tried to maroon us in Santa Barbara, we finally wound up with a flight that got us to our hotel about midnight. Ugh. On the return trip, area snowstorms and ice delayed our 20-minute flight from South Bend to O'Hare in Chicago so much that we almost missed the connection.
Winter travel through O'Hare. 1 degree temps. What a pain!
The focus of Greg's lecture was twofold: first, how the excision of The Scouring of the Shire in the LOTR films neuters the theme of mercy in Tolkien's work, and how director Peter Jackson's failure to understand Tolkien's faith led to a very different depiction of mercy in the films. The lecture, which closed out the series, was well received.
Other speakers in the weekly lecture series included Baylor's Dr. Ralph Wood, author of The Gospel According to Tolkien, and Joseph Pearce, Writer in Residence at Ave Maria College and author of Tolkien: Man and Myth (among many other scholarly works). We met Dr. Wood at the conference in Birmingham, England last August, and Greg corresponded with Mr. Pearce while researching his first book.
Prior to the lecture, we had dinner with eight of Notre Dame's undergraduate students, to give them a chance for some extended Q&A about Tolkien and the movies. More Q&A followed the lecture, and the evening concluded with a signing of Greg's book, Peter Jackson in Perspective.
While we were in South Bend, we had lunch with Tom Price, another of the Hollywood Jesus reviewers, and Greg did an extensive interview with the local paper.
We also did a live segment on The Harvest Show, an internationally syndicated Christian TV program, and were interviewed by the program's hosts about The Chronicles of Narnia. It was the first TV appearance for both of us! What a hoot. And thank God that He didn't allow us to embarrass Him on live global TV! After the live show was taped, Greg did an additional taped segment about Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings.
It's good the ministerial end of the trip went well, because the travel end was not so hot. We had to rebook our flight the night before our departure because the rescheduled layover in Chicago got so short that United considered it an "illegal connection." After a not-too-with-it phone booking agent tried to maroon us in Santa Barbara, we finally wound up with a flight that got us to our hotel about midnight. Ugh. On the return trip, area snowstorms and ice delayed our 20-minute flight from South Bend to O'Hare in Chicago so much that we almost missed the connection.
Winter travel through O'Hare. 1 degree temps. What a pain!
2 Comments:
Hi, Greg! You and Jenn happened to be in my "neck of the woods" during one of the coldest Decembers in decades! I will have to search the web site of the local paper and the TV station to see what I can find! Have a Merry Christmas!
Mark Sommer
Yeah, we got out of there just in time! It started snowing as we left South Bend, and literally got to O'Hare just in time to make the shuttle between concourses and be the last ones on the plane to Seattle! What a potential nightmare.
Remember that photgrapher who was taking so many pictures that someone passed him a note to stop (which I found more distracting than the flash photography itself)? I never found out who he was taking pictures for. But the South Bend paper is doing a lead Faith section story on my lecture. It's supposed to run on Dec. 29.
It was good to meet you! Too bad we didn't have more time to chat (and that the lecture topic wasn't one of your favorites). But I do appreciate the effort you put into making the lecture.
We hope to be out that way as part of the Center of Ethics and Culture's first film series sometime next fall.
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