The Cokeville Miracle (GAM253)

Noah Lugeons

Heath Enwright

***The Cokeville Miracle*** is the story of an elementary school bombing that has the word "miracle" in it! In the title. It's *Trolling for Columbine* the Christian movie–the Mormon movie, technically.

### **Opening Phrase**

Where each week we sample another selection from Christian cinema, because sometimes I'm *so* white I oppress myself.

### **How Bad Was It?**

Well, if you wanna hear how God works in mysterious ways, but first you need to sit through an hour of made-for-tv reconstruction of a real life terrorist attack, you will *love* this movie. It's like if *Schindler's List* had ended with a rainbow appearing over Auschwitz.

### **Best Worst**

* Heath: ...best best little kids harassing a terrorist. ["You smell like Peaches."]
* Noah: ...GAM selection. [We're looking at you Eli.]
* Marsh: ...protagonist? [Our main character spends the vast majority of the film two hours away in a car.]

### **Notes**

* Check out Marsh on Twitter, *Be Reasonable*, *Skeptics with a K*, and at The Good Thinking Society or Skeptic of the Year.
* On the film's website, the synopsis and press kit still have "it's" instead of "its", and the "Fun Facts" link includes "Hostage Crisis Facts" like "Total Injured: 79" and "Number of Witnesses Claiming Angelic Visions: 8."

### **Jokes**

* [Noah: So now we cut to a school in Wyoming—the school day starting—and I gotta say, you know when you were a kid, you'd have friends come over or whatever and your family would be getting into an argument or there would be something embarrassing, like some family ritual or something? *That's* how I felt knowing that Marsh would be watching this scene that opens with the Pledge of Allegiance.] [Marsh: *Oh yeah*. For me, the only thing creeper than having to have your country's flag in every single classroom—sounds like something that if you described North Korea doing that, most Americans would think "That's pretty weird" (no, you've got it in all of your classrooms)—the only thing weirder than that is having all of the kids chant—in unison—a pledge of allegiance to that flag while one of them holds that flag. It is *psychotic* to watch this.] [Heath: Wait, Marsh, you don't have that in the UK?] [Marsh: No!] [Heath: How do you know what country you're heiling? I don't understand.] [Marsh: Well, that's because in all British classrooms we've got a map of the world which not only has us on it, it also has all of the bits that we used to own by stealing it from people around the world. And that's a pretty colorful map by this point. So we're very much acquainted with the world, because we had to know where our territory used to end, so yeah, we all know these things. We don't know a lot *about* them, but we do know them.]] (15:55)
* [Heath: And then the last thing they show us—this is insane to me—in text: "Other times, a bunch of kids got killed at schools from terrorism. We don't know why."] [Noah: I can tell you! It's 'ause your God doesn't *exist*! I know the answer!] [Heath: Why put that in the movie?] [Noah: Because they feel like they nailed it with that next bit, where it says (and I quote): "Yet even in Christ's day, not every leper was healed nor every blind person made to see." And I'm like "I agree! Christ was a dick!"] [Heath: Yeah, that's a thinker. That's a thinker. What the fuck? So basically, "Nonetheless, God is *mostly* nailing this"—that could be the title of the movie.] [ [Noah: Think about how many kids he *didn't* blow up though. Of *all* the kids…"] (1:49:04)

### **Interstitials**

* First Writer's Room Meeting (6:50)
* Our Very Own Fireworks Store! (1:05:03)

### **Tropes**

* Angry Yelling At God
* Atheist Converts to Christianity
* Cancer Wife/God Killed My Mom/Evil Stole My Faith
* Christians Don't Know How the World Works
* Coincidence Treated like a Miracle
* Indoctrination of Children
* Jingly Keys! [Literally]
* Looks Like
* Make Me a Sammich!
* SEXISM!
* Neglectful/Godless /Abusive Parent
* This is YOUR Movie!
* World Without Black People

### **Links**

* Episode on Audioboom
* Episode on YouTube
* Film on YouTube
* IMDB

### **Ad Reads**

* Adam & Eve: Handing the Stay in Place Stuff (1:53:13)