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I’m back! (For the moment, anyway.)

I’m back! (For the moment, anyway.)

Last updated on: October 29, 2024 at 12:51 am by Dan Peterson

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I’m back! (For the moment, anyway.) 2024-10-29T00:51:39-06:00 Dan Peterson

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The Tuxtla Gutiérrez México Temple, the seventy-fifth operating temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

To the nearly giddy delight of several folks on the Peterson Obsession Board, Six Days in August has, thus far, considerably underperformed our hopes and expectations at the box office. As a consequence, it will probably not last much longer in theaters. So, if you’ve been a’thinkin’ about seein’ it someday on a big screen, you might want to take action very soon in that regard.

On the Obsession Board, explanations for the film’s relatively unimpressive performance in theaters tend to emphasize its miserably low quality — despite the fact that, so far as I can tell, the overwhelming majority of those who have actually seen it (as most of the Obsession Board folks seem not to have done) have liked Six Days in August very, very much. This is especially so if we disregard the handful of very jaundiced reviews from those (including a couple from the Obsession Board itself) who went into the theater already determined, whether on ideological grounds or out of personal disdain for me or out of some combination of the two, to dislike the movie and to find fault with it.

Another Obsession Board theme is that the movie’s lackluster box office results represent a deliciously gratifying rebuke to me, personally. And that may be true, of course, although it’s very unlikely that the general Latter-day Saint theater-going public knows me well enough to dislike me as much and as comprehensively as I deserve to be disliked.

The problem, so far as I can determine, is not that people who attended screenings of the film hated it. The problem is that too few people attended screenings of the film in the first place.

Well, we move on.

On the Obsession Board, it has been suggested that there will soon be a shake-up, a coup, within the Interpreter Foundation, putting an end to what is being called my “personal vanity projects.” I’ve tried to make the predicted revolution as easy as possible for the two other members of the Interpreter Board who are along on this Interpreter Foundation tour. (They are Steve Densley, Interpreter’s executive vice president, and Larry Ainsworth.) I have asked only that they dispatch me quickly and, if possible (out of respect for our current whereabouts and the area’s rich history), by means of either an obsidian blade or a green jade one.

Happily, as we were creating Six Days in August we were also, at the same time, gathering footage and conducting on-camera scholarly interviews for the documentary or docudrama that we have always intended to follow the theatrical film within about a year or so. Consequently, much of the documentary sequel, though by no means all of it, has already been created.

Some of you may be wondering, by the way, why I haven’t been doing anything here on this blog or on Facebook for the past several days. I had actually written, in my immediately previous blog entry, that

For the next two weeks or so, I’m not going to be able to spend as much time on my computer as I typically do. I won’t be able to manage this blog as well as I usually do, or to respond as quickly to emails and comments. I’ll miss all or almost all of the criticism and mockery aimed my way at the Peterson Obsession Board. I’ll be otherwise occupied, and I won’t always have access to the internet. Perhaps not even, reliably, every day. I’ll do my best, but it can’t altogether be helped. I apologize for that in advance.

Well, I didn’t know the half of it. My computer absolutely failed me during the three or four minutes that intervened between my posting that last blog entry from the main building of the Jungle Lodge at the Parque Nacional Tikal, in Guatemala, and my trying (and failing) to restart the computer again in our bungalow. I don’t know what happened. With the expert technical assistance of my brother-in-law, who is here in place of my wife — who reluctantly dropped out of the trip because of an injured foot — we tried all manner of things to regain access to the computer, including conversations with the folks at Apple. Finally, we determined to try to load a new operating system, which proved difficult (when not altogether impossible) because of poor internet service in remote locations. After two or three nights of trying, though, we managed to download it — only to find that the computer looked completely new (and empty). And tonight, after a very long day of travel and a very late arrival at our hotel for a very late dinner, I turned it on again and everything was back to normal. Very mysterious. And I keep expecting it to fail again . . .

Anyway, I apologize to those who may have been frustrated by my inattention to emails and comments and questions and the like. I couldn’t do anything about it. Now, though, I seem to be back again. (We’ll see how long it lasts.). But I’m still traveling, and mostly without internet access except at nighttime.

At the Obsession Board, two or three of the leading theoreticians have suggested that I’m in southern Mexico on a hastily-arranged vacation not only because I’m shirking my responsibilities but because I’m hiding from angry donors. Those infuriated donors are upset with me, so the suggestion goes, because of the way I looted their bank accounts in order to fund my dismal but hilariously incompetent “vanity project,” Six Days in August. Actually, of course, this is a long-planned Interpreter Foundation educational tour, and not a few of our significant donors are right here with us. When they all plunge their jade or obsidian knives into me sometime during the next few days, I expect, it will be impossible to determine which of them struck the actual fatal blow. (As if anybody would care, of course, unless it were to bestow some sort of prize on the hero on behalf of a grateful public.)

Posted from Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, México

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