What Would Jesus Bench?
WOBURN, MASS., USA
Listening to: The Folk Implosion, The New Folk Implosion

'm not an especially religious guy. Neither is Hoffmaster -- we both had kind of a rough time getting away from our church upbringings, in fact. But where I was raised in a conservative but basically reasonably religious home, Hoffmaster's parents were the sort that collected evangelical junk -- everything from the Jesus fish car decal to the Jesus sports figurines to the Jesus fish eating the Darwin fish car decal. Tim's still kind of into it, to be honest. So while Hoffmaster's escaped the belief system, he still tends to see religion as little more than a marketing avenue: Jesus as brand. The 95 theses of lifestyle shopping.

I'm telling you this as background for what would otherwise seem like a ridiculous story.

Ever since the Big Dig started, Hoffmaster's been taking an alternate route into the office. (Just in case you don't know, the Big Dig is this big highway project in which Boston's section of interstate 93 is being put underground. That's right.) Instead of I-93, he's had to use surface streets, which have him driving through Milton everyday. There's a billboard down there, on the side of a Starbucks, that says, "Exercise daily. Walk with the Lord." I've been reading some media effects studies lately, courtesy of my cousin, and it appears that Hoffmaster was significantly affected.

One day it just became a critical mass for him. From the parking garage he called both myself and the guy he'd recently brought in to consult on media projects, Lew Walsh, one-time bigshot at Rhino. The record label buyout had gone so well that Hoffmaster started to feel like entertainment was the place to be. He did something similar with home video, bringing back into print a few favorite obscure movies, and he'd lately been thinking about original, direct-to-video productions.

So he steps quickly from the elevator, tosses his office door open and gestures us in. Then, three words: "Jesus exercise video." He described this idea, barely coherently, which he'd apparently developed over the previous 45 minutes in traffic. It was sort of hard to understand, but I know I picked up something about spandex robes and sacrament supplements. Sometimes he had these manic, off his rocker moments. I'd gotten used to them. Usually they passed quickly, like the time he thought the DVD explosion meant the laserdisc market was ripe for the picking. This one didn't pass. That afternoon he had me and the research team looking into popular exercise video formats and directors; he put Lew onto finding someone to play Jesus. Our info was sent Lew's way, as well, and that was the last I heard of it for a while.

A couple months later, Hoffmaster hands me a video cassette; the label says "BODY AND SOUL: EXERCISE WITH JESUS V1 WORKPRINT." I pop it in. Immediately, I could see the target audience: middle-aged WASP women who know their husbands didn't want them getting too chunky, praise God. Not quite soccer moms, because they didn't want their kids mixing with the non-Christian kids at soccer. All of them were named Becky Sue Raeburn, and they all lived in Atlanta. Many of them were featured under the opening graphics, jogging with Jesus, spinning with Jesus, doing pilates with Jesus, etc.

That wasn't even close to the best part. Jesus himself was played by a spindly, vaguely effeminate guy and the part was taken on in a very verité way. "I had to stay in top shape to walk the roads of Israel, spreading God's love. Now I want to share my methods with you." Around him were three blonde Becky Sues and one token black woman. While they stretched, touching their toes, Jesus told them to glare down at Satan. "That's what I did when I was training to face him." It was terrible. Hoffmaster loved it. He already had future volumes in mind, to focus on getting holy abs or what have you.

When the time drew near, Lew got in touch with somebody at The 700 Club, hoping to get this tape in front of everyone who'd been duped into buying "The Clinton Chronicles." I'm told they laughed and politely declined. Hoffmaster was annoyed but not discouraged. He'd been fascinated by the way church groups had bought out theatres for Christian movies like "The Omega Code" and "Left Behind," even though most of the tickets went unused, just to get those movies into the box office top ten and the public consciousness. He decided to do the same with the Jesurcize tape.

Upon release, there was little attention paid to the tape. But over its first few weeks on store shelves, it began to make its way up the sales charts. What was happening is that Hoffmaster was buying up -- but not buying out -- inventory from stores across the market, on-line and off. The tapes went to a selection of charities administered by HF&C, and from there made their way to church-run community centers and youth groups. Technically, he was laundering the tapes, but since there was no profit to be had from it, I doubt anybody cared.

Now there was a buzz. The video started getting mentioned in church newsletters. But far more importantly, the target audience started getting pissed. Those past-their-prime southern belles were aghast that anybody could be so blasphemous as to suggest Jesus needed exercise to be so fit and trim. His body was not just a gift from God, a man's temple -- it was God's temple and more than that, it was God. It did not need such pedestrian maintenance as stomach crunches. And so, it seemed a marketing miscalculation had been made.

I've heard since that the tape -- now discontinued, of course -- has become a popular party tape on college campuses and that parts of it can be found for download, but it's no good for Hoffmaster. I think that after this debacle he finally lost the rest of his faith.