The Holy Glow of TV in Hollywood Priest

There's a photograph in new documentary Hollywood Priest. A tall man, looming over a shorter guy, rocking him back on his heels as he makes a very convincing argument. If it wasn't for the dog collar, you'd swear it was LBJ's famous method of winning people over; but it's not. It's Father Ellwood "Bud" Keiser, priest and TV producer.

The similarity is not lost on Father Tom Gibbons, the documentarian behind the new film about the life and unique career of Keiser (the film gets its Austin premiere next Tuesday at a free screening provided by St. Austin Parish and the Austin Film Festival). He noted that presidential biographer Robert Caro "would take about LBJ getting into the buttonholes. I don't know if Bud was that aggressive, but when he was working with producers he definitely used all that stuff."

Like Johnston, Keiser was trying to change society. In 1957 the young priest was assigned to the St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Los Angeles: rather than rail against Hollywood (after all, this was the church attended by many of Tinsel Town's most devout stars), in 1960 he jumped into TV when he he launched Insight, a hugely successful anthology show that ran for 25 years.

Keiser's TV work was born of a very particular confluence of events in the early 1960s. On one side, there was the increasing popularity and ubiquity of television. On the other, the Second Vatican Council, in which Pope John XXIII sought to modernize the church, make it more accessible. Through Insight, Keiser tackled faith and morality, but in a way that was deliberately non-denominational, not intended to proselytize, took wisdom from all faiths and no faith at all, and was ultimately was always intended to be accessible as entertainment, not a sermon. Gibbons said, "He was working at a time when it was, 'Hey, we're going to be talking to a lot of different people. Let's invite them to the table to have that conversation.'"

That's a mindset that Gibbons absorbed for for Hollywood Priest, one that he summed up with a simple mantra: "We're making a Hollywood film about a Catholic. We're not making a Catholic film about Hollywood."

When Gibbons joined Keiser's old parish, he already knew of Insight, and was a fan of Romero, the 1989 biopic of Salvadorean Archbishop Óscar Romero, played by Raúl Juliá, and his struggles against the country's military regime. But serving in the same parish that Keiser had served for decades gave him a very different perspective. "The thing I heard most about him was sitting around the dinner table with the guys that knew him was what a gruff pain he could be a lot of the time. ... I heard more about Bud the man and how he could be such a bulldozer than anything else." The stories humanized Keiser, which was vital to Gibbons as a priest himself. "People look at religious figures or priests from the outside, and they'll either put us up on a pedestal or look down on us, but when we're just sitting at the dinner table, it's just, 'Oh, can you believe this guy did this?'"

Unlike Gibbons, Hollwyood Priest producer Maria~Elena Poblacion Pineda was living in the parish when Keiser was still preaching, and remembered an imposing figure. "He was this six-foot-seven guy," she said, "very powerful-looking, but I would hear these things of, 'Oh, he's a producer,' and I thought, well, this is interesting."

The project didn't start as a film. Originally, in 2016, Gibbons and Pineda were working on a series of video interviews to place online with the show. They had an unbelievable talent list from which to pick: over its 23 seasons, Insight attracted directors like Gilbert Ralston (creator of The Wild Wild West) and writers such as future Jurassic Park writer Michael Crichton, and The Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling. In front of the camera, the roster was even more star-studded: After all, Insight ran for so long that they were able to cast both Ed Begley and Ed Begley, Jr. in leading roles.

By sheer luck, they'd collected all the interviews before the pandemic, so all that was left during lockdown was to finish the edit and work with actor George Newbern, who provides the narration. Fortunately, Gibbons said, "He's got this home studio, so I'd write him, 'Hey, we've got a hole here, can you write something?' I'd send him something at 1:30 in the morning and have gone to sleep, but he's an early riser, so he'd have recorded it in his studio and sent it back to me."

It may seem like it was divine intervention that Gibbons and Pineda had locked all the interviews before the lock down, but the reality is that they knew when they started production that there was a ticking clock. Many of the people involved in the show were old, and others had already died, and the duo realized that the pressure of time meant they had to move swiftly. Quickly, they found that the actors who had appeared on Insight were more than willing to talk about their experience, and Keiser. "They were so kind and gracious to let us into their homes," said Pineda. "They were so down to earth, so kind even though they were so successful, which is so refreshing to see - especially in Los Angeles.

However, that didn't stop the filmmakers getting a little star struck, like spending time with Insight actors like Martin Sheen, or hearing the ever-gentle Bob Newhart tell stories about his unlikely friendship with the king of the insult comics, Don Rickles. Pineda recalled with particular fondness visiting the home of Happy Days star Marion Ross. Pineda said, "We were setting up the shots and all of a sudden you hear, 'Children, come to the table for breakfast,' and you're like, 'Oh, my gosh, Mrs. C. is calling us."

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Austin Film Festival and St. Austin's Parish present Hollywood Priest: The Story of Father ‘Bud’ Kieser, Tue. May 3, 7pm, Highland Galaxy, 6700 Middle Fiskville. RSVP at austinfilmfestival.com.

Watch the complete Insight on YouTube.