Casting the Movie (In Which bink Takes on the Sheriff of Nottingham)

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Who should play the leads in a Robin Hood version of bink's DVD to ART project?
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That's what I was left wondering after reading the Washington Post article "Of Bully Pulpits and Bully Bishops". [more text at end of post]

[Gulp. The Wash-f*ing-ington Post!]

This is my favorite article yet about the DVD to ART project because the author, Anthony Stevens-Arroyo, starts off talking about movies:
As a Catholic, he says, he always resented the movie cliché of bishops dining at the king's table while ignoring starving peasants.
But, he goes on to say

What would that scene look like today, with presidents instead of kings and CEOs instead of counts and dukes? While medieval labels like "Robin Hood" no longer apply, the age-old temptation to make deals with the rich and powerful have not gone away.

I don't know if John Nienstedt, the Archbishop of St. Paul, Minnesota, has succumbed to this temptation, but if you substitute "same sex marriage" for "rights to hunt deer in Sherwood Forest" you'd have enough for a movie.

A movie! There's an idea!
And then he discusses bink and Father Michael Tegeder, the guy I wrote a thank-you letter to the other day, and wraps up by asking,
"Where is Friar Tuck when we need him?"

Well, now. Obviously Fr. Tegeder is Friar Tuck, the church representative.

And bink?
A Robin Hood fan from early childhood, when she wore her under-shirt and -pants over her clothes so her clothes would look like his, bink said she always liked Wil Scarlett, Robin Hood's dashing, daring side-kick. He's a bit of a shape-shifter: sometimes he's cast as a fashionable young man, sometimes as a far darker and older character.

Who should play these roles?
I had to think.... oh, about 10 seconds.

I've never met Tegeder, but Jeff Bridges (left) is my kind of Friar Tuck.

And a grown-up, female Will Scarlettt couldn't be anybody but Judy Davis (above, right). Unless she was Cate Blanchett.

Naturally the Sheriff of Nottingham is Alan Rickman (above, left) reprising his role in the otherwise lame Kevin Costner vehicle, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

And the archbishop?
We shall just have to resurrect Charles Laughton.

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On Faith column of the Washington Post writes:

"What would that scene look like today, with presidents instead of kings and CEOs instead of counts and dukes? While medieval labels like "Robin Hood" no longer apply, the age-old temptation to make deals with the rich and powerful have not gone away. I don't know if John Nienstedt, the Archbishop of St. Paul, Minnesota, has succumbed to this temptation, but if you substitute "same sex marriage" for "rights to hunt deer in Sherwood Forest" you'd have enough for a movie.

"The issue concerns the use of money from anonymous donors to fund the distribution of some 400,000 DVDs promoting a view that the legalization of same-sex marriage is not a civil rights' issue, but a moral one in which Catholics have no choice but to oppose any political candidate who takes another approach. At stake in Minnesota is a constitutional amendment that would deny the right to marry to any same-sex couple, even those who are not Catholic.

"There can be no doubt that Catholic teaching denies the Sacrament of Marriage to same-sex couples and that many currents in contemporary culture undermine the stability of the institution of marriage today. If that was all that Archbishop Nienstedt did, who could complain? The episcopacy is, after all, a "bully pulpit."
But in this incident, as in many other decisions he has made, the archbishop seems to be seated at the table of unnamed donors, whose politics happen to coincide with a partisan agenda.
Since there are such appalling financial needs for Catholic schools and social services in the aftermath of the Great Recession, how can the Church instead accept money to fund a decidedly political indoctrination effort-- right before an election?"

ANTHONY M. STEVENS-ARROYO writing for the On Faith column of the Washington Post