Moscow Summer
A country preacher has a solution for all his followers’ problems

The oppressive heat of summer beats down on a small Kentucky church. The building is simple, just your run of the mill small town timber-clad place of worship, but then we cut to a rather more complicated headline written large across a newspaper - “TRAIN DERAILS, GOVERNMENT SILENT ON MISSING CARGO”.

Inside the church we are confronted by the head of the establishment, Reverend Tommy. Dressed in his hobo-chic best, Tommy  addresses his sparsely populated flock, each member slightly more colourful than the last, his furious ramblings getting more deranged by the second. Cults come in all shapes and sizes and Tommy’s most certainly seems to be destined for the bargain basement section in the grand Target of religious extremism, but what was with the headline? And what on earth has it got to do with Tommy and his friends?

REVEREND TOMMY
Have we offended thee, Lord?
Have we spit in your face?
Shit on your lawn?
Have we fouled thee in any way?

CU on KAREN PETERS (50s) clutches a dog collar to her chest like a Rosary, bites it to hold back the pain of the memory.

NARRATOR
Karen Peters thought about her dog,
the little poodle that her husband
dismembered after the poor beast
crapped in his authentic gator-skin
cowboy boots he got at that place
in Waco, Texas when they traveled
last Spring to pay their respects
to the freedom fighters who died at
the hands of the federal government.
Or at least, that's what he told the cashier
at CrackerBarrel.

REVEREND TOMMY
Are we to just stand by and watch
this world be destroyed by the
sinners that walk this ravaged land?
We refuse to hide our faces from the Lord.
We will not have our DNA scrambled,
nor shall we submit to an upgrade.
We all know what happened with Windows Vista.

The parishioners whisper a collective "Amen".

CU on BIRDIE JOHNSTON (50s), a scraggly wisp of a man in a greasy car mechanic's jumpsuit. In his lap, his hand wraps around a small device, his thumb hovers over a red button.

As Tommy laments the ills cast down upon him and his followers, his rambles finally reach some kind of focus, one that may have some ramifications for the local community. He and his buddies have been praying to the big man upstairs with little apparent result, but owing to a recent acquisition their luck may well be about to change...

Moscow Summer cuts through the all American cult experience with charm and wit, covering the frustrations of disparate society in the eclectic congregation. If you’re a producer or director that’s on the lookout for a short that’ll leave an impression with a comedic punch, then look no further than Tommy and his friends.