One of the most talked-about short movies of the year is director Gregory Barnes’ Sundance-winning satire The Touch of The Master’s Hand. The rising filmmaker made his directorial debut, and NYU graduate film project, about the woeful tale of Elder Hyde, a young Mormon missionary stationed in Mexico, struggling with the sin of masturbation.

After loosing a tooth in a team-building exercise—under circumstances that metaphorically point at him being the weakest link—Elder Hyde is called to attend a monthly "worthiness interview" with the mission President. Unable to share the same zeal for the Lord as his fellow adherents, it becomes clear that Elder Hyde has something he needs to get off his chest. His subsequent confession, and the object of his transgression, is what caps off this perfectly-paced absurdist comedy.

The Mormon church views any sexual deviance as a slippery ramp onto the proverbial highway to hell. Boosted with a campaign by late church President Gordon B. Hinckley against pornography, young Mormons have had to grow up in shame, believing that their natural responses to their sexual urges are a sin. 

The Touch of the Master’s Hand was partly inspired by the director's Latter-day Saints mission in Argentina, as well as anecdotes and personal experiences from the film’s majority ex-Mormon crew.

Much of the critical acclaim bestowed on Barnes' stomping debut is for his deft portrayal of Mormonism, which is sensitive and satirical in equal measure. With excellent dead-pan performances from Samuel Whitehill as President Packard and Samuel Sylvester as Elder Hyde, Touch of the Master's Hand offers a veritas peak behind the curtain to see the characters and conundrums young Mormons face. 

Read on for an interview with Gregory Barnes about his experience of (and departure from) the church, what Mormons thought of his film, and what it was like to (probably) be the first filmmaker to shoot in a real Mormon meetinghouse.

How was your project received by the Mormon community?

The reception amongst the Mormon community has been a major highlight of making this movie, especially amongst ex-mormons where it resonates most. I have gotten some reach from some true-blue Mormons and they’ve been really nice but I’m not quite sure if they get the satire.

My mom is quite Mormon. The subject of masturbation and pornography—it is a sex comedy, after all—did make her uncomfortable. But my mom just said that she was so relieved that Elder Hyde did the right thing in the end. I really do think some Mormons think of this movie as faith promoting.

I read that you shot in a real meeting house? What other details did you include to make this film as authentic an experience as possible?

To my knowledge, this is the first short, and probably last short, to be filmed in a Mormon chapel. Mormons absolutely do not allow film shoots in their places of worship, but it was always my dream to shoot a movie in one, so I reached out to a family friend who was the leader of a congregation. I mentioned to him that I had this homework assignment to do over winter break, which was technically true, I was going to NYU Grad film at the time, so it was homework. He was really accommodating, Mormons really are nice and love to help out. At that time I didn’t have a script, but we were shooting two weeks later.

Shooting at the church wasn’t stress-free. There was this looming fear that some church person could just walk in and be offended by what we were doing and shut us down. As fate would have it, every day the church was full of young missionaries. They were chill and wanted to hang out but we would kindly ask them to hang somewhere else. Missionaries are just bored teens and our small production was probably one of the more exciting things to happen during their two-year stint. I never asked any of those young missionaries to be extras in the movie, and I kind of regret that now.

Everything in the movie is very inside baseball of Mormonism. From the bags the characters use to the manuals they're holding, it's all like the stuff you'd see in any part of the world if you walked into a Missionary conference.

Was it a challenge to balance comedy and respect for your depiction of the religion?

My generation’s experiences in Mormonism, if I may be so bold as to speak for many people, were traumatic. I think trauma is something that you can turn and laugh at, and with this levity, you can really get to know the people and the culture of Mormonism if you’re unfamiliar with it. Comedy is a welcoming door.

Sitting around talking with ex-Mormon guys my age about sexual shame, we say stuff like, ‘Oh, Gordon B. Hinckley told me not to look at porn, I looked at porn, I felt so bad.’ But there’s a stark contrast when I talk to women my age. I often hear things like ‘I was told my worth was defined by my husband and that I needed to get married and behave a specific way.’ Pain is pain, but the contrast here is stark. Women’s experiences in the church are incredibly difficult, and meanwhile, my pals and I are over here crying like, ‘Oh, my Bishop told me not to touch my peepee. I’m so sad.’ So there is this inherent absurdity in the situation, and I wanted to play that up.

My dad emailed me when this movie played Sundance and he was clearly stressed out. He’s quite the reader and he went off about how Kierkegaard said that any time eternal ideas are expressed in temporal terms, it has to be absurd. It’s absurd that God came to Earth and died. It’s absurd to think that Joseph Smith saw Jesus. The interruption of the eternal into the temporal is inherently absurd, and I kinda like that idea. This absurdity for many people is a call to action for belief. But I think absurdity is just absurdity and inherently comedic.

I certainly could’ve pulled more punches. But the respect and reverence of the film come out of a love of the character. Mormonism is the backdrop, but at its core, I wanted to tell a story about a kid who really wants to fit in, which is very relatable to me. I think it’s kind of fun we get to celebrate with him at the end, even we’re so aware that his woes are far from solved.

What message do you want the viewer to take away from your film?

I’m not there to necessarily get people out of the religion, but I am here to say, please examine your situation and take care of yourself. Whether or not you belong to a cult, belief is powerful, and I think it’s important to take a step back every once and a while and ask “Am I being nice to me? Do all these things around me add or subtract?”

What did you learn during your transition from producer to debut director?

For my undergrad, I went to the Mormon University and got their film degree, which was called Media Arts. I’m still confused about what exactly that term means even if I have a degree in it... Anyway, the program was mostly critical theory but they allowed a couple of movies to get made each semester by the seniors. I got picked my year, but I eventually shelved the short because the faculty constantly combed it for homosexual undertones, and I couldn’t really create in that environment.

Discouraged, I decided I needed a film school of my own to learn production, and after a couple of years, I ended up producing. Producing wasn’t creatively fulfilling, and I think the major motivation to switch to directing was because I was going through a divorce, and I had to get a lot of stuff off my chest. So I moved coasts and went to grad school. The structure grad school provided was a great way to rededicate my time to writing and directing.

What were you visual references?

I grew up watching weird Mormon VHSes every Sunday as a kid, which were these over-the-top moral tales that usually ended with someone sinning and turning into goo. They were probably the strongest narrative and visual reference for the movie.

The Mormons like to do things very pro, and after a deep dive I found out Caleb Deschanel was the cinematographer of the very first couple ever made in the late 80s. Honestly, it makes a lot more sense than it should, because their style is very Twin Peaks, riffing on the glossy soap opera aesthetic.