This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
"Sometimes in your search for happiness, you ponder the meaning of your life. You sift your memory for beginnings, you send your mind ahead for directions, but all you really know is 'now' — and you are lost in the present." Sound familiar?They're the opening lines from the 1964 LDS film "Man's Search for Happiness," which started out as a theological showcase for the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and premiered at the World's Fair in New York. It then became part of church youth "firesides," missionary discussions and an LDS visitor center staple.Now, nearly 50 years later, according to Doug Gibson of Ogden's Standard-Examiner, it is listed in a catalog for Something Weird, a Seattle mail-order DVD cult film company "that traffics in everything from old 1930s melodramas to '70s porn flicks."Gibson reports that the Mormon classic finds itself among the "Christian Scare Films."The catalog promises that this "trippy, Mormon-made short" literally shows viewers "what heaven looks like ... and, yup, it's surprisingly psychedelic, lots of pretty colors and angels milling around."Gibson has mixed feelings about seeing a film he enjoyed as a youth being marketed as one of the group's "rare, cultish films." Part of him is sad at the way the film is treated, while another part, he acknowledged, "relishes the irony."Peggy Fletcher Stack