Product Details

• Actors: Lonnie Frisbee
• Directors: David Di Sabatino
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Passion River
• DVD Release Date: May 27, 2008
• Run Time: 55 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0017MO10K
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #51,040 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Frisbee: The Life And Death Of A Hippie Preacher" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

FRISBEE:LIFE AND DEATH OF A HIPPIE PR - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Paradigm Reversing, January 15, 2007

By 

Jedidiah Palosaari "Not My Real Name" (Fes, Morocco) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher (DVD)

I gotta say, there's no way I can be unbiased in this review. My dad, Jim Palosaari, did the narration, so take everything with a grain of salt.

Loved it. David di Sabatino is the premier historian of the Jesus Movement, having more copiously researched this unique event more than any other. He was the one to do this project. He meticulously reveals who Lonnie was and how he was treated, framing his story within the larger thematic genre of Biblical literature.

This film is about the guy who comes the closest to being the founding father of the Jesus Movement. It was due to him that Calvary Chapel and Vineyard exist at all. He was there not only on the nights when the Spirit came down initially in those two churches, back when they were an Assembly of God and a Calvary respectively, but he was the impetus for their growth and the movement of the Spirit. He was the evangelist, healer, and exorcist of those churches- not Chuck Smith or John Wimbur, for all the good that they did do. He was there at Fuller Seminary the night Peter Wagner first realized about Signs and Wonders. This movie describes the power that flowed through Lonnie, which even the skeptics couldn't deny. People wary of charlatans were impressed at how the presence of the Holy Spirit was palpable when Lonnie was present.

As the film's website asks, What do you do when the founder of your church turns out to be gay? What do you do when the impetus of the growth of your movement struggles with bitterness and doesn't seem to care about working on a healthy relationship with his wife? What do you do when a man obviously filled with the Holy Spirit dies of AIDS? This is the story the movie addresses. David di Sabatino calls this a Biblical story, for it is the story of how God uses tragically flawed people to show His glory greater. He uses Deborah, Gideon, Sampson, Delilah, David, Peter... the list goes on and on, for not many of us were wise in the eyes of the world, or great, or glorious. That is the brilliance of Christianity, and of Christ's message. He uses the weak to confound the strong.

After watching the movie you *must* view the extras. This DVD was done from a local PBS special in San Francisco, and not from the longer version touring film festivals and winning awards. As such half the footage is in the extras, and explains a good deal more of the background. It is unfortunate that the footage couldn't have been more incorporated into the storyline itself for the DVD.

This movie speaks powerfully to me. When I was 13, living on the Big Island of Hawaii, I briefly met Lonnie, just before he died. He was leading a prayer time, and he laid hands on me, and the Spirit came down powerfully, perhaps for the first time for me, as Lonnie prophesied about events in my future.

I think of my Dad, and the things he's done for the Kingdom, with thousands coming to Christ through his work. But he's made mistakes at times, and like Lonnie, I am impressed at how he's been written out of histories as inconvenient. I think of myself, and the struggles I have in beliefs that don't fit with the Evangelical mainstream, giving me an evolutionary scarlet E. Doors have closed to me in this world, both in the past and the future. I think of how we all have ways we are the 100th sheep, and ostracized because we don't fit the mold- or ostracize others because they don't fit our box of who God would want. That's what this movie is about.

Lest I forget, the narration- sublime! Deep and resonate, Palosaari chooses to read it more as a story than in the typical narrator's voice, which perhaps fits this particular film better, as it is story, and myth, of who we are.

This movie will shock you. The histories many of us have grown up with are not quite what we were always told. Our paradigms of reality are in the mood for a shifting. This documentary will tell you the truth about a great man and great churches. But hopefully it will do more than that. It will help you be amazed at the way God interacts with His people. After all, He's not a tame Lion.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't Watch This Movie (unless you want your life changed), January 22, 2007

By 

Brenda Poklacki "audiobooks" (Trabuco Canyon, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher (DVD)

I had the privilege of knowing Lonnie Frisbee in the late 60s, early 70s when he preached in the streets of Southern California and began attracting thousands of barefooted hippies to the Calvary Chapel Movement. After seeing this film in a couple of it's incarnations I can say that it not only captures the sights, sounds and emotions of the Jesus People Revolution but it also challenges us today in our presuppositions of what it means to be "a Christian." My life was changed by the ministry of this man of God, Lonnie Frisbee. I hope many will see this film and be encouraged to seek for themselves the love of God found in Jesus.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars God knows, February 19, 2007

By 

Theo Ballgame (Cambria, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher (DVD)

The old saying about 'God working in mysterious ways' seems to be the point of this fine and thought provoking film. Was/is Frisbee's message of the power of God's love made moot by his failings? Or, is the message validated because of what Frisbee went through? I attend a Vineyard church and when I found out about Frisbee and his early association with Vineyard, I started asking "The Elders" about Frisbee, and was met with...blank looks. Of course, that peeked my interest, so the movie was an eye opener. After viewing i was left with numerous questions and thoughts. Question: is Frisbee dismissed nowadays because he freely admitted that his path to God was fueled by drugs? Or is it because he was Gay? Or, my God, was there some sort of political battle going on (ego-battles? In the church family? Unbelievable!). Either way, whatever the truth was, or how history is written by those that remain, the Truth, as this film conveys, is that God does work in mysterious ways, and does use, at times, the most unexpected or peculiar messenger. Like Jesus, Lonnie was a radical who shook up the establishment and caused people to think about what being a Christian was all about. After mulling over the film and it's message for a few days, I had a thought: maybe God, all knowing, all about love, foreseeing the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic just a decade away, used Lonnie as his messenger--a Gay, acid imbibing hippie? Sure. God's like that.