Stranger Coughs Up $25,000 at Screening (By Roger Friedman: Fox News, Tuesday, January 24, 2006)

OK, the documentary “God Grew Tired of Us” has been turning even the most stone-faced screening audiences into Weeping Willies.

But last night, after what seemed like a charged show, a total stranger opened his checkbook and wrote out a $25,000 check to the foundation started by one of the movie’s real-life stars. I think that’s a first.

“God Grew Tired of Us” is a remarkable film about displaced Sudanese in Kenyan camps called “The Lost Boys.” Forced out of Sudan in the late 1980s, thousands of Sudanese walked through their country and through Ethiopia to Kenya. It took them five years.

By then, many of them were dead or worse, by the looks of things. Like the Rwanda genocide of 1994, the Lost Boys (and Lost Girls) are one of those international horrors.

Director Chris Quinn has made a remarkable film that will likely win an award here and go on to tremendous popularity. They went to Sudan and chose three young men who’d been assigned new homes in the United States by Job Corps.

They then followed Panther, Daniel and John as they first traveled to the West, saw TV, learned about electricity and other fundamentals in our lives — things they had not heard of, ever. And this was in 2001.

You can check out the details of this movie and how to donate to save the Sudanese at www.godgrewtiredofus.com. More to come on this subject as the movie begins to get notice.

So far John, who’s raising the money, has collected $90,000 (apart from the new donation). By the way, Nicole Kidman does a great job narrating the film, and Brad Pitt is listed as executive producer. But when I asked them, none of the three principals in the film had ever heard of any of them. They have more important things on their minds.