Tag: seven skeletons

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A movie just came out about my family and I got about a billion bones to pick with it.

My sisters are in it, my mother is in it. Hell, I’m even in it. But it’s really about my dad, the legendary Eddie Minnis. Yes, THE Eddie Minnis. The iconic Bahamian fine artist, cartoonist, singer and songwriter. It’s called “Ting an’ Ting”, and it’s directed by Kevin Taylor, executive produced by Edgar Seligman. You can Google them.

It premiered at the Bahamas International Film Festival (BIFF) over the 2024 Christmas holidays and to put it bluntly, in its current form, I want nothing to do with it.

I dead serious. 

I’ve asked the director, my dad, and the executive producer of the thing to cut me out of it and they have all, so far, refused. “The movie finish” is basically their line.

Last week, I even dropped a press release about why I want to be taken out of this film. But a press release has to be short. It can’t possibly hope to contain all the backstory, all the nuance, all the tea that I need to spill to make you understand where I’m coming from. 

You ever been quiet about something so long that when you finally get tired and fed up and have to start saying what’s on your chest that you can’t stop? Well, that’s where I am right now. I’m standing in front of this massive walk-in closet full of rotten old skeletons and wondering which one I need to air out first. 

Let me start with this: There was another version of this movie that I wish you could see, let’s call it the “Director’s Cut.” When Kevin came to me in 2023 about this project I asked him if he was sure he wanted me of all people to be in this movie. I am Ward Minnis, Eddie Minnis’ son, but I am also the black sheep of the family. Don’t believe me? Go to his website and try to find me. Go on, I’ll wait.

I’m standing in front of this walk-in closet full of rotten old skeletons and wondering which one I need to air out first. 

“Eddie Minnis and Family” has come to mean “Eddie Minnis and daughters and even son-in-law” – this might be the first time you even heard that he has a son. It might surprise you even more to know that I also paint. That I am also a writer, an actor, and a bunch of other artistic things; but we’ll get to that later. 

So why am I on the outs with my people? What did I do that was so evil that I needed to be scrubbed out of the Minnis family record on the website, then kept against my will in the documentary? Well, that’s the thing that’s in the Director’s Cut that I wish you could see. That version goes into their religion, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the fact that he raised all of his children, including me, in that religion. And then, when I turned twenty-five, I left.

Yes, I left the Jehovah’s Witnesses and I been catching hell for it ever since. 

That version of the documentary isn’t perfect either but at least it was honest. This one, the one that you might have seen at BIFF, is by contrast a joke. I’m still there talking about my ‘artist’s journey’ and of course the movie is still about Dad and you get a bunch of that. But, for me, the thing that mattered most to me, my pain and the cross that I bear daily got reduced to a single title card. 

Now you might say, why did you want to be in this movie anyway? You should have said no from the beginning. And you know what? You are absolutely right. I should have listened to you and I should have listened to my wife who told me the exact same thing from jump street. But I hard-headed and I didn’t listen and if I didn’t see that Director’s Cut I would say that I deserved what I got.

But, I did see it. And it was good. Then everything that made it good was ripped out of it. Now its only purpose is to be a vehicle to glorify my old man. 

My father is in that phase of his career, let’s call it the twilight, where people want to give him his flowers while he’s alive. The “Ting an’ Ting” movie went from being a thoughtful consideration of him and his life into what these things always end up as – an extended chorus of “How Great Thou Art“. And good for him.

That isn’t the reason that I want out though, because don’t get me wrong, he is great and legendary and all those other adjectives too.

The main reason I want out is because the released version makes Jehovah’s Witnesses seem like a normal religion. 

And I am here to tell you why that just ain’t so.

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The bottom line: If you want a happier family, bring those skeletons out of the closet.
Bruce Feiler

Here’s the deal: I’m not going to do this all in one go. I’m going to break it up into episodes. I’ve done picked out the seven juiciest most rancid skeletons in that walk-in closet and every week from now till I’m done I’m going to dissect a different one, bone by bone, and piece by piece and give you the full report. 

I’m going to give you what you haven’t gotten from the “Ting an’ Ting” documentary or any other thing you have read or seen about my family, which is a full examination of them as Jehovah’s Witnesses as only an insider outsider like me could do.

To do this, I’m going to have to go deep and of course this involves me telling a lot of my own story too. We’ll be talking about art, some history, a bunch of cultural criticism and a whole boatload of tea. 

I’m going to give you a full examination of my family as Jehovah’s Witnesses as only an insider outsider like me could do.

It’s about the Minnis family but trust that a lot of people you know will be catching strays or direct shots too. This is our family story but it is also a deeply Bahamian story. This is where we start, but I think you’ll be surprised where we going to end up. 

You coming? 

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Coming up next: I go back to when this whole thing started for my family, as I take out the first skeleton: "The Truth about the Truth."