Badly scarred in a childhood accident, Violet boards a bus in North Carolina on a pilgrimage to Oklahoma to visit a TV preacher, the one that heals. On the bus, she meets two soldiers on their way to Fort Smith. The film won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film in 1982.
The young “Violet” (Didi Conn) was involved in an accident when she was younger and she is determined to eradicate the scar it has left on her face and make herself “pretty”. To that end, she has been captivated by a television evangelist who promotes the healing powers of the Lord, so she sets off
... on the long trip from her home to his church in Tulsa. Along the way, she encounters two soldiers and perhaps it is “Monty” (Patrick Dollaghan) and his friend “Flick” (Rodney Saulsberry) who might actually be a better conduit for her to realise that being “pretty” is much more than just what a person looks like. Conn delivers quite well here as the vulnerable young woman but the film tries to cram just a bit too much into half an hour and so doesn’t really have time to develop her character or that of the war-weary “Monty” to whom she takes quite a shine nor does it quite have the courage to properly tackle the cynicism of pay-as-you go religion and of just how it toxic that can be when the hope it offers doesn’t quite materialise. It is worth half an hour, but it really only scratches the surface.
