Interview: Dallas Jenkins of “The Resurrection of Gavin Stone”

Posted on April 13, 2017 at 8:00 am

Director Dallas Jenkins spoke to me about his charming and touching film, “The Resurrection of Gavin Stone.” Brett Dalton stars as the spoiled former child actor who gets into trouble and is sentenced to community service, where he starts as a janitor and ends up playing the part of Jesus in a church Passion Play directed by the pastor’s daughter, played by Anjelah Johnson-Reyes.

Tell me where the idea came from, how did it start?

A couple of years ago when I was developing a few ideas for movies. I live in Chicago now, I’m working at a church in Chicago and we were working on a few ideas. I had a random breakfast meeting with someone and they mentioned the script and when they told me the storyline of a guy who pretends to be a Christian but he can play the part of Jesus in his passion play, I immediately liked it and because I could immediately see the humor of him trying to navigate through church world, trying to learn the language that Christians use and trying to figure out all the Christian clichés that he could sound like a Christian. I love the humor, but also by playing the part of Jesus he’s going to learn more about Him and going to become part of this church. So from both a humor perspective and an emotional perspective it just felt right to me. It felt like an opportunity to tell a story about church but through the eyes of an outsider so it could appeal to both worlds. It just really felt like the kind of project that would appeal to both church insiders and church outsiders and it came together pretty quickly.

It was good to see Anjelah Johnson-Reyes, known for her comedy, in a role that gave her a chance to be a little more serious.

Months and months before we made the movie my wife and I were talking about the part of the pastor’s daughter. This was a Midwest church and I didn’t want the part to look too Hollywood. My wife said, “You know, there’s an actress in the movie ‘Chipmunks the Squeakquel’ who has the character look you’re talking about.’ So, we popped in the DVD to take a look at it and immediately I said, ‘Oh she’s great. That’s exactly what I’m looking for,” I think standup comedians actually make good actors because they just have a good understanding of emotion and timing.

And I looked her up and I didn’t realize that she was a Christian. And so, when I found out she was married to a Christian hip-hop artist and we actually had some mutual friends. It was all completely random and completely coincidental and so through my mutual friends I contacted her and said I really wanted her to audition for this part. She was skeptical and I just said, “Well just read the script and see what you think.” She read it and loved it right away and then she came in and auditioned and did a great audition and the producers agreed that she would right for the part.

So it all started with her Chipmunks movie and now we’ve become great friends and she does a great job in the film. It is funny because she’s playing the part of someone who doesn’t know how to tell a joke, someone who takes herself too seriously. I think it appealed to her because it was different than what she normally does.

What makes this movie different from most Christian films?

We heard this over and over again: “I don’t normally like Christian films but I love this.” I think the humor has a lot to do with that. I think sometimes we Christians can take ourselves pretty seriously. Our movies are usually message-driven as opposed to story-driven which isn’t always a bad thing. I’m not criticizing that. But I think the humor in this film really stood out. The quality of the acting and the story can appeal to and be related to by church outsiders. I think the humor takes the sting out of it a little bit, makes it feel a little bit less propaganda, and so I think people just have responded to that.

Gavin Stone has a lot to learn obviously about grace and who Jesus really was. So do the Christians, and so do the churchgoers. And the pastor’s daughter herself learned as much about grace and about who Jesus was as Gavin does because she had taken it for granted and so he is impacted by the church and the church is also impacted by him. Being willing to acknowledge that the church has its own strengths and weaknesses and being willing to poke a little at the fun at it, I think again takes the sting out of it a little bit for people and makes it feel less like a sermon.

Part of that comes from D.B. Sweeney as the pastor, who is a great character.

He’s just a normal guy and the first time you see him on screen he communicates both in his words and his behavior that he is not intimidating and he is not pious. He admits he is still figuring out a lot about this himself and about the Christian faith. He’s not perfect. He doesn’t have it all together and he is willing to acknowledge that but yet at the end of the day he is a father, he’s a pastor who’s been there for decades and has a lot to teach and a lot to impart. But it’s coming from the perspective of somebody who is not pretending to be perfect. The whole conceit of this movie is that Gavin is pretending to be a Christian and I didn’t want the pastor to be stupid and not be able to tell that something may be a little wrong. He knows that something is very off but ultimately realizes Gavin Stone playing the part of Jesus is going to have a much better chance of impacting him than cleaning toilets. He says to his daughter at one point, “Isn’t this why we do what we do?” Having the opportunity to have an impact on someone — that’s the whole theme of the movie, that line.

Is Gavin Stone a good actor?

We really specifically made a choice to make Gavin Stone a very good actor and one of the key parts to illustrate that was his audition. The original script had him doing the scene from “Braveheart,” you know, “They’ll never take away our freedom” speech and I thought that would come across as humorous. I wanted that part where he gives his audition to actually be serious, to show that he is actually a really good actor and is going to bring something special to this church.

And so, I moved the “Braveheart” speech to the prayer scene where Gavin is asked to pray for the first time and he doesn’t know how so it’s just “Braveheart.” And then I found a speech from “Hamlet” and I put that as the audition and it turned out that it happened to be the same speech and monologue that Brett had used in real life to audition for the Yale School of Drama. And so that’s one of the things that really connected Brett to that script. The only way this was going to be pulled off that Gavin could quickly and on his feet convincingly portray the part of a churchgoer is that he’s a good actor and we had to portray that going in.

I also liked his interaction with his estranged father, played by Neil Flynn.

Neil is a really good actor and again a normal guy; he is actually from Chicago so he plays the part of the Midwest dad perfectly. We just wanted to have some moments away from the church setting and that allowed us to experience Gavin in some of his natural environment so that we could see who he was for real when he wasn’t pretending to be somebody else.

Gavin was spoiled. Hollywood has actually damaged him a little bit. You see that his father wasn’t a big fan of Gavin’s lifestyle choices and that he wasn’t a big fan of him being a child actor. At one point his father says, “I wanted to protect you, you know I didn’t want you to become selfish.” That’s what being sometimes a child actor can bring out when you are a celebrity too soon you can create a selfishness. And so I just kind of wanted to paint more shades of gray that Gavin’s father maybe he was really harsh at times but wasn’t entirely wrong and Gavin’s choices weren’t always the best but also weren’t entirely wrong and that he had something to say too. So we just wanted to tell a story that wasn’t always black and white.

Do you have a favorite Bible verse?

Psalm 34:5 — “Those who look to him are radiant, their faces will never be ashamed.” I’m guilty of this too: my career, my choices, where I’m going to be in five years? What is my plan? And I’ve learned over the years that where I am at in five years is none of my business and that verse really speaks to me because when you’re looking to God, when you’re looking up then you don’t have to worry about not only the practical things of life but you also don’t have to deal with the shame of your humanity. And so that phrase, “those who look to him are radiant,” I found that to be true over and over.

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Interview: Writer/Director James Gray of “The Lost City of Z”

Posted on April 12, 2017 at 3:55 pm

James Gray wrote and directed the adventure movie “The Lost City of Z,” based on Percy Fawcett, the real-life explorer who inspired fictional characters from Indiana Jones to the swashbuckling heroes of books by Arthur Conan Doyle and H. Rider Haggard. The movie stars Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, and Sienna Miller. Gray and his crew had to re-create the arduous journey through the South American rainforest; while they had better technology than Fawcett’s group, they also had to bring along all of the equipment to make the film.

In an interview, Gray talked about the directors who inspired him — and why he had to make some different choices than the ones in their classic films.

It’s 100 years after the events in the film. Tell me how you approach dealing with issues of gender and race that acknowledges the realities of its era without distracting us unnecessarily?

Wow, that’s a heavy one. How did I deal with it, well, with great difficulty and with kid gloves. It’s one of the advantages we have and it’s not about judging the characters, that’s not really what I’m saying but a more global view, a more…how do I say this? A more progressive view, a more open view hopefully of the ideas of gender, class and ethnicity that has to be part of the film. And I felt that if I could make a movie in the style of let’s say David Lean, who I revere, but bring, dare I say this, a more advanced or different approach to the politics of it — for example,”Lawrence of Arabia he has Alec Guinness playing an Arab which is absurd today.

So, I felt that that was the way that I could do something different from what Mr. Lean did. And in the case of something like an “Apocalypse Now,” as great as I think it is, and I think it is the greatest, there certainly aren’t any women in it of any importance. A Playboy playmate is pretty much the only woman in the whole movie. So, I felt that it was important that I give everybody a sort of fair shake at the narrative and that everybody’s existence would be entirely independent. So, Sienna Miller’s character has her own hopes and dreams and that the film acknowledges those desires. And the indigenous people of South America would be independent and not demand a white male European view of the world to exist. People talk about what they call the Magical Negro in movies where this African-American character has all these magical qualities throughout which is in its own way deeply racist. My ambition was to do something the opposite of that, which was that the indigenous people of Amazonia would function in a way that was entirely free from any need for the white man.

And really the approach was to try and bring a certain dignity and humanity to every single person in the movie. And so, I’ve tried to think of it in those terms.

For me one of the most intriguing characters in the film was Murray, the veteran of the Shackleton expedition to the Antarctic but a terrible problem for Fawcett.

In the book he goes on I think it’s eight trips, so I had to condense that to three. When I approached it I thought, “Okay if it’s three trips, each trip has to have a different meaning.” The first trip is about the exposure to his obsession and how the obsession settles in and what it becomes and what it starts to mean for him. The second trip with Mr. Murray would have to be about how he saw the trip in the beginning as cementing his position not only in society but in history and really it was an act of ego to bring Mr. Murray along. He was going for glory and he thought Murray would bring an incredible luster. Murray’s ethical bankruptcy is in a way Fawcett’s fault because he chose Murray to go with him. That was the price he paid for wanting that because Murray is the lie of one class’s superiority over the other. Murray is the person who’s “Oh look how much wealth I have.” He’s a man of means and prestige and yet he’s a fraud.

So, Murray was a lesson for Fawcett really that the measure of a man has nothing to do with class or rank. That was what I thought the whole trip meant. He had to learn that and the third trip was his atonement for his neglect. It became a much more spiritual experience for him because he was able to enjoy it with his son. On the third trip he could achieve a measure of transcendence because he had already been through the second trip with this person who showed him that the search for glory and class validation was a bankrupt position.

Were you able to read some of Percy’s own journals?

I sure did. In addition to the Grann book I read Exploration Fawcett which is a compilation of his journal entries along with some editorializing by his son Brian that was put out many years later. I’m sure there is some embellishment from Brian, who was anxious to validate his father’s journeys but I’m sure it still had a bunch of Percy’s actual words still in them. I tried to adhere to Fawcett’s own words in as many places as possible. That Royal Geographical Society speech that he gives, which is about a seven and a half-minute long scene in the center of the movie is almost entirely his actual words. I read his letters too, back and forth to his wife and Charlie Hunnam and Sienna Miller did too. That was actually the best window into who those people are that we could have found. And I think it was necessary work.

Did you feel in a way as you were filming in South America that you were re-experiencing some of what he experienced? Did you learn what he went through just from being there?

Probably not because I’m nothing like Fawcett. I’m a wimp and I was only there for four months and he was in it for years. He didn’t have GPS and he didn’t have a bed at night to sleep in. I had clothes with special coating so I didn’t get bitten by anything. It must’ve been unbelievably difficult and I can’t understand how he did it. I mean we were there only four months and one crew member got malaria and two people got dengue. Somehow he marched to the jungle multiple times in the eight trips he went on that’s really about 20 years’ worth of living.

What would have happened if he found the City of Z?

Perhaps if he had found it, it would have been kind of anticlimactic for him. We have a real-life example of this in Hiram Bingham, who discovered Machu Picchu but his life had to have another act. He became a Senator. And I feel like if Fawcett had found some city in the jungle he would’ve looked at it for about twenty minutes and thought, “This is totally amazing. What the hell do I do now?” So much of what it was about for him was about the need to escape.

What is it that you think drives people to become explorers, to go past what is on a map?

There are noble qualities to exploration, there really are. There is an unending curiosity, there’s a remarkable drive, there is a stunning courage but there are also darker, less noble, aspects to it. One is the need to escape confronting what it means to be a person living in this world. I think that Fawcett’s whole need for exploration was in part a need to get out, a need to get away from what was very obviously a situation that was punishing to him. The father was a terrible alcoholic and was a gambler. He destroyed not one but two family fortunes. It shamed the family. So Fawcett was trying to escape from Victorian England and the cruelty of that world that seemed so punishing. And I think part the need for exploration is just to get out.

New on Netflix: Five Came Back

Posted on March 31, 2017 at 12:00 pm

Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War, is a book by Mark Harris about five of the greatest directors of all time who joined the war effort to document it and to promote morale at home. It is also about how the experienced changed them and inspired them to come home after the war and create richer, more complex, and more powerful films than they had before. George Stevens, Frank Capra, William Wyler, John Ford, and John Huston created films during and after the war that helped shape our views on the war but also on America and what kind of world we would create when the war was over.

The book is now a series on Netflix, narrated by Meryl Streep and featuring commentary from today’s top directors, including Guillermo del Toro, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg, as well as clips from films we know by heart like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “The Best Years of Our Lives,” and film that has been rarely seen since the war, including stunning documentary footage.

Why Do People Love to Hate Uwe Boll?

Posted on March 27, 2017 at 2:57 pm

In Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever, Mark O’Connell writes perceptively about our fascination with truly awful works of art and the people who create them. I first learned of the Dunning-Kruger effect (the less capable people are, the worse they are at estimating their ability) from that book.

Any discussion of the worst movie directors of all time will include Ed Wood, of course, and Tommy Wiseau. Both have had films made about them that are vastly better than the films they made. But on the Mount Rushmore of bad movie directors one cannot overlook Uwe Boll, who has completed his 30th film, which he says is his last. Vanity Fair has a great feature about him. Describing the angry short film he posted on YouTube declaring that he was quitting the industry: “At the time of writing, the video has more than 1.6 million views on YouTube. Some commentators have suggested, not unreasonably, that it’s Boll’s best work.”

About “Bloodrayne,” like many of Boll’s films, based on a video game:

Cast and crew members have denounced the films. “BloodRayne was an abomination,” said BloodRayne star Michael Madsen. “It’s a horrifying and preposterous movie.” Willam Belli, who acted in and had a co-writing credit on “Blubberella,” compared viewing the finished product to “watching a car accident with clowns.”

Boll has always been better at raising the money for making a movie (hence the reliance on pre-sold brands) than in actually making it. A script supervisor points out that the job is rather difficult when there is no actual script to supervise. And yet, we can’t help feeling a grudging admiration for Boll’s determination despite universal opprobrium.

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Interview: Jon Manning on the Burlesque Documentary “The Glitter Tribe”

Posted on February 28, 2017 at 7:50 am

Jon Manning is the director of Burlesque: Heart of the Glitter Tribe, an engaging and enlightening new film about modern-day burlesque performers who, as one of them says, combine “dancing, sexy, pretty, funny” in their performances. They have great passion for their work, their audience, and their fellow performers and they love what they do. Another one says in the film that when people tell her she will end up a spinster because of her burlesque lifestyle, she says, “I’m going to be a spinster that was a showgirl so I’m okay with it.” The film is in limited release March 3, 2017 and on VOD/Itunes March 7, 2017.

In an interview, Manning talked about what he saw and what he learned.

What makes someone a great burlesque performer?

You might want to ask a performer that question but here goes – a great burlesque performer is one that takes seriously their artform, their performance, their costume, their music, their family of performers, their audience – in the playful presentation of a sexy, sometimes funny 5 minutes of performance art. For, generally, almost no money.

These are the 98% of burlesque performers around the country that are bank tellers, graphic artists and chefs during the day.

This is not relative to (and this film is not about) the small handful of international performers such as Dita Von Tease that create big extravagant Las Vegas style shows, and have major international sponsors.

What goes into the song selection? What makes a song right for burlesque?

I have found that usually bsq performers select a piece of music that is very specific to the routine they are doing – either bc of it’s irony, specific singer or that they are exploring in their performance.

Our film explores “neo-burlesque” which is generally different than “classic” often in the types and styles of music the performers choose.

How does a burlesque performer develop her or his on-stage persona?

It’s usually an outgrowth from an aspect of their own personality. They then begin to see what works on-stage with the audience and slowly they begin to create their own persona that is unique and different than other performers.

Are burlesque performers competitive with each other? Do they enjoy watching each other perform?

I can’t speak to whether or not they are competitive with each other. As dancers and performers I image that they are. We looked very closely at one troupe that works intimately with each other in their chosen burlesque family.

My experience is that they love to watch other dancers/performers – especially if those other performers are at the top of their game!

Some of the performers in the film have always been outgoing and enjoyed being on stage. Others were originally shy and found the freedom to perform very liberating. How does that affect their acts and their relationship to the audience?

No doubt that their fears or assets are front and center in their comfort on-stage. Remember that these dancers are also actors for those few minutes on stage – with narrative and persona being adapted to their routine. So there may be a lot to overcome in who they actually are to what they want to be on-stage.

This is why most bsq performers find it empowering to be on-stage and getting immediate feedback from their audiences.

Who is the audience for burlesque? Is it different from the audience for strip shows?

Everyone can enjoy a burlesque show! A strip club usually has a completely different vibe and intention of from the audience. My experience of a strip club is that it is also very carnal and mostly attended by men. Bsq is kind of the opposite. The sexual aspect is usually done with a lot of fun and tease and usually only at the very end of the performance and my shows I have ever attended are at least 50% women in the audience.

In an era where everything is available online, what is it that brings the audience to a burlesque show?

People are realizing that life is bigger than their phones. There is a whole vibe and excitement at a bsq show. You have to be in the audience to feel it. You can also usually talk with the performers afterward a show.

So many of the performers have day jobs and other commitments. Why is burlesque so important to them?

Love of performance, empowerment, chosen family. Did I mention that is was a bawdy and raucus good time?!