Before he was the best-known clergyman in America and a spiritual adviser to Presidents, Billy Graham was a young man struggling with doubt and searching for a way to be of service. This sensitive and respectful film about Billy Graham’s early years stars Armie Hammer as Graham.
I spoke to Hammer about the challenges of taking on the role of a man people know so well.
How did you come to this project?
One day my agent called and said, “I have your next movie. That’s all you need to know.” I fell madly in love with it, knew i had to do it. The next thing I knew, I was in Billy Graham world.
it was the approach i responded do. i knew who he was the way every one else on the planet knows, but this was the human, how he found his faith, how his faith was shaken, how the love of his life was given and almost taken away. We start at the beginning and end when Billy Graham the preacher eclipse Billy Graham the person.
What are the challenges and pitfalls of portraying a real person who has inspired so much respect and affection?
You want to be so careful and pay respect to the Grahams, make something they like and love, and give them the most honest and real portrayal so they can say, “I remember that, I said that.”
I studied his autobiography, Just As I Am. It was an amazing tool for me to use. I also used the internet where you can see private, personal videos that show how he was when he was not preaching. His preaching was his signature enthusiasm but I wanted to see what he was like when he was just talking, where you see his personality.
What made Graham so special?
It was definitely his blind faith — the fact that he whole-heartedly without question or doubt at all found his beliefs and did not waver. He was so human and could take the gospel and make it accessible. He would not say he was the smartest person in the world but he had the gift of faith. In this story, he and Templeton go through a crisis of faith but react differently.
His approachability and simplicity was what made him so good at communicating with people. He is the most honest and good human being that ever walked this planet. He never had a scandal because he did not have a scandalous bone in his body. He created the Modesto manifesto to make sure that he and his men could withstand temptation. He called them together and said, “Ministers are falling to the left and right. What we have to say is too important. Go to your room for an hour and think about what it is that is the cause of these ministers’ downfall.” They all had the same things on the list — sex, money, pride, lying. He said, “Here is what we will do. We will have an outside firm to do the money, none of us will ever be alone in a room with a woman, we will never lie about our numbers of followers or criticize others.” Those are the kinds of decisions that made him unique.
Interview: Alice Eve and Krysten Ritter of ‘She’s Out of My League’
Posted on March 10, 2010 at 3:59 pm
It’s impossible to meet the gloriously beautiful, smart, and funny Alice Eve and Krysten Ritter without feeling that they are completely out of the league of any mere mortals. In “She’s out of My League,” Eve very believably plays a woman of such beauty and accomplishment that the main character, played by Jay Baruchel (“Knocked Up,” “Tropic Thunder”) is too insecure to handle the relationship. Ritter plays her cynical best friend. But they are also gloriously nice and made the interview a real pleasure.
Have you ever dated anyone you thought was out of your league?
Ritter: I’ve dated someone that other people thought was out of my league. But if you’re with somebody, you think they’re a 10.
Eve: I’m stealing that line. It’s true, if you’re with somebody you think they’re a 10. I always think that if I’m with somebody, they’re better than me. That’s why I love them. They’re amazing.
Do you think that men and women rate each other differently?
Eve: Women are less aesthetic than men.
Ritter: Men are more visual creatures and rate women based on looks. We like to laugh and be shown a good time. I’ve never rated anyone on looks.
You seem like real friends on screen. Did you know each other before?
Ritter: We are real friends now but didn’t know each other before. Alice was cast in the movie and I came in to chemistry read. It just worked.
The wisecracking best friend is always a great role, isn’t it?
Ritter: It is always a lot of fun. It’s a good time. You don’t feel like you’re under any pressure except to be funny. I think there was even more outrageous language in the original script but then the studio didn’t want quote unquote pretty girls saying awful things. But we got them in there. The “plane doctor” joke was cut from the script. The script had the character as unattractive, plain, frumpy best friend. But then I read and got the part and then they started to change it and get away from the really foul-mouthed and sarcastic lines. But then when we were shooting we decided to try it and it made it into the movie and the trailer.
You wear some beautiful clothes in the movie.
Ritter: You had standard, conventional fabulous, stuff. I had cooler, edgier, weirder stuff. The costume designer didn’t have the right sizes for me so we literally got in the car and went to all these boutiques in Pittsburgh and got all these great pieces. I wanted to keep everything especially the green one from the Andy Warhol party scene.
Eve: We had a lot of fittings I had to go back to New York for and the producers at Dreamworks were really involved in the look and what was right. I put a lot of work, sweat, and tears in those fittings and it has been so rewarding to have it pay off because we’ve had such great responses to the costumes. They clothes show that she is very successful, she’s got taste, she’s got money. It’s an inch by inch process, do you like this, maybe we’ll try this one for now, it can be a very long process.
Tell me about working with Jay.
Eve: He’s so great! The dramatic stuff, the comedic stuff, a lot of intimate stuff, we put work into it. it’s about building the right kind of relationship together and knowing that the energy you have together keeps that alive for the duration of the film.
You’re playing a character who is supposed to be just about perfect. And a lot of what you are doing is reacting in the middle of some outrageous behavior. How do you make that work?
Eve: I felt like she was an honest, straight, calm, nice, person. So you have a whole plethora of choices, and it was incredibly refreshing to me because you don’t have to be the bitch or the slut or the clumsy one. It was a lovely thing to have that role. At the time I was outraged when they cut out all the swearing in the original script but in retrospect I think it was the right choice.
In Rwanda, where 800,000 people were massacred in 1994, everyone who is left is either a perpetrator or a victim. There were simply too many people to jail, and so the government has released 50,000 prisoners back into the communities populated with the survivors, every one of whom lost friends and family members and must now live as neighbors with the people, sometimes the very individuals, who were responsible. As the movie’s website says,
Without the hope of full justice, Rwanda has turned to a new solution: Reconciliation. But can it be done? Can survivors truly forgive the killers who destroyed their families? Can the government expect this from its people? And can the church, which failed at moral leadership during the genocide, fit into the process of reconciliation today? In “As We Forgive,” director Laura Waters Hinson and narrator Mia Farrow explore these topics through the lives of four neighbors once caught in opposite tides of a genocidal bloodbath, and their extraordinary journey from death to life through forgiveness.
I spoke to Ms. Hinson by phone while we were both snowed in at our homes in the Washington DC area.
How do you define forgiveness?
It is complicated but forgiveness is in your heart, when looking at a wrong that has been done against you, it is saying to the person who has done that or just to yourself, “I no longer seek retribution or justice for what you have done to me. I’m letting that go. My right to be angry, my right to seek justice, I’m allowing that to go so that I can heal and move on with my life and be lifted of that burden.” You can do it therapeutically, you can do it alone, in your heart. You don’t even have to tell anybody that you’ve done it.
I would distinguish that from reconciliation, which is the next huge step where you say, “Not only have I forgiven you, but I want to work with you to rebuild to some degree my relationship with you.” That is much more difficult, much more rare.
In some cases it shouldn’t be done; if someone has traumatized you in a horrible way. But in Rwanda, these people are forced to be together. All these killers returning from prison are your neighbors. You see them everywhere you go. So what do you do? Do you reconcile, do you just forgive, or do you live isolated in your home?
I do not want to sound disrespectful to the victims of these unspeakable tragedies, but the perpetrators were victims in a way, too because they did not have freedom of choice either.
How did you find the two people who are the focus of the film and how did you get them to talk to you?
That was my chief concern going over there. This all-white American film crew — how would we gain the trust of the people? We needed a great ambassador, a translator, somebody who could get the vision of what were were trying to accomplish through a wild set of circumstances involving a recommendation on a church listserv that my roommate’s mother was on. I literally cried because he was so perfect. He himself was a survivor; he was hidden for three months protected by a Hutu friend. He went to all the people in the film and told them about what we were doing. He could relate to them and invariably they would say yes, they wanted to be a part of the film. I wrote out questions but he was the one who really interviewed them. All of the interviews ended with lots of hugs and we are still in close to those people today.
I think if you have the power to forgive, it makes you more open to people. If you can forgive, there’s really nothing they can do to hurt you.
That’s so true.
And in America, I think we find it easier to believe that something as horrific as genocide can occur than to believe that people can forgive and reach out to each other with generosity and humanity. How do you tell that story?
I watched other films on this issue and a lot of them focused on telling you many many stories of victims almost to the point where you were overwhelmed with suffering and then this rosy ending was added on. I wanted to focus on two main stories. And I wanted to give time to the perpetrators as well. I wanted people to envision themselves being those people. This was a journey I was going through personally when I was meeting those victims and then meeting the killers themselves. I was shocked that I identified with even the killers, too. Just normal people.
They just seemed like normal people who had done abnormal things.
You had hundreds of thousands of normal people who were involved in the genocide. They were farmers, they were dads, they were friends of the people in the movie. They were just normal people.
I asked a lot, “What made you do all these killings?” It’s a complicated answer. On one hand you had the mob mentality. On another level you had a corrupted government who had taken over the radio waves and the military and people were “educated” to hate their neighbors, to think of them as not actually human beings, that they were animals — the word “cockroach” was used a lot. There was physical pressure, too. The militia came to your village and said, “Hey, you, come over and help us kill these people.” If you didn’t, you would be killed, too. Many moderate Hutus were killed. And these were poor people. They were told that if they killed their neighbors, they could have their cow or their farm.
The idea of forgiveness is to see the normality in everyone, even people who do unthinkable things, the other end of the scale from thinking of them as non-human.
It was a humbling experience for me. I thought they were monsters or I would be afraid of them. But they were broken people, very mild-mannered, very ashamed. Not everyone, but many. It was very significant for them that they were trying to help, that the hands that had killed were now being used to build something for someone they had harmed. There is very little they can do, but it is something. It is important for survivors and the perpetrators. One of the survivors participates in a physical act of reconciliation to help one of the killers.
Many of these people would say to me, “I believe I have been forgiven by God. And so I will extend that forgiveness to these people even though they don’t deserve it.” That was central to those who seemed most authentically forgiving. That comes from their faith. On another level, you have the fact that the president has asked the whole country to reconcile. To forgive is not to forget. They remember the genocide and go over it and over it again to make sure no one forgets.
I’ve been given so much hope from this story. I went into it skeptically. I just couldn’t believe it. And I was so humbled, so struck by these people’s faith and their ability to act on what they believe. I was struck that they could enter into a relationship with the person who slaughtered their family. There are so many levels. It just changed me.
Frederick C. Weibel, Jr. is the author of Edison’s Frankenstein, a tribute to an extraordinary film that was considered lost for decades.
What is it about the Frankenstein story that makes it so enduringly compelling?
Frankenstein is so filled with universal questions and truths. It’s a moral tale about how our actions have repercussions that we never considered. And that we are responsible for those consequences that can cascade and destroy us. Frankenstein creates a creature, brings it to life and then realizes that he has made a great mistake, and abandons it, leaving it to its own devices, hoping it will die. It doesn’t. Eventually the creature learns how to survive and realizes the he is so hideously ugly that it can never associate with human kind. The monster tracks Frankenstein down and revenge kills all his friends and family, forcing Frankenstein to pursue it to the ends of the earth, and his own destruction. The moral parable can be applied to almost any situation and is open enough to be interpreted many different ways.
Why did Edison studios choose that story as one of its first productions?
The Edison Studios had been making films since 1896. By 1910 they had evolved quite a bit and desired to make motion pictures that were “photoplays”, filmed versions of plays. They developed and applied a scientific method to film making as Edison had done with all of his experiments and products. There had been some complaints from distributors that Edison pictures were too American for foreign audiences. The studio bosses tried taking a different approach to put out well known public domain stories that would appeal to global sensibilities. They used a photo from “Frankenstein” to be on their first British catalog and had the titles translated into many different languages.
What were some of the most challenging elements of the story to film?
The biggest challenge was to condense the story down to 15 mins. in a cinematic fashion. J. Searle Dawley the producer / director wrote the scenario using elements from the book and play versions that would most stand out. He realized that trick photography could be used on the creation scenes to accomplish things not able to be done on stage that would thrill the audience and sell the picture.
How was the story edited/censored to make it acceptable to audiences of the time?
There was no post-censorship on the film but the producer had to follow the moral standards that were demanded by the Studio heads and Mr. Edison. The catalog says that all the ‘repulsive’ elements of the story were eliminated; the murders, etc., to make the film acceptable to any audience. The film also had to have a ‘happy ending” where Frankenstein realizes his mistake and eliminates the evil he has created and that love cleanses his soul from the pursuit of un-natural science over things which should be left to God.
How does it differ from later re-tellings?
Mainly in the creation of the monster. The creature is not made of a collection of corpse parts but rather formed from a gathering of chemicals mixed and set afire in a large caldron. We see a skeleton appear and the flesh start to creep across the bones. The monster shows life and movement even before it is finished. The creature also has a huge head of long wild hair that is quite a fright wig as described in the novel.
There are some scenes from the novel that were never re-done in future versions, such as when the creature peers at Frankenstein from the bed curtains. There is more of a connection between Frankenstein and the monster who argue with each other as in the book. Yes, the monster talks and is more confused than murderous.
Who were the performers and what were their backgrounds?
Augustus Phillips, who plays Frankenstein was perhaps the most accomplished actor in the film at that time. He had appeared in many plays on Broadway and national touring companies for many years. Charles Ogle, who portrayed the monster, also had a lot of experience on the stage playing character roles and was considered a master of make-up. He eventually had the longest and most successful motion picture career working for Paramount through the 20s, with some of their most famous directors and stars. Ogle is probably now the most well known of all the actors because of “Frankenstein”. Mary Fuller who plays “the Sweetheart” became quite a sensation in 1914 when she stared in the series of sequential films of “What Happened To Mary” which initiated the serial craze, creating a whole new genre of chapter films. She rivaled Mary Pickford in popularity contests at the time. Her star faded in a few years as she couldn’t seem to adapt to feature films and withdrew from making movies all together in the late teens. She died in a mental institution in Washington, DC and is buried in an unmarked grave in Congressional Cemetery.
Do you have any idea of how many people saw the film when it was first produced and what the reaction was?
“Frankenstein” was well distributed across the country, Europe and South America. It appeared in theaters from March until the late summer of 1910. I’ve found a few advertisements in a variety of newspapers and magazines and never a bad review. Quite the opposite, all of the reviews were very positive. It’s impossible to tell at this point just how many people may have seen it. Movie theaters ran it 3 or 4 days, as was the norm for the time, or even just one day. Others gave it special performances with full orchestras as the feature film of the evening in a vaudeville presentation. There are notices in newspapers of it booking in large and small cities; New York City, Salt Lake, Hartford, CN, Frederick, MD, Palestine,TX, etc. It had a very long run for an Edison film.
What made you want to research this film and where did you get your information?
I became fascinated with the film since 1963 when I saw a picture of the monster in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. In the early 90s I saw a clip of the creation sequence on cable TV so I started my search and tracked down the man who owned the only known print of it. The major amount of my research came from The Edison National Historic Site, The Museum of Modern Art who had many of the Edison Motion Picture Studio papers, The Library of Congress that had the copyright materials and magazine articles, and The Academy of Motion Pictures that had a lot of information on the actors. Just last year a lot of old newspapers had been scanned and put up on the web. I was able to access a lot of material from that.
It was long considered to be a lost film. How was it discovered?
Mr. Al Dettlaff of Cudahy, WI bought a bag of old films from a fellow collector and friend of his, Herman Schmidt for $25 in the late ’50s. Neither one of them had any idea of its real value or historical significance. The film had shrunken a bit and when Dettlaff first ran it, the projector tore it pieces. He pieced it back together. In the 1970s he somehow learned of its rarity and did a semi-restoration job by copying it and photographing many of the frames for a storyboard. He contacted many of the film institutions around the country trying to sell it for $1,000,000. All of them just offered him a tax write-off. When the word got out that the film existed, he started licensing 2 min. clips of it for $2000 a pop. He made over $20,000 in this manner and decided that it was more lucrative doing this that releasing the whole thing which would be immediately ‘bootlegged’ due to it being out of copyright. Eventually in 2003 I helped convince him to release it on DVD.
How did the graphic novel adaptation come about?
I had a contract in the late 90s with a small publisher to print an earlier version of my book and a comic book version of the film. The company welched on both accounts and never returned my rare photos. Chris Yambar, a well known comic writer and publisher contacted me in 2002 about reviving the comic book idea and turning it into a 64 page graphic novel. He wanted me to provide an essay on the background of the Edison’s “Frankenstein” film and actors. I also sent him a copy of the film and many frame grabs and photos. Chris knew an excellent artist Rob Bihun and contracted him to do the drawing. Chris wrote a modern version of the film and storyboarded it. I just made a few suggestions and let them run wild with it. Rob’s artwork was astounding. They certainly knew what they were doing and filled in a lot blanks in the story. My version was just to stick to the original film and use the frame grabs to base my drawings for a style in the old EC horror comics of the 1950s. These guys were professionals and knew what would appeal to a modern buying public. So where it deviates from the film was due to that kind of approach. They did a fantastic job, much more exciting and better than what I could ever have achieved. The run quickly sold out and I think I have the only remaining copies. Chris was planning a hard cover reprint for the 100th anniversary. I hope it comes out.
On the Nickelodeon series True Jackson VP, Danielle Bisutti plays Amanda, the fashion company executive who is jealous of — and always outsmarted by — the teenage title character played by Keke Palmer. She also stars in the popular Christian film No Greater Love as a young mother who leaves her family and devotes her life to Christ. I spoke to her about fashion, co-starring with young performers, and what inspires her.
Is it fun to wear high fashion clothes as Amanda?
When I was two years old, I would pick out clothes. My mom would stand me up in my crib and pull out dresses and I would point to what I wanted to wear. So it was an inevitable thing that one day I would end up playing a role where I was a vice president of a fashion company. My mom and my aunt did a great deal of modeling and both my grandmother and my great-grandmother on my mom’s side worked for Gucci. So I have all these amazing vintage Gucci pieces. So when I was cast as Amanda in “True Jackson VP” and saw that it was a kind of “Devil Wears Prada”/”Ugly Betty” setting I knew exactly what I was going to wear. It was a total dream come true. And our wardrobe stylist, Alison Freer, is phenomenal. She totally gets me, my body type, the character. Amanda has a bit of little girl in her and a lot of sass, a lot of edge. She’s a New York executive and she always wants to be a little sleek and sophisticated. We’re totally on the same page and I couldn’t be happier. I love her; she’s amazing.
Is there one outfit you especially loved wearing?
I seem to get a lot of great dresses from Karen Millen and some pieces from Alice & Olivia. Alison Freer let me borrow and Alice & Olivia dress on the red carpet, and a Karen Millen one that fit like a total glove I wore on the red carpet as well. She gives them to me on loan and I rock them on the red carpet and bring them back.
You’re working with one of my favorite young performers, Keke Palmer of Akeelah and the Bee.
She is a consummate professional and she’s just 16 years old. There’s a side to Keke where you feel like you are dealing with a sophisticated 40-year-old woman who has been doing this forever and then there’s side that is this 16-year-old girl who is bouncing off the walls. What I love about her is that she is always open to playing, always open to new ideas. Sometimes I’ll come to her and say, “Hey, why don’t we try the scene this way, or in this scene why don’t you look at me and I’ll look and you and then we’ll go in this direction. We come to each other with different ideas and there’s a real collaboration with a lot of love and respect for each other and playfulness. It’s a total joy.
What is it like interacting with kid actors all day long?
That’s like the clash between the two worlds in the show — dealing with kids in a very adult, high-fashion, high-pressure situation. I kind of see myself as like the mama bear on the set. If the kids are getting rowdy before a take, honing everybody in and getting everybody focused. You have to watch your language. You have to watch what you talk about. I feel like it has made me a little bit more PG-rated, which is totally fine for me! It’s refreshing. The writers come up with clever, interesting jokes without it being anything risque. It’s a total family show.
Tell me about meeting fans of the show — they must get very enthusiastic!
I play the nemesis of the show. And there are kids who love the hero but there are also kids who love the villain! A lot of kids love Amanda! They love how she takes herself so seriously. They love how she dresses. One girl sends me pictures of how she dresses like Amanda at school! That’s been fun. We have a lot of parent fans, too.
I think it is great for families to watch a show that is set in the workplace. Most shows featuring kids are set at home or school.
Filming NGL was a completely organic and collaborative process. Russ, Brandon and Brad all set the tone for a family feeling environment which allowed me as an actor (and I believe the other actors as well) feel safe to really discover the truthful unfurling of each moment. Yes we were on a budget, yes we had a time limit, yes this was the first film for this production company but you’d never be able to tell by looking at the finished product that any of these factors weighed in on the over-all quality of the project.
What was it like being a part of a faith-based film?
Being in a faith-based film felt like being back at home, growing up in Simi Valley. Everyone was kind and supportive. There were a lot of prayers to get through stressful moments or non-stressful moments such as before each meal and no one ever used “bad words” on set. Much like being on set for my Nickelodeon show “True Jackson V.P.”
Did you identify with your character “Heather” in any way?
Since I am not a mother nor have I ever been married nor have I ever had a problem with drugs and alcohol, I do not directly relate to Heather’s outward circumstances and life choices.
However I can certainly relate to making a selfish choice as an act of desperation from a time in my life where I was feeling absolutely helpless and hopeless. Even regardless of having a relationship with God there have been those moments of total doubt and loneliness where I have felt like I need to do something drastic to take control of my life and inevitably my choice doesn’t help so much as lead me to a BIG lesson that God was trying to teach me all along. Then comes humility, surrender and supreme forgiveness and those are experiential attributes that I can certainly relate too.
Anything you want to add about the film, its importance in the industry, what people can learn from it, etc.?
NGL is a film that I believe transcends all “genres” or limits to “specific audiences” simply because its themes are so central and universal: Forgiveness, Redemption, Family, Love and Second Chances. Since it is a faith-based film the moral code is up to par to fit any families standards and regardless of what “Religion” you are, there is most definitely a need for more films of this caliber, upholding the highest integrity.
For people who want to check out the film, what is the one thing you would say about it to spark their interest?
First love that gets lost along the way is given a second chance to make it work for the better. I mean how romantic is that?!
The show has a classic “I Love Lucy” tone to it, with the over-the-top situations and humor. Who are the performers you look up to?
Well of course Lucille Ball is like the queen of comedy, and maybe the goddess is Madeline Kahn, who had a little more of an edge to her. I grew up watching a lot of “I Love Lucy,” a lot of “Saturday Night Live” in the Gilda Radner/Jane Curtin era. And a lot of Mel Brooks. I really resonated with her because she had that darker, edgier side, totally ridiculous. When I was 21 and graduating from college I had to do a one-woman show and I did “I’m Tired” from “Blazing Saddles.”
Is there a role you would really love to play?
I’ve always loved the role of Guinevere in “Camelot.” I’ve always been drawn to the Arthurian legends. My mom and I used to watch that movie all the time. I love rock operas like “Jesus Christ Superstar.” I admire performers like Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett because they are so chameleon-like; they do comedy and drama and music. Cate Blanchett can do anything — she even played Bob Dylan! I just love to continually change it up.
And you sing and write songs as well.
I’ve been singing and song-writing since I was 21 or 22. I have not released an album but I have done songs for movies. I hope to do an album very soon, that’s one of the things I’m working on during my hiatus time. The “True Jackson” fans have been downloading my songs and two of them even performed one in the talent show! To think that two 13-year-old girls would love a song of mine so much that they would sing it in a talent show is really a compliment and very touching.
Do you have a favorite romantic movie?
The Notebook is so good. It has that retro feel. “Casablanca” is also very romantic. Anything that has a love triangle sucks me right in. And “Camelot.” I get so tortured trying to decide who should be with who.
What inspires you?
To continually feel authentic in my work. And in my authenticity to be able to touch people is the ultimate gift. There’s a sense of being of service when you can get yourself out of the way and let the art come through. Surrender to the process and allow it to be fun, allow it to happen. Knowing that my work is inspiring other people to be authentic to who they are is my inspiration.
, a tribute to an extraordinary film that was considered lost for decades. 
, Danielle Bisutti plays Amanda, the fashion company executive who is jealous of — and always outsmarted by — the teenage title character played by Keke Palmer. She also stars in the popular Christian film 
as a young mother who leaves her family and devotes her life to Christ. I spoke to her about fashion, co-starring with young performers, and what inspires her.