Interview: Candace Cameron Bure of ‘Truth Be Told’

Posted on April 13, 2011 at 8:00 am

“Family Movie Night,” sponsored by Proctor & Gamble and Walmart, has produced another fine film for all ages. Candace Cameron Bure (“Full House,” “Make It or Break It”) stars in “Truth Be Told,” the story of a marriage counselor who is not married. When she has a job opportunity that requires a husband, she tells a lie, and enlists an old friend and his children to pretend to be her family.

I spoke to Candace about the role and about her work and her ministry, speaking about her faith and giving back to the community.

Tell me about “Truth Be Told.”

I couldn’t have been more excited when I was sent this script. I had seen some of the Family Movie Night shows and said to myself, “I want to do one of those!” When I read the script, it was absolutely perfect. I fell in love with Annie Morgan, the character I play. She’s a family and marriage counselor. It was something I can totally relate to, and family and marriage are so important to me. I do a lot of speaking at conferences and churches about family and marriage, so it was a topic I am passionate about. The premise is that one little lie snowballs into this huge mess and honesty is always the best policy.

That’s what I love about this series. These are not kids’ films that adults can tolerate or movies directed at adults without offensive content but true family movies with characters and situations that everyone in the family can understand and will want to talk about later.

I appreciate it as a mom. I have 12, 11, and 9 year-olds. I loved the fact that Proctor & Gamble and Walmart teamed up to give us this time on a Friday night when we can sit down with our families and watch a movie that we don’t have to worry about. It gives us things to think about and to open up some conversations with the family. “What happens if you tell a lie?” Depending on the age of your kids it can be a very simple conversation but you can turn it to a situation you and your family have recently experienced. I can open the door for something else your child has been struggling with. You use it as a platform for whatever dialogue needs to be exposed in your family at this time.

What happens in the film?

My character is offered a job at a radio station and because she is a marriage counselor, they assume she is married. And family is very important to the man who owns the company. She is probably not going to get the job unless she has a husband. She runs into an old college friend who is a widower and convinces him and his children to pretend to be her family for the weekend. The relationship develops — it is definitely a romantic comedy.

What is your experience like as you speak to groups about your faith?

I’ve been speaking and sharing my Christian faith for seven or eight years, and now I am speaking to the bigger groups like Extraordinary Women and Women of Joy. I actually just got back from a conference with Extraordinary Women. Sometimes there’s anywhere from 1500-15,000 ladies I will speak to. It is an amazing opportunity for me to share my faith and what is important to me and ultimately the gospel of Jesus Christ. I think I am as encouraged or maybe even more to see that God allows me to be used in that sense. These ladies will tell me they are encouraged by hearing my story and yet I am in awe that I am just a person getting this opportunity so I feel very privileged. It’s a very different thing from being on television. Most people would think that you would automatically be comfortable if you’re an actress to go up on stage to speak but it is actually very different. It’s not the number of people that scares me. The more there are, the easier it is for me. But it is a very different thing to open your heart and share your heart and be exposed in that way, not reading a memorized script or acting a different character. I get much more nervous speaking live at an event. You throw a camera on me and I am comfortable!

You have written about your faith as a way to manage food issues.

I had an emotional attachment to food. I ran to food for comfort, to fill a void instead of realizing I had to run to God for those things. I learned to honor my body by eating healthily and exercising but really by putting my faith into the forefront of my relationship with food by honoring my body as a temple God gave me and learning to run to Him for those needs and not to turn to food for it. I don’t enjoy getting up at 5 am some mornings but I see it as a necessity to take care of my body. To eat healthy, that’s all about the choices I make whether in a restaurant or the grocery story. The food’s not making it for me. There are so many tools out there to get us on the right track and help us make better choices. We don’t value those choices as much as we should. One choice a day, one choice an hour. If you look at it this way, it’s not so overwhelming.

Do you have a favorite Bible passage?

I don’t like that question because there are so many good ones! But the one that’s been on my computer desktop recently is Philippians 1, Verse 6. I just go, “God’s good work is in all of us and He will carry that on.” I don’t need to worry about it, I don’t need to stress over it. I know God has a plan set before me and I need to obediently just follow the footsteps that he’s laid out and keep my eyes focused on Him and He will carry out that good work to completion. And whatever that is, it might not be my own expectation but He knows what that is.

It’s everything. We read the Bible together and we talk about verses that can help us focus for that day. If we have a need or a worry for that day we find verses where it talks about it. We go to church. My kids are involved in Awana and youth group. My daughter has started leading worship and singing at her chapel. They go to a Christian school. So it is in every aspect of our lives but most important, my husband and I try to be that example, to show them that it is not just words but by our own actions and what we do.

Truth Be Told

Interview: John Rhys-Davies of KJB: The Book That Changed the World

Posted on April 10, 2011 at 8:00 am

I couldn’t help it. When I picked up the phone to hear the voice of distinguished actor John Rhys-Davies, I had to enjoy a moment pretending I was talking to Sallah from “Raiders of the Lost Ark” or Gimli from “Lord of the Rings.” Rhys-Davies and his gorgeous speaking voice have appeared in everything from blockbusters to “Star Trek: Voyager” and “Spongebob Squarepants.” I very much enjoyed speaking to him about the new DVD release of KJB: The Book That Changed the World, a documentary celebrating the 400th anniversary of the most widely-used and influential English translation of the Christian Bible.

How do you think about faith and science?

I count myself a a rationalist and a skeptic with a very conscious awareness of my indebtedness to Western Christian civilization and I am a fairly passionate defender of it. My background is as a Welsh Protestant and I find myself championing all sorts of causes when I find them unfairly portrayed. I am a believer in the evolutionary process and yet I have sympathy for the friends of mine who are creationists. I don’t find the positions incompatible. That means I irritate both camps. How do you expect God to communicate to people — to speak about event horizons and milliseconds? It is better to say, “In the beginning….” There is no necessity for them to disagree. Dare I say it is a failure on the imaginations of both parts.

The issues of faith I keep coming back to. I am convinced logically that to say there is no God is the act of a fool. When you get back to fundamental questions — why should anything exist? A, I’m not sure what the answer is in terms of the science and B, I’m not sure that science can even ask that question. And it is sophistry to say that it is not a valid question. In the absence of an answer, reasoned speculation seems to be legitimate. Given the size of the earth and the number of possible universes that exist — I was told once it was 10 to the 500th power. The revised figure is 10 to the thousandth to the ten thousandth power, a scale so far beyond our comprehension that to make any assertions about it is simply fatuous.

Don’t you think that is exactly why the Bible presents its lessons in parable and metaphor? Because so much is beyond our comprehension?

I think that is a very legitimate observation. Aquinas got it right when he said, “God is that which nothing is greater.” But the size of that greatness is slowly revealing itself to us.

Were you on location for some of this film?

Only a few occasions like Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh, where the kings of Scotland were crowned, Westminster Abbey, Magdalen College and the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and the library of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Beautiful places. And one had the privilege of meeting ultra-smart minds, people who could understand complex matters and give a simple, clear answer. Not like me! I can’t give a soundbite for love or money.

What surprised you in learning about the history of this translation?

The human drama. And the real surprise for me was the enormous sense of emotion that I felt when I actually held it in my hand. I was moved to tears. It shocked me into realizing how deep the instinct of faith is still in me. I’m choking up at the recollection of it even now.

You know that argument the traditionalists have with the modernists about the translation: “Then I shall see him face to face but through a glass, darkly,” that wonderful Elizabethan expression. It always happens to be my favorite because I know exactly what it means. Imagine murky, dirty, Elizabethan London. Carts, horses, noise, excrement. People dumped chamber pots onto the street. The glass windows were not the clear glass we have now but rather like those sort of obscure, bubble-filled slightly opaque things that let some light in but you could not exactly see through, and that’s the image they found of the way we can look at God.

The scrupulousness of the scholarship, the care, the sense of importance of what they were doing, the need to get it right, and the extraordinary tensions between them. And as they worked together and refined things, slowly they began to respect each other’s talents and scholarship. And that strange mutation takes place when you realize that what you’re doing is not just an exercise but a mounting sense of excitement: “What we’re doing is really extraordinarily good.” I think by the end they knew what they were making was pure gold.

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Actors Interview

The Grace Card

Posted on February 24, 2011 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for violence and thematic elements
Profanity:	Some language, implied racist term
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, including drinking to deal with stress, drug dealers
Violence/ Scariness:	Death of a child in an accident, shooting of a teenager
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	February 25, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	June 13, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B005335K9A

Anger seduces us because it fools us into feeling powerful.

Anger absorbs so much energy that it helps us avoid the more complicated and painful emotions of loss, guilt, regret, and fear. And that, as “The Grace Card” shows us, is why it is so hard to forgive.
Mac MacDonald (Michael Joiner) is a cop so bitter and angry after the accidental death of his young son that seventeen years later he is consumed with hatred. He subjects his wife, his teenage son, and his co-workers to constant complaints and insults. The escaping drug dealer who killed his son was black, and Mac has allowed racism to poison his heart as well.

His new partner is Sam (Michael Higgenbottom) a part-time pastor who has had to work as a policeman to make ends meet. He has a naturally cheerful and optimistic nature but he is hurt by Mac’s bigotry and hostility. Guided by the wisdom of his grandfather (Louis Gossett Jr.) and his wife (a warm and gracious performance by Dawntoya Thomason), he is able to play the “grace card,” to find forgiveness in himself and, after a tragic twist, to inspire it in Mac.
This is an unpretentious but sincere film with quiet power, and its final scenes are moving and inspirational.

(more…)

The Sunset Limited

Posted on February 22, 2011 at 3:42 pm

Tommy Lee Jones directed and co-stars with Samuel L. Jackson in “The Sunset Limited,” an HBO movie based on the play by Cormac McCarthy (“The Road,” “No Country for Old Men”). Jones is a professor who struggles with despair so deep that he tries to commit suicide by jumping in front of the train in the movie’s title. Jackson is the janitor, a man of profound and committed faith, who rescues him and brings him back to his apartment for a conversation about God, purpose, meaning, and what we can know about life.

This is a rare production that is willing to engage on issues of faith. Whether you think of it as a literal conversation between two men or as a metaphor of a Jacob-like character wrestling with an angel, it is a moving experience — and a chance to see two of our greatest actors at their best.

Featurette

The Sunset Limited

Interview: Douglas Gresham of the Narnia Movies

Posted on December 9, 2010 at 9:36 pm

When Douglas Gresham was a little boy, his mother Joy married C.S. Lewis (known to friends as Jack), the author of the Narnia books. There are two different movies about the touching story of the romance between the sheltered British bachelor, an scholar who lived almost entirely within the academic community and the outspoken American divorcee, a Jewish/atheist/communist-turned Christian and an award-winning poet, who challenged everything Lewis thought he knew. Gresham had two sons, and after her death they were raised by Lewis. Her son Douglas is now the literary executor of the Lewis estate and he is a producer of the films. I was lucky enough to get a chance to talk to him about “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” and what he learned from his mother and step-father.
I know many people have come to you over the years with proposals for Narnia films. What made you decide that Walden was the right group to work with?
I’ve got a secret technique. When we’re making decisions like that within the C.S. Lewis company, where I am one of the leading people, I go inside in a closed room and I pray lots. And then I follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit of God, which is what I’m praying for. And the Holy Spirit of God indicated to me that Walden were the people to go with. So that’s why I went with Walden, and I’m not sorry. As always, the Holy Spirit is right.
Like any other relationship, we have our storms, mostly storms in a teacup. But if you look on the screen, you see what it is like to work with them. We’ve put very good movies on the screen, very beautiful movies. And that’s proof of the pudding.
I was so glad to see how well the movie did in portraying the gallant soldier mouse, Reepicheep.
I love Reepicheep. He’s great! We worked hard on him. He had a relatively small part in “Prince Caspian.” But in “Dawn Treader,” Reepicheep is one of the stars of the movie. They often say you should never work with animals and children. Our whole movie is animals and children! And we have a two-foot-high mouse who steals the show. We had to make sure we wrote his dialogue very carefully and got it right. And we had to make sure that the special effects guys got it right and he looked absolutely realistic and he does come across as a real character in the movie. He’s a star! He’s an absolute star. We don’t have to pay him, but he’s a star.
He’s really the heart of the story.
He’s a pure knight of Narnia, who goes to Aslan’s country without having to die first. That’s Sir Galahad all over again. So we really have to get him right, and I think we did. And Simon Pegg did a wonderful job with the voice, absolutely perfect for him.
One thing I love about the movies is that they are very welcoming. If you are familiar with the books and the other movies you will find what you want to see. But if you are not, you won’t be left out.
That’s largely the part of the books. We don’t make sequels. We make stand-alone adventures that happen to include some of the same characters and places. This one shows us new parts parts of Narnia we’ve never seen before and many new creatures. There’s a continuity of casting but it’s a new story each time. You don’t have to have seen the other movies. You don’t even have to have read the other books.
But they’re also very respectful of the people who are fans, and as you know, those people have very strong views about how everything should look on screen.
I’m probably the most demonically fanatical Narnia purist of all time. So I do try to protect Narnia as much as I can. We do have to make changes in translating a book on screen. But I’m like a dragon jealously protecting the books; they’ll tell you I’m a real nuisance.
The Dawn Treader itself, the ship, looks just like I wish I could have imagined it.
Pauline Baynes, who did the drawings for the Dawn Treader originally gave us these fabulous drawings and gave us a guide from which to work. We took that and wound up with this beautiful ship.
You were essentially raised by C.S. Lewis after your mother died. What did you learn from him?
He was my step-father and the only one who lasted long enough to have any real parental role in bringing me up. I think what I learned most from him is that Christianity is not something you just believe in. It is not enough to just believe in Jesus unless you believe Jesus and do what he says. Jack was someone who lived his Christianity every hour of every day. That was a huge example to me. It took me a long, long time to wake up to it, mind you. I’m trying hard to follow his example but I’m nowhere near as good as he was. But I’ll keep trying until I shuffle off to Buffalo.
What gave him that gift of faith?
Humility. In his 30’s he realized he’d been going the wrong direction. It took me longer. But he suddenly realized that and he turned himself entirely over to Christ. He made no secret of the fact that the Holy Spirit of God was the real author of these books and brought the stories to him. He crafted them with his enormous literary talent. But he was a humble man and that enabled him to follow Christ very closely. I’m an arrogant and conceited man and that makes it harder for me.
I am the man I am today because Jack was my step-father.
What did you learn from your mother?
Courage and the value of courage. She was still making jokes on her deathbed and laughing at her disease. She said, “I have so many cancers I could form a trade union of them.” Once Jack said something particularly pedantic and my mother said, “Could someone please pass the pedanticide.” And once he said, “What do you take me for, a fool?” and she said, “I took you for better or worse.”
What has been the best part of the reaction to the film for you?
Just yesterday, our church was having a baptism at our house because we have a pool. A little girl we know brought a friend over because she told her I was one of the producers of the Narnia films and she didn’t believe there was someone who had been living in Narnia all his life. I met her at the foot of our stairs and her eyes grew as big as saucers. When someone is so enthralled and affected by the movies, it is lovely to see, a rewarding thing. And I heard from an Anglican priest who had conducted a funeral, and then went to the movie and said he was “ministered to” by “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.” That means a lot to me.
Be sure to watch the movies about Joy Gresham and C.S. Lewis, Shadowlands with Debra Winger and Anthony Hopkins and C.S. Lewis: Through the Shadowlands with Joss Ackland and Claire Bloom. Both are superb.

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Behind the Scenes Interview