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eternal sunshine for the Transformed mind

The Waiting is the Easy Part

Interview: Phil Cooke

While he may not look as old as some major Hollywood Executives, Phil Cooke has been at the forefront of the media industry for years.  Whether working on his own or partnering with other entertainment industry greats or one of the many schools and programs he teaches for, Phil has no problem expressing himself on the state of media in the world, the Christian’s place in that world and how to properly effect change.  He is a television and film director and producer with numerous feature length videos, documentaries and commercials to his credit, including the recent Thou Shalt Laugh videos.  He is also the author of three books, the most recent of which, Branding Faith, he expects to redefine how Christians take hold of the power of the media in the today’s world.

Paul Rose, Jr: Well, let’s start by paying the bills.  How did you get involved with directing Thou Shalt Laugh 2?

Phil Cooke: Jonathan Bock at Grace Hill Media and I talked about doing the original Thou Shalt Laugh stand up comedy DVD special a couple of years ago.  And we realized there was a huge need for – not necessarily a Christian comedy video – but a comedy video that anyone in the family could enjoy.  We didn’t want church humor that only Christians would relate to, we wanted stuff that everyone would find funny.  So we started by auditioning about 100 comedians to find seven that were really, really funny.  And so we did the first show, with Jon producing and me directing and our production company, Cooke Pictures, did the production work, crewed it and did all the shooting for it.  It was hugely successful – I’ve been told it’s the biggest selling Christian comedy video of all time.   And so we decided to come back and do the deuce.  And this time, we decided to throw our lot in together and become owners of the project.  So we teamed up, Grace Hill Media, Cooke Pictures, are joint producers of the project, along with Hunt Lowry’s company, Roserock Films, it’s all shot on high definition video – it looks really nice.  And the second one seems to be doing well too, and hopefully we’ll be on television at some point in the future.

Now you own two different media-oriented companies, is that correct?

I have two companies, one is Cooke Pictures, which is primarily involved with working with Christian churches and media organizations, trying to help them improve the quality and effectiveness of what they do in the media.  There’s some really scary stuff out there on religious television!  So we consult and do a lot of strategic planning related to how they produce and use the media.  If they have a television program, we help them improve that and make it more effective.  We’re also involved in digital media, branding, and identity.  We do a lot of re-branding.  With Joyce Meyer, for instance, we went in a number of years ago and completely rebranded her ministry and her media outreach, and it’s proven to be very effective.  We were part of the team that helped create Joel Osteen’s television program.  We’ve worked with people from Robert Schuller Jr., to Ed Young in Dallas, to a number of ministries, and now we’re working with some even larger organizations, like the American Bible Society, to re-brand them, and focus them where they need to go in media.  We’re also working in the digital media world with a number of emerging leaders.

And then my other company, TWC Films, is actually a TV commercial production company.  I’m partners in that company with Ralph Winter, the producer of the X-Men films and Fantastic Four, and also commercial producer Mark Thomas, and we’ve created a company that creates mostly comedy TV spots.  We really enjoy doing comedy, and we represent about 10 directors, literally from around the world – including Bangkok, Thailand, all the way to Zurich, Switzerland, and we do comedy spots for all kinds of major companies across the country and around the world.

You mentioned “Branding.”  I think a lot of people don’t know what branding is; could you explain that some more?

Well, actually, my new book is coming out in March 2008, called Branding Faith: Why some churches and ministries impact culture and others don’t, from Regal Books, and essentially it’s a book on branding churches, ministries and other non-profits.  Branding is essentially, “what do people think of when they think of you”?  It’s the story that surrounds a person, a product, or an organization.  You can check out the book at Amazon or at BrandingFaith.com.

In the book I show that companies like Nike have very clearly designed brands.  Their brand statement for instance, is “the spirit of the athlete,” and everything they do reflects that.  With Starbucks, their brand statement is a “great coffee experience.”  Everything they do reflects that and impacts that story.  Not only the coffee they sell, but the design of the store, the menu items, the outfit the baristas wear.  So branding is essentially the story that surrounds you or your organization, and just in the way Nike and Apple and other companies need effective brands, I think churches and ministries need a brand because today, we live in a media-driven culture.  We’re being overrun by media messages on a daily basis.  And in a media-driven culture, it’s all about choice. 

For instance, when my grandmother went to the grocery store in the 1920’s and 30’s in the Southern United States, she only found one brand of flour, one brand of salt, or one brand of sugar.  But today, a typical grocery store stocks as many as 30,000 different items.  In fact, I understand there are 8 or 10 different kinds of Oreo cookies alone in a typical grocery store.  So the question becomes, how do you stand out in that incredible range of choices?  That’s what branding is all about – helping people distinguish your message from the swirl of media clutter out there.  In the religious world, what makes your message worth hearing?  What makes your church different from another church down the road?  What makes your organization different from all the others?  It’s not necessarily about being better, it’s about being distinctive.

In a media-driven culture, researchers indicate we’re bombarded with as many as 3,000 advertising messages a day.  So how does your message stand out?  That’s why my vision and my goal working with churches, ministries, and non-profits is helping them get noticed.  Helping them express their story – especially in the media – more effectively.  We’re telling the greatest story ever told, but if no one is listening, we’ve failed.

In light of that, what do you think the world sees as far as the “Brand” associated with Christianity?

The perception of Christianity is in really bad shape right now.  In fact, if you check my blog at PhilCooke.com, I recently wrote about the fact that the perception of Christianity may be at an all time low.  Short of the Roman occupation during the early church or the rise of Nazism in Germany, we’re in a pretty sorry state.  Largely because of issues that range from behavior of major pastors – like those getting divorced and not missing a day in the pulpit, plus a lot of sexual scandal and financial allegations, misappropriations of funds, things like that.  (And that doesn’t count crazy hair or gold furniture on Christian TV.)  I think we just live in a time right now where the public looks at Christians and think, man, those guys don’t experience any more meaningful lives than I do, so why would I want to become one of them? 

And so one of the big issues in the work that we do as far as branding and identity with churches and ministries is perception.  Perception is incredibly important in today’s culture.  How you’re perceived is just as important as who you are.  That’s why I believe if you don’t try to impact your perception, you’ll spend the rest of your life at the mercy of other people who will.  So from a Christian point of view, there’s no question, I think we need to clean our act up.  In fact David Kinnaman’s book that just came out called UnChristian deals with this issue, and his research results are frankly pretty sad.

Is there some possibility we could turn that trend around within our generation?  How would you go about doing that?

Absolutely we can turn it around.  No question.  But it won’t be easy.  I think there are three or four areas in David’s book that were particularly sensitive – for instance that Christians are only concerned about money.  We get much of that from the world of Christian television – it’s all about money, money, money, prosperity teaching and that stuff.  And another issue is that many unbelievers think Christianity is all about political power.  And we certainly understand that – the last generation of Christian leaders were very vocal in their efforts at achieving political power.  And that’s backfired in many ways.  Sure, we should be active in politics, sure we should vote, and the Christian faith needs to be heard in the public square, but we can’t be perceived as a group that pushes people around to get our political agenda taken care of.  Those kind of things hurt us when it comes to evangelism and getting our message heard.

Rick Warren has said that we’ve come to an era where it’s not so much about creeds, as about deeds, and I think we need to show the public that Christianity is about service.  A great example is the incredible outpouring of help after Hurricane Katrina.  You know when the government got backed up and made mistakes getting the necessary supplies there, it was hundreds of churches from across this country that poured into New Orleans with food and water and shelter and health services and that made a huge impression.  One blogger said, “When you look at what happened after Hurricane Katrina, you didn’t see a lot of secular humanism around there.”  It was all about God and the church making a difference.  It’s actually very possible to turn this thing around.  But it starts with changing our perception in the eyes of the culture.

Is Hollywood a vast wasteland, as many in the church want to keep telling us?

Excellent question.  My experience is that Hollywood is not anti-Christian, and Hollywood is not anti-family.  Hollywood is simply a business.  It’s just like a business of being a lawyer, or being in the oil and gas industry, or being in the insurance business.  And like many executives, they would sell their grandmother to make a buck.  So they’re not out to destroy Christians, they just don’t get what we do and what we’re about.  They don’t understand what Christianity is.  By and large most executives and influencers in the entertainment industry aren’t people of deep religious faith, but the fact is, probably most top executives in the insurance business don’t have deep religious faith.  Most attorneys probably don’t have deep religious faith.  So it’s not that different from other industries in America.  That’s why I think the way to change Hollywood is first of all, to stop protesting and boycotting. 

It’s interesting that when missionaries go to a Third World country, they don’t surround the village and boycott the tribe.  They don’t hold up signs and call them names and criticize them.  What do they do?  They develop a relationship of trust.  They get to know them, they become one of them, they develop that kind of trust relationship.  That’s what we need to do with Hollywood.  We’re not going to get Hollywood to change by criticizing them, and complaining and boycotting.  We’re going to get Hollywood to change by developing a trust relationship, having them understand who we are, sharing our faith with them, and that’s how we’re going to make an impact.  There’s a number of great Christian organizations out there doing that right now.  And, the key is developing that trust.  That’s where we’re going to make a real difference.

What I generally do – I can give you a great example from The Da Vinci Code.  When that movie came out, a lot of Christian leaders wanted to boycott and protest the movie.  And I started saying, “Let’s engage.”  Quit criticizing and boycotting it.  Sure, it’s got a lot of flawed theology, it’s heretical, it’s got a lot of wacky stuff in it, but let’s use it as a platform to share our faith.”  Back in those days, I’d tell people, “You get on an airplane with a copy of The Da Vinci Code in your lap, and somebody’s going to start a conversation with you.”  And what a better way to share the truth than through a conversation like that.  Boycotts can backfire.  Sadly, there have actually been a couple of movies that Christians boycotted, which became box office successes because of the attention the boycott brought them.

In fact, one similar movie came out about 20 years ago and Christian leaders got real upset about it.  And all the critics said, “Look, this is not a good movie, forget about the theology, it’s just not a good movie, and it’ll disappear tomorrow.”  But the Christians decided to boycott it and they actually made it a box office success.  In another example, a few years ago, a major Christian group decided to boycott Disney.  Well, during the boycott, Disney sales actually went up.  In fact, not long ago, a major leader from that group called me and said, “Any ideas for how we can gracefully get out of this boycott?  It’s making us really look stupid.”

Boycotting is a nuclear option only.  There are times to use it, but I’ve rarely ever supported boycotts because they can so easily backfire.  It needs to be very strategically handled.  But when it comes to criticism, I certainly think we should create resources to help believers understand something like The Golden Compass, and it’s message.  The His Dark Materials novel series – (the movie was based on) – where does it go, what does it do, should we be cautious of it?  No question about it.  We should educate believers about what those things are about.  However, I also say, let’s use it as a jumping off point for starting a conversation with a friend who’s not a believer.  Maybe you even take a friend to the movie and then afterwards to a coffee shop and talk about it, talk about what it means and what the implications are.  So there are so many ways we can actually turn those projects on their head and use them as a way to reach people with Truth.

Now on another note, it seems like some of the best, most well-developed, faith-based characters we see in the entertainment industry are written or created by atheists and agnostics, people like Joe Straczynski and Aaron Sorkin and Joss Whedon.  Do you have any thoughts on why that may be?

Erwin McManus, pastor of Mosaic, made a brilliant statement at the Biola Media Conference last year.  He said that when he watched The Lion King on Broadway, and when Mufasa, the lion king died, he was more moved than when Aslan died in The Chronicles of Narnia.  He said, it’s as if the writers of the Narnia film knew we would understand what that lion represented.  They knew we’d buy into that so they didn’t have to really make us understand the implications, or move us emotionally, because we knew who it was.  But in The Lion King, nobody knew who that lion represented.  Nobody knew what it meant.  So they had to write a compelling scene, so that when Mufasa died, you were moved to tears.  And part of it is Christians who write characters thinking, okay, the audience will know who that guy is, and are going to be moved.  We’re going to know he’s a Christian and we’ll be moved emotionally, so we cheat.  We don’t do as good a job professionally writing that character, directing him, or creating that character’s world.  In fact, so many Christian films have a character who’s specifically “The Christian Guy.”  That’s his job, to be the Christian guy in that movie.  You can pretty much pick it out. 

But these other guys, Josh and J.J. (Abrams) and these other guys who are creating faith-driven characters in secular material, they’re putting their heart and soul into this thing.  They’re creating a real live, compelling character.  So there are no shortcuts, there are no buy-ins, he’s not assuming the audience is going to get it, so he makes us get it, and makes us feel that character.  It’s not a terribly articulate answer, but I think that’s the heart of why secular writers sometimes write more compelling Christian characters than Christians do.

Now I know you’ve taught at some of the Biola Media Conferences.  What is your affiliation with Biola?

Ralph Winter and I are co-chairmen of the Studio Task Force, which is essentially an organization of about 100 Christian media professionals who have come alongside Biola’s radio and TV and film department and help them with fundraising, mentoring, with teaching, those kind of things.  Yeah, we’re very involved with Biola, because I think few things are as important as training the next generation of Christian media professionals.  In fact, this year, Biola is building a multi-million dollar production facility on the campus.  Brand new television and film studio complex that’s going to be pretty impressive. 

Are you working with Barbara Nicolosi and Act One or the 168-Hour Film Festival?

I am on the Advisory Board for the Act One Executive Program, and do a lot of teaching there.  And I have taught at the 168-Hour Film Festival two or three times.  I have great respect for both Barbara Nicolosi at Act One and John Ware at 168.  I think it’s really important work that they’re doing. 

If someone were to come to you and say, “Hey, I feel like I’m called to be a Christian out in Hollywood.  Where do I start?”  What would you tell them?

Run!  Sell insurance for your father in law!  No, actually, first thing I would say is go to Hollywood Connect.  HollywoodConnect.com is a website designed for people just like you who feel called to go to Hollywood.  It has resources for: “Do I need acting lessons?” 

“Do I need a headshot?” “Where should I live?” “What kind of classes do I need to consider?” “What kind of lifestyle is it?” “Where can I go to church?”  It is a huge resource for believers who feel called to come here, and I wish it had been here back when I started.  So, first of all, I would start there.  The next thing they can do at Hollywood Connect, is give you a list of ministries in Hollywood that can help you.  The key thing to survival, I always tell people in Hollywood, is networking.  Talent simply isn’t enough.  Developing relationships with people helps.  It’s a natural thing that you want to work with people you know.  So the best way to work your way up the ladder in Hollywood is to get to know people.  And through organizations like Hollywood Connect, the Hollywood Prayer Network, InterMission, the National Media Prayer Breakfast, those kind of activities, you start elbowing with people who are pretty highly placed in the industry.  And they can really make a difference, give you good advice, help you make the kind of connection that you need to make.  So I think that’s really important.  And I always tell people, start with Hollywood Connect.   Michelle Wood runs it and has done a brilliant job creating a resource for Christians who want to move out here and get involved in the entertainment industry.

What’s coming up next for you?

  A couple exciting things.  We just finished a one-hour feature documentary on William Wilberforce.  You probably saw the movie, Amazing Grace, which was the dramatic version of his life story.  The British Parliamentarian who in the 1700’s outlawed the slave trade throughout the British Empire.  We’re doing a one-hour documentary, it looks like it’s going to debut nationwide in the Spring on Public Television across the country, so we’re really excited about that.  It’s a high definition documentary.  It was a featured selection at the Heartland Film Festival a few months ago, and it’s already been shown by request at the White House.  So we were real pumped about that, and it’ll make its debut on Public Television in the Spring, so that’s kind of cool. 

Probably the most exciting thing right now is my book that’s coming out in March, Branding Faith: Why Some Churches and Non-Profits Impact the Culture and Others Don’t.  It’s really the first book of its kind that starts a new conversation about how branding and identity relates to churches, ministries, and non-profits.  I think it’s going to change the conversation when it comes to marketing and promoting churches, ministries and faith out there in the culture.  In fact, the implications of these ideas spill over from religious media into non-profit and cause-related marketing.  And my next goal is to help great causes use the media to tell their stories more effectively.  I’m hoping it will have a huge ripple effect.

Interview: Mitch Albom

Mitch Albom is the author of nine books, including his newest, For One More Day, which he adapted into a made for TV movie that airs on ABC this weekend.  His first novel, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, is the most successful U.S. hardback first novel ever and has to date sold over eight million copies worldwide. Tuesdays with Morrie, his chronicle of time spent with a beloved but dying college professor, spent four years on the NY Times Bestseller List and is now the most successful memoir ever published. Albom adapted both of those books for television as well. 

In addition to writing for print and television, Albom has founded three charities in the metropolitan Detroit area — The Dream Fund, established in 1989, which allows disadvantaged children to become involved with the arts; A Time To Help, founded in 1998, which brings volunteers together once a month to tackle various projects in Detroit, and S.A.Y Detroit, Albom’s most recent effort, which is an umbrella program to fund shelters and care for the homeless in his city.

In this interview, Mitch was candid about his inspiration behind his stories and why forgiveness is always important.

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Paul Rose, Jr.: So tell me a little bit about For One More Day.  Where did the inspiration for the story come from?

 Mitch Albom: Well, the idea actually came to me while I was working on another book.  I have a daily routine of getting up early and writing for a few hours and I went to call my mother, which is not an unusual thing – we have a nice relationship, and we had a real nice conversation and we’re laughing and then I hung up the phone and I turned back to resume my work and I was hit with, just this wave of sadness, for want of a better word, thinking suddenly about what it will be like when I’m not going to able to pick up that phone anymore.

My mom’s getting pretty old.  You know I just got this atypical sense of depression over something that hadn’t even happened.  And I, I felt very strong emotions – to feel that way, almost missing her while she’s still here, that there must be something to that.  And I knew that, when that day comes, and she’s not going to be on the other end of that phone, I know what I’m going to sort of say out loud, “Just give me another day, give me one more phone call and I’ll say everything that I didn’t say.  One more, you know, now that I know that it really could happen, God just give me one more chance to, you know, spend some time with her.”  And I thought, “You know, I bet this is something that a lot of people feel. 

And I literally stopped working on the book I was working on and began that day on this book.  Which is essentially about a guy who never appreciates his mother while she’s alive, he’s always chasing after his absent father and it all is around one episode in his life while he’s chasing his father and his mom dies suddenly and he’s not there and his own life sort of goes down the tubes afterwards and he kind of realizes it’s all because of the guilt he feels over this and he goes to kill himself, and on this one sort of fateful night, where this story takes place, back in his small hometown where he grew up and just before he does it, he suddenly finds his mother living in the old house where she had always lived and it’s as if she never died and never went anywhere, and he spends this one day with her, which is sort of the metaphor for the, for what all of us would like with people that we’ve loved and lost.

  All of your stories tend towards spiritual themes.  If you don’t mind me asking, what is your personal faith?

I’m a practicing Jew and my wife is Christian, and she’s practicing – at the moment.

I notice that forgiveness plays a huge role in For One More Day.  Is that relative to your own life?

Well, forgiveness is not only reflective of the people in my own life for sure, but it really goes back to when I was visiting with Morrie, during Tuesdays With Morrie, and, you know, we met every Tuesday, and I saw him in a lot of different moods and modes, but the most I ever saw him cry – and the thing, when you have ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), you can pretty much cry anytime you want – the most I ever saw him cry was when he told me a story about a friend of his who had died and he didn’t get a chance to apologize to and their relationship had kind of crumbled, over a small, little nothing argument, and he had never made it up to him and all of a sudden he died.  And Morrie was just, heaving crying, you know, with regret, and why, why did I let that stupid little thing separate us for all those years, it doesn’t mean anything to me now, and yet I can’t do anything about it. 

That’s when he turned to me and he said, “Forgive everybody everything.  Even if you’re 100% right and they’re 100% wrong, you say you’re wrong if it’ll end it, because you don’t want to get to the position where I am and not have the chance to fix it.  It won’t matter when you’re at the end, and who you thought was right.  What’ll matter is that you’ve gotten back with your buddy.”  And I never forgot that, you know, this is a man who is dying and he’s getting hit hard over this.  Then it must really be a potent lesson.  And as I’ve aged and as I’ve talked to people, I’ve found that to be the case.

Obviously, you learned a lot from Morrie.  Do you ever find yourself learning lessons from your fictional characters while you’re writing?

Well… That’s an interesting question.  (long pause)  Yeah, they kind of take on a life of their own.  I mean, you, you bring them to life and, but then as you go along, they sort of start talking back at you.  I mean, Cozy, in this story, the mother, is actually based on my mother and a lot of the earlier stories in the book when he’s a boy, are stories from my life.  But the older stories, once she comes back and visits him and he’s grown into an alcoholic and all that – which is not me, thankfully – now she’s this different person, and you kind of find yourself saying, well, what would this character say, you know, and that’s when you sort of know that the characters have come to life when you’re asking yourself that question, as opposed to I’m going to make this character say something.  

But every one of my books has people, who are inspired by real people.  Even like, you know, Eddie in The Five People You Meet In Heaven, was really my Uncle Eddie, who was very much like the character in the book.  Of course, he didn’t die and go to heaven and meet five people – well, he did die, but I don’t – I don’t know what happened to him.  I hope that that’s what happened… But you know, I try to at least base them on somebody that I knew and then sort of let them start to wear different clothes.

 What do you hope your stories will accomplish?

First of all, you just hope that people you know, read it or watch the movie.  You know, first and foremost, I’m just a storyteller, and I think most storytellers want the same thing, they want people to begin and become intrigued, and they want them to stay with it and finish it.  A storyteller wants to get to tell his story.  He doesn’t want people leaving in the middle. 

So, firstly, you want that, but, you know, after they’ve turned the last page of the book, I hope that people have an appreciation for the people they love in their life, and that they don’t wait around ‘til they’re gone, you know. 

If I did my job right with For One More Day, people will finish it and then pick up the phone, like I did that morning, and call whoever it is in their life, who, you know, might be getting older, or is sick or whatever and say hey, you know, I’m going to come visit you tomorrow or next week – not this summer, not two years from now, not at Christmas time, because if you just wait around, for life to get around to your busy schedule, you’re going to find that it’s going to move on its own and you may be planning to go visit your parents next summer and you’re going to get a phone call between now and then from a hospital, you know, that say, you better come quick.  And then, all of a sudden, next summer isn’t so much an issue anymore.  And so I guess that is what I’d hope people would take out of it – is not to wait and count on there always being another day, but grab that day now.

Tell me about “A Time to Help”?

A time to help I started really right after Tuesdays With Morrie.  Because Morrie kind of admonished me when I was visiting, “Well, what are you doing for your community?  What do you do for charity?” 

And I said, “Well, you know, I write a check.”

“Oh, that’s it, you write a check, huh?”

“Well, sometimes it’s a big check…”

He said, “Well, you can do more than that – you should be involved in your community.  You know, you’re a high profile person, you can lead the way.”

And I went back and started this volunteer organization that is now, you know, ten years old, And it basically meets once a month and we use the radio program that I do or my column (in the Detroit Free Press) or whatever, to reach people and to tell them and it pulls together large groups of volunteers from around the Detroit area to participate in volunteer programs that one day is an example of it and we’ll get sometimes 200 people to an event and you know, we’ll build a house for Habitat for Humanity, or we’ll run a Christmas party at a big shelter for women, or we’ll go revitalize a neighborhood, bring in, you know, 100 trees and dig the holes and plant them and all that – things like that. 

But, basically, it’s supposed to be a gateway to people learning the volunteering things to do in your community and you don’t have to worry about getting sucked in and you’re going to have to give up every minute of your life.  We work with a real good partner group that organizes volunteer activities every day of the year, not just once a month, and so hopefully people will enjoy themselves with us and then they find out that they do love it and it’s been pretty effective.

What’s next on the horizon for you?

My next book is, believe it or not, a non-fiction book about Satan, so I’ll be talking to you again.  (laughs)

More information about Mitch and his charity work can be found at http://www.mitchalbom.com/

Interview: Doug Jones

He put the Pan into Labyrinth, and this summer he brings to life the title character in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. You might say Doug Jones is having a good year. And you’d be right.

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Let’s talk about Pan’s Labyrinth. It’s an odd question to start with, but do you provide the voice for Pan?

That’s not an odd question at all, because you are listening to him and you’re going, “Huh… I don’t remember Doug sounding that deep.”

Well, I know you can do voices, so…

Yeah, when Guillermo del Toro first offered me this, and told me I have to play Pan, that no one else could do it… I was very complimented, by the way, and then I saw it was going to be in Spanish and I was terrified. Love the script in English, mind you, the English translation was great, even to the point where it was a page turner, and I was swallowing it like it was syrup. It was wonderful! I got to the last page, wiped a tear away, and said, “Gosh, I have to be in this movie.”

This all came to me in the form of an email, and Guillermo went on in his cover letter to say, “It’s going to be in the Spanish language, but don’t worry. I’ll get someone to dub over you.” ‘Cause I was worried. I was like, there’s no way. I saw how much dialogue he has — it was like full paragraphs at a time. Telling the young girl in the story, Ofelia, where she came from, where she needs to go, here’s the riddle, all the exposition — and that’s all on me. Right, so… wow, that’s a lot of responsibility in Spanish, isn’t it? I fretted and I worried for five months leading up to that shoot, and honestly, I was not myself.

(Laughs.)

So, I told Guillermo of my fears, and I said, “I understand you can dub over, but I still have to know the Spanish.” And he said, “Oh, no! You can count to ten for all I care… I will dub over it, don’t worry, my friend!” So, I’m thinking to myself, I cannot leave him with me going, “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten…” on set. So, then, he’s got to try to make some lip sych happen with that? Are you crazy?

Yeah.

So, I wasn’t going to leave him with that. I was determined to learn to phonetically pronounce the actual words, but I had the comfort of knowing that if I got it wrong, I’d be close and that they could dub over me. What I didn’t realize, Robin, is that I was selling myself extremely short in the end, and I will say this. I now know there is a God. I had a hint before. I knew. I did not know that God designed the human mind to be able to do the things that it could do! One of those things was for Doug Jones to be able to injest reams of Spanish dialogue and spit it out picture perfect. All the Spanish people told me that I was flawless. That my inflections were all in the right places, my accent was not even American.

They weren’t quite sure where I was from, but it sounded great. I was an otherworldly character anyway, right? So, in the end I was like, “Shoot! Why didn’t I go in knowing that I could probably do that? And try to convince Guillermo to please let me use my own voice? Let me do this entire thing,” you know? But instead, it was “No, I’m terrified.” And in the end, even though I got darn close on set, Guillermo already had someone in mind, who was able to get nuances out of the language that I wasn’t even able to hear. He was a Spanish born actor. That’s fine to get someone over. I hope that in the DVD bonus features, in the behind the scenes interview, you’ll see me rehearsing. You can judge for yourself if my Spanish was anywhere close.

There’s actually an audio interview on the movie’s website…

I did it over the phone. It was great fun. I love the Pan make-up people so much. I was happy to toot their horn.

Ok, I have a really dumb question.

There’s no dumb questions, Robin!

This one might be. I left the theater wondering why it was called Pan’s Labyrinth when we never met a character identified as Pan?

I was Pan, by the way.

Well I figured, but it was never said specificially…

I guess the mythological character, Pan, was a faun, and from what I understand, Guillermo del Toro has said in an interview that he never really intended for this faun to be, specifically, Pan. It didn’t have to be. But the character of fauns themselves, he said, were mischievous and ambiguous whether they’re good or evil and that’s what he wanted as this character. Pan is ambiguous, he approaches her with all these tests, and fauns are known for trickery and tom-foolery. It forced Ofelia, little Ivana Baquero — wasn’t she divine?

She was amazing.

It forced her to rely on her own heart and her own gut instincts as she made her choices. So, that’s kind of what the lesson was there. That’s why he wanted to use a faun in that character, in that role. The “gatekeeper to the underworld,” The labyrinth. Pan was the most westernized figure that they thought might make sense with that. I’m not sure who made the decisions, but you’re right, “Pan” is never mentioned in it. It’s all “faun,” “the faun,” “el fauno.” El Labertino del Fauno. Soy un fauno, Robin. Vuestro mas humilde subdito, majestad.

Now, you know I’m not going to be able to transcribe this… (Laughs.)

What I just said was “I am a faun, Robin. Your most humble servant, your majesty.”

Okay. So in your mind, was Pan good or bad?

Well, this is what drove me forward. I loved, loved, loved playing him. I loved the, “Is he good? Is he bad?” nature of it. We don’t know until the very end. I loved that. It gave me a lot to chew on as an actor. But I would say, in my mind, I think that he’s good. My favorite characters that I have played, are the ones that I would like to hang out with.

(Laughs.)

Pan became one that I will want to hang out with. And I think I probably wouldn’t do that if he wasn’t inherently good.

Yeah.

The ambiguity, if the audience wants to leave the theater with that? Fine. That’s okay. I did my job. But, (whispering:) I like to think he’s good.

The ending was kind of ambiguous, too. It was left open to interpretation. What’s your interpretation of what we saw?

Hmm. After going on that ride with little Ofelia, after watching her struggle with the harsh reality of her family life and living at that military outpost with her evil, evil step-father — who was truly the monster of the film, by the way. I might have looked grotesque in a couple of scenes, but that man was the monster.

Oh yeah.

After going through that with her, and being sort of the gatekeeper to a better life for her and where she really belonged, I sure wanted to believe the end was real. And I would like also to know that as we go through our life, and we’re tested and faced with many choices — I would like to think that one of those choices is what is our personal faith going to be? Who are we going to believe in and trust in? Who will save us from the sin that we come into the world with? And by the end of this earthly life, I’m counting on that eternal glory being real. So that’s why, at the end of this movie, I sure want to believe that Ofelia has her eternal glory.

Fair enough. I want to believe, too. You kind of suspect that it’s not, though.

It’s left open. There are hints both ways.

Yeah. And the whole thing is told as a kind of fairy tale anyway.

Exactly.

How long did it take you to get into the make-up for the Faun?

Both characters I played, the Faun and the Pale Man were five hours each.

Oh my gosh…

So, it was almost a full day for each one, before I ever went to set.

Is this the first movie you’ve ever done two characters for?

I hesitate to mention Doom. I showed up four different times in Doom as four different imp creatures that got shot four different times. So, if you really don’t like Doug Jones, please rent Doom, and you’ll just enjoy watching me die four deaths.

How different was it to play the Pale Man and the Faun? He’s a character that’s openly non-ambiguous. He’s evil. He’s trying to eat the kid. He’s the stuff nightmares are made of. He’s only in one scene. How different was that for you?

It was different altogether and yet, it’s funny, because as an actor, you still take the tools that you were born with into every role that you do. Those were the tools and the similarities that Guillermo del Toro was counting on. He did want the same actor playing both of those roles for his own little twisted reasons. He said, “In my sick mind, the Pale Man could be a creation of Pan’s.” Okay. That makes sense, so having me play both characters made perfect sense. But then, each character is very different for me.

The Faun was a guide for the little girl. He was smarmy. He had his moments where you weren’t sure what the heck he was thinking or where he was leading her. Was he leading her to her eternal glory, or was he leading her to her eternal demise, we didn’t really know. The Pale Man, as you said, was just pure evil and had one thing in mind, and that was just this insatiable hunger to eat children.

For me, acting is a complete, full body experience. In real life, we don’t just communicate with our words, we use our facial expressions, gestures, our body language, all of that posturing. So with these two characters, especially when the Pale Man had no dialogue anyway, I had to depend on all that visual communication with him totally. Pan, if you notice in the film, ages backwards. I don’t know if you picked that up?

No, I didn’t!

Every time you see Pan, or the Faun, every scene you see him in, he’s younger than the last one. If you go back and think, when she meets him down in the labyrinth the first time, he’s older, more decrepit, his eyes are more glazed over with cataract looking milkiness. His hair is grayer, his skin is a grayer color, and one of his ram-horns is kind of eaten away at the end. Progressively, until the very last scene, the last scene that you see Pan in the movie, he then is auburn of hair, and colorful skin, and his horns are complete and shiny, and his eyes are very clear and golden colored. If you see it again, you’ll notice.

So, what were they going for with that?

Never was it explained to me. So, again left to Doug’s interpretation, I felt that each time Ofelia passed the test or would go the next step with all these things that I was giving her, she was getting closer and closer to coming back to the king and being the princess to sit with her father the king. The underworld had been missing her for decades or centuries or however long it had been.

It was implied at the beginning of the movie that without her, the underworld was slowly fading and dying a little. So I think Pan was a reflection of the underworld in its entirety, and the more she believed in herself, and the more that she believed that this better life existed, the more she believed that this underworld was real, then the more real and the more fluid and younger I became, as a reflection of it. That’s my interpretation.

Interesting.

By the end, Pan was very fluid and I wanted to make him pretty-yet-creepy, so I had sort of a balletic approach to his movement by the end. It worked in that way, I thought. The Pale Man, on the other hand, was more infirmed and creaky looking. When you meet him, he’s asleep, and it takes a child coming into his chamber to break the rule that will wake him up.

When he’s awakened, he smells children. He wants to eat. That’s all he wants, but he’s been asleep for who knows how long? How long is it between children? We don’t know. We see a pile of shoes on the floor of his past victims, but we don’t know how long he’s been collecting them. So, when you wake up from a deep sleep, you’re not agile and fluid, you’re more like, shaking the kinks out of your knees. So, I thought the Pale Man worked really well for him to sort of have an infirmed sort of stiffened walk. And again, in classic horror film style, here this young, nubile thing is running away from me, and as an audience member you would think, “She can run faster than him, what’s the problem?” But because he’s coming with that slow, determined “I gotcha” walk behind her, it’s just terrifying for some reason. For me, the reason I was confident in that, was that when children get into my chamber, they’re trapped. There is no way out for them, so eventually they will tire, and I will catch them. Simple. So, there lies the difference between Pan and the Pale Man, and it’s now an hour later. I’m sorry. I told you you were patient, didn’t I? (Laughs.)

(Laughs.) I read somewhere that you actually have professional mime training. I didn’t know that.

The reason I don’t talk about it myself is because then people want to call me a mime. It’s happened in lots of the press. In mainstream press especially, where they don’t know exactly how to define this guy who has been under rubber for most of his career, so let’s call him “mime Doug Jones.” I respect mimes. I think mime is a beautiful art. I have studied and have performed over two decades.

However, I define myself as an actor. I actually go through hair, make-up, and costuming. Mine just happens to take five hours. I have to do the same character study. If there’s an actor studying to be Bobby Kennedy, he’s got to go into back story and look at old photos of him, get mannerisms and maybe an accent, motivations, back stories, family life. All that has to go into creating him on film. The same for me. Even if it’s a half-kangaroo mutant wolf with kung fu skills, I still have to go back and find out who this character is from the heart all the way out to his movements, just like any other actor would do.

So, you don’t want to be identified as a mime.

I respect people who do mime professionally and wear the white face, which I’ve done my share of. I respect them, and it’s a beautiful art, but when I’m on film, portraying a character, I am an actor.

Gotcha. Okay. Tell me about the Silver Surfer. First of all, while we’re on that subject, I need to clear something up. At Comic-Con last year, you very bluntly told me that you were not going to be doing anything motion capture-related for the Silver Surfer, and that turned out to not quite so much be the case.

Well, that’s what you were led to believe.

Oh, really?

I still to this day have never done green-screen-colored-leotard-covered-with-dots motion capture work.

Really?

I have not.

So then, what did you do?

(Laughs.) Believe it or not, Robin, I am an actor. Through make-up and costuming, I became a character on film. What happens after that, though, is an amazing process. The technology they use for the Silver Surfer is cutting edge and amazing. It is a combination of the very best of both worlds of practical effects with the design done by Spectral Motion. That’s the same company that designed my Abe Sapien make-up, and the lead artist that did the original sculpture and that did every little piece for me was José Fernandez. You will find him at joseismael.com. He is a fine artist that has done work that is absolutely, drop dead, “oh my word!” stunning. His work is very inspired. I would say it’s inspired by the Holy Spirit. If you talk to him, you’ll find out that he is a Christian. Laurie and I now have two pieces of his work in our home. Love him. Just love the guy.

But anyway, he sculpted the original Silver Surfer, so there’s the best of that world. Then you’ve got the best of the digital world headed up by Weta, the same people that brought you Gollum for Lord of the Rings and King Kong and who knows what else. They then would go over me with… Well, okay, this is how it was explained to me. I’m not a technical person and I’m not qualified to tell you this even, but they did digital treatment on me that was sometimes transparent, where you could see this original suit underneath but with this shiny otherworldly glow that made him just stunning on film.

And there are some shots, much like Spider-Man, I guess, where Tobey Maguire jumps off a building and then they cut to a CG character because it just simply required it. I want to qualify this, because that’s as far as my understanding of this goes. I could be wrong. They could wipe out everything I did and completely replace me with digital, they could go off of what I did on film as a reference and then, I honestly don’t know what happens. I did my acting job on set, and now I back away and let them do whatever they do in post-production. So my understanding was that it’s a combo platter of the best of both: digital and practical.

Fair enough. I talked to Ralph Winter a few weeks ago, and I asked him if your voice would be the voice of the Silver Surfer.

Ooh, this ought to be interesting. What did he say?

He said that they hadn’t decided yet.

(Laughs.) Yeah.

He said that they didn’t know. That they had listened to a lot of different voices, and they seemed to like what you were doing on set, but they talked about maybe digitizing it a little bit or something like that to give it an otherworldly quality.

Which I understand. I went into it knowing the studio specifically had the right in this case to replace my voice if they need to. Again, I did the best I could on set. I used my lower register. I spoke way down, very directly and very authoritatively, and when I saw playback on the monitor of the look and the sound together, it was like, “Oh, my…” I never pat myself on the back, but that really worked for me, and all I heard from everybody on set, no matter what department they were from, was “Doug, your voice! Oh, my!”

So, that was very nice to hear, but again, now that I’m done, I must back away and let them do whatever they are going to do with the film. I’m hoping against all hope that the fans will be pleased with the final result. In then end, it is the fans that we are making this for. At the end of the day, if the director and studio and everybody hates what I did, but the fans love what I did, I will sleep at night knowing that I did my job.

Cool. Ralph also told me that Silver Surfer doesn’t have an abundance of lines, that they wanted to take a “less is more” approach. I thought that was kind of appropriate because you want to sense that mysterious, super-powerful air about him.

Right, right, right.

Even if he’s a little more chatty in the comics, this is the first introduction to him in film.

He could do his own stand alone film later, if they wanted to.

Have they said anything to you about, if there is a stand alone film, would they call you again?

There’s no promises and there’s no guarantees, but that is the hope, indeed.

Okay, I’m going to ask you the same ultimate fanboy question I asked Ralph. I totally expect you to answer with “I can’t tell you” but I have to ask anyway. The question was, “Does Galactus appear?”

Right. All I can tell you… (laughs)

Ralph told me he didn’t know. That they hadn’t decided yet.

They haven’t decided yet. Right. What I would tell you is probably mostly more from my wishing than anything else. And that is, that it would be difficult to introduce the Silver Surfer on film without Galactus having some sort of presence, now wouldn’t it?

I think so.

There’s my quote.

(Laughs.) Just so I’m clear on this whole Silver Surfer suit thing, I want to go back to that for a sec.

Yeah. This could get very convoluted and very twisted and then I could get in trouble.

I just want to wrap my brain around all of this. I’m not trying to press you to tell me more than you should or anything. Take for example, the trailer that’s been shown of Silver Surfer facing off against Human Torch. Are we looking at you in that trailer? Because I thought there was a moment when you zoom in on the Surfer’s face and he kind of resembles you.

The trailer, from what I’m looking at — and I have to qualify my answer because I’m not the one who put it together, and I’m not Weta. I’m not sure what they did in total. But from what I’m looking at, some of the shots are a combo platter. It’s the best of both. You’ve got a shot or two, where I’m sure it’s me in the make-up with enhancements over me–

Digital enhancements?

Yes. And then there’s other shots where I never remember doing that specific motion, probably because it was something on the surf board during the chase scene that was very, very physical that would have been extremely hard to capture on set.

Like when he passes down through the surf board? Or something like that?

Exactly. There’s one instance, where that motion, that movement, was never done by me. So when they have the template of me to work from, they can do the cyber scan and make it come to life with their artistry. It’s also my assumption that you can seamlessly now go from a real person with enhancements to a totally digital character all in one shot. They have the technology to do that, I’m sure. So you might be seeing all that. I don’t really know for sure.

But I think that it’s a bad idea for people to be dissecting how the Silver Surfer is technically achieved. The studio doesn’t want us talking about him too much in this way before you’ve even met him on screen. What I really want is for people to come out June 15th to the theater and have a look, get wowed by him on film, and fall in love with him like I did. That’s what I really want.

What are you working on next?

Well, there’s a two part answer. I have things coming out that I’ve already done, but I have other jobs coming up that I haven’t done yet. So the next things to happen around the same time this summer will be the release of the DVD of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the remake. I played Cesare in that, the somnambulist sleepwalker guy. It’s a classic horror film from 1919; it was a silent film. It predated Frankenstein and the Mummy and Dracula.

This guy, Cesare the somnambulist, was one of the very, very first horror icons on film, and to follow in those shoes was a big responsibility. A lot of the film purists who know this classic piece hardly ever want to see a remake done, and I respect that so much. So going into this, I hope any film purists know that the director, the cast — we all went into it with a very respectful attitude toward the first film, and so much so that we all were made up to look like the original characters, costumes to look like the original characters, and shot in black and white on a green screen. All us actors were shot on green screen and then plopped into the backdrops of the original film digitally, so all of the backdrops you’ll see, all of the sets are the original film.

Wow.

Again, that was another technical thing that I’m not qualified to talk about. The director is also very technically capable. He created matte shots off of the original film. Back in the old days, a lot of the old films would have a wide shot for minutes, while people were acting and moving around, much like a play. They didn’t come in for as many close-ups. During these wide shots, he was able to watch characters move around, and as they moved, then the information that was behind them would show. If they are in front of a piece of wall and they would move and the piece of wall was shown.

So it was capturing it piece by piece by piece, and they were able to remove all the original actors and create a clean matte shot in the background, we would have props and we would have things in the foreground. It looks great. I saw a screening and I was very, very happy with it, and the dialogue of the film, it explains so much more of the story. That’s something about silent films. They’re a classic art form unto itself, but minutes go by with people arguing and ranting and raving and throwing their hands around and then a dialogue card comes up that says ‘Yes, Mother,’ and you’re like, ‘wait, they said a lot more than that!’ So, this one done as a talkie, we’re all happy to share more of the story.

Of course.

And it really does help to flush things out to hear more of the story. Having seen the original and then having seen the newer one, a lot of my questions were answered.

Clever.

So, there’s that. And then coming up this summer will be another DVD release that could also be airing on the TBN network which is called The Wager starring Randy Travis.

I think I’ve heard of that.

Yeah. It was directed by a first time director. Here’s the tie-in between those two jobs: the director, Judson Morgan, was the lead actor in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. So, when were were on set on Caligari, we both recognized each other as Christians, and then when it came time for him to get an opportunity to write and direct The Wager, he came looking for me to play a supporting role in it. Randy Travis played a movie star during Oscar season, and I play a member of the paparazzi who helps bring him down. I’m an antagonist, and I see a lot of the conflicts of this character. He’s got lots of conflicts, but I am one source professionally, for him that he needs to try and overcome. So, it was delicious and fun for me to crawl into the other side of showbiz and become the guy who interviews.

That’s interesting to have the tables turned on you. I’ve been going through some of that myself.

Yeah. Haven’t you though? Right? You writer guy.

It’s unusual. It’s not entirely comfortable.

Yeah, I hear ya. As far as other things… Hellboy 2 is in pre-production right now. Contracts are still being finalized. When we all come to terms, and I am confident we all will, filming should begin, I am told, late May, and go on for five or some odd months over in Budapest. So, that’s going to be the bulk of the rest of my year.

I’ve got another independent relationship dramedy after that’s called Knock Knock. It’s a fun little sweet piece that was written specifically for me to play a mid-life crisis bound 40-something door-to-door book salesman. He needs to shake things up and get out of his mundane existence, so he decides to become a Goth kid and starts running around with a crowd you would never expect to see him with and all the tom-foolery that ensues with that. He does look ridiculous, and his twenty something daughter ends up coming home to live with him and wonders what the heck has happened to her dad.

So, is that going to be a role without a lot of heavy make-up for you?

This time I get to just play a guy. March is the month of reshoots for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and I have not been told how much of that they need me to re-shoot, if any. So that could be happening in March, and Hellboy 2 would be starting in late May.

Interview: Ralph Winter

How can you not be a fan of Ralph Winter? He gets to make all the cool movies! Here he chats us up about the Fantastic Four, the Silver Surfer, the future of the X-Men, and gives us The Screwtape Letters scoop! And did somebody say “Galactus”?

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Robin: It’s been a few years since we last talked. How are things? What are you working on now?

Ralph: Good, good. I just got back from Vancouver, working on Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. We’re getting started with post-production on that. We’ve got other stuff going on, like getting [Ted Dekker's] Thr3e out. And I’m working on a lot of development, getting other projects up and running.

How’s Fantastic Four turning out?

Very well. We finished shooting on December 20th. We’re thick into post-production right now. It comes out June 15th. Silver Surfer is the new addition to the story, and he’s getting a lot of attention. We had a teaser trailer attached to Night at the Museum, and we got a lot of positive response from that. Now we’ve just got to deliver the darn thing. (Laughs.)

You know, there’s a moment in that trailer, where if you freeze it on a close-up of the Surfer’s face, you can catch a bit of a resemblance to Doug Jones. [Editor's note: Doug Jones is the actor who portrays the effects-driven Silver Surfer.]

Yeah, yeah, a little. We’re using Weta, who did Lord of the Rings, to do the CGI work for the Surfer, and Doug is heavily involved with providing motion capture and all that stuff.

So is the Silver Surfer being visually achieved entirely through CGI?

It’s a combination of CGI, and some on-set motion capturing of Doug. Pulling this whole thing together is what Weta is charged with doing, and they’ll be putting the final product into the scenes.

This one’s for all the Doug Jones fans out there, myself included: Will Doug’s voice be the voice of the Silver Surfer?

We don’t know yet. We’re not sure. That was clear up front, as part of Doug’s contract. We don’t really have a clear direction on that at the moment. We listened to a lot of different voices, and there’s a possibility we may go with what Doug provided on-set.

In the first draft of the script, the Silver Surfer wasn’t going to speak at all. It was thought that that might make him more mysterious, and maybe he might say one or two words, or one or two sentences. And it’s grown from that, but not that much. There’s an air of mystery about him that we want to keep. That would be a decision that we’re going to make in March or April.

I can see how that would fit with the character. He’s got kind of a standoffish, super-other-worldly power vibe, when we first meet him.

Truly less is more. [Director] Tim Story is cutting the movie together now, so we’ll see how all of that comes together. I think once we’ve seen the whole sweep of the movie — how it plays, how it feels — then we’ll probably dig in and say, “What’s the best way to handle Surfer and his arc? Does he talk more or talk less? Is it Doug’s voice or someone else’s voice?”

I fully expect you to say no to this question… (Laughs.)

(Laughs.)

Can you tell us, in this version of the Silver Surfer’s story, if he is still the herald of Galactus, as he is in the comics?

Yeah. That is part of the story. That is part of what we talk about in the story. That is something our characters will discover along the way. But how that plays out — whether we see Galactus, how much of Galactus you’ll see — I can’t answer that question at the moment because we truly don’t know. I’m not being coy, we just haven’t made a decision yet. We want to cut the movie together, play it out, and see if that’s necessary or needed, or if it’s something we can play in another movie. There is no specific plan mapped out about Galactus right now, but that is definitely the reason that the Silver Surfer comes to earth.

Sounds like the perfect setup for a third movie.

Yeah, and that’s what we want to play out. How well does this play without Galactus?

There will be some fans who feel cheated if they don’t get at least a glimpse of Galactus in there somewhere.

Maybe. And we understand that. We don’t want to disappoint anyone, but it is a tightrope. June 15th is coming quickly. We’ve sketched out ideas of what Galactus might look like, but we really have not yet made any decisions. We have to see the movie put together first, which should happen very soon.

Galactus would be a whole other challenge in his own right, in how to pull off visually without being completely cheesy.

That’s right. Less is more with that as well.

Okay, switching gears… Are you happy with how X-Men 3 turned out?

I am. We struggled with changing directors at the last minute, as you know. But I was thrilled with Hugh Jackman’s performance, Famke Janssen’s performance — I think she turned in her best performance out of all three movies. Ian [McKellan] and Patrick [Stewart] are steady, in terms of what they deliver. And the story was a good climax to the three movies. I feel good about it. There are things we would have changed if we’d had more time or different resources. But yeah, I’m happy with it.

There’s been talk of various spin-offs from the X-Men films. Are you involved with any of those?

We’re talking about the Wolverine movie, which would be a prequel telling how he came to be at Alkalai Lake and all that stuff. Hugh Jackman is in Australia right now doing a big movie with Baz Luhrmann titled Australia, so he probably won’t be available until later this year. So we may not know exactly what we’re doing until summer or something like that.

But there’s lots of talk. The X-Men world is rich with different characters, so there are lots of spin-offs that could happen. There’s talk of a “young Magneto” movie, there’s talk of “the young X-Men,” and of course Wolverine. There’s plenty of places you could go in that world. I think as long as we could continue to make interesting, compelling movies that people want to see, then it could play out for a long time.

Yeah, there’s no shortage of characters in the X-Men universe.

And there are lots of new characters who we haven’t even talked about, like Gambit, for example.

A major player in the comics right now is Emma Frost, and we’ve never seen her on film.

We haven’t played her out yet, yeah. There’s plenty of room to grow in those movies, and I think Fox is trying to be smart about making the most of this.

Okay, for all the X-Men fanboys out there, which I again count myself among — sorry, Ralph — I just have to ask. [Spoilers ahead for X-Men 3: The Last Stand.] The final, post-credits scene in the movie showed us that Xavier wasn’t quite so dead after all. As much speculation about that among fans as there’s been, there’s been an equal amount that maybe Cyclops didn’t really die, either, since we never actually saw his death on film. I’m not asking for an official word on that; I’m just curious what your personal feelings are. Could Cyclops still be alive?

In terms of the story, killing Cyclops was about demonstrating the enormous power that Jean Grey came back with, and this conflict that was raging inside her. I can’t recall any discussion we’ve had about Cyclops coming back. But hey, it’s science fiction, it’s fantasy. Anything could happen.

Nobody ever stays dead in comics.

(Laughs.) Hey, nobody stays dead in the Star Trek movies I made! We were blasted with, “You can’t kill Spock!” And we were sort of like, “Well, if you do it right, you can. Because then you can bring him back.”

Were you witness to any major backlash about killing those two prominent characters in X-Men?

Not much, really. It was shocking, so we tried to keep it a secret so you wouldn’t know about it before the movie came out, though a summary of the script was leaked online pretty early on.

But I’ll tell you this about that final scene. We went around opening night and visited a bunch of theaters, and it was very interesting. We went to some of the suburban theaters, and there were ten or fifteen people who would stay until the final scene, and they were kind of laughing and scratching and poking each other, saying, “I told Harry he should have stayed! I knew there was more!” Then we went to Mann’s Chinese Theater, which is sort of the height of fanboy geekdom. And that theater was packed at the end! They sat through every credit and they made everybody be quiet, and when that final scene came up, they were cheering.

(Laughs.) Let’s talk about the movie Thr3e. This has been a long time coming. The last time I talked to you, a couple of years ago, you were still figuring out the logistics of how to make it and where and with who. And now it’s done. What are your thoughts on how it turned out?

We’re making these kinds of movies on a small budget. So for what we have to spend, and the resources we have, we feel very good about it. We make a special effort on these movies to stay close to the author. Ted Dekker was involved every step of the way, to ensure that the story translates the integrity of what he wrote.

We’re happy with the movie, and how it came together. Hopefully it will stimulate those ideas of good and evil, and how they come together inside of people. And maybe stimulate some discussion afterwards when people see the movie.

And you’re working on Dekker and Peretti’s House now, right?

House is done shooting, and in post-production. That will probably be out in October. Both of these movies were shot in Poland, where we can extend our budget. They did a really good job for us, and I don’t think anybody’s going to notice that it was shot there. That will also be released by FoxFaith.

How involved are you at FoxFaith? Are you an executive, do you work there…?

I’m an independent producer on the lot. I have a relationship with the FoxFaith guys. I’m an outside supplier, but we stay in close contact and work together frequently. I’m sort of a consultant for them, but I have no official capacity with them. I’ve got my hands full trying to get my own movies made. (Laughs.)

What rating are you shooting for with House? Because it’s definitely an ‘R’ book.

We’re not afraid of an ‘R’ rating.

Really? Because I would like to see that. That would really push the envelope.

We’ll probably push the edge of the envelope for ‘PG-13′. Our first edits on The Visitation and Thr3e both came back from the MPAA as ‘R’-rated. But we felt like especially with the “FoxFaith” label, we should keep it to a ‘PG-13′ rating. I think an ‘R’ rating might confuse people. They’re trying to build a brand at FoxFaith. But we’ll see. We’re trying not to make it ‘R’, but we’ll see.

I don’t know, I’d probably be pushing for it if it was me. I mean, The Passion was ‘R’ and that didn’t keep anyone away.

No no, you’re right. The horror audience definitely wants an ‘R’. And even in making Fantastic Four and X-Men, the true fans would love an ‘R’-rated movie. But I think even on the Fantastic Four movies, we felt we needed to go no higher than a ‘PG-13′, so people would realize that we’re serious about this and we’re serious about talking about these issues. We’re not just catering to kids.

Frank Peretti has been talking a lot lately about his desire to direct some of his own books as movies. Are you involved in any of that?

I’m not as yet. I’ve seen that he’s working with North By Northwest in Spokane, and possibly, he’s going to write and direct Monster. They’ve asked me to be involved, but I don’t know if I have the time. We’ll see.

How is In My Sleep turning out?

Haven’t seen it yet. [Director Allen Wolf] has got it wrapped and cut, so we’ll see how that turns out.

What’s happening with C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters?

It’s in development with Fox and Walden Media. Fox has owned the property for decades. They bought it in the 50s. There was management at Fox that wanted it and bought it, and they’ve owned it for decades.

So what’s the current status?

We’re signing deals right now. We’re finishing the Fox option deal, we’re finishing my deal with Walden. Doug Gresham’s deal is done.

Does the movie have a green light?

Not yet. We’ve been talking to Randall Wallace about writing and directing. We need to have more discussions with Fox and Walden about that, and make sure that Randy’s still available. Everybody wants to make this movie; I think it’s going to happen, I just don’t know what the timetable is right now.

We’re very excited about that. With the right script, dealing with temptation and that whole upside down world, it could be a very, very interesting movie. And it’s going to be dark. This isn’t a light, happy, Narnia piece.

The C.S. Lewis name alone should be enough to draw people into the theaters.

We’ve been telling people that for years, and they wouldn’t believe it. And now that Narnia has happened, they’re a lot more open to it. (Laughs.)

That’s everything on my checklist. Do you have anything else new and interesting on the burner?

The only other thing right now is that we’re talking with Rick Warren about making The Purpose-Driven Life with Fox Searchlight.

I remember hearing about those rights being sold. How would that even work? How do you make a story out of something like that?

Well, you’ve got to create a narrative. We’ve been talking with a lot of A-list writers in town, who are very interested. The book has a wide readership — both Christian and non-Christian. So the challenge would be to find the right A-list writer to pair up with Rick, and develop some good stories that would begin to illustrate some of those principles. You couldn’t take all of that stuff and pile all of those principles into one movie. But the idea we’ve been operating off of is doing something structured like Crash, where you have a bunch of different stories that intersect in interesting ways.

That’s still in an early development stage. Rick’s a very busy guy, so it’s moving somewhat slowly. But I think it could be very fun, on down the road.

The last time we talked, I asked you what you thought about The Passion, because it had just come out. Now I’m wondering what you thought about The Nativity Story.

Well, I liked The Passion a lot more. I liked how The Passion was mysterious, was darker, and how it had this sort of transcendent quality to it. Being brought up a Protestant, I couldn’t tell you how many stations of the cross there are in the Catholic tradition. But it didn’t matter to me. All of that stuff was interesting, value-added pieces, that they used to make the story more interesting and more compelling.

I didn’t find any of those things in The Nativity. I know those filmmakers, they’re nice people. I like them, I don’t want to say bad things about them. But it’s a straight-ahead retelling of the story, and there’s a lack of mystery to it. I think they toned down some of the violence, afraid that some Christians would be turned off by it. Some of that is exactly what that time was — it was a very violent period in history. And to soften that and take the edges off, I just wonder if that doesn’t make it less appealing to non-Christians, and maybe that’s why the movie hasn’t expanded out any further.

Ultimately, it’s just not transcendent enough to inspire me. My wife liked it more than I did. And I hope to see it again, so maybe I’ll feel differently. It’s got all the right production values, but it doesn’t have that mysterious missing element that takes it to another level.

I have one last question. It seems like there’s a shifting climate taking place in the politics between Hollywood and Christianity. From what I understand, Hollywood once wanted nothing to do with Christians, and then The Passion came along, and now we’ve got Nativity and Screwtape Letters and Paradise Lost, and we’re seeing some actual success stories in this unlikely marriage. What are your thoughts on where we are at right now?

Certainly The Passion opened the door in getting the studios to think about how, from a business point of view, they can reach that underserved market and make money. That’s not a bad thing for us. If that means better stories, and we have the opportunity to do that, then good. If the audience responds to those kinds of stories, then good for the studios for recognizing it and funding it and getting it out there.

But I think you can’t just slap the “Christian” label on something and put it out there, and expect the audience to show up. Maybe The Nativity is an example of that. You still have to make it entertainment. People want to be entertained, they want to laugh and cry and feel. They’ve got to be good stories, first and foremost.

I’ve read a couple of scripts lately based on Old Testament stories. One of them is about David, and his rise from a shepherd to becoming the anointed king. And it’s gritty. It’s brutal. It’s reflective of the time. And it’s not written by a Christian. But it’s a compelling story, and that’s the kind of movie I want to make!

But I think it’s still going to be a while before you see one hundred million dollar movies made for Christian audiences. It’s still perceived as a niche audience. Studios are going to be cautious until they can build a strategy to get there.

I can’t help wondering if this notion of creating movies for Christians and marketing them to Christians is the wrong tactic. I don’t have any problem with great “general audience” movies that just happen to have strong underlying values in them. Like the Spider-Man movies or Superman Returns. There have been a lot of these kinds of movies lately. Maybe Hollywood is finally waking up to the fact that it’s not so bad a thing to see those classic archetypes play out with themes of redemption and our longing to be rescued and that sort of thing.

Yeah, I’m not sure about the marketing aspects of that, though. They may be stretching it in trying to market every movie in some unique way to a Christian audience. And I don’t think that Christians or big communities are going to stand for being a marketing center for film studios. There needs to be some caution about that.

But as far as the audiences go, audiences want to see movies that are entertaining. It’s that simple. They don’t want agendas, they want entertainment. But maybe we can open their eyes a little while they’re being entertained.

Book Review: The Time Travelers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

brilliantly original and compelling love story

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It has been said that there are no new stories to tell. Just like Solomon of old, authors everywhere cry “there is nothing new under the sun.” That is, until Audrey Niffenegger came along. The Time Traveler’s Wife is a love story unlike none ever told before.

Though the title implies a science-fiction novel, Niffenegger all but ignores the science portion, choosing to take the Back To The Future route. The science is mentioned and then set aside for the sake of storytelling. Henry meets Clare, his future wife for the very first time when he is 28 and she is 20. However Clare met Henry for the first time when she was six, and he was in his 40′s. Sound confusing?

Henry, you see suffers from a rare malady known as Chrono Displacement. At any time, without warning, he can disappear from his present and appear in his past, or more rarely, his future. On the surface, The Time Traveler’s Wife is a romantic story, but at its heart it is really gripping drama that draws the reader in and makes it hard to put the book down. Niffenegger deftly handles the switches in time, indicating at each Chrono-slip the ages of our two protagonists, and keeping a thorough plotline while moving the reader and the characters back and forth in time.

You get to learn about Clare and Henry’s romance, their marriage struggles–oddly enough, the same struggles most modern couples go through–and their social lives. Of course, everything is made more difficult as a result of Henry’s condition, including the awareness of him being in two different places at the same time. This leads one friend of the couple to believe that Henry is cheating on Clare, when, in fact, it is Henry’s younger self he is witnessing.

There are a few elements of the novel that some people might find offensive. For example, one of the ways that Henry can keep himself anchored in his current time is for him to have sex. This works perfectly after he is married, but before meeting Clare in his present, he runs through a string of women, often using them just for sex. There is also one scene from Henry and Clare’s past that will be particularly troubling for some Christians, if taken out of context.

I said at the beginning that Niffenegger sets aside the science for the sake of story, and while that is true, she does not forget it completely. Several of the most moving scenes in the novel deal with the paradoxes created when people slip out of their proper time, and while it may be hard to follow at first, she sets out a clear timeline that keeps the story on track, even if you might not realize it at first. And this timeline provides the theme of the story as well. Even though Henry is aware at times of what the future holds, he cannot change it; he is set on a destined path that is defined by his choices.

Omar Khayyam once wrote, “The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it.” While Niffenegger never mentions Khayyam, this quote from his Rubaiyat sums up the theme of the story perfectly. Like Sisyphus, Henry’s choices define him and once defined, he cannot change his destiny, although the reader quickly finds himself hoping against hope that this time things will be different.

On the whole Niffenegger’s novel makes you question what you believe and in my case, praise God that there is always an opportunity to make a fresh start and not follow the future that others have defined for us. Our past doesn’t have to define us, but sometimes it takes a story like this to remind us of that.

The Story Beneath the Surface

I started to write this as a comment to our own Brian Palmer’s review of M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water, but quickly realized I was writing a whole lot and it might be better presented as a blog entry.

I rather enjoyed this film, although from the box office report, we were among the few that even sampled it. It seems that Night drew from the ideas of Andy Andrews and Rick Warren this time around, and if you look even deeper than the obvious elements of the tale, there is more going on here than you expect.

This is the second review I’ve read that pointed out Story’s name, and I think for some reason, the symbolism is lost on people, which is particularly odd here at Infuze. I don’t want to come off as critical to Brian, because what he wrote is a film review, and is limited by its nature. What follows are my thoughts, unfettered by such restrictions and thus more open to exploration. You see, here at Infuze, especially behind the scenes, we often talk about stories and the power to move people – how stories are epic in nature and often can teach us more than just facts themselves. I intend to post something even deeper on that later this week, but until then, let’s look at the Lady.

Story is really a symbol for all of M. Night’s work – his exploration of what defines us, makes us human and gives us our beliefs. Truth is in story (and Story), which is why it makes us uncomfortable, draws us closer, changes our lives and offers us hope for something better. The fact that she is a mythological creature just ups the ante, bringing a little of the Carl Jung school of thought into the picture.

I agree with Brian, and almost every other critic I’ve read, that this is not the popcorn flick that some were looking for from the creator of Sixth Sense and Signs (of course, many of those same critics were hypercritical of that aspect in Night’s previous films, then complained that this wasn’t one of them – is it any wonder he mocks the critics so heavily in this film?). However, like all of Night’s tales, this one wraps the epic, historic and heavenly in the mundane, showing that the mundane is not all there is to live for and about.

To be blunt, this is a thinking person’s movie. Not to say that people can’t just go to escape, but much like Story herself, if we choose to go deeper, below the surface (pun completely intended), we will find more than meets the eye and our hearts will be opened.

And isn’t that what all good stories should do?

Music Review: Hyper Static Union: Hyper Static Union

new rock act shows promise to be around for a long time

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Hyper Static Union, discovered by Mac Powell & Third Day is the latest hot new alternative band to slip up the charts, two of their singles scoring well before the album was even released. Hailing from the Northwest, mutual friends introduced the up-and-coming band to Mac and Brad Avery, who decided to make the band their first project for the new Consuming Fire Productions. The project quickly caught fire, so to speak, and sparked interest from Rocketown Records and their new niche label, RKT.

At first listen, Hyper Static Union sounds like standard rock fare. In fact the first and title track on the disc sounds a lot like a certain producer’s popular sound, but I have to question why they choose to open the CD with “Lifegiver,” as the rest of the album tends much more to the creative, experimental and original sounds. Luckily, RKT had the sense to release two of my favorite songs to radio first: “Overhead” and “(Praying for) Sunny Days,” giving the band early radio success.

Shawn Lewis’s guitar and vocals dominate the project, but not to the point of being overbearing or annoying. In fact, he has a remarkably smooth voice that gently rides around the more fluid tracks on Lifegiver like “Can’t Leave It Alone,” and “Now That It’s Over.” Lewis still manages to belt out a hard rock worthy gruffness on the edgier tracks like “Lifegiver” and “Right Where You Want Me.” Bryan Albrechtson and Mike Jackson expertly weave the additional guitars and bass into the mix, with Ray Burnham driving every song with skill and finesse. In fact, the band sounds a whole lot stronger than most freshman acts, which I’m sure builds out of the fact that they’ve been playing together since the late 90s.

Other reviewers have compared the band to Lenny Kravitz and Foo Fighters, but I think that comparison is a little hollow. In fact, when they apply themselves, the band delivers a much fresher west coast influenced sound than most of the bands on popular radio these days. And while the group has a number of radio-friendly songs, don’t look for them to crossover anytime soon. The bands explicit message will keep them on the Christian radio dial for some time, which is not always a bad thing. While I generally dislike the Christian subculture, Hyper Static Union defies what is often the driving concept of that culture. They are good enough to make it anywhere, but they choose to keep their content about Christ and directed to the audience of believers, much like Casting Crowns.

In fact, my favorite single on the CD is also one of the most creative and explicit, “Chariot.” Not only does the song segue way into the old spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” but they manage to pull it off in such a way that you not only expect them to get there and are looking forward to it, but at the same time it makes the original song stronger and much more relevant to today.

There will come a time when the skies will open
There will come a time, when all men’s hearts are broken
The return of my King draws near
The footsteps of His horses I can almost hear
O, My Lord don’t be too long

I’m waiting, watching and I’m wondering
Will You carry us
Right past the lightning and the thundering
In Your Chariot?
…Will You carry us to Your throne above
In Your Chariot?

Hyper Static Union is definitely a new voice on the Christian music scene that you will want to hear and hear it you will, if the success of their first two singles is any sign. An alternative band with the strength to move mountains and the ability to record hit singles right out of the gate is something that is not often seen in the “mainline” Christian music scene. This is actually a band I look forward to other bands copying, because even a derivative of their sound has the potential to be stronger than a lot of the other material currently playing on your local positive, upbeat and encouraging Christian radio station.