Televangelist Makes Movie : Film: Paul F. Crouch’s Tustin-based Trinity Broadcasting Network is producing a $6-million feature based on the life of Chinese-American evangelist Nora Lam.

Proclaiming that he is “not willing to surrender the motion picture media to the devil,” Orange County televangelist Paul F. Crouch is breaking into the movie business with a $6-million feature film, aimed at mainstream theater audiences and financed entirely by donations.

The film, “China Cry,” is based on the life of Chinese-American evangelist Nora Lam and carries the subtitle, “A True Story.” Although a new ending was shot last week at Newhall Ranch, a rough cut is being screened for ministers and motion picture industry executives. The final version is scheduled to open Nov. 2 in 25 cities.

Packed with recognizable Asian-American and Eurasian actors and shot mostly in Hong Kong and Macao, the film tells the story of Lam’s life in China before and after the 1949 Communist revolution. A critical episode, both in the book and film, comes when Lam refuses to denounce Christ and is led before a nighttime firing squad. As the courtyard is suddenly bathed in an otherworldly light, she feels the bullets passing near her but is miraculously spared.

As befits the founder and president of the 200-station Trinity Broadcasting Network, Crouch is marketing the film in a big way--complete with razzle-dazzle TV promotions, slick posters and brochures, a book tie-in and an innovative plan to “pre-sell” millions of tickets.

“China Cry” is presented by TBN Films--a new, nonprofit California corporation--with Crouch listed as executive producer and his son, Matt, as associate producer. The film was shot in color, features Dolby sound and is entirely a union production.

It was written and directed by James F. Collier, a Directors Guild member and veteran of Billy Graham’s Worldwide Pictures. Collier wrote or directed several other “inspirational” films aimed at mainstream audiences, including “Caught,” “Cry From the Mountain,” “Joni” and “The Hiding Place,” the story of the late Corrie Ten Boom and her efforts to save Dutch Jews during World War II.

The director of photography, David Worth, shot Clint Eastwood’s “Bronco Billy.” The music and orchestration is by the Oscar-winning team of Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn.

Not since 1988, when Worldwide Pictures was closed by the Graham organization, has there been such a direct effort by a religious organization to produce a mainstream feature film with Christian content. (Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church produced the $45-million “Inchon” in 1982, but that box office bomb, dealing with Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s Korean War landing, made no attempt to proselytize for Moon or his church.)

Film critic Michael Medved, co-host of PBS’s “Sneak Previews,” attended a recent screening and called “China Cry” “a very professional piece of work.”

He also said that “the look of the picture is quite authentic,” especially the Shanghai section, adding that the Christian aspects of the film are “relatively subtle. . . . There are very few moments where it is embarrassing or (where) the budget shows.”

Medved contrasted “China Cry” with some of the Billy Graham films, which while “fairly well done,” were frankly “advertisements for God” that preached mainly to the converted or those ripe for conversion. Medved said he did find it curious that Crouch, aiming to control costs and reach a mainstream audience, chose for his first effort a period story set in another country and culture.

In the rough cut at least, there are also some discreet sexual references (a love scene between the stars--both clothed in pajama tops and bottoms--after their wedding alludes to the fact that Lam was pregnant before her marriage). In addition, it includes some violence that borders on the gratuitous (a bloody martial arts sequence involving Lam’s Red Army interrogator serves no discernible plot function).

The Tustin-based Trinity network has more than a dozen TV stations outside the United States, concentrated in northern Italy, the Caribbean and Central America.

Backers of “China Cry” are so committed to reaching a worldwide audience that they took a 12-minute segment of the picture to this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Accompanying the distributor--Tim Penland of Penland Productions--was the star, Julia Nickson-Soul (the wife of actor David Soul), who was featured with Sylvester Stallone in “Rambo II” and appeared in the TV miniseries “Noble House.”

The cast also includes co-star Russell Wong, who appeared in “Eat a Bowl of Tea” and “Tai-Pan”; France Nuyen (“The World of Suzie Wong” and “South Pacific”); James Shigeta (“Flower Drum Song” and “Midway”), and Philip Tan (“Tango and Cash,” “Batman” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”).

In Trinity’s August, 1990, newsletter, Crouch wrote, “I am not willing to surrender the motion picture media to the devil. . . . If Hollywood had produced (“China Cry”), you can be sure they would have cut any witness for Christ out of it. So we had to do it ourselves. And, partners, we have done it! Praise the Lord!”

With “China Cry,” Crouch said, “a whole new door is opening up to this army of the Lord: theater doors. And into this dark corner of our world we are going to shine the light of the Gospel! . . . The church let the evil one have the great motion picture media.”

The director’s goals are considerably more modest. “I became involved (in ‘China Cry’) because I thought there ought to be one show that’s inspirational coming out of the industry each year,” Collier said after one screening.

This is not Crouch’s first involvement with motion pictures. In 1961-65, he headed the department of TV and film production for the Assemblies of God in Burbank. In August, 1988, he used Trinity to help mobilize--on extremely short notice--a rally at Universal Studios in Burbank that drew 25,000 people to protest the release of “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Crouch called on Lew Wasserman, Universal’s chairman, to allow the outraged fundamentalists to buy the film and, in Crouch’s words, “burn it at the stake.”

Penland, the distributor, resigned his position as Universal’s liaison with the evangelical community to help organize opposition to “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

In a telephone interview last week, Crouch acknowledged that it was the controversy over “The Last Temptation” that propelled him into film production. “That’s one of things that impelled me to get involved, instead of cursing the darkness,” Crouch said. “I saw a real need in the area of the motion-picture field. . . . We are not only hoping to reach the present film-going public, but we’re also hoping to appeal to that large segment of the population that has stopped going to the movies.”

The producing experience provided him with an education. As “a complete neophyte,” Crouch said, the countless details and decisions of movie-making “took much more of my time than I thought it would.”

For more than a year, Crouch has been using his nonprofit, tax-exempt network to build support for “China Cry,” talking about it regularly on his prime-time talk show, “Praise,” and reporting on its progress, both in documentary reports from the set in Hong Kong by Crouch’s son, Matt, and in the broadcast ministry’s newsletter. (Neither Crouch took fees for his work on the picture.)

In recent weeks, clips from the film have appeared frequently during Trinity’s 24-hour-a-day Christian programming, seen locally on the network’s flagship, KTBN-Channel 40.

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of Trinity’s involvement in the film business has been in financial backing and distribution plans for “China Cry.” Crouch simply asked viewers to give money to make the film, rather than invest. Any money brought in by “China Cry,” Crouch said, would be put into a revolving fund to make more movies. (One idea, Crouch said, would be a film version of the biblical Battle of Armageddon, complete with special effects and climaxing with the Second Coming.)

One person who responded to Crouch’s appeal--to the tune of $40,000--was John F. Long, a Phoenix home developer. Through the charitable foundation that bears his name, Long donated the money to Crouch.

Long said in a telephone interview that he had seen Lam on Trinity and had read her book. When Crouch made his appeal to support the movie, Long simply picked up the phone and did so.

“I think the type of movies that are being produced that young people are seeing, all the crime and violence, has an adverse affect,” he said. “The reason I made the donation is that I believe I’m making an investment in the future of our young people. . . . It’s important for the younger generation . . . to understand that miracles do happen in modern times.”

Crouch has asked supporters, on the air and in the network’s monthly newsletter, to fill in reservation coupons--a “faith promise”--committing them to buy blocks of tickets to the movie when it plays in their area. The aim, he wrote, is “to secure the partnership of a major distributor so that the film will be seen by the world, and not just by Christians.”

Under the plan, called “Advance Purchase Discount Tickets,” in exchange for reserving blocks of 25 to 1,000 tickets, individuals receive a 20% discount. Groups, Crouch wrote, “may use this as an opportunity to gain a profit for their own ministries.” (Despite this support for “China Cry,” Crouch cautioned that support for the film “must come from your entertainment budget and not from your regular TBN gifts of support.”)

Tickets for the 1981 Academy Award-winning “Chariots of Fire” and “The Mission” were sold in a similar fashion by various religious organizations.

According to Tim Penland, the distributor, more than 75,000 of these reservations have been received in the Orange County-Los Angeles area alone. More than 40 Southern California theaters have agreed to book the film in November, Penland said. As part of the marketing plan, the other 24 cities chosen for the film’s platform opening--including Denver, Miami and Dallas--were selected to coincide with the location of Trinity’s owned-and-operated TV stations.

Ticket reservations so far total more than $5 million, Penland said. More than 1 million requests have been received alone from the cities where “China Cry” is opening, Penland said, and he expects more than 2 million by the opening. In exchange for a payment of 80% of the local admission price, which varies from city to city, Penland will soon be sending out the tickets.

Keyed to the film’s release, the religious publishing house Thomas Nelson will be issuing a “movie edition” of Lam’s autobiography. “China Cry” has already sold more than 100,000 copies in a previous edition. The new edition, featuring a still from the movie on the cover and a new co-author, will be sold through both the Trinity and Lam ministries, as well as in bookstores, and may have a first printing of 200,000 copies, a Nelson spokesman said.

It is difficult to separate Crouch and Trinity Broadcasting Network from Nora Lam, her own ministry and “China Cry.” Since 1982, the San Jose-based Lam has been listed as one of Trinity’s “Foreign Missions” in the network’s literature, and Lam appears regularly on Crouch’s prime-time talk show, “Praise,” and makes heartfelt appeals in Trinity’s twice-yearly “Praise-athon” fund-raisers. Trinity produces Lam’s Chinese-language religious programming, which is broadcast in Taiwan. Lam has been boosting both the film and the book in her own quarterly newsletter, China Today.

Lam and Trinity have produced a non-religious TV magazine show seen on Chinese state TV, and Crouch has said several times that the Chinese government has agreed to broadcast “China Cry” as a four-part miniseries. However, that seems problematic in light of a recently reported ideological crackdown on the Chinese film industry. At a San Joaquin Valley revival several years ago, Crouch predicted that “the Bamboo Curtain is coming down!”

In the world of Christian broadcasting, Lam is not without her critics--none of whom will speak on the record. They have criticized her early relationship with the evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman, her fund-raising techniques, her tours to China. Some have accused her of embellishing

details of her life story in “China Cry.” Several years ago, Lam’s organization was refused membership in the National Assn. of Evangelicals. Officials of the 50,000-member organization based in Wheaton, Ill., would not reveal the grounds.

Crouch has had his own share of scrapes with controversy. He and his wife, Jan, began their broadcast ministry 17 years ago in partnership with Jim and Tammy Bakker, an arrangement that ended acrimoniously with the Crouches in control of the Orange County-based network and the Bakkers heading to North Carolina. In a recent book by Austin Miles, “Don’t Call Me Brother,” Bakker is quoted as claiming that the station “was literally stolen out from under us. . . . Nobody will ever take a television ministry away from us again.”

In 1989, Crouch and Trinity left the National Religious Broadcasters following a yearlong investigation by the voluntary organization’s ethics committee, which looked into complaints by former employees, partners, colleagues and suppliers. Crouch and Trinity have been involved in civil suits and charges before various governmental boards in at least half a dozen states. Crouch reported an annual salary of $125,000 in 1988 and drives a $70,000 BMW supplied by the network. Crouch’s wife, son and various in-laws are on Trinity’s payroll, and another son recently received a large loan from the network to buy several TV stations.