Tustin Goes Hollywood With ‘China Cry’

Several thousand of the faithful and the curious gathered at a shopping mall here Saturday for a Hollywood-style promotion of “China Cry,” a feature film produced by Tustin television evangelist Paul F. Crouch.

Such a glitzy event--complete with remote broadcasts, rap singers and a movie star--might be standard procedure in the movie business, but Saturday’s razzle-dazzle was one of the few traditional things about Crouch’s venture into the film industry.

“China Cry,” which premiered last week at Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and opened in more than 25 U.S. cities, is the inspirational story of San Jose evangelist Nora Lam. Based on Lam’s autobiography, it tells her story of her transformation from a pampered Shanghai girl in pre-revolutionary China to a Christian who was persecuted and almost executed for her faith by communist authorities.

“China Cry” was financed by $6 million in donations from viewers of Tustin-based Trinity Broadcasting Network. It has been strongly promoted around the country by affiliates of the 24-hour-a-day Christian programming service, which Crouch founded in Orange County in 1973.

Crouch, who served as the film’s executive producer, joined “China Cry” co-star Russell Wong on Saturday at the Tustin Market Place for the daylong event. The shopping center is just across the Santa Ana Freeway from Trinity’s headquarters and flagship television station, KTBN Channel 40, which broadcast the day’s events across the country and around the world.

While the festivities continued throughout the day in the parking lot, the film was shown on all six screens from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. at a multiplex theater nearby, one of a dozen theaters in the county exhibiting “China Cry.” Many who watched the film bought tickets in advance through Trinity, according to Scott Tiveron, assistant manager of the theater complex, Edwards Market Place. As part of the distributor’s marketing strategy, more than $215,000 in advance tickets was sold to Trinity viewers at a 20% discount.

Helen Genovese, a regular Trinity viewer, drove from Simi Valley to see the movie and found it “terrific. It shows you that if you have faith in God, He can pull you through anything.”

But not all of those who saw the movie Saturday were regular Trinity viewers. Shelley Westmore of Tustin said she came because of the previews she saw earlier at the theater, and was not disappointed.

“I go to a lot of movies,” she said. “China Cry” is “not one of the greatest ones I’ve seen, but I thought it was well done.”

Her mother, Claire Westmore, said the film was “disjointed in parts, unlike bigger-budget productions, but it was a good story.”

Despite the film’s PG-13 rating, there were a number of children in a ticket line of several hundred for the 2 p.m. show. The reason for the rating was the film’s “emotional intensity,” according to Tim Penland, distributor of “China Cry.”

Crouch has told Trinity viewers that he didn’t like to see “China Cry” in the same category with films that featured nudity, profanity and gratuitous violence. He said Saturday that although he felt the PG-13 rating was “excessive,” he did not appeal the rating.

While Trinity has promoted, financed and sold tickets for “China Cry,” Crouch and Penland have chosen to offer the picture to general audiences like any other commercial release, and let it sink or swim.

“We’re right out there on a limb,” Crouch acknowledged. If “China Cry” doesn’t draw enough paying customers, theater owners will swiftly replace it.

In the past, evangelists such as Billy Graham, who have made similar films, have hedged their investments by “four-walling” them, renting theaters and selling tickets through churches and other religious organizations.

Should “China Cry” earn back its cost or make a profit, Crouch has pledged to make more such films. Projects under consideration range from the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian hanged by the Nazis for plotting against Hitler, to the lives of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Crouch said.