The Spirit Moves Them to Entertain

Frustrated with Hollywood, which has shied away from making films with spiritual themes or religious characters, a handful of independent producers are striking out on their own to make Christian-themed films that seek to entertain more than preach.

“There are a lot of people within the religious community that are just hungering for a high-quality film with a spiritual message,” says Bob Beltz, a Presbyterian minister from Littleton, Colo., and co-producer of “Joshua,” which will be released next month. Based on the novel of the same name (which sold 10 million copies), “Joshua” is a G-rated, modern-day parable about a mysterious stranger’s effect on the lives of the residents of a small Midwest town.

Mitch Davis directed the recently opened “The Other Side of Heaven” (2001), based on Elder John Groberg’s memoirs of his adventures as a Mormon missionary on the South Pacific island nation of Tonga in the 1950s. “It was never our intent to make a movie for Mormons,” Davis says. “It was always our intent to make a movie for the world and for a general audience. We’re not trying to proselytize with this movie at all, but we’re not trying to hide what it’s about, either.”

The hope of these filmmakers and independent producers is that films such as “Joshua” and “The Other Side of Heaven” can build on a grass-roots support within the Christian community and cross over to a more mainstream audience, unlike past independent releases such as “The Omega Code” and “Left Behind: The Movie.”

Thanks to evangelical moviegoers, those films were financially successful--”Omega Code” grossed $12.6 million and “Left Behind” sold 2.5 million copies on video, followed by $4.2 million at the box office--but were lacking in production values and were poorly reviewed in the nonreligious press.

Those films, “Joshua” director Jon Purdy says, were “kind of fear-based. They’re post-apocalyptic.” He says “Joshua” is more hopeful. “It’s attempting to portray faith in a positive way. And I think there’s a big question in there as to whether or not hope sells versus fear.”

“The Other Side of Heaven” has already grossed $2 million since December from a regional release in Utah, Idaho and Texas--states with large Mormon communities--despite never having played on more than 50 screens at once.

That encouraged Excel Entertainment to give the film a national release April 12 on several hundred screens. The film, though panned by major critics, cracked the top 20 and has so far grossed $3.5 million. Artisan Entertainment, which is distributing “Joshua,” also wanted to build word-of-mouth with an unorthodox release pattern. Before moving into larger metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, where advertising costs are much higher, it is releasing the film first in areas where religious-themed films have done well.

“Joshua” opened April 19 on 220 screens in 11 states, mostly in the South and Southwest. The film will widen to another 50 cities on Friday and will reach New York and Los Angeles on May 24. “Joshua” is reaching out to mainstream moviegoers with the usual television and newspaper ads, as well as targeting churchgoers with mailings, Web sites and screenings for religious press and leaders. A soundtrack with Christian artists such as Jaci Velasquez, Pete Orta and Point of Grace was put together, and best-selling Christian singer-songwriter Michael W. Smith was brought in to score his first film.

Other independently funded, spiritually themed films have found it a challenge to entice nonreligious moviegoers. The boxing drama “Carman: The Champion,” from early last year, grossed only $1.8 million and the wholesome extreme-sports film “Extreme Days” managed only $700,000 last fall.

“Megiddo: The Omega Code 2” (2001), which carried a significantly higher budget--$22 million--than the first, finished with a disappointing $6 million.

Excel’s first release, “God’s Army” (2000), a drama about Mormon missionaries in Los Angeles, grossed a profitable $2.6 million, but its director Richard Dutcher’s darker follow-up, “Brigham City” (2001), made only $800,000.

One encouragement, ironically, has been the success earlier this year of a major studio picture: Warner Bros.’ $40-million-grossing “A Walk to Remember,” which featured a devout main character and was marketed, in part, to Christian audiences.

Yet, as much as Davis admired that film, “they didn’t ever dare in the entire film to say what [the producer of ‘A Walk to Remember’] called ‘the J-word’ and they never dared show anyone praying, because they were afraid to,” Davis says.

Budgeted at $8.5 million, “Joshua” is based on the first in a series of novels by the Rev. Joe Girzone. Beltz, minister, co-producer and an author himself, first read the book in 1985 and optioned the movie rights when they became available two years ago.

The film was shot in 23 days near Chicago and briefly in Rome. Director Purdy, who has written scripts exploring religion but doesn’t describe himself as religious, was brought in.

“Having someone like me on board probably helped prevent the movie from going in the direction of its worst tendencies and helped create a movie that functions on a dramatic level, that still makes the statements that they wanted to make,” he says.

Casting the role of Joshua, a woodcarver who starts rebuilding the town’s storm-ravaged Baptist church and draws the ire of a Roman Catholic priest (F. Murray Abraham), was crucial.

“Playing Jesus or someone who might be Jesus is not the sort of thing that a lot of actors want to do,” Purdy says. Deciding to cast someone who looked different from the iconic image of Jesus, the filmmakers turned to actor-director Tony Goldwyn, best known for his villainous roles in films such as “Ghost,” “The Pelican Brief” and “Kiss the Girls.”

Unlike the book, in which Joshua is more of a leader and outright preacher whose identity is apparent early on, Goldwyn in the film “portrays this character just as a person who is admirable and someone you like--someone that does good works but doesn’t force it on anyone,” Purdy says.

Also, the book’s rants against the Catholic bureaucracy and calls for reform were mostly left out of the film. “A real effort was made to dramatize the message and not sermonize it,” Purdy says.

“The Other Side of Heaven’s” path to the screen started when director Davis read Groberg’s 1994 book, “In the Eye of the Storm,” and was enthralled with the portrait of Polynesian life seen through the eyes of a callow young man from Idaho. Davis purchased the movie rights and wrote the screenplay, drawing on the memoirs and the saved correspondence between Groberg, now 68, and his family and future wife, Jean, played in the film by Anne Hathaway (“The Princess Diaries”).

Davis, a former studio executive who was a missionary in Argentina in the late 1970s, had long wanted to make a film about the missionary experience. “We live in a world where most guys 19 to 21 years of age are hanging out at frat parties with a six-pack and coeds, and while my buddies were doing that I was in this foreign land trying to learn a foreign language, coming of age in a really quick way and in a very profound way,” he says. “The Other Side of Heaven” was budgeted at $7 million and filmed in New Zealand and the Cook Islands over 10 weeks.

Christopher Gorham, who plays Groberg, is a non-practicing Protestant who knew little about the Mormon faith before he was cast. He says he learned that the young missionaries are “not a bunch of crazy zealots out trying to ruin cultures. They’re young kids and they’re idealists and they believe in what they’re doing.”

But the film is more a coming-of-age story than a religious tract. “It’s an adventure and a love story that happens to be about a guy who is a missionary,” Davis says.

“The Mormon Church itself isn’t really discussed that often in the movie,” says Gorham, who was a cast member on the TV series “Popular” and will be in the new Showtime sci-fi series “Odyssey 5” this summer. “I wasn’t interested in doing a church film--something that would be shown at all the temples, you know?”

In fact, Davis says, there has been no official support from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which historically has chosen to stay away from commercial ventures.

The companies behind “Joshua” and “The Other Side of Heaven” are banking on families looking for morally uplifting entertainment. Epiphany Films is already developing a sequel to “Joshua” based on another book in the series, “Joshua in the Holy Land,” “a story that’s obviously extremely relevant today,” Beltz says. A prequel with a younger Joshua is also being discussed.

Later this year, Artisan will release the Christian-themed “Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie,” the first theatrical film of the popular animated direct-to-video series.

Excel is developing director Dutcher’s next project, “The Prophet,” based on the life of Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith Jr. Parent company Crusader Entertainment is also producing family-oriented dramas with less of an overt spiritual component, including “Swimming Upstream,” with Geoffrey Rush and Judy Davis, about a champion Australian swimmer overcoming a troubled family life, and “Children on Their Birthdays,” based on a Truman Capote short story about kids during the Depression, with Christopher McDonald and Sheryl Lee.

Davis, for one, thinks it’s high time for a return to making films like “Places in the Heart,” “Chariots of Fire” and “Lilies of the Field,” “movies that all have a sort of religious element to it without ever making me feel like, ‘Oh wow, they want to make me one of them.’”

“How ironic it is that we live in a culture or a society where it’s perfectly acceptable to make a movie that helps you get inside the head of a cannibal, and it’s kind of hip and politically correct to make that movie, but to make a movie where you try to get inside of the head of someone who believes in God is taboo.”

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Andre Chautard is an occasional contributor to Calendar.