The Movies

The Movies: Box Office Closed

By Bob Briner

Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.

¾ Philippians 1; 27

The movies have made me a better person.  I really believe this. As it was with many who grew up in the forties and fifties, in those halcyon pre-television days, movies were a big part of my life. My mother was and is a true fan of the silver screen, and, since I was an only child, the two of us would take in several movies a week during my early childhood. We often had to sell milk bottles and soft-drink bottles to get bus fare and the price of two tickets, but many summer afternoons found us escaping the Texas heat in a cool, dark theater, often enjoying that bygone two-for-one bargain known as a double feature. There were even some days, much to my father’s chagrin, that my mother and I would take in two double features in an afternoon—four full-length motion pictures, plus “selected short subjects” in one day!

Not only did Mom and I see many movies during the week, my father almost always took the three of us to a Friday night movie. Hamburgers, followed by a movie on Friday evening, was as close to being a ritual in my family as anything. It was, unfortunately, much more regular than church on Sunday. Because I saw so many movies as a youngster, I can relive much of my childhood through old flicks on television. And, as I said, I believe I am a better person because of the movies. In those days, almost every movie extolled virtue. Good triumphed over evil. There were absolutes. There were real heroes.

Respect for women was lauded. Courage, bravery, and sacrifice were qualities to be praised. Love of country was promoted. Helping the underdog was shown to be a noble pursuit. True romance, extolling fidelity and loyalty, was almost the essence of the movies of that era. Family life was depicted favorably, even idealized. Education was shown as a prize to be sought. Even love for and kindness to animals were regular movie themes.

God, the church, and those who worked for the church were never demeaned, though they usually were not drawn too clearly. And, once in awhile, the big screen was used to bring powerful messages of God and even of Jesus Christ. Certainly, King of Kings and The Robe were the first real, meaningful presentations of Christ and His message that ever impacted my life. I really believe that it was because of those movies that I was more open and objective when the claims of Christ were presented to me from Scripture. The movies of my childhood really did make me a better person.

Then something strange happened. At age thirteen I was attracted (through sports) to a small church nearby, and almost immediately I was cut off from the movies. All movies. Even the basically wholesome movies described above were anathema to this church and were all but forbidden to its members. The winsomeness of the church people and of the Christ preached in their church convinced me “to buy the whole package” and so, reluctantly, I virtually gave up the movies for most of my teenage and college years. (It is ironic that now, with the movies almost indescribably worse in terms of values they project, this same denomination and its institutions have no hard and fast rules relative to attending the cinema, and most of its members are, one presumes, regular ticket buyers.)

Even though I was cut off from regular Hollywood fare, the big screen continued to demonstrate its attraction and power for me during my teenage years. In those days, Billy Graham and his organization were producing quality dramatic motion pictures conveying a gospel message. And they were giving these pictures significant distribution. Most were shown in regular theaters, using the best available sound and projection equipment. When a new Billy Graham picture opened in town, it was a big deal, particularly for the young people of a church that forbade them to go to Hollywood movies. To take a girl to the premiere of a Billy Graham film was the biggest date of the year for many Christian teenagers. In addition, many churches used the attractiveness of these films as one of their major evangelistic outreaches. The idea, and a good one, was for church members to invite their friends, who might never go with them to church, to have a night out with them at the movies. In the neutral setting of a movie theater, a quality motion picture would present the claims of Christ in a dramatic way. It was a good idea.

Unfortunately, Billy Graham’s motion picture efforts came at a time when there was no after-market in television and/or video­cassette distribution available to either extend the reach or help defray the production costs. It has now been many years since the last Graham film was released. And, more unfortunately, even tragically, Graham’s efforts were the last regular quality effort of the church to use this powerful, important, uniquely American medium to bring the salt of the Gospel to the world. There are now almost no lambs roaring in Hollywood and anything close to a Christian message or theme rarely appears on the screens of the thousands of movie theaters across the country. The Christian church, which had some time ago abandoned the motion picture industry as a place of ministry and outreach, now, for all practical purposes, abandoned the medium itself as a way to communicate the message of Christ to the world at large.

When the church and its people are absent, when there is no preserving salt and no roaring lambs, the same thing always happens. It is just as sure as a law of physics. ‘When a vacuum is created, it is always filled. When good departs, evil always fills in behind it. If you remove the salt, the meat spoils. It rots. This is what happened to the movies. To think that my children and grandchildren could be better people by ingesting a steady diet of movies today the way I did as a child would be ludicrous. Once again, Christians left the scene, and, again, the scene was an important one. The movies continue to play a big part in how America thinks and in what the world thinks about America. The power of the silver screen is still there, but it is just not a power for good and right.

Michael Medved, the respected movie critic, host of Sneak Preview on PBS, and author of the recently released Hollywood vs. America, says that there is a definite antireligion bias in Hollywood. In his now-famous lecture at Hillsdale College, Medved cited many instances when movie makers went out of their way, i.e., spent lots of their own money, to blast religion and religious values. To make his point, he noted that almost none of the really religiously offensive films did anything but lose money for their producers. These include such notorious bombs as The Last Temptation of Christ, Monsignor, Agnes of God, The Runner Stumbles, True Confessions, Mass Appeal, and The Mission. By con­trast, films that in many ways conveyed a positive look at religion and religious values found large audiences and made much more money. Those cited include Chariots of Fire, Tender Mercies, The Trip to Bountiful, Witness, and A Cry in the Dark. Medved concludes that the moguls in Hollywood are so biased against religious values that they are ready to put significant amounts of money behind their beliefs. He says,

Why hasn’t Hollywood gotten the message? The one thing this industry is supposed to be able to do is to read the bottom line. Why, then, do savvy producers continue to authorize scores of projects that portray religious leaders as crazed conspiratorial charlatans, when similar films have failed so conspicuously in the past?

It is hard to escape the conclusion that there is a perverse sort of idealism at work here. For many of the most powerful people in the entertainment business, hostility to traditional religion goes so deep and burns so intensely that they insist on expressing that hostility even at the risk of commercial disaster.

In this context, Medved cites the 1985 King David production, which cost $28 million to produce and attracted less than $3 million in ticket sales. This film advanced the totally unsupported conclusion that the biblical king rejected God at the end of his life. Medved gives this account of an interview he conducted on the film:

A few weeks before the film’s release, one of the people who created it spoke to me proudly of its “fearless integrity” “We could have gone the easy way and played to the Bible belt,” he said, “but we wanted to make a tough, honest film. We don’t see David as a gung-ho, Praise-the-Lord kind of guy. We wanted to make him a richer, deeper, character.” In his mind, in other words, secure religious faith is incompatible with depth of character.

For our purposes here, the most germane and compelling words of Medved’s powerful lecture are these: “It’s easy for most movie makers to assume a patronizing attitude toward religiously committed people because they know so few of them personally. If most big-screen images of religious leaders tend to resemble Swaggart or Bakker, it’s because evangelists on television are the only believers who are readily visible to the members of the film colony.” (Interested readers can obtain a complete copy of Medved’s lecture by writing to Imprimis, Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan 49242. It is an important document and well worth having).

What Medved is saying is that since there are so few Christians in the Hollywood film industry, can we blame the moviemakers for their errors when they try to portray religious faith? We’ve left the interpretation of our faith, our church, and our Savior up to non-Christians. Is it their fault if they almost always get it wrong? Is it their fault if Swaggart and Bakker are the primary models they have for Christian characters in their films? The answer, I believe, is obvious. We left, and the world is paying a significant price for our abdication.

Remember, twenty million people go to the movies each week in America alone. Millions more see movies on television and cassettes. Only very rarely do they see anything that points them to Christ. Our fault.

Typically, but unfortunately, our response to the sacrilege and blasphemy of modern movies is to whine, demonstrate, boycott, and keep score. Again, as with television, we have almost no alternatives to offer. We cannot say, “Don’t watch that trash. Watch this film of a great story that is uplifting and ennobling.” We can’t say that, because we haven’t produced those films in any numbers. Basically, we are saying to the twenty million who attend movies every week: “Stay home. But don’t watch television, because we haven’t produced anything there either.” This is not a logically defensible position. It won’t play, not even in Peoria.

Again, all too typically, it seems that one of our few responses to a very bad situation is not to provide good alternatives but to spend our time, energies, and the Lord’s money in scorekeeping operations. A recent newspaper column had this account:

“Several times a week, Movie Morality Ministries sends reviewers into theaters to count cuss words, bare breasts, axe murders and assorted other Hollywood favorites.” From Movie Morality Ministries, we learn that the “F” word is used fifty-eight times in JFK I feel sure the people of this “ministry” feel they are serving God in their hearts and that people who contribute to their cause feel they have done their Christian duty relative to the movies. This, no doubt, makes them feel active and engaged as Christians where the movies are concerned. I could be wrong, but I do not think this is the kind of thing Christ meant when he said, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). And frankly, I don’t think it takes a cadre of movie monitors to deduce that movies are in pretty bad shape.

Because we have been absent so long, Hollywood may be the uttermost part of the earth, more foreign in many ways than China, India, or Africa as far as the Gospel is concerned. Still, we are commanded to go there and be witnesses, and you can’t witness without being present. Christians need to be in Hollywood, working alongside the men and women who are producing the movies that twenty million people see each week. What a mission field!

It has been years since Chariots of Fire, with its evocative theme song, its compelling story, and its fair and sympathetic depiction of a Christian character, sneaked into movie theaters around the world. “Sneaked” is the right way to describe its emergence. Because of its Best Picture Academy Award and the classic status it has now achieved, it is important to remember that Chariots of Fire was a “small” movie, relatively very inexpensive to produce and with no important, big-name stars among its principal players. Only word-of-mouth publicity kept it alive at the box office. It was quietly released and had to win its way by the quality of the production and subsequent response of the viewers. Obviously, it succeeded extraordinarily well.

Naïve soul that I am, I believed that the success of Chariots would trigger a spate of similar films. It seemed to me that the movie moguls would see that a great, uplifting story, competently acted, backed up by stirring music and produced on a reasonable budget could be a formula for success after success. It was not to be. There have been few if any Chariots to follow the original. I wanted to find out why.

To find out why, I spoke with David Puttnam, the creator and producer of Chariots. The worldwide success of his great movie and the Best Picture Oscar it earned catapulted Puttnam into perhaps the most powerful position in the motion picture industry. He became the head of Columbia Pictures, then owned by Coca-Cola. His tenure there was a stormy one. The Hollywood establishment fought him at every turn and ridiculed his common-sense approach to movie making. The moguls and mavens won and Puttnam soon returned to London, chastened and defeated. I wanted to visit with him and hear firsthand why the success of Chariots could not, or at least had not, been replicated.

Getting in touch with Puttnam required a good deal of detective work, and I finally had to go through ex-baseball commissioner, Fay Vincent, who once represented Coca Cola in running Columbia Pictures making him, in effect, Puttnam’s boss. Through Fay’s good help a date was set for me to meet Puttnam in his difficult-to-find London office. It was almost as if he wanted to get as far away from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood as possible. His small space was tucked away in an old mews in an obscure section of London. The entire building that it was in probably did not contain the area of his magnificent suite of offices at Columbia.

A large, bearded man, Puttnam was initially cool but courteous. He was probably wary of yet another American there to inter­view him about Chariots, his tenure at Columbia, and the aftermath. Sports soon provided a common ground for us. His father had been a sportswriter on a London paper, and we dis­covered we had friends and acquaintances in common. We had an animated conversation about the difference between a baseball pitcher and a cricket bowler. I enjoyed myself with him.

When the discussion turned to Chariots and to why there had been so few quality pictures following it, Puttnam turned melancholy. It was obvious that he was looking for the next Chariots. His office sort of overflowed with scripts in various stages of being read. He was looking, but not finding. He said that there were just no good scripts being brought to him. He said it with sadness. Here was a guy who, based on his previous track record, could certainly raise the money to produce any movie he wanted to make. He had shown an affinity for producing quality, uplifting, affirming, even Christian-oriented movies, but no one was bringing him scripts of quality, I couldn’t help but wonder where the Christian screenwriters were.

David Puttnam, sitting in his little out-of-the-way office in London, is an untapped resource for people who care about quality movies. To tap the resource, the church needs writers. We have the Movie Morality Ministries to keep score for us, but we do not have the writers to change the score in our favor.

Although it was difficult to arrange the time with David Puttnam, God has given me a close, warm relationship with one of the legendary giants of the movie industry.

Martin Jurow lives in my home town of Dallas, Texas. Although physically a small man, his heart, intellect, and reservoir of goodwill are huge. His experience in and knowledge of the movie business are unsurpassed, encyclopedic. He has produced such classics as The Pink Panther, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Terms of Endearment, among many others. He has known all the great stars and directors and all the important studio executives. Great writers for the movies, such as Louis L’Amour, were among his close personal friends. To spend time with Martin is akin to having lunch at the MGM commissary in the era of the great stars of the studio system. As he talks, the stars seem to materialize and pass by as if passing by your lunch table. He is a superb raconteur.

Martin has always been very generous in giving me time. He invited me to his home near the Southern Methodist University campus, where he teaches a tremendously popular course on the business of entertainment. After we spent some time deploring the dearth of quality in current movies and he shared with me his anger in not being able to be comfortable with his wife and daughter in most movies he now sees, we began to talk about alternatives.

If a group of caring people would develop a great script with a biblical message, I asked him, could such a movie be produced and distributed? I wanted to know whether, even with all the antipathy to religion cited by Michael Medved, it was still possible to make and distribute quality movies with a message. His reply sort of stunned me. Almost with vehemence he said, “Of course they could! It isn’t that it can’t be done; it’s that nobody tries.” We have not, because we ask not.

He illustrated his point with a story. The wife of a Methodist minister knew of a story she believed should be made into a film. This woman, unlike most of us, acted on her belief Knowing that one of the legendary film makers lived in the same city, she picked up the phone and called Martin. She asked if he would help her produce a movie. His reply was, “Of course I will!” We receive not, because we ask not. The unlikely partnership of a Dallas minister’s wife and a Hollywood legend produced a wonderful result. Because a preacher’s wife saw, through eyes of faith, the possibility of putting a great story on the big screen and because people of good will, such as Martin Jurow, often respond to others of good will, we have Papa Was a Preacher. My wife and I had the great joy of seeing this wonderful full-length motion picture in one of our local theaters. It was up there on the big screen just as any other production would be. The difference is that it presents an honest, humorous, sympathetic picture of the life of a Protestant clergyman and his family. It does not present them as perfect; it presents them as committed to the cause of Christ and caring about the welfare of others. And, because it is on film, many generations of people will be able to see it in many differ­ent mediums, in many different venues. I am thrilled to be able to write about this great example of active faith, of salt delivered, of a lamb that roared, roared with a sound as sweet as can be. If you haven’t seen this movie, rent it tonight.

After telling me about Papa Was a Preacher, Martin gave me a formula for replicating its success. Maybe there’s someone out there—maybe a group of Christian businessmen and creative types who will give this formula a try. Here are the salient points:

1. Select a quality story with a sound message and appealing characters.

2. Develop a sensible budget. The script should not call for special effects or expensive stunts, car chases, etc. (The budget for Papa Was a Preacher was about $2.5 million.)

3. Spread the risk. No single person put more than fifty thousand dollars into Papa Was a Preacher. Bring people to the project who see it as a mission, not as an investment. If the film is a financial success, this should be seen as a bonus.

4. Build a relationship with a distributor who specializes in small” quality movies.

5. Have a European strategy. American films are much more in demand in Europe than they are in America. Films made only for television distribution in America are often given significant theatrical distribution in Europe.

6. Have an after-market strategy. Unlike the days when Billy Graham produced his movies, there is today a very dynamic market for films beyond their original intended use. There is at least cable television distribution (more about this later) available on almost any quality film, and, more and more, video-cassette distribution both extends the reach and produces revenues for films.

7. Do not be afraid to go after a quality cast. Actors, even the best, most of them highly paid, want to work and want to do quality work. They will often agree to do roles of quality at rates far, far below their usual fees. Examples of this are Robert Duval in Tender Mercies (for which he won an Oscar), Geraldine Page in A Trip to Bountiful (for which she won an Oscar), and Sir John Gielgud in Chariots of Fire, in which he performed an important cameo role.

Martin feels that any denomination or group of Christians (Papa Was a Preacher was financed by the members of one suburban Dallas church) could make the above strategy work over and over again if there were people developing quality scripts. (You are by now probably tired of my saying, “The church needs writers.” But it is true, and it needs emphasizing.) Christians can take heart in the knowledge that Papa Was a Preacher is not the only recent success of Christian film makers.

Frank Schroeder provides an inspiring example of persistence and perseverance and, perhaps, another example of how to go about recapturing some of the lost ground in the motion picture business. While working in a sports television ministry (a man after my own heart!) he became convinced that a motion picture should be made on the life of basketball legend “Pistol” Pete Maravich, who had come to faith in Christ late in his career. Even the untimely death of Maravich himself did not deter Schroeder. Taking a page from the Papa Was a Preacher story, he raised the $2 million production budget from a group of private Christian investors and completed The Pistol: Birth of a Legend Once he had the film, he could not find either a distributor or the money to distribute the film himself He decided on a unique approach to raising the distribution dollars. He would sell a corporate sponsor an on-screen promotion—in effect, a commercial message to be shown as a lead-in each time the movie would be shown in a theater. Fifty-five corporations turned him down before the Atlanta based fast-food chain Chick-fil-A agreed to cover the marketing cost of the film in exchange for the on-screen promotion. A smart, synergistic adjunct was that the film would also be promoted in the 435 Chick-fil-A restaurants across the country.

Even with the marketing dollars at last in hand, Schroeder still faced a very high hurdle. He needed to persuade movie theater owners that audiences would accept a film with a commercial lead-in. Most large theater chains wouldn’t even consider it. By convincing executives of General Cinema, the nation’s third-largest theater chain, to at least view the film and the Chick-fil-A lead-in, he scored a breakthrough. GC agreed to play it, and other major chains followed.

With faith, determination, the help of Christian friends and Christian businesses, Frank Schroeder succeeded in producing and distributing a quality film with a solid Christian message. I am sure this is no big deal to him, but he also immediately gained entry into my Roaring Lambs Hall of Fame.

Following the successful theatrical release, Pistol was picked up by Sony for home-video distribution. This kind of success has enabled Schroeder to put four more quality films into development, including the final two in the Pistol trilogy. He is opening up the box office. I hope Schroeder’s success thrills you as much as it does me. But what should individual Christians do in response to Schroeder’s heroics? Well, first of all, buy a Chick­fil-A sandwich. It’s a great sandwich! Perhaps, more than that, we should show the Christian-oriented companies such as Chick-fil-A that we applaud their strategic thinking, which syn­ergistically combines sound business sense with an effort to tell The Story.

Second, watch for Frank Schroeder films. If one comes to your city, buy a ticket. Go see it. Take a friend who needs to see a qual­ity presentation of the gospel message.

Third, if you are an investor or have means to contribute to God’s work here on earth, consider putting money into Schroeder’s films.

However, the very best thing you can do for Frank Schroeder is to help him find great stories and encourage Christian writers to consider writing screenplays for him.

Believe me, I’m dead serious about this business of cleaning up movies by joining rather than fighting the industry. Think of all the effort that has gone into boycotting and slamming the admit­tedly awful movies being produced today. Are we better off for it? Can you honestly say you’ve noticed that this strategy is working? Are you pleased with the general fare offered in movie theaters today? Let’s be honest: all our protests have done is make us feel good about standing up and being counted. They have not cleaned up Hollywood, nor will they. The studios just don’t care. What will ultimately speak to them is profit. Sure, they may be willing to lose money to make a few perverted films, but by and large the pro­ducers want to make money. If done right, good, clean, uplifting, even faith-affirming movies will make it to the silver screen.

Let me close this chapter, then, with just two more examples. If I told you that the Kuntz brothers are not particularly impressive people at first sight, it would not be a pejorative statement. In fact, it is a high compliment. These rather ordinary guys operating out of very modest offices with no big corporate dollars and no big-time Hollywood connections have accomplished extraordinary things. They have made movies, successful movies, all with a Christian message. The key to their success has been in identifying and attracting a star who sees and identifies with the mission they have undertaken. Dakota, their most recent production, gained acceptance into movie theaters mainly because of its young star, Lou Diamond Phillips. The Kuntz brothers spotted this compelling young actor before he had become the big star he was destined to be and signed him on for their film. It was one of those roaring­ lamb kinds of deals that will have eternal benefits for the kingdom.

I don’t want to leave the impression that, even with a Lou Diamond Phillips, the Kuntz brothers had it easy. To get Dakota produced and distributed took the same kind of determination and dedication that Frank Schroeder has. It took the entire Kuntz family—wives, children, friends, neighbors—and it took at least two years of all their lives. Was it worth it? Before you decide, let me tell you about the greatest success of Dakota.

Earlier I mentioned the large number of cable channels now available as “after-market” distribution for films. Well, the Kuntz brothers hit a cable channel home run with Dakota. They made a deal for their movie with Home Box Office—HBO—the country’s premium movie channel. HBO, the channel the blasters and boycotters love to hate. HBO, where you can catch some of the worst Hollywood has to offer, but also Dakota, which is the story of a Christian family who live out their faith by befriending a young rebel played by Lou Diamond Phillips and help him to see that Christ is the answer to his alienation. More than a year after its debut on the channel, HBO continues to air Dakota. Millions continue to see it. Because of the vision of Darryl and Frank Kuntz there is a roar of the lambs on HBO. And the roar will be long and loud, for Dakota will be available on videocassette for years to come. It is certain that many young people, attracted by Lou Diamond Phillips, will see it.

Was it worth it? It was eternally worth it, and the Kuntz brothers occupy a place of honor in my mythical Roaring Lambs Hall of Fame. More important, they have provided a model for the rest of us as to how ordinary people can do extraordinary things with God’s help. Isn’t this a better way to “fight” Hollywood?

Finally, I’d like to tell you about Rhonda Richards, a talented producer for my own company, ProServ Television. As a graduate of Greenville College, which is also my alma mater, Rhonda has already in her young life demonstrated that what I’m talking about in this book is no pipe dream. Rhonda has not let the fact that she attended a small Christian college deter her from her goal. An English major in college, she could easily have followed a traditional path toward high school teaching. Nothing wrong with that. But Rhonda had other ideas, different ideas. She wanted to produce movies. I am sure many people told her that women from small Christian colleges don’t produce movies. If she heard discouraging words, they did not deter her. Almost totally on her own, she obtained admission and a fellowship to study at the prestigious Stanford University film school. Before coming to PSTV she had already earned an on-screen credit for her work on Kevin Costner’s epic, Dances With Wolves. Seeing her name roll by on the credits of this important film is more exciting to me than the buf­falo hunt, the battle scenes, or Costner’s escape from his captors. The next time you see Dances With Wolves on television or on videocassette, watch the credits. Watch for Rhonda Richards’ name. Let this be both an encouragement and a challenge. Let it be evidence that Christians who want to change Hollywood from the inside can at least have a chance. Let it be convincing to all of us who have deserted the movies.

My prayer is that Rhonda will fully realize her opportunities and responsibilities and will help put the most important story of all up on the big screen many times for many to see. I hope her example will inspire many others.

The movies, the people who make them, and the people who see them are important. The absence of God’s people from the movies has been tragic. Millions of people are being misled and corrupted because the salt has been absent and because the lambs have not roared. A reentry for Christians presents very formidable challenges, but God is able if his people are obedient. The movies can be both an important mission field and an important vehicle for the gospel message.

We need to focus on the individual heroics of the minister’s wife who has given us Papa Was a Preacher, on what Frank Schroeder and the Kuntz brothers have been able to accomplish, on the insight and commitment of executives such as those at Chick-fil-A, on the potential of our young people like Rhonda Richards, and on the available resources represented by men of good will such as Martin Jurow and David Puttnam.

Think what these people have accomplished on their own. Now think what could be accomplished if God’s people in America would begin to think strategically about the movies and about the twenty million souls who attend them each week. If churches, Christian businessmen, Christian colleges, Christian foundations, and Christian writers would begin to prayerfully target the movies, I have no doubt that we could hang a welcome sign on the box offices of America, signifying that, once again, the movies are a place and a medium in which God is honored. Let’s do it.