It’s
funny to think of connecting one’s film to one’s faith when one’s main
character is an ex-Playboy Bunny.
I somehow find myself with these characters—forlorn, bloodsucking vampires;
foul-mouthed, pregnant teenagers; strategic, manipulative vixens. They appeal to me, these sweet-and-sour
girls. They remind me of who I am. They remind me of what I see in
everybody. They remind me, however
strangely, of Jesus—the hybrid deity of passionate anger; the human who ravaged
the courtyards of the compromised temple; the god who suffered little children;
the criminal who pleaded with the only one who he knew could spare him. We are never one or the other. We are never good. And we are not Disney villains. We bite and scratch and plot and kill
for reasons. And these reasons are the things that compel me: the
dichotomy of the average human appeals to my sense of reality and to my sense
of fantasy. It appeals to my understanding
of God. If we are truly made in
his image, and if we are truly so two-faced (if not four or six or
fifty-eight-faced), I can begin to understand how he is the God who ordered the
Israelites to slaughter entire people groups, and the God who spared Isaac; the
God who befriended the tax-collector and condemned the Pharisee; the God who
created both light and its inherent shadow.
In
a movie with a tough-as-nails/closet romantic producer, an artistic/sell-out
director, and a lady of the semi-night who understands exactly who she is and
who she is not, I think the film, while vain and fluffy on its surface,
actually fits in quite nicely with pregnant teenagers and lonely vampires. Each character has a face they present the
world—the public, their professional peers, the cameras—and a face that they
keep hidden for fear of ridicule.
They are, like any real person, complicated by their own warring
desires. Henry, if he really wanted, could work his ass off and get investors and
make the film he really wants to make, but he’s afraid of critical rejection,
and I think he’s comfortable maintaining the lifestyle he has. Olivia, as a female producer in a still
heavily-male-dominated industry, has to be as unromantic as any male producer
in order to be taken seriously by investors and the media. She can’t act on her own long-held
desire for Henry because it would seriously interfere with the public persona
she’s been building for the last ten years. And Ellen, well…Ellen doesn’t hide who she really is. She just doesn’t bother to correct
people’s assumptions about her.
She uses people’s preconceptions to her advantage. She is sly, cunning, and doesn’t need
anyone. Although we don’t get to
explore much of why this is, or if she wants more out of her life, there is
definitely some deeply unpleasant reason why this came to be. These characters excite me because they
stand in their own way—they’re just like me, and like everyone I’ve ever met.
For
me, having faith in God manifests itself in creating stories that respect God’s ultimate creation: human beings (and by “ultimate” I mean he made
EVERYTHING else, then when he’d seen us, he stopped, because nothing more
needed to be done). Movies like Fireproof are, to me, blasphemous. They mock the complexity of the human experience by
simplifying life down to petty Christianisms and squeaky-clean endings. Human beings do not behave in Fireproof ways.
We are not fireproof. We
are scarred and dented and chipped and we say terrible things to each other and
we do things that cannot be fixed with Chick-Fil-A and a sermon from a
well-meaning secondary character.
I don’t deny that Eye of the Beholder is not a profoundly philosophical film. And it has an intentionally “perfect”
ending, with the lovers left to their bliss by a slowly-receding camera. But even here we’ve intentionally
marred the perfection by dollying back in, setting up another conflict, and
dollying back out, leaving the audience wondering if the star-crossed lovers
will really make it after all.
Because there’s never a perfect pull-out in real-life. There isn’t a perfect ending, and to
suggest otherwise is to blatantly contradict a lifetime of
experiences—experiences given by the grace of a complicated and unfathomable
God.
Faith,
to me, is acknowledging that most things do not—and will not ever—make
sense. Faith is allowing the bow
of conflict to remain untied.
Faith is about standing up to crappy stories and saying, “I’m not going
to sanitize this for you. I’m not
going diminish a terrible, beautiful story just to make you feel more
comfortable. I’m not going to
censor my content just because it doesn’t appear in your pop-up Bible.” Faith is about admitting we’re really,
really screwed up—not just the murderers and rapists and embezzlers, but the accountants
and kindergarten teachers and yes, the artists. It’s about examining the dirty, gross, hidden, disgusting
parts—but then it’s about holding up the
crap side-by-side with the beautiful stained-glass fractures of the people we
wanted to be, the people it is still possible, one day in another world, to
become. Christianese films get it
wrong on one end—but porn and shock-effect slashers get it wrong, too. They say “Here’s the depravity,” and
they leave you with nothing more.
Faith goes beyond. It
brings the beauty and the ugly together and acknowledges that the can live side
by side in perfect contradiction, because that’s who we are. That’s who God created us to be. Honoring that contradiction is the best
expression of faith in God that I know.
After
that, the process of incorporating faith into the construction of the film is
fairly simple—you do your job, you do it well, and you treat others with
respect and compassion. That’s it. Respect the story, respect yourself,
respect your coworkers, and you inherently honor God. Faith is an action, and people can only see it if you
practice it in everything you do. The creed of the Christian filmmaker
should be, “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Conviction of Character, and I
promise, for the love of God, to not preach at my secular coworkers.” I’ll
use a short illustration—I was at the mall with my boyfriend on Black
Friday. We walked past a Lucky
jeans store, and he mentioned that he’d been meaning to get a new pair. I convinced him to go in, even though
he knew he didn’t want to buy anything that day. We walked in and immediately a sales rep attached herself to
Phil like a leech on an open wound.
She mentioned—three times—their sales item, asking him what his size
was, digging through the piles to pull out three colors for him to try on. After he—with a pricelessly bewildered
look on his face—had them in his hands, she immediately went around and got
three more pairs of jeans for him to try on as well, enlisting the help of two
other sales reps. He looked to me
for help—and because I thought it was really funny, I just smiled and
watched. The woman pushed him into
a dressing room, and checked on him—I kid you not—at least four times in the
span of about eight minutes. By
the time we left the store he was so mad I thought he was going to strangle the
overzealous saleswoman. While she
was very well-meaning and eager to help, her very eagerness and helpfulness so
alienated Phil that the very sight of her—and by association, the Lucky brand—made
him angry. This, in my estimation,
is exactly what movies like Fireproof are doing. They’re
well-intentioned, they’re eager—but they’re having the exact opposite of their
intended effect. The saleswoman
might have convinced her fellow sales associate to buy a pair of jeans—but a
new convert like Phil—well, he’s steering clear of that store for a long
time. And it’s the same with
movies. If Christians keep branding
themselves with movies like Fireproof, they’re only going to sell their idea to the people who’ve already
bought into it. They’re not doing
themselves—or anyone else—any favors.
So
I make movies about ex-Playboy bunnies.
Not because I have a desire to shock the audience or indulge some weird,
religious rebellion. I do it
because characters with not-so-squeaky-clean stories are fertile ground to
discover truth and beauty through pain and tragedy. Taking stories—even comedies—seriously, as a means of
communication, as a means of transformation, is my act of worship to a bizarre
and fascinating God, who created me in all my complexity, and who gave me the
urge and the ability to create films.
I am as uncomfortable in corporate worship settings as an atheist on
Easter Sunday—but put a pen in my hand, a computer, a camera, and I will wonder,
and I will dream, and I will write and when I am done, I have will have
something that inherently points to a hidden but implied order; a God who is
active and frighteningly present. My God is not a wise baby or a
placid-faced crucifix—my God is a God of anguish and sorrow; my God bled, my
God was tortured; my God pisses me off, and my God is a God who will let me
come to him. My God does not force
conversion at the end of a sword or whack me over the head with a Bible. My God is patient. My God does not demand that I be Fireproof. My God
does not expect me to be sanitized and polite and my God will not disown me if
my beaten-and-battered pregnant teenage main character drops the F-bomb when
she realizes it’s the last day she has to decide about aborting the baby her
mom’s boyfriend impregnated her with.
Wouldn’t you say, “Fuck”?
Well, I’m sure the Fireproof
people wouldn’t. And I’m sure the Fireproof people wouldn’t find themselves in such a
compromising situation in the first place. But we weren’t all born into fireproof worlds. And sometimes shit hits the fan. And I think it’s okay. I think it’s really okay. I think God is big enough to take the
fucked-up moments. Because my God
is faithful to me. And there is no word or deed that I can
say or do that can separate me from him if he wants me. And the story of God has made it apparent that he will go to
extreme lengths to guarantee that we are never separated unless I
will it to be so.
Filmmaking—storytelling—is
both a professional and a highly private calling, if you’ll pardon the
word. It is what I want to make my
career out of, but it is also deeply personal. I cannot separate my idea of God and my idea of story. I cannot separate my idea of crafting
good films and my idea of worship.
Worship, by definition, is supposed to come from a place of incredible
joy, fulfillment, and humility.
And there is nothing more humbling that I have experienced than working
on a film. Nor is there anything
more satisfying, nor anything more joyful than seeing the final product. At the risk of sounding truly
blasphemous, I would even posit that the theater is a sort of church where I go
to hear stories about how other people have lived, how they have failed and
succeeded and strived to understand more.
And just as there are horrific stories in the Bible, there are also
horrific stories in film. And ones
of beauty. And ones of peace. And ones of hope. We need all of the stories to even
begin to piece together a picture of the human experience. We need to understand that we are made
up of a billion fractured moments.
We need stories. We need
compassion. We need to allow each
other to be messed up. We need to
allow for God to allow us to be messed up.
And
that’s where it all begins.
Once
upon a time…
…something got messed up.
And here’s the
story of how some humans did their very best to fix it. And here’s where they fell short. And here’s where they pulled through. And damned if it isn’t compelling.
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