Cinema Verities - Christianity Today

Brian bird’s call to live for Christ in Hollywood came while watching Fantasy Island on a hotel television in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. But this was not just any installment of Fantasy Island. Bird himself had written this episode four years earlier. It was the only script he had sold before his screenwriting career had fallen by the wayside. Randomly catching the show on the other side of the world revitalized his desire to work in the entertainment industry.

“It was a crystal moment for me,” says Bird. Although he considers Fantasy Island a “lame show,” seeing it in Africa helped him realize the TV shows may also have potential for the advancement of “life and faith-affirming messages.”

“I fell to my knees and said, ‘God, put me back in the game,'” Bird says. “I just felt that Christians had to be at the table.”

God answered Bird’s prayer. Now, 14 years later, he works as senior writer and co-executive producer on CBS’s highest-rated drama series, Touched by an Angel. The “show about God” is seen in 200 countries every day, Bird says.

Bird is part of a small minority of Christians working in Hollywood. But he, Karen Hall—a writer for the television show Judging Amy—and Ralph Winter—a producer whose credits include X-Men and the remake of Planet of the Apes—are three Hollywood insiders who strive to integrate their faith and art without compromising the integrity of either one.

Broadcasting faith

Early in her career, while writing for shows like M*A*S*H and Moonlighting, Karen Hall was an agnostic. When she committed her life to Christ five years ago, her reputation as a Hollywood writer was solid.

Since her conversion, Hall has observed a couple of factors that stoke Hollywood’s anti-Christian sentiment: the exclusivity of Christianity in a world that stresses inclusiveness, and many pop-culture executives’ ignorance regarding religious people and their faith.

“On TV it’s a big deal if a character goes to church” because in Hollywood people in power aren’t religious, Hall says.

But the anti-Christian forces within Hollywood aren’t the only ones who criticize Christians in film. According to Robert Johnston, professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary and author of Reel Spirituality, there are three types of Christians in Hollywood:

those who use the workplace as a forum for evangelism
those who bring biblical values and insight into the workplace
those who see professional excellence as their calling and testimony to God.

“Which is right? All three,” says Johnston. “There are evangelicals in Hollywood who would center their activity in each of those categories, but often when other Christians think of Christians in Hollywood, they’re only thinking of the first category.”

Hollywood, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with entertainment, not content, says Winter, who spoke with Christianity Today from the California desert where he was working on the recent remake of Planet of the Apes.

A frequent problem for Christian screenwriters is being more focused on sharing an evangelistic message than on following the structural principles of good storytelling, Winter says. The result is stories that are more Christian clichÉ than compelling.

“If you want to get into screenwriting because you want to convert people, it’s the wrong reason,” says Winter. “My experience is that people who do that frequently leave the craft of screenwriting behind them.”

Johnston agrees. “Such a mindset doesn’t produce great screenwriters,” he says. “As in any artistic endeavor, one’s intention needs to be bringing to light and telling the story—it’s a piece of reality that must be told. If storytelling is a means to an end, and not an end in itself, then one will fail.”

Bird’s 1993 film Bopha!, which he wrote with John Wierick, is a story with biblical truth woven into its fabric. The film is set in South Africa at the height of the apartheid tension in 1980. It stars Danny Glover as a black police sergeant torn between his duty to his country and his relationship with his son, an activist in the anti-apartheid movement. Themes of social justice and redemption run throughout the film.

“It’s a father-son story in which the father is forced to arrest his son, only to realize the sin of his ways,” says Bird. “He has to shed his skin and is reconciled to his son. Even as the specter of more violence continues, true freedom has been born in both the father and the son.”

Bird also sees the Touched By An Angel strategy as a good model of integrating faith and art. He says that Martha Williamson, the show’s executive producer, is convinced that God must be Touched by an Angel‘s star. Thus, the shows writer guidelines come right out of Scripture—every episode features biblical truths, and the angels are God’s angels, not reincarnated human beings.

And yet, some Christians wonder why Touched by an Angel doesn’t take its Christian message further.

“CBS is a broadcast network, not a narrowcast network,” says Bird. “But the beauty of our show is that it can appeal to people who aren’t Christians but who are searching for God. If we strictly identified our show as a Christian show, there would be a lot of people who wouldn’t tune in.”

Being Cagey

While Touched by an Angel is perhaps the most overt example of Christians working in Hollywood, there are other ways God is working through them. For one, many Christians in Hollywood serve as gatekeepers who keep depraved content off the screen. For example, some writers come up with creative plot twists to keep unmarried characters from having sex.

“There’s a ton of stuff that you’ll never know about because people with some sense of values said, ‘No, that’s over the line,'” says Bird. “You can’t trace it, but I see it constantly.”

Many Christians also stand out in Hollywood because of their kindness toward others. Backstabbing and lying are common in the entertainment industry, so it’s rare when people treat others with love and respect. Winter makes it a priority to visit crew members who get hurt on the set and prays with people on occasion.

“It’s about touching their lives in very practical, seemingly common ways,” says Winter.

In addition to being a gatekeeper and loving others, Karen Hall had an unusual opportunity for a pro-Christian message on Judging Amy, when she was asked to write an episode about Amy questioning her own agnosticism. Hall agreed to write the semi-autobiographical script on one condition.

“I said, ‘Can we please have a Christian who’s a normal human being who happens to go to church?'” says Hall.

The episode, called “The God Thing,” showed Amy’s surprise when she learned that Bruce Van Exel, a well-liked regular character who is in many ways the conscience of the show, is a committed Christian. Throughout the episode, Amy challenged Bruce to give her a “short answer” for how an intelligent person like him could believe in God.

“I figure I have three choices on what to believe,” Bruce tells Amy at the end of the show. “(A) there is no God; (B) there’s a callous God who doesn’t care that horrible things happen to people; or (C) there’s a benevolent God who is beyond my understanding, and I have to give him the benefit of the doubt when he looks bad.”

“And what makes you choose C?” Amy asks.

“The look on my daughter’s face when I tuck her in at night. That’s the short answer,” says Bruce.

The episode ends with Bruce inviting Amy into his church, and from that episode forward, Bruce Van Exel’s character has been a voice for Hall to suppport a faith-based perspective.

Hall, who has written for TV for over 20 years and has been nominated for seven Emmys, says she could include a pro-Christian message in this script because she’s a longtime veteran of Hollywood. She teaches young Christian screenwriters to lie low and build their reputation before they can be more open with their faith.

“If you get kicked out of show biz the first year for waving your Bible around, then you’re not going to make much impact,” she says. “You have to be a bit cagey.”

Marshall Allen is a recent graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary and the religion reporter for the

Glendale News-Press

in Glendale, California.

Related Elsewhere

A ready-to-download Bible Study on this article is available at ChristianBibleStudies.com. These unique Bible studies use articles from current issues of Christianity Today to prompt thought-provoking discussions in adult Sunday school classes or small groups.

Also appearing on our site today:

Reel School for Real Christians | Act One prepares Christian screenwriters to write Hollywood blockbusters.

CT Classic: Can Any Good Thing Come Out of Hollywood? | An interview with producer Ken Wales.

On NPR’s Morning Edition, Monique Parsons interviewed devout Christians Karen Hall (Judging Amy), Ralph Winter (Planet of the Apes), and Ken Wales (Christy) on how Hollywood portrays faith.

The Internet Movie Database lists film and television credits for Brian Bird, Karen Hall, and Ralph Winter.

Touched by an Angel’s web site includes cast bios, an episode guide and show news.

A fan site for Judging Amy posts episode transcripts.

In 1999, Christianity Today’s sister publication Books & Culture looked at the films of Paul Schrader.

Every Thursday, Christianity Today.com’s Film Forum looks at what mainstream and religious critics are saying about current films.

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