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EUE/Screen Gem Studio, home to the largest sound stage (studio) east of California, in Wilmington, NC.

EUE/Screen Gem has been home to the production of movies A Walk to Remember, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I & II, 28 Days, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Muppets from Space, along with TV shows “Matlock,” “Dawson’s Creek” and “One Tree Hill”, along with almost 500 other productions.

We took the tour on Sunday. It’s quite impressive how they do what they do. The are currently filming this season of “One Tree Hill,” so those are the only sets we could see.

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Dan Merchant wonders, “Guys, guys [and presumably gals, too]—how are we supposed to have a conversation when everybody’s talking at once? Why is the Gospel of love dividing America?” Want to know why? Merchant decided to find out, so he donned a religious bumper-sticker-covered jumpsuit and set out across America in the documentary Lord, Save Us From Your Followers.

Along the way, Merchant meets Southern Baptists, apathetic Protestants, atheists, Al Franken, Catholics, homosexuals, Jim Santorum, a cross-dressing nun, and Tony Campolo calling Jon Stewart a “prophet of God” (referencing Tucker Carlson’s Crossfire on CNN, October 2004). He listens, asks, talks, pokes, prods. People critique his bumper stickers. They talk religion. In a conversation.

Merchant meets Ron Luce, leader of the national youth movement “Battle Cry” and discusses the “bee-hive” Luce and the event ran into in San Francisco. “Battle Cry” wants today’s Christian youth to speak out against the mass media culture that has turned America, a “Christian nation” according to Luce, into a culture opposed to Christianity. In San Francisco, “Battle Cry” staged a protest event on the steps of the San Francisco City Hall.

“It’s like we put our finger into a bee hive, and we didn’t know it—we didn’t realize it was a hotbed for a very violent response to people who represent the Bible,” Luce said.

This situation, according to Joe Garofoli, of the San Francisco Chronicle, put this Christian event on the same sacred steps for gay marriage, where the Mayor had decided to bless gay marriages just a few years ago. After the blow-up during the first event and plentiful press coverage, Luce brought “Battle Cry” back to San Francisco the next year, and again held a protest on the front steps of City Hall.

Merchant’s documentary opens with an animation of commentary from talking heads:

Jon Stewart: “Religion: it’s a powerful healing force in a world torn apart by… religion.”

Jerry Falwell: “We formed the Moral Majority. We weren’t intending to say everyone else is in the Immoral Minority.”

Merchant hit the streets and asked for the opinion of Americans on what Christians are all about: to be holy. Fanaticism. The Crusades. Killing off non-Christians. Trying to get other people to be Christians. Being good people That “love thy neighbor” thing. Theatrics. Jesus Christ. Being really snobby. Hypocritical. “Preparing to be holy, and being butt-[censored] wild behind closed doors. And that’s a fact.”

For Merchant, the trip began on a trip to Ethiopia, where he met Christians “full of joy, kindness and grace, despite living with daily hardships that would snap [him] in half.” That messed him up, he said, because he started to recognize the “stark contrast” between the Christians in Ethiopia, and the Christians he saw in America. “This collision of faith and culture in America—is killing me,” Merchant says. “It’s one thing to project our faith from a bumper sticker, it’s another to have a conversation. I think we’re getting it wrong again.”

Some will recognize this title from the book release. Lord Save Us has garnered attention from the Today Show and a USA Today Op/Ed piece. The film is available on DVD via group-screening license, by free download from the film’s website, or in a planned limited theatrical release June 13.

As documentaries go, Merchant and co-producer Jeff Martin produced a solid one. Both put their extensive television and film production experience to work, and through their production label hope to create more titles that express the spiritual truths of grace, redemption, and forgiveness.

The voices they include in Lord Save Us span the colors and faces of America and give a multi-sided voice to this commentary on Christianity in America. Politics and hot topics make up the early minutes of the film, while social justice and humility fill the later minutes. The film is also up-to-date, including footage of the Iowa Debates between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Through much of the film, there is a visual stimulation overload with animation, news clips, original interviews, talking heads, images, and music. Yet the representation implied is clear: there are many, many voices… and as Merchant noted early in the film, they’re all talking at once, and few are listening.

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When our lives are rhythmically in tune with God, the music of our lives is played out to anyone around us who cares to listen. Maxwell “Wizard” Wallace (Robin Williams) says to young August Rush (Freddie Highmore), “[Music] is God’s reminder that there’s something bigger than all of us.”

August Rush grew up in a boys home, known as Evan Taylor. Separated from his mother, Lyla Novacek (Keri Russell), at birth by her over-protective father, both desperately wanted to know the other existed. Living a life of feigned existence and separation, neither pursued their shared passion for music. But an innate sense brought them back to music.

Evan begins the movie in a field, swaying in rhythm with the music of the wind saying, “I believe in music, the way that some people believe in fairy tales. What I hear came from my mother and father, once upon a time.” The movie also follows his father, Louis Connelly (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), working as a West Coast businessman, also avoiding his former life as lead singer of a band.

After Richard Jeffries (Terrence Howard) from the Department of Child Services checks in with Evan and the boys at the home, Evan decides that now is the time to find his mother. He sets off for New York City with nothing but the music of his soul.

When Evan first meets “Wizard,” he picks up a guitar for the first time and instantly shows off his musical prowess. “Wizard” wants to give Evan a new name, August Rush, and give him a platform to share his music. Sounds a bit like the Saul-to-Paul transformation in the New Testament.

After police raid “Wizard’s” hangout, August is left wandering the streets of New York. He hears music coming from a church and wanders in to find a gospel choir in the midst of their practice. He finds Hope (Jamia Simone Nash), a young girl in the choir, who gives him a place to sleep, teaches him about music and introduces August to the minister.

Up to this point, Evan’s music came from the heart. He didn’t have a process or a structure or rules. His music came out of a childlike innocence, innocent and pure. Sitting at a piano in the church, Hope asks him, “Do you know your notes?” August is caught off guard: “I’ve never seen them like that before.” A childlike faith can be caught off guard in the same way when introduced to rules and regulations of religion.

August’s musical prowess took the minister’s breath away, and the minister found a way for August to attend Julliard. Learning how to write music, he composes a full-scale rhapsody which his professor discovers. The professor passes the rhapsody onto the Dean (Marian Seldes). She called August into a board meeting, where they informed August that they wanted the New York Philharmonic to play his rhapsody:

August: How many people will hear it?
The Dean: It will be performed in Central Park, on the Great Lawn.
August: A hundred?
The Dean: Much more. Thousands.
August: OK, I need to play it to a lot of people. Lots and lots.

Even with this newfound knowledge about music, August has not lost his passion and excitement. He wants nothing more than to share the music of his life with as many people as he can. What if people of faith lived with that same eagerness to share their passion?

“Wizard” constantly reminds August of the importance of his music, its connection to his heart and the world around him: “You gotta love music more than you love food, more than your life and more than yourself…You know what music is? A harmonic connection between all human beings.” Our spirituality longs to be number one and that “music” in our lives will connect us to the world around us.

August asks “Wizard” where the music comes from: “I think it comes from all around you, really. It comes through us, some of us. It’s invisible, but you feel it.” August asks, “So only some of us can hear it?” and “Wizard” responds: “Only some of us are listening.”

Are you listening to the music this Christmas season? August found the music, lived the music and shared the music.

The music is all around us. All you have to do is listen.” – August

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Two things make me really excited about this book. First, Donald Miller is writing another book. Second, it was inspired during the screenwriting for the new movie, “Blue Like Jazz.” Let the countdown begin! It’s going to be a long countdown though — supposedly Feb 2008 for the book, and filming may start next summer for the movie.

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The most alarming aspect of Academy Award-nominated Jesus Camp is the indoctrination of children at an incredibly young age. Mike Papantonio, a political radio show host, confronts Becky Fischer with this realization during their on-air interview.

Becky, the leader of the Jesus Camp, was Children’s Pastor for Word of Faith Church and Outreach in Bismarck, ND, before focusing her efforts full-time on Kids In Ministry International. Their ministry goal through workshops and training events for parents and leaders is to empower children to be all that God has for them to be. Through the camps of Kids In Ministry, the film shows these children being taught God’s warfare in this world, and the supremacy of America as God’s country. In one scene, a leader raises up a life-size cardboard cutout of US President George W. Bush and urges the children to reach out and pray over the President.

As the film opens, we hear radio clips from the resignation of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. In the Director’s Commentary, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady mention that Bush’s announcement of O’Connor’s resignation came as they began filming, and they believed it was necessary to include that as a thread of the Evangelical Movement they were portraying.

Soundbyties from Mike Papantonio’s Ring of Fire, balance the Christian worldview portrayed by Pastor Becky and the Jesus Camp. “So there’s some new brand of religion out there,” Papantonio says, “that somehow things have changed since Matthew wrote about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus told us to be peacemakers.”

This camp raises up children who believe they are separated from other children around them. Some are home-schooled because their parents want a different worldview impressed upon their children. Levi, a 12-year-old, knows and shares this in the film: “I do think I’m different from other kids because we know Jesus and we’re hungry after Jesus. But you know what, I wouldn’t be different from other kids if everyone did their calling.” Tory, 10, follows: “Really Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan, I could definitely care less about them. Their songs are mainly based on guys or girls, and we as Christians, well I, do not believe in that.”

In what has become a controversial aspect of the film, the children visit New Life Church, where Ted Haggard was Pastor. Haggard first expressed his dismay with how he was portrayed; then Haggard found himself in the midst of a scandal centered on his personal behavior. To those not a part of the Church, or who are unfamiliar with varieties of American Christianity, the correlations between the Jesus Camp and Ted Haggard could prove confusing.

The film introduces Levi, Rachael and Tory, shows their families, follows their time at camp and ventures across America with them as they put into practice what they have been taught. The words coming out of the mouths often sound more like a seasoned Pastor than a young child. During camp, Rachael takes a walk around the camp and speaks to the camera: “Churches that God likes to go to are churches where they’re jumping up and down, shouting his name and just praising him…they’re not quiet…they’re [shouting] ‘Hallelujah God!!’ And depending on how they invite him, he’ll be there or not.” During the credits, Rachael has a conversation with three men during one of her visits to the city about where they think they will go when they die. They give her all of the traditional Christian responses. Her response: “I think they’re Muslim.”

“And right now, everything they do, they say they do in the name of God,” Papantonio rants, “that we need to go to war in the name of God. They’re being told that George Bush, of all people, is a holy man, who’s been anointed with the job of creating a Christian nation, not only in America but all around the world.”

For an incredibly passionate documentary, Ewing and Grady have accomplished an insurmountable task of creating a work that is balanced. This is certainly a credit to their hard work and desire to create a solid film. In a recent interview on “Ring of Fire,” Ewing and Grady mentioned their continued contact with Fischer and an ongoing relationship. They successfully engaged their subjects and maintained a relationship despite the controversy that surrounded the release and widespread viewing of the film. This is what a documentary should be.

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A friend of mine from college leaves January 17th for a trip to Central America with 2 other guys. They’re filming a documentary about the beauty and hardships of Colombia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama in hopes that through the film, South/Central/North Americans will be able to better understand each other. Check out their website, it’s called the Down the Road Project.

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