Why So Many Faith-Based Movies Don't Work

This is a post I've long needed to write and long delayed writing because there's just no way to do it without offending somebody or even alienating people. But there are issues related to writing Biblical, family-oriented and spiritually uplifting films that need to be said. So, here we go.

First, let me make it clear that I am a NOT attacking Christianity or Christians. Christianity is not the topic here. Christian films, faith-friendly films, family-oriented films and spiritually uplifting films are the topic. And, just so we're clear on this, I will remind anyone who doesn't remember that I am, myself, a Christian - a fallible and imperfect person doing my best to live out what I believe.

Okay, so why oh why oh why are so many faith-related films so stinking bad?

• Nobody else gets it - Let's start with this. Most faith films are made for other church-going people. Biggest mistake. Christians make them. Christians watch them. Christians like them. They use situations, themes, and even church-y jargon that are unfamiliar to an audience that doesn't attend church. That makes the non-church-going audience outsiders looking in. If people cannot relate to a film or empathize with its characters, the film disaffects them. 
• Too much message and not enough art. Films are artistic expressions. But a lot of faith films are all message and very little art. Victor Hugo's book which has been adapted a gazillion times for stage and film, Les Miserables, is a story of redemption and atonement and a lot of other positive messages. Lots of good stuff going on in there. But, it's also artistic. It's visual. It's poetic. And no, it's not overtly a faith film but can anyone doubt the Christian charity that changed John Valjean from a bitter, resentful and selfish man into an unselfish lover of humanity? This story is a fine example of a message revealed through artistic expression, not in an on-the-nose sermon or in-your-face kind of way.
• Funding low expectations. Everyone is looking for money and let's face it, faith films are not usually strong contenders. One reason is that they have an automatic handicap as they must overcome a history of and expectation of low quality. Even funding platforms like Kickstarter can do more harm than good if the pitch does not demonstrate a skill and knowledge that will make investors want to participate. Done poorly, it could perpetuate the expectation that great aunt-so-in-so will get a lead role since she once played Lady Macbeth 40 years ago. .
• People want to be entertained, not preached to. We've seen some great message films in recent years that attracted large audiences. Facing the Giants met the expectations of its target audience and crossed over into mainstream audiences. The opposite is true with the The Blind Side which was made as a mainstream film that attracted Christian audiences. Both were football stories. Both were successful. But, the real common denominator here is that the films were entertaining and got their point across without being sanctimonious. 
• Weak writing. Faith films are guilty of some of the worst writing I've ever seen. Not all, but many of them are littered with cliches, poor dialogue, lack of structure, and characters with no dimension. Regardless of the genre of the film, that's disaster. Okay, maybe porn is the exception. But you get the point. Being a preacher does not make you a screenwriter unless you're a preacher who actually IS a screenwriter. The very romantic film, The Vow, was based on the experiences and memoirs of a Christian couple who, in their book, very clearly demonstrate their Christian faith and values but the screenplay was written by people who knew how to take something designed to be read and transform it into something designed to be viewed. Again, it goes back to the art thing. Storytelling is an art. Screenwriting is a craft.
• Theme - Many faith films try to say everything there possibly is to say about something in the ninety minutes they hold the audience captive. They've got multiple themes competing for the alpha dog role. No workie. Like any other film, faith films need a theme, a direction, a focus. Is there any doubt whatsoever what the theme of Crash was? It was a very strong message film and that message won it an Oscar for Best Picture in 2005.
• Unrealistic View of the World - Sometimes, I think faith filmmakers believe they are sacrificing beliefs or selling out or watering down their message if the film includes anything less than G rated material with some Bible verses and a few prayers thrown in. By the end of the movie, everybody repents and lives happily ever after. In the real world, there is ugliness. There is violence. There is conflict. There is sin. The Bible doesn't pretend it's not there. Why should we? I was not a fan of the film Joyful Noise. I believe it nailed the entertainment value but compromised its message so much that it subsequently lost its identity in order to get butts in seats. What was it trying to say exactly? The theme was butchered by the comedy. Doesn't have to be that way. But I give this film credit for entertaining the audience. And, I also give them credit for showing some real life. I, too, on more than one occasion, have wanted to throw hot dinner rolls at my choir director but I was not thrilled with how bitter and petty and selfish the real life ultimately made people of faith look.

All filmmakers must find ways to entertain, earn back the cost of making the film, and still express themselves thematically and artistically. Regardless of the film genre, the goals are the same. What I'm saying here is that a faith film is still a film. It still needs all the elements of strong filmmaking to make it a strong film.  The spiritually uplifting value of the film doesn't change the fact that it's still a film and that's what people want to see.

Make me! Make me! Make me!

You can't make me. Ever say that as a kid? Well, I'm saying it as an adult. You can't make me. Or maybe you can. Can you?

This is one of the most difficult posts I've ever written. I'm typing on a computer the size of a mousepad and while the keyboard is about 90% the size of a regular keyboard, it gives the illusion that it's about 50%. Don't care. I want 100%.

Hence I'm already cranky as I begin my rant.

Maybe the most efficient way to illustrate my recent film pet peeves is to go to the mattresses where my oldest son engages in performance wrestling and regularly endures some of the worst story weaving imaginable. The offenses go like this:

• Too much too soon.
• Vague conflict.
• Same ol' thing again and again.
• Shouting instead of drama.
• One dimensional characters.

Obviously, through the course of a 15 minute match, we're not going to see three acts, character arcs, and plot resolution because these storylines drag on week after week. I get that and in some venues where my son wrestles, it actually works. But most places? Yikes.

The difference lies in the person who controls the storylines. Does that person consciously or instinctively understand how to make the audience take a ride?

Performance wrestling should be more like Tom and Jerry. These guys beat each other up every episode but each ride is unique. Characters are clearly defined and periodically arc. Then the Indian givers take back their arcs and it works. They make us love them.

Now. On to film.

My boys and I recently saw a much anticipated new release. My wrestler son is the quickest to point out bad exposition, cliche lines, and inconsistency. For this particular film, he simply barked in his soft voice that carries a big stick, "This sucks." Basically, the film did everything he was accustomed to enduring in poorly written matches.

• Too much too soon - The protagonist's pain is over-sold and his heroism is nothing to cheer about. Why? Because it's way too early for me to empathize. Don't rush me. Even a roller coaster gives you a few seconds to anticipate a fall. Make me realize I'm ON a roller coaster before throwing me off of it.
• Vague conflict - Don't assume the audience gets it. Don't. I may not have read the book or seen the headlines the story was ripped from or ever been to other installments of the same series. Whatever. Don't expect me to get it. Make me get it.
• Same thing - Picture the last time you saw a person running in the woods and she falls down. Big fake deal. Now the murderer is closer. Now she has a twisted ankle. Yeah. It's the same ol' thing. There was a time when it increased the tension. No more. Make me feel the tension. Scare me. Thrill me. Anger me. Whatever. But don't use the same ol' devices.
• Shouting is not drama - Making your character yell is not the same thing as giving him something to say. He can yell and say nothing. Or, he can yell and say something. Or, he can just say something without yelling. It's not the yelling. It's the line behind it. Make me hear the line behind it.
• One dimensional characters - Here's your hero. Now love him. Here's your villain. Now hate him. Really? Is that how it works? MAKE me.

So that's that. Make me. Make me love your character. Make me hate your villain. Make me understand the conflict. Make me feel the tension. Make me listen to the lines. Make me!

My original plan was to purposely fill this post with ridiculous typos and then explain my easy bake oven computer to illustrate that I needed to MAKE YOU understand what was going on - not just expect you to assume from the beginning that there was a logical reason for all the typos. Most readers would ditch this post, though, after the first paragraph and I had to make you read it.

My boys and I didn't ditch the movie. We stuck it out even after my son said "who wrote this crap, I want to punch him in the face," and I had to remind him that he wasn't inside the ropes. We stayed. But we didn't stay because the film made us want to stay. The ticket prices kept us from walking out, not the film.

A Montage Menagerie

Found a post on a board where they point us to this breakdown from scripttoolbox.com of three different ways to write montages: (1) series of shots (2) list of scene headings and short descriptions (3) one scene heading and a list of descriptions. This script tip doesn't debate the merits of using montages or discuss how to effectively use them. It basically just gives three ways to write montages IF you choose to use them.

So, when do you choose to use them?

1. To elevate an emotion. Montages are often used to show the depth of love, loss, grief, joy, or confusion.
2. Recollection. Montages can be used to show a character's memory of events.
3. Speed up the story. Montages acknowledge a part of the story that merits mentioning -- but not the time it takes to show it in a full blown story.
4. To tie seemingly random events together.
5. To tell a mini-story.
6. To show background events.
7. When the director wants it. A lot of montages aren't even written. They're added by a director because that's what he wants.
8. The writer is taking an unnecessary shortcut to storytelling.

Ouch. Number eight is going to sting a few people. But I've seen it over and over. Writers get lazy and throw a montage in to avoid sorting out a messy area of the story. You can tell when a montage is an integral part of the story telling process and when it was used as a Band-aid for an open wound in the screenplay.

A montage CAN be used to do all those things on this list but it's not the ONLY way or necessary the BEST way. It's not a deus ex machina and it's not a convenient pair of scissors for a screenplay that's twenty pages too long.

I knew a girl in high school who wore an elastic belt with everything. She even wore one with her wrap around dresses and skirts. Why would you wear a belt with a wrap around? To look stylish? Those things tie! One Friday night while we were gathering on the sidelines, she grabbed her waist and said "oh my gosh, I forgot my belt". Um, yeah. I reminded her that our little blue skirts and vests didn't have belts. She told me that she always wore one under her uniform because it made her waist look skinnier. In her defence, the 80's were another era. Weight discrimination was rampant. At 118 pounds, I was terrified every week at weigh-in that I'd go over the 120 pound limit. But I was smart enough to know that a belt would ADD ounces on the scale, even if it made my waist appear thinner.

To some degree, a montage can tighten a story but there are times when using a montage is a lot like wearing an elastic belt with a wrap-around skirt. Maybe it looks stylish, but it's not necessary.

Neither should a montage be a collection of scenes that all say and do the same thing. If every scene demonstrates the same thing, why not use a single scene?

A montage should move. I like montages that have a beginning, middle and end. Scenes can progress or regress but the montage should be fluid. For example, a jilted lover could remember the beginning, middle and deterioration of a relationship. A mini-story montage should probably have three mini-acts. If the purpose of the montage is to elevate emotion, let's see a progression or regression of that emotion - good, better, best or bad, worse, worst.

Using montages is not just about knowing how to use them. It is first knowing why we use them. That's the difference between wearing a belt that holds your pants up or wearing one that is actually weighing you down.

That Would Never Happen

We've all done this. We're watching a film or reading a screenplay, rockin' happily along in our la-la land, when "No way! That would never happen!" We're brutally yanked out of story land because our brain refuses to accept some fractured piece of logic the film tried to feed us.

Welcome to the land of broken magic.

Often, in the course of reviewing screenplays and critiquing films, reviewers comment about how a situation was too much of a suspension of reality to work for them or that it simply could never happen at all. Suspending reality is a good thing. That's what we do in screenwriting. Suspending it beyond recognition is something else. The trick is to to create an orderly and logical suspension of reality that can be followed and understood. That's, I suppose, what separates the masters from the apprentice writers.

In storytelling, reality is a product of the author's pen, not the reader's existence. One of my complaints about online peer review forums is that while writers certainly have a burden to create a reality that works in the imagination of the reader, too many of these reviewers, I think, are subjecting stories to litmus tests based on their own environments. That's not to say that there's no merit in arguing that something would never happen. But the argument has to be based in the story world, not in the reader's world.

That would never happen moments, for me, fall into three categories: legitimate screwups, spoofs, and misinterpretations.

LEGITIMATE SCREWUPS - These are genuinely messed up moments where somebody blew it and the magic was lost. In Swimfan, a male arresting police officer gets in the back seat of a squad car with a handcuffed female prisoner about to be transported. That would never happen. Sorry. It just doesn't. Officers don't ride in the back seat with dangerous criminals and they certainly don't ride with females. They call in their beginning and ending mileages when they transport women. Departure and arrival times are then recorded so if they're accused of something inappropriate, a time line can be established. Oh, and as for prisoners being cuffed in the front? Yeah, that happens when cuffing is a formality or the officer is really stupid.

SPOOFS AND COMEDIC BEATS - These moments aren't supposed to really happen. They're just there to make us laugh but some people have no sense of humor and take them entirely too literally. The result is a that would never happen moment. Of course, that would never happen! That's what makes it funny! Or, not if it the timing is off or it's poorly written.

MISINTERPRETATIONS - These moments are the ones that actually would happen in another time or place or culture or religion but maybe the filmmaker didn't do his job well enough to convey this to the audience. Or, maybe the reader or viewer has such a narrow outlook on the world that he wouldn't find the magic no matter how well the filmmaker did his job. But if the majority doesn't get it, the problem is probably not with the recipient.

SCREW-UPS, SPOOFS, MISINTERPRETATIONS, So, how do we keep our readers and viewers from doing that annoying Homer Simpson "DOH!" thingie when they look at our work? For you sophisticated non-Simpsons viewers (Mom), that "DOH!" is like the "Wow, I could have had a V-8" forehead thump but from a beer bellied bald guy who would only have a V-8 if he confused it with a teeny tiny Duff beer can. But to answer the question -- there is one back there some place -- I have a few self imposed rules.

The Roller Coaster Rule - Reality is organized chaos. Roller coasters look like a looping, twisting, mess but every turn, climb, and drop has been carefully designed and engineered. Whatever reality we create in our story worlds has to be planned, purposeful, and organized even if it looks like chaos and feels like chaos to passengers along for the ride.

The Pluto Rule - Reality isn't for Indian givers. Don't establish a reality and then yank it away (unless that's the story itself). There are still a few questions left unanswered and a place or two left to explore in this universe. But the boundaries of the unknown are shrinking with every book published and every film released. Whatever I create, readers and viewers will probably still accept regardless of how fantastic it may be but they have little patience for situations where it's obvious the writer didn't establish a cause and effect that's logical within itself. Once a story contradicts itself, even commonplace facts lose credibility among the suspect ones.

Huh? What did she just say?

Okay, try this. I've never been in outer space. I've been accused of it, but alas, no. However, for as long as I can remember, nine planets have orbited the sun. Nine. I accepted this because there was scientific proof. My teachers said so. My text books said so. Plus, I made a mobile out of Styrofoam balls and tempera paint so it had to be true. If you had told me two years ago that one day in my lifetime, there would only be eight planets orbiting the sun, I'd have said that would never happen because Pluto isn't just going to disappear or get blown to bits by a meteor. But it happened. There are only eight planets now. Pluto has been voted off the island. Reality as I once knew it has been yanked away from me and now all astronomy is suspect in my mind. They're Indian givers. They can't take that away from me. I will ALWAYS think of Pluto as a planet. Always. Pluto has to be a planet. Come on. We named a beloved Disney character after it. It's a planet -- the people's planet.

I digress.

The point is - don't do that to your viewer mid-movie. Don't establish a reality in your story and then contradict it or erase it. Or, if you MUST for artistic reasons, then make sure you're a genius and can craft the story so that your reader/viewer doesn't cling to the original reality the way I cling to Pluto.

I've mentioned before that one of the most annoying suspensions of reality in film for me is the "disturbance of nature" theme in Failure to Launch. The film sets up a certain romantic comedy kind of reality. We get comfortable in it and settle in for a light hearted Nora Ephon-esque romantic story. Suddenly, we're jerked into various Chevy Chase-ish skits where animals attack the main character. In this case, it's because he's is a freak of nature still living at home and it just doesn't work with the reality already set forth in the film. If this was Caddyshack, it would work. If this was Mr. Deeds, it would work. But the reality established by Failure to Launch doesn't support angry chipmunks.

The Equator Rule - Reality is because I said so. My pen is the final answer. How much inaccurate information did we all learn about dinosaurs from Jurassic Park? I'm sure more than one paleontologist said "that would never happen" during that film but does that make it a flawed film? Or, does that make it a film that established a reality that viewers could feel engaged in even if it took liberties with prehistoric animal behavior? The important thing about Jurassic Park is that most viewers didn't sit there thinking "that would never happen". They were too busy marveling, screaming, laughing, and enjoying the ride in an open jeep while experiencing the terror of being pursued by a T-Rex.

If my story establishes that the temperature is twenty degrees below zero at the equator and the abominable snowman lives there, then that's the reality of the story. It's as much the reality of that story as a talking droid in Star Wars or a hobbit living in middle earth in Lord of the Rings.

Somebody mentioned on this blog that the wedding scene during Pirates of the Caribbean At World's End was too much of a suspension of reality to accept. I found that odd considering the myriad of outlandish characters and inconceivable events taking place in the film. We've got dead people in boats, ghosts floating under water, barnacley and shell-headed fish people, a titanic squid, an undead monkey, a live heart beating in a chest, a tentacle-faced guy walking around with a gaping hole in his chest, a sea goddess who turns into a hundred thousand crabs, and a pirate licking the brain he just removed from his own skull but it's a wedding amid a swordfight that bugs ya?

Still, most men I've asked said they didn't like the wedding part in this film. The reality established in this film wasn't stretched or suspended for a swordfight wedding on a ship in a spinning vortex. I think the problem with these guys is the REALITY of marriage. Period. A wedding is still a wedding and men in the audience don't want the cold, hard reality of marriage to momentarily wreck the adventure. They aren't annoyed because that would never happen. They're annoyed because they know darned good and well it could.

The Aunt Lizzie Rule - Reality isn't stagnant. It changes with time and culture and continents. My Aunt Lizzie cleaned house in a dress and apron every day. She got out of bed an hour before my uncle to put her make-up on so he wouldn't see her without it. Even when she was in the hospital dying of Cancer, she begged my cousin to help her with her face and hair before my uncle arrived to visit. If I was writing a devoted immigrant housewife from Austria, my Aunt Lizzie would be it. A modern 2007 woman wouldn't do any of those things but Aunt Lizzie's characteristics would work in a spoof, a period piece, or a 2007 story if my character is old and set in her ways, daft, senile, caught in a time warp or suffering from Alzheimer's.

Events that happened twenty, thirty, or fifty years ago may not happen today but they work in stories if set in the proper time and context. Too many writers put today's behavior, statutes, standards, and environments in their period pieces and vice-versa and then wonder why people say that would never happen. They might even point to my equator rule and say if they write it that way, it must be so. True. But that doesn't mean it's logical or that it will work. Remember the roller coaster rule.

My high school journalism teacher, Mrs. Hooper, who went by Hoop because it was more newsroomy than "Mrs. Hooper" and less masculine than "Boss" or "Chief", took me aside one day for what I assumed would be her customary "go get 'em, Tiger" speech before a writing competition. She pointed out a young honor student from Highland Park High School who had transferred from Austin and said he was a brilliant mind by all accounts, the son of a former press secretary to Lyndon B. Johnson himself. A press secretary's son! Oh, my gosh! She was surely about to warn me that he was my toughest competition. Nope. She told me not to talk to him or make him angry in any way. He was a killer.

No way. That would never happen! I was in competition with a killer? It was all very hush hush. The teachers weren't allowed to talk about it. He was a minor. But they were terrified of him so the teachers secretly talked about it anyway.

Hardly two and a half years had passed since John Christian had walked into a Murchison Junior High School English classroom and shot his teacher three times with his father's .22-caliber rifle in front of 30 students. He had been only thirteen at the time. Now here he was, barely sixteen, and his slate was technically clean even though he had supposedly been found schizophrenic and suicidal and even though a judge (Hume Coker) had ordered him to a Dallas psychiatric hospital until he was 18 years old.

Whether it was privilege or family ties or his age or his father's connections, I don't know. Nor do I have all the facts. But John Christian appears to have spent a short time at Timberlawn Psychiatric Hospital and then lived under the foster care of a Dallas physician while he finished public high school and went on to graduate with a law degree from the University of Texas.

Can you even BEGIN to imagine a child today strolling into school and killing his teacher and then going on to graduate from a public school as if nothing had happened? That would never happen today but I was there. I sat in a desk three feet away from him as if he was just any other student because he WAS just any other student even after killing Wilbur (Rod) Grayson, Jr., a 29 year old first year teacher, in front of his entire class.

If I wrote a character in a 1981 story who had been a teacher killer and for whatever reason managed to get back in public schools and graduate, who is going to read my screenplay and NOT say that would never happen? The cruel reality of our daily existence with recurring violence in schools will certainly affect the way anyone receives a story like that one.

So, if people are going to draw conclusions based on their own lives anyway, is there really anything we can do?

Reality is organized chaos
Reality isn't for Indian givers
Reality is because I said so
Reality isn't stagnant

Okay, okay already, so I'm not McKee. But the reality of story reality is that even with our best effort, there's a limit to what we can do to prevent the that would never happen moments. No amount of engineering prevents roller coasters from breaking down, Pluto really isn't a planet anymore and charming aunts who once vacuumed in checkered dresses will eventually lose their battles with Cancer.

Unless somebody finds a cure.

That may never happen.

But it doesn't stop us from making the effort.

Story and Concept

One of the few benefits of semi long-term (abeit temporary) illness is the ability to read, read, read. Most mobile working people don't have this much time on their hands, but a couple of must reads --

Fun Joel has a very good article in Scr(i)pt about story and concept. Joel's article is thorough and he has a knack for making no-brainer screenwriting basics sound like fresh news. Example? Joel quotes Michel Shane who pretty much says that scripts can be fixed but it's tough if the story or concept is weak. Sure, I write it and you say "duh". Joel writes it and you say "slow down a sec, I'm taking notes."

Speaking of stories and concepts, turn to page 44 in Creative Screenwriting (take your nitro or two blood thinning aspirin first) and read up on an intellectual properties claim and the implications of implied contacts. This could be disastrous for us newbie and wannabe screenwriters who already need an agent just to submit a query. Who's gonna want to hear a pitch from a nobody writer who can claim "implied contract" if they later see a project similar to theirs? Yeah, I'm over-simplifying. Just read it.

Meanwhile, I really shouldn't have read the Snakes on a Plane article right before the one about a seventeen year old Kansas kid who struck screenwriting gold. Not only am I now drinking Geretol laced Tequila and writing on a Big Chief in crayon but I just noticed my latest draft about a teenage entrepreneur somehow got titled Penis in a Paper Shredder.

Yeah, I know. What's a Big Chief?