Tim Chey and the Christian cinema ‘cheese’ factor

There was much consternation among Tim Chey and his Christian movie fans recently when all of the major Hollywood  movie studios took a pass on releasing his $50-million epic, David and Goliath, shot last year in Morocco and produced by RiverRain Productions.

The usual suspects, including the secular media, were trotted out for a whipping, and Chey and his supporters decided to go ahead and release the film on their own in 31 cities on Good Friday, April 3, while they tried to raise more money to get the film shown on more screens in more cities through Indiegogo, a San Francisco crowdfunding company. The movie earned about $161,000 at the box office over the Easter weekend. When the Indiegogo campaign closed March 12, they had only managed to crowdfund three per cent of their $777,000 USD goal, with 499 donors contributing $19,653 USD. According to the filmmakers, GodVine reported “The Hollywood studios have rejected David and Goliath for being too Bible-based and religious. One studio executive said, ‘You mention God in almost every scene.'”

Godvine went onto quote Chey as reportedly saying, “We were constantly being ridiculed by the secular media.” Contrast that with the upbeat tone Chey took in a Beverly Hills, California-based Ripple Effect Communications media advisory on April 21, 2014, just weeks before shooting was set to get under way for David and Goliath in Morocco.  “Chey, who just finishing location scouting in Morocco, is jubilant,” according to Carol Edwards’ media advisory for Ripple Effect Communications. “We’re going to have thousands of extras, A-list special effects, and it will exceed the epic-look of ‘Noah,’ Chey was quoted as saying. “The $50 million dollar film comes at a perfect time. Hollywood is embracing faith-based films as of late and the audiences are growing at a record pace according to reports.”

What a difference a year can make.

Martin Stillion, reviewing David and Goliath in Peter T. Chattaway’s “Filmchat” on the religion blog Patheos April 5, wrote that Chey “undertook a mendacious, self-pitying marketing campaign to position the film as the ultimate underdog, “rejected by Hollywood for being too ‘God-centered’ – a claim based on an alleged remark from one of those potential distributors.

“This may seem a little puzzling. Why wouldn’t distributors be interested? After all, David and Goliath comes along at a time when a lot of attention is being paid to both “faith-based” films (God’s Not Dead, Old Fashioned, Do You Believe?) and Bible epics (Noah, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Son of God), and several of those films have done well financially. So Chey’s film, a faith-based Bible epic that retells one of the most archetypal biblical stories, is in the right place at the right time.

“But it forgot to bring the right stuff.

“I could give you a dozen reasons that distributors wouldn’t want to touch this film, and none of them have anything to do with its being ‘God-centered.’ They have to do with its being a very, very bad movie. I know that’s a common criticism of faith-based films, but seriously, this one makes God’s Not Dead look like Blade Runner.”

Chey has directed 10 feature films, including the $20 million Carry Me Home with Cuba Gooding, Jr., Suing the Devil with Malcolm McDowell, Genius Club with Stephen Baldwin and Final: The Rapture, starring Jah Shams, Mary Grace, Carman, Masashi Nagadoi and Dave Edwards, which depicts the apocalyptic chaos that ensues for four nonbelievers – an African-American, an Asian, a Hispanic and a white man living in Los Angeles, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and on a South Pacific island, after the Rapture occurs.

Trotting out the secular media – or even other Christians – as a whipping boy is not exactly a new theme for Chey. In an April 25, 2014  Christian Post story by Stoyan Zaimov, headlined  “CP Exclusive: ‘David and Goliath’ Director Assures Big-Budget Movie Will Be ‘Biblically Correct in Every Way,’ Chey is quoted as saying, “We were constantly being ridiculed by the secular media, our films were being sabotaged by online piracy, and fellow jealous Christians were mocking us saying the acting was bad, script was horrible, etc., etc.

“Thousands of people were coming to Christ so why did I let that bother me? I don’t know. The Lord showed me clearly it was a spiritual attack. I repented and began to trust the Lord again. Within two months, we raised millions of dollars and made the $20 million dollar Carry Me Home on the early life of John Newton, writer of Amazing Grace and now David and Goliath.”

Bad scripts and bad acting are hardly new criticisms when it comes to the Christian movie genre. Nor are they ones without merit. As I observed in a blog post last Sept. 15 headlined “Flying largely under the mainstream cinematic radar: Christian movie genre is ‘hot’” the “big knock against the Christian movie genre for more secular moviegoers – aside from the fact the films are Christian – has long been heavy-handed theological scripts, clunky acting and cheesy sets, with mainly bad films, which, to be charitable, do little more than preach to the choir, there hasn’t been, aside from the occasional blockbuster, much for broader audiences to judge such films on if they were done, well, well. You know, decent scripts, good actors, high production values, that sort of thing.” You can read the piece here at: https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/flying-largely-under-the-mainstream-cinematic-radar-christian-movie-genre-is-hot/

The story of Chey’s conversion from atheist to born-again believer has been oft told in many places, but the shorthand goes something like this. Chey was born and raised in Los Angeles and  “once threw his mother’s Bible in the trash and hectored his Christian friends,” noted Matt Soergel in a generally flattering piece in the Florida Times-Union when Suing the Devil was released in 2011. Chey was educated at Harvard University, University of Southern California (USC) School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles and Boston University School of Law. He practiced law for three years, but “realized I just didn’t have a heart for law,” he told interviewer Nathan Jones of The Christ in Prophecy Journal of David Reagan’s Princeton, Texas-based Lamb & Lion Ministries in a Jan. 20, 2014 broadcast interview. “I was an artist, caught up in something that really meant nothing to me,” he told Soergel of the Florida Times-Union.

His first film, which he wrote and directed was, Fakin’ Da Funk, a 1997 comedy starring Pam Grier and Dante Basco about a Chinese son adopted by black parents who relocates to South Central Los Angeles. A second story involves Mai-Ling, an exchange student played by Margaret Cho, who by another twist, gets sent to the wrong ‘hood.'”

The film was nominated for the Golden Starfish Award at the 1997 Hamptons International Film Festival and won the Audience Award at the 1997 Urbanworld Film Festival.

In 2001, Chey was in his mid-30s, single, and in the Philippines scouting locations for his next movie. After a busy night boozing at strip clubs,” Soergel wrote in his May 23, 2011 piece for the Florida Times-Union, he picked up the Gideon Bible in his hotel room and began reading: “”I got down on my knees and accepted Jesus Christ right there,” Chey said.

He was back in the Philippines in 2002 in Manila, Pasig City, Bataan, Manila Bay, and Antipolo to direct Gone, his first Christian-themed film, a post-apocalyptic thriller based on his screenplay, starring Dirk Been and Joel Klug star as tenacious lawyers who are sent to Manila to defend a multinational corporation, but instead, meet their fate in the Last Days after the Rapture.

Suing the Devil, released in August 2011, was his fifth Christian-themed movie and set in Australia, where he obtained much of the financing for it. It’s about a young law student who files an $8- trillion dollar civil lawsuit against Satan for all the misery he’s caused humanity. Corbin Bernsen, played divorce lawyer Arnie Becker on TV’s L.A. Law, which ran from for eight seasons on NBC from 1986 to 1994, and is a long-time evangelical Christian, plays a TV news host.

To law student Luke O’Brien’s (played by Bart Bronson) surprise, a loquacious Satan – in the form of Malcolm McDowell, star of the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange – shows up to defend himself.

Describing McDowell to Soergel, Chey said, “He’s a seeker. We had great talks. We talked a lot about God, a lot about life. He’s a spiritual person.”

In a June 2010 interview, about 14 months before Suing the Devil was released, McDowell had this to say about the movie: “From my point of view – I play the Devil – [the film] is about a loser that can’t get his act together or his life together and blames everybody else for his loser-ness. He’s a big loser, and so he, of course, blames the Devil and he goes to court to sue the Devil. And I answer the summons. And so it’s really a comedy in a courtroom.

“You know, I’m not into the religious connotations of what good and evil are. In fact the Devil I played is not really evil. I mean, the Devil really is charming, seductive. I mean, it’s like Nazism … charming, seductive, all these things. It’s just the underbelly of angst … but it was really actually a terrific script and I had a ball.”

How that fits in with Chey’s observations 11 months later in the Florida Times-Union, I leave for you to decide.

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Catholic cooking: From Pope Francis’ love for Buenos Aires pizzerias to Father Leo Patalinghug, the TV show Filipino ‘Cooking Priest’

“If smell and sound are important to Catholics, so, too, taste,” I wrote last Dec. 18 in a blog post headlined “With our O antiphons, Smoking Bishops and ‘sinful servants’ we are the Church Militant on Earth.” I noted that we had borrowed the “Smoking Bishop,” a mulled wine wassail, “in a spirit of ecumenical breaking of bread at table” from our “Anglican (also known as Episcopalian and Church of England, depending what country you are reading this post in) brothers and sisters, particularly Charles Dickens….” You can read that earlier Christmastide post in its entirety at https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/12/18/with-our-o-antiphons-smoking-bishops-and-sinful-servants-we-are-the-church-militant-on-earth/

As today marks the Fourth Sunday of Lent, could be food is simply on my mind a bit, as I wrote in another post Feb. 13 headlined “Shrived by the confessor: Fat Tuesday and Ash Wednesday arrive for penitents as the liturgical season of Lent is upon us, but not before one last rich feast of pancakes Feb. 17 as shrovetide ends” and Ash Wednesday was some 26 days ago now: https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/shrived-by-the-confessor-fat-tuesday-and-ash-wednesday-arrive-for-penitents-as-the-liturgical-season-of-lent-is-upon-us-but-not-before-one-last-rich-feast-of-pancakes-feb-17-as-shrovetide-ends/

In any event, something Pope Francis said in a recent interview,  to mark the second anniversary of his election to the papacy March 13, with Valentina Alazraki, the veteran Vatican correspondent for Mexico’s Noticieros Televisa at Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican hotel where he has lived since his election on March 13, 2013, caught my eye. Alazraki has covered the Vatican for Noticieros Televisa since 1974. The Spanish-language section of Radio Vaticano published a full transcript of the interview March 12, which you can read here at: http://es.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/03/12/segundo_aniversario_de_la_elecci%C3%B3n_del_papa_francisco/1128922, while an English-language summary of its contents published March 13 by Vatican Radio is available to read here at: http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/03/13/pope_francis_on_his_pontificate_to_date/1129074

It wasn’t the prediction that the 78-year-old pontiff expects to have a short papacy of maybe four or five years that really caught my eye.  Perhaps if Pope Francis had suddenly embraced Jack Van Impe, Cris Putnam and Tom Horn’s view, along with others on the far reaches of Protestant evangelicalism, that he was indeed “Petrus Romanus” (Peter the Roman), who would be history’s last pope, according to the Prophecy of St. Malachy (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/04/the-prophecy-of-malachy/), also known as the Prophecy of the Popes, from 1139, then the time element really would have caught my eye. Alas for would-be date setters and their eschatological ilk (some of whom like to deny they are date setters even when they are for all practical purposes) he didn’t do that. No, what really caught my eye was Pope Francis saying the only thing he really misses as pope is the ability “to go out to a pizzeria and eat a pizza,” adding that even as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires he was free to roam the streets, particularly to visit parishes.

Almost half the population of Buenos Aires can rightfully claim  Italian heritage, so it is little surprise the Argentinian capital is so well-known for its Napoletana pizza. “The only thing I would like is to go out one day, without being recognized, and go to a pizzeria for a pizza,” Pope Francis said, comparing his life now to how it was when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires. “In Buenos Aires I was a rover. I moved between parishes and certainly this habit has changed. It has been hard work to change. But you get used to it,”  Pope Francis told Alazraki.

What I want to know is what pizzeria is Pope Francis’ favourite in Buenos Aires? Is he a double-cheese kinda guy with extra pepperoni? Those strike me as the kind of questions this pope just may answer if posed to him.

In a similar vein, I am a big fan of  Father Leo Patalinghug, who was born in the Philippines,  raised in the Baltimore area, ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Baltimore on June 5, 1999, and who works at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland – and who finds time along the way to host Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN’s) half hour Savoring Our Faith show, where he uses the kitchen as his pulpit to preach the Catholic faith while at the same time showing viewers how to prepare flavourful dishes.

Father Leo developed his love for cooking while attending seminary at the North American College in Rome. There, he became friendly with several Italian restaurant owners and would often invite them back to the student kitchen to trade cooking secrets. They would teach him about rigatoni and lasagna; he would show them how to make hamburgers and ribs.

I haven’t caught an episode of Savoring Our Faith for a few months, but I did  see a special report with Father Leo, known as the “Cooking Priest,” back home in the Philippines walking through Central Market in Manila Jan. 16  to do an open air Filipino street food tour, explaining local delicacies to a journalist during January’s papal visit to the 7,107 Islands of Faith.

Mouth watering. Soul satisfying. And so very Catholic.

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