Several years ago, noted Hollywood Christian Crazy Man, Mel Gibson, opened Hollywood’s eyes be self-financing his movie The Passion of the Christ. He bypassed traditional marketing by giving the movie away to Churches to drive word of mouth. His unique marketing approach worked, Passion became a mega box office sensation. Every since then Hollywood has tried to duplicate its success and has spawned a small new genre called the “Christian Movie.” At the forefront of this new movement is Writer/Director David Nixon who had some success with his first two films and is now back with his latest effort Letters to God.
Letters to God is a sweet, if not a tad preachy story about a young boy who has cancer and decides to write letters to God. A down on his luck mailman reads the letters and it starts changing his life, eventually the letters find their way into other people’s hands and it has a profound impact on those around him. The movie is loosely based on a true story. It opens in limited release this Friday. I had a quick 10-minute conversation with the director earlier this week.
Michelle
Can you tell us a bit about Lets to God?
David Nixon
Letters from God is a sweet little story about a boy in Nashville Tennessee who had written letters to god, the mailman couldn’t bring himself to shred the letters. The letters changed the life of the man and he decided to share them with others in the boy’s community. The father of the boy this movie is based on wrote the screenplay.
Michelle
What drew you to this material?
David
The story was really well written and I was really impressed with how the boy’s father was able to write this story after his son had passed away. It was very therapeutic for him.
Michelle
How long did it take you to shoot?
David
It took us 6 weeks to shoot the movie, but we’ve been working on it for over a year from the time we first got the screenplay to actually shooting it and editing it in post.
Michelle
How do you respond to people like me who don’t want to be preached to?
David
You’re the kind of person we’re making the movie for, all we want to do is try and tell a good story. We want to make movies with good messages. The movies we’re making are about how people deal with real life and how it connects to God. A story like this is all about how when people reach the end, it’s the one point in their lives where we find god and try to find hope.
Michelle
What’s your background and what’s it like being a Christian and working in evil Hollywood?
David
We’re originally from Sydney Australia and have been working in the movies since the 70s. We have an advertising company. When the Passion of Christ earned a lot of money it opened the eyes of Hollywood. We don’t look at Hollywood as an evil place; we think movies are a powerful medium to tell a message.
Michelle
Where do you think the Christian film industry is now?
David
It’s a very small industry that’s about ready to explode. The technology has given us the ability to create a Hollywood look at a very low cost and now Churches are able. We’re looking at creating a faith-based film in 3D, we’re doing. We’re marketing our films directly to Church.
Michelle
Looks like our 10 minutes up, can you leave us with a pearl of wisdom or a reason to go see your movie?
David
This is a very high quality Hollywood Movie with a great story; there are characters in it that will inspire you and give you hope. This is not a preachy movie; we just want to give people an inspirational movie that will make you feel good.