Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . INTERVIEW . Terry Mattingly . November 25, 2005

Read more of Kim Lawton's interview with Scripps-Howard columnist Terry Mattingly, author of POP GOES RELIGION: FAITH AND CULTURE IN AMERICA:

Q: How significant is it for Christians that THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, a beloved piece of literature by C. S. Lewis with so many Christian themes, is becoming a movie?

Photo of TERRY MATTINGLY

A: The expectations for this film among that core audience are just totally off the chart. It makes the Tolkien fanatics look calm. To me, there are certain key concepts that you can't film the book without, and ... especially the concept of atonement. I'm very anxious to see what parts of the book got in and what parts got out. I'm sure that a lot of people who know these books, who can quote them like Scripture almost, are sitting out there with their own checklist going, "Said that, said that, oh-oh, didn't say that," you know, and I don't know how you deal with those people. I don't know how you deal with me in that circumstance.

Q: That's just it. On one hand, you hear that Christians are so excited about this movie, but on the other, isn't there a high risk that they are going to be disappointed?

A: Yeah, there certainly is, and I don't think you can possibly satisfy all of them in this case. But you couldn't have a better person involved in this case than Douglas Gresham [stepson of C. S. Lewis] on that, in the sense that this is a man who literally feels it's his legacy to Jack -- to his stepfather -- and to his mother. I've heard people on the set joking that "We can't spit without permission from Douglas Gresham," and I think he really does take it that seriously. So you have an unusually powerful advocate in this film.

Q: Still, what are the risks involved?

A: The ultimate risk is that the series fails early and you don't get to complete the books, at which point you have an incomplete project that somebody later is going to want to come along and finish or do again or whatever. And with seven books, that's a tremendous commitment by the corporations that are involved. Yet at the same time, if this film makes a lot of money, something along LORD OF THE RINGS-level bucks, they're going to want to do all seven. But how do you carry that audience from film to film, both the kind of general audience, the folks who are just going to it for the ride, plus the true jot-and-tittle, verse-quoting, every-passage-has-got-to-be-right fanatics? That's going to be an incredible challenge.

Q: Talk about this strange marriage that we see between Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media, the big corporations that are behind this film.

A: Well, in Walden you have one of the most interesting stories in this era of Hollywood trying to come to grips with religion and with the religion audience. In some ways, Walden has been the great story that's been off the radar in the midst of THE PASSION. While THE PASSION got all the headlines, this company called Walden has been sitting out there making mainstream films and trying to get up to speed. If you look at a project like HOLES, which I thought was a very important film -- it made money, and yet it was very true to its book. You've got an interesting group of people involved in this, in Walden, in that you've got mainstream, some people would call them progressive, educators, people who love public libraries and public schools and all of those mainstream forces, yet you also have true believers in terms of evangelicals, and they're trying to make money. It's a radical concept. They want to make money. Meanwhile, along comes Disney, you know, the anti-Christ of many, many evangelical stories, the great betrayer of the family market, to hear some say it. So now you've got C. S. Lewis meets Disney. You couldn't ask for a more ironic pairing in the public square.

Q: Let's get back to Disney in a minute. First, tell me more about Walden, their mission and the mission of their founder, and what they are trying to do with pop culture.

A: You actually have a mission statement from the company, and when you start using things like "upholding values," you're using words that -- a lot of people in Hollywood will turn into pillars of salt when you start using that language. They expect James Dobson to pop out of a cake, you know, at some point when you do that. But Walden is really quite ecumenical when you look at the people who are involved in it. And it also definitely has a mix of political parties involved in it. But they are trying to please the family values market while simultaneously pleasing public schools and educators. That's a very interesting high-wire act.

Q: Why were some evangelicals, Southern Baptists in particular, so upset about Disney?

A: The Disney wars were about all the pop culture wars that are in the midst of us and in the political wars, specifically gay rights. That was the big issue. So the minute you take on anything that has to do with sexuality outside of traditional marriage, blah, blah, blah -- you've got wars. The lines are going to be drawn, and Disney was the line. The problem, of course, in the Disney wars with the Southern Baptist Convention is that your ordinary Southern Baptist sitting on their couch with their remote is watching ESPN and watching Oprah and watching DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES probably and whatever else comes down the pike. They're living normal American lives and then packing up the kids in the minivan and driving to Disney and to church. What do you do with them?

Q: Earlier this year, the Southern Baptist Convention called off its boycott of Disney. Was it in anticipation of this movie?

A: I think that the Disney link had a lot to do with the end of the boycott. At some point, they just had to admit that they hadn't followed through; the Southern Baptist Convention hadn't followed through on many of their educational efforts that they had promised, and they did get everyone's attention on this. When the Southern Baptist Convention says that they permanently changed the image of Disney, to some degree I think you would have to concede to them that point. And if that was the minimum goal of their boycott, they did accomplish something, from their perspective.

Q: Back to Walden. Let's talk specifically about its financial backer, Phillip Anschutz, and his role as the force behind all of this.

A: Well, first of all, Anschutz is a man who makes billions and billions of dollars. He is a businessman, and he is -- that wonderful word that the press loves to use -- mysterious. He's not granted an interview in two, three decades, and the minute you do that, the press just wants to flock around that like sharks. He is a genuine mystery person in this. He seems to be a fairly mainstream Presbyterian guy. He lives in Denver, Colorado, which is off the media radar in large part. Yet he controls thousands of theaters. He has made billions of dollars in cable television. He is a media player in the truest sense of the word. And if you were going to get someone who pulled off an alternative studio, it would have to be someone like this guy or Mel Gibson.

Q: Speaking of Mel Gibson ... how influential was THE PASSION in waking up Hollywood to this potential religious market, and where does this film NARNIA fit in with that?

A: THE PASSION was huge. But along the way you also had a number of films that made healthy profits while targeting this audience. So while the headlines leapED on THE PASSION, I was watching THE ROOKIE, HOLES, WALK TO REMEMBER, and a bunch of these other movies. If THE PASSION was this tremendous grand slam that every body looked at, Hollywood was looking just as much at these singles and doubles, these films that you made for $25 million and then they made $80 million. You made them for $40 million and then they made $140 million. It's that kind of consistency in the religious audience that Hollywood doesn't believe exists, but they're starting to. So THE PASSION was terribly important, but it wouldn't have been important without all these other films that frankly didn't get as much ink.

Q: And what was it about those films?

A: They made money. They pleased a religious audience, yet to some degree they were entertaining. Mainstream stars agreed to be in them -- Sigourney Weaver, if you haven't seen HOLES, in one of the great walk-ons of all time. They were normal Hollywood films. In many ways, they were 1950s movies -- classic Hollywood formulas for that audience. They made them again, and they made money. THE ROOKIE was rated G -- an adult sports movie rated G? It made money. Hollywood tends to listen to things like that.

Q: So it wasn't that they were explicitly religious films?

A: In many cases they weren't. In many cases they simply either avoided religion, or they showed some reverence for it at all. They didn't edit all of the churches on the corners out of a Southern town. They left religion in its place, to some degree, or at least they didn't attack it. And that is enough today.

Q: Given those examples, how is the movie industry now trying to reach out to that particular audience?

A: A number of different ways. THE PASSION flew this bizarre thing where they talked to literally everybody in America except the press. You know, you had a better chance to get face time with Mel Gibson if you were the pastor of a Pentecostal megachurch in Orlando than if you were the film critic of the CHICAGO TRIBUNE. It was a bizarre, unprecedented campaign, not even what you would have seen Cecil B. DeMille do years ago in the glory days of Hollywood. I don't think anybody's going to go that far again because I don't think anybody out there has the strength of personality and fierceness of Mel Gibson. The more normal plan is going to be at least allowing religious publications and reporters who are interested in religion a minimal amount of access to the players involved in these [movies]. Information is going to get out. It's going to be okay to ask religious questions to people in Hollywood if they're trying to reach that market. I think to some degree the publicity campaign on THE LORD OF THE RINGS is the template just as much as THE PASSION. In other words, it's one thing to reach the clergy. At the same time, the people making the films are going to have to answer some questions if they're going to make movies like NARNIA.

Q: And what are those questions? What is it that they are going to have to be talking about?

A: Back to THE LORD OF THE RINGS for a second. If Peter Jackson is going to make THE LORD OF THE RINGS, a beloved work by a great Catholic author, he's going to have to answer the question, "What do you think of the Catholicism in this book? Do you even know it's there? When Tolkien called this an explicit work of Catholic fiction, what do you think of that?" The screenwriters are going to have to [answer], "Did you seek a way to edit God out?" Those are tough questions, and they're not the kind of things Hollywood people are used to answering. Yet at the same time, they have opened up. The people who did LORD OF THE RINGS answered those questions and they contributed, I think, great insight into the making of the film by opening up their own religious questions and doubts some. I think that's going to become a standard part of what Hollywood people get asked about now on these kinds of family and religious-market films. It's fair game.

Q: What parallels and tensions do you see between the screen adaptations of Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS and Lewis's NARNIA?

A: They are two different types of books which lead to two different types of tensions. You know, in Tolkien you had a Catholic who was creating a work in which Catholicism was soaked in, like water into a sponge, but it never waved a flag. You never had scenes that were openly religious. In Narnia you're dealing with a man who did see himself as a public apologist. C. S. Lewis to some degree was putting religious content in here that he expected the audience, or at least parts of the audience, to be able to understand. Those are different kinds of books. But if you take that Christ figure in the lion Aslan, if you take that out of the movie, what have you done to the heart of the book? Jackson left Tolkien's faith in the movie in that style. If they do the same thing with Lewis, you're going to have a much more explicitly Christian product.

Q: What do you think of some of the projects evangelicals are embarking on to use Narnia as an evangelistic opportunity?

A: I think media makes lousy evangelism. Media works layer after layer after layer after layer, like the forming of a stalagmite. There's not some magic bullet that you shoot someone with and they go, "Oh, I've got faith." That's not how media works. Media changes people over time. So if these campaigns work, they will only work to the degree that ordinary human beings talk to other human beings about faith. And maybe the movie is a bridge. Chuck Colson once said that during the '80s he would have had nothing to talk to his Democratic friends about if not for the movies of Woody Allen. It was the only thing they shared in common. I think to some degree that's how film works. Film works at the water cooler, the restaurant, and the bar and wherever else you go and people talk about things they love. If people don't talk to each other, nothing works; these projects will be worth nothing.

Q: Are you pleased to see religion becoming more acceptable in mainstream culture?

A: Yeah, I am, quite frankly. I did an interview with Robert Duvall a couple of years ago in which he said he simply can't understand why Christians don't make movies about sin and redemption. He said they're scared of it. They should be making some of the greatest movies in the world. Once upon a time, Christians made great art. Lately, the attachment of "Christian" to a product is second- or third- or fourth-class status. To some degree, Christians will not make great art again until they realize why they made bad art, why they dropped out of Hollywood. And to some degree, I think Christians deserve the chance to go in there and make movies and have them torn apart, have them judged, have them flop. But at some point, they'll begin to get their act together again and at that point, we'll have a more diverse Hollywood.

Q: And just to be clear, why did they stop, why did they pull out?

A: Part of it was separatism, this old belief that you're supposed to stay separate from all sin. Part of it is they really think film is supposed to do evangelism. They think you're supposed to put the movie on the screen and people are going to get convinced and walk the aisle at the multiplex, and they don't expect that out of anything else. They don't expect Christian lawyers to walk down the aisle at the end of their law cases. But they've got this thing about media. They think media is supposed to save people, and that's not realistic. That's not what media does. So they either wanted to run away from it or they wanted to say it had to be evangelism. That's the only thing they could accept media doing. Well, what happened to just telling stories? What happened to just simply giving people alternative views of what life means and what the big questions mean? What about just doing stories?

Q: How much, then, is riding on NARNIA's success?

A: I think you couldn't have a bigger project, in many ways, for one simple reason: the Narnia books have continued to sell one million copies a year for half a century. If you succeed in the age of digital filmmaking when you can finally realize a lot of these things, if you can't succeed with that kind of built-in fan base, what in the world chance do you have to do other films? To me it's a slam dunk if they leave it intact and just basically make it an adventure film for children, but leave the symbols in.

Q: What do you make of the fact that this has also been an opportunity for anybody who ever knew anything about C. S. Lewis to write a new book and jump on that bandwagon?

A: And that's such an ongoing thing, too. I mean, we hit a point a decade ago where I was seriously afraid they were going to publish the man's laundry lists. I mean, basically anything he had ever touched was going to end up inside of a hardback. To some degree, if the C. S. Lewis book sales never stopped -- the fiction, then the sales of the books about Lewis never stopped. There have been 10 a year, you know, for 50 years, especially with the birth of the modern era, with Wheaton College establishing its C. S. Lewis study center, and everything else like that -- a very important development. His work is worthy of scholarship. But meanwhile, it's the popular books that year after year after year [keep selling]. So this year we get 200 instead of 20; it's just apples of different sizes. It never went away.

Q: How has be remained so popular across the Christian spectrum?

A: To some degree, he is the definitive intelligent Christian. And I think Lewis would think that it's tragic that he's never been replaced. I think, to some degree, apologists want to be replaced because they know that other eras will come along. What does it say that 50 years later C. S. Lewis is still the brightest shining star of apologetics in an age that's changed, in a world that's changed as much as this one has? In some ways, I think it's wonderful that he exists. I love his books. My son's middle name is Lewis. You know, you get things like that among the fans of Lewis. But in another way I think it's tragic that no one has come along with his vitality and his creativity for our age.

Q: What are the key religious themes and symbols in THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE?

A: The major symbolism, of course, is the death and resurrection of a Christ figure. It's interesting in the sense that there is no attempt to create a cross. Instead, Lewis, who, like Tolkien, loved ancient mythologies and loved those stories, goes with a much more ritualistic image of an altar, a stone table, an Aztec stone knife, and a witch who just slays him. But then you have a very vivid and literal resurrection. All of this is interpreted with language that is not out of the Bible, but you would have to be pretty blind not to see what the symbols mean and to hear what the words mean.

Q: Why are so many people interested in faith and pop culture these days?

A: The simple answer to that is, I think, a very small number of thinking Christians have begun to notice how Americans actually live. Not many, but at least some have started to, and the questions I always ask with my students are: How do you spend your time, how do you spend your money, and how do you make your decisions? A lot of religious life is tied up with money, time, decisions. Now if you can ask those questions to modern Americans and not run into mass media and entertainment, movies, televisions, DVDs, all of that -- if you can avoid entertainment after answering those questions, you have a promising future in ministry to the Amish.