TV.com Interview with David Nixon

That self-proclaimed heathen, Michelle Alexandria, cleaned up her act long enough to score an interview with Director-Producer David Nixon who, if you don’t know, is the Darryl Zanuck of Christian films.  (Nice one, Acuff…using an obscure Classic Hollywood Producer to define an even more obscure modern producer…he’s not “obscure” dummy, just dead…well excuse me Mr. Film Education…I don’t think I like your tone!  You wanna take this off-line?  Yeah, buddy…let’s go!  Scuffle, Scuffle, titty-twister, ow, ow, leggo, leggo…)

Ahem.  Anyway, some good stuff here…

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  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  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.

So there you go, folks.  You heard it hear first.  Maybe.  There is currently a 3D Christian film in the works and we can only hope and pray and fast peanut M&Ms for a day that it doesn’t take “suck” to a whole new dimension.

The full article can be read HERE at TV.com.

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