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Dallas Jenkins On Faith-Based Comedy ‘Resurrection of Gavin Stone’

Dallas Jenkins On Faith-Based Comedy ‘Resurrection of Gavin Stone’

Last updated on: January 20, 2017 at 2:37 pm by DeWayne Hamby

Dallas Jenkins On Faith-Based Comedy ‘Resurrection of Gavin Stone’ 2017-01-20T14:37:39-04:00 DeWayne Hamby

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Faith-based films typically are serious, message-driven stories, but today’s wide release of The Resurrection of Gavin Stone may begin forging a new path. Using the humorous story of a self-absorbed actor spending an awkward but life-changing duty of community service at a megachurch, the film offers a comedic take on matters of Christianity and salvation.

Anjelah Johnson and Brett Dalton star in 'The Resurrection of Gavin Stone' from Vertical Church/WW Entertainment/BH Tilt. Photo courtesy of Vertical Church Films

Anjelah Johnson and Brett Dalton star in ‘The Resurrection of Gavin Stone’ from Vertical Church/WW Entertainment/BH Tilt. Photo courtesy of Vertical Church Films

The Resurrection of Gavin Stone stars Brett Dalton (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), comedian Angelah Johnson (MadTV), Neil Flynn (The Middle) and wrestler Shawn Michaels, whose involvement also ties into a partnership with WWE Films, a first for a faith-based release. Dallas Jenkins, who previously directed What If and The Ride, recently spoke to Reel Faith about the film’s unique marketing angles as a comedy and wrestling tie-in.

I think one of the fascinating things about the movie is the WWE involvement. We haven’t seen that to this point. Can you talk about that?

Yeah, it might surprise you even more that BlumHouse is being involved, it’s being distributed through their distribution arm BH Tilt. BlumHouse is known for some of the most successful horror films of the last five years. It’s as simple as WWE and BlumHouse loved this script and loved the project. It started with a couple of years ago, I made a short film for my church’s Christmas Eve service and it was just intended for our church, that was it. It ended up, long story short, getting into the hands of BlumHouse and they absolutely loved it. They were already interested in faith-based movies, just had kind of an indirect interest in it, trying to dip their toes in the water a bit. Loved this project. Wanted to get involved with what our church was doing, which was looking to make feature films.

Dallas Jenkins is the director of 'The Resurrection of Gavin Stone,' releasing from Vertical Church/WWE Films/BH Tilt. Photo courtesy of Pure Publicity.

Dallas Jenkins is the director of ‘The Resurrection of Gavin Stone,’ releasing from Vertical Church/WWE Films/BH Tilt. Photo courtesy of Pure Publicity.

For WWE, they’re looking to expand their brand. They’ve become a little bit more family-friendly over the past few years anyway. For them, it was just an opportunity to expand their audience base a little bit. For us, we said, ‘Look, we’d love to get involved with you but we don’t want that to impact the message of the movie or impact the content at all’ and they said, ‘Of course not, why would we do that? You guys are the experts.’ I think one of the key evidences that this was a good decision on our part was that we did a testimony video about Shawn Michaels a few weeks ago and WWE released it. We do testimony videos at our church all the time. We did the one for Shawn Michaels and WWE put it out on social media, it’s been viewed a million and a half times already and been shared 40+ thousand times. I’ve been telling people that we’ve made tons of ‘God At Work’ videos and testimony videos and none of them have been seen by a million and a half people. That’s the answer to the question of why we would work with someone like WWE. For us, it’s an opportunity that a faith based movie never gets, which is to get into a different audience in addition to the church audience. Shawn Michaels is going to be on RAW promoting the film, they’re putting a lot of their resources behind it to an audience that certainly wasn’t hearing about War Room when that came out. For us, it’s an opportunity for us to get our message out there to a different kind of audience. This movie makes sense for that because as you saw, it’s about an outsider. A church outsider can appreciate it and has already. It’s scored as well with church outsiders as churchgoers, because they see the movie through his eyes.

Another unique element is that The Resurrection of Gavin Stone is more of a comedy, although it has drama in it. We haven’t really comedy a whole lot from faith based movies, probably because comedy is hit or miss, would you say?

I think there are a couple of reasons for why that is. Number one, it’s very hard to make a comedy anyway, just faith-based or not. A comedy is just very difficult. In the faith-based genre, most of the films that have had word of mouth success have been message movies. So they’re very earnest, they’re very serious, they’re trying to make a very serious point. There’s maybe a couple of jokes spruced in, but they take the message very seriously. The audience does too. We do too. Our movie has a very serious message and has some serious points to make. But I love comedy. It’s kind of my heart. Second, I think that it helps kind of takes the sting out of some of the earnestness and some of the cheese factor. When you’ve got a serious point to make but you introduce some comedy into it, especially for a church outsider, it kind of takes the sting out of it a little bit. It makes it feel a little less intimidating. I think also then it allows the drama to be even more impactful. For our movie, the first half of it especially is where a lot of the humor comes in. Gavin Stone trying to fit into this church world, trying to navigate through church, learning to speak Christian-ese. You have a lot of laughs and you’re kicked back enjoying the story and then the emotion kicks in, it makes it that much more impactful.

A lot of faith-based movies ask churchgoers to come to the theater on a Friday night to support the movie. We believe this movie can get moviegoers to church. We’ve heard people say ‘I haven’t been to church in years, this movie made me want to go.’

And you have a couple of actors in here known for comedy, like Neil Flyn and Anjelah Johnson

And that’s what’s interesting that the two actors who have the most experience with comedy play the most serious roles. That’s one thing that Anjelah really loved about it. She’s a stand up comic, she does comedy for a living and she plays a character who doesn’t know how to tell a joke. The thing is, I think comics have an innate sense of timing and even with drama, having a good sense of timing and having an understanding of emotional beats is vital and I think comics have a unique skill in that area. There are moments when Anjelah’s character as the pastor’s daughter plays off of Gavin and Gavin’s kind of the crazy one, but her sense of timing and comedy helps actually make him even funnier. Even though she’s playing the straight man, so to say, she’s able to make the scene funnier because she understands timing and reactions really well.

Yes, it works well with an ensemble with other setting people up.

If we would have made this whole thing a slapstick comedy, where all the characters are slapstick and all the characters are comedic throughout, then I think the point of the movie does get lost and I think it’s not as interesting. We’re poking a little bit of fun at ourselves as Christians and churchgoers but we’re not being mean either. If every character int eh church is silly or clueless, then you’re starting to make a statement that church people are silly and clueless. So we of course wanted to mix in some characters who are able to recognize or chuckle at some of the other characters who are a little bit unique. We also made the guy who’s the theological expert, we made him the nicest guy in the church. We say ‘Look, yes, he’s funny and we can poke a little fun at him, but he’s also genuinely sweet and kind so we’re not making the point that people who are theological experts are annoying.’

I read the story about casting Brett Dalton, your son’s suggestion.

We were casting the main part and having a difficult time finding the right person. It’s a very unique part, it has a lot of different colors to it. My son, who’s a big Agents of SHIELD fan and a proud Marvel nerd, he suggested it and I actually was somewhat skeptical. I had not watched the show, but I did see his character was straight laced, I didn’t think it would work, but my son kept pushing me. So I suggested to the casting director. She got him the script and he absolutely loved it. He said he couldn’t put it down during lunch. He missed lunch on the set of his show, because he was reading the script. And he’s a church outsider as well. He’s not a churchgoer. For him, he just thought it was a genuinely good fish out of water story. Because the faith aspect of it was so organic because it’s set in a church and the faith elements aren’t crowbarred into the movie out of nowhere. He didn’t really see it as a religious movie even though it’s explicitly faith based. He just loved it. His audition, the moment he did his audition, we knew this was the guy. Having him involved, as a church outsider, it lent some credibility to the character.

Wrestler Shawn Michaels appears in 'The Resurrection of Gavin Stone,' releasing from Vertical Church/WWE Films/BH Tilt. Photo courtesy of Pure Publicity.

Wrestler Shawn Michaels appears in ‘The Resurrection of Gavin Stone,’ releasing from Vertical Church/WWE Films/BH Tilt. Photo courtesy of Pure Publicity.

People are embracing more of these faith-based movies. General market audiences are a little more accepting of those who had faith. We’ve seen a change in the past 20 years. Have you noticed that?

Yes, it’s been slow but sure because I think in some ways movies that introduce church, they just touch on it a little bit. They want ot show that it’s there. It’s almost like they’re giving a nod to the faith audience. ‘Okay, we’re aware that you exist.’ You think of a movie like Barbershop. So you’ve got a movie for the African American market that is set in a barbershop. A barbershop is a very prominent setting in the black community. If you just touch on it in a movie, that’s kind of interesting, but actually setting it in the barbershop, that actually in many ways, makes the movie even more accessible to outside audiences because it’s a different world that they’re not familiar with and I think audiences like seeing worlds that they are not familiar with. Using GS as an example, we actually set the movie in the church. I mean, half the movie is filmed at the church. I actually haven’t seen that before. I haven’t seen it since the 30s and the 40s. In many ways, that allowed us to get away with being even more explicit in our depictions of faith. Ironically enough, even more accessible to mainstream audiences, because they don’t feel they’re being preached at. They feel they’re watching a world in which preaching and prayer and presentations of the gospel are actually normal. When I watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I didn’t think ‘Oh, this movie is so Greek, it’s not for me.’ When I watched Sister Act, I didn’t think ‘Oh, this movie is so Catholic. I can’t relate to it.’ I thought ‘this is a unique world. I’m interested in learning more about this world. Therefore when I see it, Catholic or Greek stuff doesn’t feel out of place or it doesn’t feel pandering or it doesn’t feel preachy, because it’s part of that world. Because all our faith stuff is a natural part of the movie it’s set in, it feels normal. It doesn’t feel preachy. I’ve always said if you want to make a movie that isn’t preachy, make it about a preacher, because people then expect the preacher to preach and it doesn’t feel like we’re forcing it in.

Resurrection of Gavin Stone

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