Behind the scenes of 'Fireproof': Take 1
Rebecca Grace - Guest Columnist - 9/24/2008 6:00:00 AM
With recording equipment in hand, I boarded a plane bound for Albany, Georgia, where I would spend some time on the set of Fireproof, the third film from Sherwood Pictures, creators of Facing the Giants. During my time on set in November 2007, I had the opportunity to get to know some of the cast and crew and experience their passion for making films that glorify God. Below, they tell their own stories.
Their love for Christ was contagious on set and that love spreads to over 800 theaters Friday, September 26.
This is the first of a three-part series that will take you on a backstage tour of Fireproof. Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.
Name: Alex Kendrick
Role: Director, co-writer
Scene 1: The process
When we finished Facing the Giants, Stephen Kendrick, my brother, and I started praying, "God, what would you have us to do next?" The Lord led us to the topic of marriage. We came up with the idea for The Love Dare - a 40-day journey of unconditional love – and prayed through it.
As we started to develop the story, we shared it with our pastor and executive pastor, and they agreed that this was the direction God would have us go. So Stephen and I wrote out the story.
To begin, we put birch paper across an entire wall, and we had little square sticky notes. We'd come up with a scene or a principle or an idea, we'd write it on one of the sticky notes, and we'd start sticking them all over the wall. We had just dozens and dozens of sticky notes on this wall. Then we started putting them in a pattern.
We knew how we wanted to end the movie so we started working backwards asking, "How do we get to this point?" Over the last year, year and a half, the Lord has been giving us little pieces. The initial idea for this movie came in the fall of 2005. So even while Facing the Giants was coming out, we were developing the whole Love Dare/Fireproof story. We didn't actually write the script until later.
I'll come up with the shell of a story. Stephen helps put meat on the bones. This is how I like to work with Stephen. Whereas I'm better at telling a story with elements, Stephen is better with concepts to fill the story with. So a lot of the concepts you'll see in these movies come from him. I'll have the arc of the story, and I'll direct it. But the meat comes from him. Stephen is very good with wanting to exhort the audience with these good concepts and principles.
So with Fireproof, we tried to put as many things as we could in that don't feel forced. After a two-hour period, the audience leaves and they've got a lot to think about.
You want to get to the story as efficiently as possible, but you never want to feel like you're rushing or dragging. That's the challenge. So there's a natural momentum or flow to movies if they're well told. You want to take audiences' emotions, weave in the truth and the message of the movie, and end so that they're walking out of the theater emotionally full. They've laughed, cried, enjoyed themselves and been spiritually challenged.
I think about the Scripture verse in Proverbs 16 where it says you commit your works to the Lord and He will establish your plans. From the beginning we said we want Jesus to be Lord of Fireproof. And the plans have just laid out right in front of us.
For example, when we went to the fire department in need of equipment, we were asking, "Lord would you allow them to trust us with their reserve trucks and maybe some older equipment to shoot this movie?" We sat down and had a meeting with the fire chief, assistant chief and a deputy chief. We told them the story of Fireproof, and when we were done telling it, they got a little emotional, and said, "If you're going to do this movie, and that's going to be your message, why would we let you use our reserve trucks instead of our brand new trucks? If you're going to represent this city, then you need to use our best equipment, our best outfits, our best trucks, our best everything, and we'll use the reserve trucks."
It was the same with the hospital. We go to the hospital and ask if there are any rooms we can shoot in? They end up giving us a wing of the hospital to use.
The Lord has opened the doors and given us favor in everything that we needed to do this movie. It has been a phenomenal journey, I'll say.
Name: Stephen Kendrick
Role: Producer, co-writer
Scene 2: The theme
When my brother Alex presented to me the idea of a movie about marriage after we batted around a bunch of other ideas, there was a sense that this is of God. We presented it to our pastors, and they agreed it was right. When we presented it to Provident Films, distributor of Facing the Giants, some of them were crying when we walked them through the whole story. They said this is what this generation needs to hear. This is a message that our culture needs to hear. So the Lord was confirming over and over again that this was the right direction to go.
And I believe He confirmed that a firefighter needed to be the backdrop. With Flywheel, Jay Austin was a used car salesman. With Facing the Giants, it was a football coach. We were trying to figure out what was going to work with this movie. When the whole firefighter idea was considered, it started just falling into place.
Alex wrote a line where firemen Caleb Holt, the lead male character in the film, says, "Never leave your partner behind, especially in a fire." Caleb was applying that at work, but he wasn't applying that at home. He is ready to leave his partner, that being his wife, when it gets heated in the relationship. So that's the theme that's going on in the movie.
And it actually came from my wife's mom who was hanging out with us, and said, "Hey, if you ever make a movie about a fireman, I have all these firefighter friends. Let me know."
I started thinking about it. We already had the whole Love Dare concept, so I called Alex and said, "What if we make this guy a firefighter?" We got real excited about it. I don't get real excited about any kind of project until it gets too big, and we're going to have to have God show up or we're not going to be able to pull this off. So in thinking about burning down buildings, rescuing people, wrecking a train, I was like, "yeah!" This way we have the male element in this movie since there are so many scenes that are romantic that women are going to connect to. We need men to go see it too.
Then when we looked up the meaning of "fireproof", it was confirmation this was the right title for the movie. If something is fireproof, it doesn't mean it keeps the fire away. It means that when the fire hits, it can withstand the heat, which is what marriages have to do. We were already telling a story about a fireman and his wife. So it fit.
He's a fireman, and he's putting out fires. Symbolically, he needs to start a fire romantically with his wife and start a fire for the Lord. In another way, he needs to fireproof his own soul and his marriage. And the only way you can do that is through Jesus Christ.
So that is what we mean by fireproof. Trials and fires are going to come to your marriage, but the only way to withstand it is through Christ.
That's why the movie presents marriage as a covenant, not a contract. Audiences hear that love is not a feeling; it's a commitment; it's a decision. Christ's death on the cross is the epitome of unconditional love demonstrated for us, and a husband should love his wife like Christ loves the Church.
There are a lot of principles interwoven into the dialogue so that we can deal with the real foundational issues that are causing marriages to fall apart.
Name: David Nixon
Role: Producer
Scene 3: The set
I've been on so many big Hollywood sets where it's a totally different feeling from being on a Sherwood set because everybody on those sets is there for themselves, really to get on the next movie. So they're really not caring about what they're doing today. They're just making sure they can be with the right people to get on the next movie.
This is totally different. Everybody here is doing something for the Lord. It's much bigger than we are. It's a totally different feeling. You go to any major film, and the director is overdosing on cocaine in his trailer, and the someone else is jumping into bed with the makeup girl. People are stabbing each other in the back. It's a totally horrible feeling. And you think how can they make something creative out of that?
Whereas here, we're praying before we start every day. When we're doing really heavy scenes, there are people in the back room who are praying for that scene. That's unheard of. That's why this movie and why Facing the Giants worked because there were so many people praying. You just don't find that in any other movies.
Name: Jim McBride
Role: Executive Producer
Scene 4: The difference
I'm the executive pastor at Sherwood Baptist Church. That's a full-time job, and then this is a second full-time job. Prior to these positions, I was in the Marine Corps, managed a cable company, worked for the Coca-Cola Company for 15 years, and was a professional wrestler for about a year and a half. I got fired from wrestling for fighting. It got out of hand one night, so I wound up getting fired. About 5 weeks later, they wanted me back, but by that time it was out of my system – all this was before Christ. The Lord called me into ministry in 2000.
My wife and I made a decision 14 years ago to take cable out of our house. We have a TV, but we choose what plays on it. We choose what comes into our house and read reviews about movies before going to see them.
One January, we thought what it would be like to not have TV this month. So we tried it. We went without it that month, and at the end of the month, my wife and I were saying, "Boy, this has been great! But the kids are going to want it back."
We had a family meeting, and we let the kids talk first. They said, "You know we played more games; we talked more this month; let's do it another month." The next month we asked why we were paying the cable bill when we didn't have the TV on. So it just never got turned back on, and that's been 14 years.
It really impacts your family. I tell parents if there is one thing you can do to really impact your kids, that's it! Where a lot of parents are struggling with their daughters wanting to dress like Britney Spears and others, my girls never had Britney in front of them on TV. Their role model for what they wore was their mom.
When stuff happened like the Bill Clinton deal, they didn't see that on TV; they heard it from mom and dad. It was a discussion around the table, rather then someone else educating my children. We still get a lot of movies and watch them as a family, but TV is just not a real big piece of our home. My boys think we should just get it for football, but why do that considering everything else it would bring into our home?
That's why there are some things you will never see in a Sherwood movie. You never see a woman immodestly dressed. They look nice, but they are modest. So how do we deal with pornography, a topic addressed in Fireproof, without taking someone there?
We have been around some people who say that sometimes in order to be real, you have to show it onscreen. Not so. The most you are going to see in this movie is a very tight pop-up of a lady's face. We're just giving people something that keeps their minds continually on the topic without harming them.
Parts 2 and 3 of this series will be posted on Thursday and Friday (Sept. 25 and 26), respectively.
Rebecca Grace, a regular contributor to OneNewsNow, is staff writer for AFA Journal, a regular publication of the American Family Association. The AFA Journal is a division of the American Family Association, the parent organization of the American Family News Network, which operates OneNewsNow.com.
Opinions expressed in 'Perspectives' columns published by OneNewsNow.com are the sole responsibility of the article's author(s), or of the person(s) or organization(s) quoted therein, and do not necessarily represent those of the staff or management of, or advertisers who support the American Family News Network, OneNewsNow.com, our parent organization or its other affiliates.
