As anyone in the entertainment industry will tell you, it is a miracle that any film actually gets made.  From the moment a writer sits down with an idea to the first time the movie actually graces the screen, a film has passed through the care of so many people, so many unique personalities and competing visions and interests, that even the simplest film is a defiance of the odds.

To Save a Life is not a simple film.

From the moment we meet Jake Taylor, high school (and soon-to-be college) basketball star, it is clear we are meeting a young man in crisis.  Jake’s world has been upended by the recent and very public suicide of his childhood friend Roger – a relationship Jake had forsaken in recent years as his own star was on the rise.  For Jake, the burden of guilt for the choices he did and did not make along the way have become a crushing rebuke.  The young man is lost.

Unfortunately for Jake, introspection is not a welcome trait among his top-of-the-food chain peers. Instead, Jake finds common ground with Chris, a local Christian youth-pastor carrying his own guilt over Roger’s death. Chris, who struggles to navigate a true course through the often false world of Christian culture, detects an authenticity in Jake’s growing and self-imposed alienation from his equally false high school aristocracy.  Jake detects in Chris an authentic faith.  As the story unfolds, the two men help one another to stand against the tides of inconsistency in both worlds. (more…)

My first two posts at this site addressed the topic of so-called “Christian” films in Hollywood. In my first post, I opined that the increased interest in Christian films by Hollywood execs hasn’t necessarily been a good thing because films with a faith theme are being sent to the small, low-budget faith divisions of the studios and marketed nearly exclusively to Christians. In my second post, I gave what I consider the reasons that most Christian films are so bad. Even though I’m an evangelical Christian, I had to admit that the films made by my brethren, intended for audiences like me, were typically very poorly done.

–

So…I was faced with a few realities. Hollywood wanted more Christian films. As a Christian, I wanted more Christian films that were actually watchable. I’d publicly and condescendingly bemoaned the fact that Christian films usually weren’t good. I’m a Christian. I’m a filmmaker. (more…)