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Is this new emphasis on faith and spirituality in film going to go away?

Detweiler: How long will the after-effects of The Passion last? Is it a passing fad? I don't think anybody knows. [But I don't think it will] go away anytime soon.

My hope would be that we could connect people of faith who are storytellers with studios' interest in those stories. In the past, not enough people of faith have even been connected with each other to know how to connect these things. It's a few isolated producers over here, writers over here, agents over here—and none of us knew each other enough because we were so closeted, perhaps.

Somebody told me they auditioned to write for Charmed, and when they were offered the job, they thought, Do I really want to do a show about witches? They turned it down. Now, three years later, they've met two other Christians who also turned it down. So three different Christians were offered the chance to write on the show and none of them knew about each other. They backed off from the show out of fear that they'd be crushed in that atmosphere, when they might have had a strong possibility to deal with some major spiritual themes.

We do not impose that kind of ethical standard on people who make widgets for a living. We don't ask, "Is this a redemptive piece of plumbing?" There may be good faucets and bad faucets, but we don't judge by the quality of company's faucets whether or not their Christian witness is valid. I think it's the same in this case. We urge our students to be as professional as possible in as many professional situations as possible.

It's about an individual's conscience in individual projects. Paul left it suitably messy. He left it very grey.

What do you say to those who still object to being involved in movies that are ethically unsound?

Detweiler: I think it's going to go away. It's an old question, rooted in an old set of assumptions about this world and God's place in it. There's an increasing openness to finding the sacred amidst the profane—or despite the profane. The more that happens to people in their own life, they can no longer put a box around God or around their Christian brothers and sisters.

I think Christians should have a radical rethinking about Paul's discussion of the weaker brother. Essentially I think we've let the weaker brother drive the conversation, when in fact Paul would say, "Hey, weaker brother, don't judge your more mature brother who might do something different."

What films do you recommend to Christian filmmakers to watch and learn?

Detweiler: In my first class at Biola, I asked students what films most impacted them. They listed American History X, Magnolia, Donnie Darko, American Beauty, Run Lola Run, and Requiem for a Dream. I said, "What do these films have in common?" Well, they're all R-rated. But then I asked them to look closer, and they said, "All of them deal with life's ultimate questions. They deal with the messiness of life. They offer the idea of transcendent hope that lies beyond ourselves."

What films have had the biggest influence on you?

Detweiler [laughing]: American History X, Donnie Darko, American Beauty, and Requiem for a Dream! Honestly, I think it's the same for my students and myself, which is why I'm in the right place. I consider myself the world's oldest Gen-Xer. I may have grey hair, kids, but I'm in your wheelhouse. But the films that got me the first time around were the great films of the '70s: Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Badlands, Days of Heaven.

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