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I grew up with these books, so I already had images in my head all these years—based on how I imagined Narnia and these characters. But now my sons, even though they'd read The Lord of the Rings before seeing those movies, are growing up thinking that Gandalf looks like Ian McKellen and that Frodo looks like Elijah Wood. Are you concerned that the same thing will happen with Narnia, that the movie will hinder kids' ability to use their imagination?

Gresham: That's part of the challenge of converting a book to a movie. We have to be aware that everyone who's read the book has in their mind's eye an image of Narnia—an image of the White Witch, an image of Aslan and Peter and Susan and Lucy. We have to at least equal if not excel all of those images.

But we also have to be responsible for an image that we are putting into the next generation of readers' minds. So that when the next people come, having seen the movie and never read the book, and they see Tilda Swinton as the White Witch, she has to fit the picture. She has to be good enough in that role for their imagination to accept her as the White Witch and to take that forward with them.

Gresham says Tilda Swinton is the perfect White Witch for anyone's imagination

And you're okay with people reading these books for the first time visualizing Tilda Swinton as the White Witch, and not using their imaginations?

Gresham: If we get it right, yes, it's okay. If we get it wrong, it isn't. In Tilda's case, believe me, we've got it right. Tilda's a lovely person, the sweetest girl. We got to be good friends on set. But as the White Witch, she is scary, evil.

When my grandson Jack, who was four years old at the time, visited the set in New Zealand, we were filming in a forest at the White Witch's camp. There were all the racks of evil looking weapons, and the White Witch's pavilion with campfires and cauldrons and the usual stuff for a witch. We get out there, and the smoke generator guys had started the mist drifting through the forest, and the campfires and cauldrons were burning. Jack looked around and said, "This place is evil." And we knew we had got it right.

What one thing has most impressed you about the whole process of making this movie?

Gresham: There are literally thousands of people working behind the scenes, doing mundane jobs like painting sets and making swords and cleaning toilets and cooking the food—people who never, ever get mentioned. Nobody ever knows they exist. So I made the point of going around and thanking the people like the cooks and the bus boys, the painters and the welders, the guy who services the generators, the mechanics, all these types of people. I'd say, "I'm Doug Gresham, the co-producer of this project, and I would just like to thank you so much for the great work you're putting in, because everything's running so smoothly, and it's largely due to you guys." Without exception, every single one of those people was utterly thrilled to be involved in this particular project.

That impressed me more than anything—the enormous enthusiasm of everybody I ran into. Everybody loves the material; everybody was thrilled to be involved with this particular project. And I'm very grateful to all of them.

Movie images copyright 2005Disney Enterprises, Inc. and Walden Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

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The Man Behind the Wardrobe	Printer view
C. S. Lewis, author of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe—a feature film coming to theaters soon—was "the best Christian I've ever known," says Douglas Gresham, stepson to the famous writer. (Part 1)