Little House Meets Sin City
That's how screenwriter Geert Heetebrij describes The Interior, a unique new film about Christian missionaries that's being released in weekly episodes exclusively online.
by Mark Moring | posted 8/14/2007
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Calvin College graduate Geert Heetebrij made a quirky-but-wonderful indie film a few years ago called A Foreign Affair, starring Emily Mortimer and Tim Blake Nelson. The movie never hit it big, but critics (two thumbs up from Ebert & Roeper!) and audiences loved it.
Geert Heetebrij, writer and creator of 'The Interior'
We interviewed Heetebrij about the film at the time, but hadn't heard about him—or from him—again till recently, when he and old friend Helmut Schleppi wrapped up a new movie called The Interior.
The film—written/created by Heetebrij and directed by Schleppi—is about new Christian missionaries embarking on their journey in a South American jungle.
It's like no film that's ever been done before: They put out a casting call on YouTube, and received hundreds of video auditions, ultimately narrowing it down to the four lead roles—the young missionary couple new on the field, and an older missionary couple that is, uhh, pretty weird and creepy. The film is now being released online in episodes over the course of about four months—playing out episodically like a TV series, but the end result will be about a 90-minute film available for purchase on DVD this fall or winter.
Heetebrij took out a second mortgage on his home—with his wife's blessings—to fund the project, which was filmed in the jungles of Panama. We caught up with the writer recently for an e-mail interview to learn more about the project.
How/where/when did the idea for The Interior come about?
Geert Heetebrij: One day early last year, Helmut and I were shooting the breeze, when he shared some anecdotes from his upbringing as a missionary kid in the jungle in Suriname, really intriguing, and I joked that it was a crime that he had never done anything with all of that. He started sending anecdotes, characters, ideas, for days on end. That triggered what would later become The Interior. Obviously, there were stories in those woods …
Why did you want to make a film about missions/missionaries?
Heetebrij: I've always been fascinated by jungle missions, even as a kid—the nerve of these people to pick up and go. Talk about a leap of faith—mentally, physically, spiritually; everything about it is extreme. And there's a treasure trove of relatively untapped material there. We're especially interested in the stuff that missionaries don't write home about—the quiet struggles, daily life. We're interested in the diaries more than in the letters to supporters.
Heetebrij on set with stars Hanna Verboom and Christian Badami
How would you describe the plot synopsis in just a few sentences?
Heetebrij: We see it as Little House on the Prairie meets Sin City. It's about a young couple that feels called to become missionaries in the rainforest. But while they expect to live nearer to God in nature, they instead find themselves in a land of gold diggers, prostitutes, and voodoo.
How many episodes in all, and how long will the finished film be?
Heetebrij: We're planning 12 weekly episodes, with every month a grouping of the previous four episodes combined, so we should have all of them online in a time span of about four months. The final film will be cut differently, and will also be longer than all the episodes combined; it will be a little under 1½ hours in length.
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