"Hello." "We thank you for joining us here for the commentary the behind-the-scenes tour of The Grace Card." "I'm David Evans, the director, executive producer." "And joining me today are Pastor Lynn Holmes." "Hello, good to be with you." "And the one and only Michael Joiner." "Thank you." "Great to be here." "And so we're just gonna kind of take you on a behind-the-scenes tour of the movie here and kind of share some insight, personal stories." "Share a few testimonies about God's anointing on The Grace Card." "And so we're gonna just kind of talk through some of the different scenes and we hope that you enjoy some of the things we have to say and we hope that we'll give you some additional information as to how this project was created and all the doors that were opened up for us through the making of this movie." "We might talk about that, but this came about because of the fact that you, for these 15 years had been writing the screenplays for our passion plays." "And when you brought us the story for 2009 we realized we needed to do that on film." "Yeah." "You know, I think the 15 years that we did a passion play at Calvary Church here in Cordova, just outside of Memphis we had all the essential ingredients already in place." "You know, we had a set designer, we had wardrobe volunteers, makeup, set building." "And so, you know, it really helped us in preparing for a project like this that we had this database already of great volunteers people who were willing to labor in the Lord for the 30 days it took to make this movie." "And they did." "They came together." "I think we clocked 1 5,000 hours of volunteer labor just while we were filming the thing." "But I wanna know where you found the word ubuntu." "That's just something that we found in some of the research we were doing." "We wanted to" " Because of kind of the missionary tie-in with this certain character in the movie, it was one of those words that stood out and helped us to introduce the scenes." "Here, you know, we tried to give the movie the film, kind of an aged look." "So the coloring here-- The colorist certainly made these scenes look different than others." "And of course we had to make Mike look younger which was a challenge for any makeup artist." "But...." "I think Bruce Sarratt who plays the character with the bandana on..." "...he does a great job eating." "He does." "He does." "The barbeque is outstanding." "Neely's, most of you know about that." "Memphis barbeque." "Any time you do flashback scenes, one of the challenges was finding cars that were, you know, at least 17 years old or older." "And, you know, God blessed us with a great friend here in Memphis who has a used-car dealership." "He basically said, "Come in and take whatever cars you need."" "So he made our job very easy." "And we even had a few cars donated by a local car dealer that we could damage, and that did happen here because we wore out that car that we used for the stunts." "I feel like I'm with my mother-in-law." "Am I gonna get to talk?" "Go ahead." "Go ahead." "Okay." "I'm kidding." "Kind of." "Well, that was great." "Now, Dave, what about...?" "No." "Who was the person that lent us this house where we did these scenes?" "Yeah." "We actually came in and reconstructed several of the rooms." "We had to build some extra walls and that sort of thing to make some of these scenes work." "Did you see that painting on the wall, though?" "Do you remember?" "There's a local artist." "Right there." "The eye." "Yup." "What is that?" "Well, I tried to slip in the Eye Care as an eye doctor." "I wanted as many eyeballs in the movie as we could." "I see a card there in the corner." "Call David Evans." "Do you remember that guy's name?" "I don't." "I'm glad you're prepared." "He's on my Facebook, I know that." "I can't remember everyone's names too, but he did a great job." "Right above the sink, that was an opening to another room so our incredible set crew came in and actually built an artificial wall there." "And, you know, of course we've got this great lighting team as well and just made it look like a normal wall." "They were incredible." "Yes." "Who's renting the Johnson house?" "Debbie said he's a mortgage broker." "If there's any question about Mac's character you get an early indication here from some of the comments he makes about his Hispanic neighbors, that he's not too proud of the fact..." "...that he lives next door to Hispanics." "There's improv coming up where I said, "David, let me try--"" "I wanted to do this to make it apparent before the scene ended of what I was about." "Do you remember the line?" "Absolutely." "Tell them." ""Must've got it from our neighbors."" "Line's coming up here in just a moment, but...." "I remember sitting in theaters, some people would catch that, some wouldn't." "It establishes right away what Mac's about." "Right." "Absolutely." "I won't be home till dinner." "And I think these scenes early on are important in establishing" "The character of those who are here, yeah." "that we've got a family here that's in disarray." "And, you know, that there's basically no relationship here between Mac and his son the relationship is strained between Mac and his wife." "I think these early scenes are so important in establishing the fact that, you know God is not the center of this family unit here." "I think everybody here did a great job of just looking so stressed." "You know, you can tell there's hostility, animosity in this family." "And when you meet Mike's family, it's brightness and joy and love." "A great contrast, which is what you need for this to work." "And J.P. did a great job in zooming in on faces and giving you total context of scene too." "It just really helped to estab-- You see the stress in their faces..." "It just really helped to estab-- You see the stress in their faces because he was good with his camera." "Yeah." "This gives us a moment to talk about the Memphis Police Department." "Without their support, it's hard to make a movie about policemen if you don't have access to the uniforms, badges, cars, precincts." "But they gave us an all-access pass." "So, what you have here are a number of real Memphis police officers with our extras sprinkled into the mix." "Should we point out that that's Pastor Sam right there?" "The real one." "Yeah." "Yeah." "One of my patients, whose name is Sam, is in this scene." "You see him in a couple spots" "He's a policeman." "Yeah, plays a policeman." "And he is actually" "He is a Memphis police officer." "He is." "And a pastor in town." "And so we kind of modeled Sam Wright's character after this real-life person who we've known for very many years." "And there's Stephen Dervan." "Stephen Dervan from Fireproof." "It was me, lieutenant." "And I reported it immediately to the shift supervisor." "Stephen is the youth pastor at a church here in Memphis." "And came alongside us and helped in some of the preproduction work and helping to guide us in some of the ways that Sherwood Baptist had done their films." "And really gave us some excellent guidance and some ways that we could keep our costs down when it came to catering and using RVs for dressing rooms and makeup trailers." "So he was very helpful to this project." "It's amazing how many of our church members make pretty good police officers in here for just at least" "Chris Thomas was perfectly cast as the captain, I think, with his silver hair." "Right there." "Yeah." "See, he really looks great." "And, you know, I just like the overall look to this scene." "Very smooth and...." "And here we have our first introduction to Sam Wright." "Pastor, police officer, great family man." "And Mac, of course, a great look of disgust on his face there realizing that here it happens again, you know, another minority getting" "Sometimes they ask, "What do you use to get that look of disgust?"" "And when I found out we were having bologna sandwiches for lunch I just kind of thought of that." "He kept looking for the catering truck to pull up and then he saw sandwiches being taken out of a cooler." "Where's my private room?" "There's no private room?" "ls there a problem here?" "No, sir, no problem at all." "Mike did a great job too." "He was cast perfectly for that scene." "I mean, for that part, that role." "It's about you not flying solo anymore." "Yeah, why don't I believe that?" "Like David always says, I play a great jerk." "Absolutely." "And, you know, from the very beginning it comes on very strong this person who is just full of anger and resentment and bitterness." "I think you feel that from the opening scenes and that's why as we move on through the movie..." "...you begin to see Mac's character" "Starts to soften." "That's right, begins to soften." "And as his heart begins to be reshaped and the potter takes control of his soul and then begins to mold him into a different character." "Michael Higgenbottom does a great job too because you see him struggling and persevering and witnessing to Mike." "Yeah." "He's not expecting this guy to be so blatantly" "Right." "See how happy Mike is." "He's just...." "You also begin to get a feel of the music style we used here with Brent Rowan, who is one of the most sought-after studio musicians in Nashville." "He's played on countless country music albums but as a Christian, he wanted to be involved in a faith-based film." "So Brent" " All these beautiful guitar tracks that you hear that kind of have that great Memphis feel and then switching over to something like this." "Awesome." "More of a rock sound, almost." "He really was able to look at the scene and get a feel for it and determine what we needed for each of these scenes." "This is one of the local Christian private schools here in Memphis that was gracious enough to let us have their campus for a while." "We had over 1 50 students who volunteered to spend their Saturday with us and come in." "Because it is a private school, our wardrobe department went to great lengths to make sure everyone had the right sized shirt." "And they made the crest for the private school." "This girl here who does a great job of playing the girlfriend I gotta tell a funny story." "When we had the week that the movie played in Memphis..." "...she was working at the cinema." "She was." "She sure was." "And here she is in the movie." "It's funny." "And that only happens in, you know, this kind of situation." "And that only happens in, you know, this kind of situation." "I just wanted to say that." "Here's a great actor." "So this waiting room is actually a sub waiting room at Total Eye Care, our eye-care practice." "And Dr. Vines' office is also one of our physicians' offices so in our scouting for locations we could not find a counseling office that looked like what we really had envisioned for Dr. Vines' practice so we moved the doctor out of his office and brought in the set designer and created a counselor's office here in the eye clinic." "And so in order to-- It was kind of a dreary day so we had to have lights put on these different lifts to raise the lights up to the second floor windows to make it look like it was more of a sunny day." "But this was actually the first scene we filmed in the movie." "Day one, right here." "And you see J.P '. s skill here." "Who's that great psychiatrist..." "..." "Pastor Lynn?" "That is the pastor's...." "That's our worship pastor's wife who also happens to be my sister." "When I talk to people about the movie they always ask about her." "She did an incredible job." "She did, and I taught her everything she knows" "No, that is not true." "That is not true." "She actually had an invite recently to speak to a large group of Christian counselors, some big convention." "And they said, "We want her to be our guest speaker." And...." "Then they learned she really wasn't a counselor..." "...so that didn't happen." "Maybe not officially but I still refer people to Dr. Vines when they need some adjustment." "Yeah, I got Jerks Anonymous calling me asking me to be the leader." "ls that why your voicemail's full?" "Voicemail's full." "talk about Blake." "But I think I need to talk about a lot more than that." "Joy does a good job too." "We cast her" "Well, you cast her because in some of our passion plays..." "...she does so good at crying." "Yeah, she's just natural." "And she had to go through the audition process like everyone else, but really stood out." "And we knew she could bring it emotionally." "And it was just wonderful having her playing that role because we-- Very dependable and we knew that when we needed her to bring the emotion, she could do it." "Mac would be one of those laymen, be so challenging to minister to." "He's...." "You see the attitude coming out very clearly here." "Mike loved having to take this over and eat another doughnut." "You know, one thing I'll add here, is that many, many people have sent in notes telling us that we lost a sense of realism in the movie because they noticed the officers aren't wearing their seat belts." "Depending on what community or city you live in but in Memphis, 95 percent of the officers never wear seat belts because at a moment's notice they've gotta be able to react." "So for those of you who were questioning that I can tell you that we had a lieutenant with us every day we were filming our police scenes as an advisor so...." "I'm not aware of anything we missed when it comes to, you know the realistic portrayal that we gave of police officers because in Memphis, again, policemen are not wearing their belts." "They also don't notice this, but I'm in my underwear in this scene." "I don't" "I knew it was from the waist up." "I'm like:" ""Do I really have to get dressed for this?"" "lt saved time in Wardrobe." "They were boxers, though." "Yes." "I'm not a freak." "So here we have Dawntoya Thomason." "Did a wonderful job." "Oh, these kids are awesome." "Wait a minute." "Who bought Winky?" "That little girl's the sweetest girl." "Yeah, they just really were excited about this." "And again, you know, of course there's a few folks in the movie here who've been in movies before, Lou, Michael Stephen Dervan, but you know, 95 or more percent of the cast in this film have never been in a movie before and so...." "But they all did a great job." "I think beginning each day with prayer and a devotion and a time of reflection on the "This is the reason we're here" helped get everybody into character and a sense of peace." "It did bring a sense of focus too, to what we were doing." "Everybody seemed to be so willing to do whatever was asked of them because they realized the ministry was reaching out to." "Or for." "I think because you weren't a control freak, David, as a director, which...." "If you put too much in an actor's head who's never acted before, it can" "You kind of let them just do their thing and didn't worry about it unless there was a problem." "And that's what really gave them a nice, natural...." "A lot of people compliment-- They say, "Your actors it's hard to tell who's the professionals and who aren't."" "This little girl did a lot of theater." "I was impressed with her." "And the Wright family said?" "Amen." "Amen." "If you don't like lasagna, you give yours to Daddy." "It's funny, this scene gets a lot of laughs." "Did you expect that when you wrote--?" "We thought it was a cute scene but I think some of the facial expressions and just little things that are demonstrated by the characters helped to build up to that moment when she reveals what Sam's having for dinner." "It was cool when we saw the movie with a full crowd to discover..." "...where they were gonna laugh at." "lt was." "The way they reacted, yeah." "Big contrast here that we set out to have from the beginning with kind of a dismal look in the McDonald home and more of a bright, happier you know, environment, lighting, setup, in the Sam Wright home." "Lot of open communication in the Sam Wright home Iot of forced communication in the McDonald home." "If you remember, you thought about having a clock ticking to even demonstrate-- Which was a good idea." "For some reason you cut it." "We had it there..." "...and it seemed distracting." "Did it?" "lt was a grandfather clock." "I see where you're coming from." "to afford a decent college." "What does your little counselor say about our problem child?" "And again, very apparent here that Blake is absent as he is most of the times in this home with the strain and stress that's on his family, but...." "One of the things that was most distracting to me being right there with the rest of the crew was the great food that was on the plates here because the volunteers came in and cooked up this entire meal but we couldn't touch it." "And that was very disheartening to know that we're there working hard too and we can't eat." "Work with us?" "Right." "She'll have a program set up like your wack-job chiropractor so we can go to her for five years and talk." "Somebody said some of the best acting Joy did was the words she didn't say, but her facial expressions really showed the stress she was under, trying to keep the family together." "Joy is an elementary school teacher in Memphis." "And just, again, as we said moments ago really does a great job at expressing emotion and can bring it when we need her to bring it." "And the chemistry here was really...." "It really was intense, even on the set." "You could just sense the" "Absolutely." "If you remember that...part was also another improv." "There's several lines there that were just beautiful." "I thought, "I'm gonna say something that I say to my wife, see if that works." "And it worked." "So tell me about your family, man." "Wife, teenage son" "And of course here, Mac looks over and notices a kind of a homeless person on the street and he begins to reflect back to the courtroom where the person who killed his son so tragically at the beginning of the movie 17 years earlier." "Again, our Wardrobe, Costume and Makeup Department did a great job here." "That's how Michael looks all the time, isn't it?" "Mac." "Mac." "What?" "The light's green, man." "That was a good-- That's just one of those scenes everybody can identify with." "You get caught up in thought and don't pay attention to where you're at and the red light changes on you." "These are always fun." "And this lady, the mother of the child, did a phenomenal job." "Where'd we find her?" "She did." "She just happened..." "...to come to our auditions." "She's a striving actress too." "She audition, David?" "Okay." "She did audition, yes." "And our location manager did a great job of finding this apartment complex." "And the managers were really helpful and...." "We found an apartment unit that was being remodeled so the carpet had been pulled up." "And we just" "They just basically went around to Dumpsters all around the area picking up discarded furniture, mattresses, television sets anything they could find, and just came in and made this apartment complex look like, you know you're more in, like, a-- Like, a ghetto-type area." "And, you know...." "You see the neighbors pointing upstairs and everything." "I remember Mike kicking that door and they forgot to unlock it." "Are-- Do you notice the camerawork?" "How he's making it like a CSI:" "Miami." "Very smart to do that." "Yeah, he really did a great job there." "lt just added to the suspense." "For this scene." "Lord have mercy." "Several of these, when we have the ambulance and everything are Memphis Fire Department volunteers who came to help us." "And this is a really good way to do the scene of chasing him and trying to" "You know, pursuing him." "When we went to do the location scout for Sam's church..." "...which is Messiah" "Missionary Baptist." "Missionary Baptist here in Memphis, the male suspect here that puts the gun to Mac's head, his name is Adrian McQuarter and he was playing the organ at the church." "They were there for choir practice and he had on, like, a tank top shirt similar to what he has in this scene and he had that great look I thought would be perfect for the person who is playing the role of the suspect." "The bad thing was that you said:" ""You look like you'd be the right person for a role in the movie."" "I don't think he realized it was a thug." "I don't think he did either, but, boy, he did great." "He did a phenomenal job." "There was really no prep work done before we gathered to shoot this scene, and he came right in and just did an incredible job." "Brother, he was just doing his job." "Don't make this any uglier." "I didn't mean to hurt that baby." "Again, the couch behind him, there's a television set sitting on the couch the clothes hanging on the fence." "Just" " Just" "You know, people" " It's hard to appreciate what goes into..." "...doing one scene like this." "A lot of preparation." "Several hours of prep work just to get..." "...the apartment complex to look- ln this scene, I'm worried about Mike who's not a great shot." "We just" " No, Mac." "White boy?" "Is that what you called me?" "Who's the boy now, boy?" "We edited this scene many different ways, and I think adding in just the simple insert shot of Mac seeing the face of the young man who ran over his son worked well." "Made you feel more like:" ""Well, is he really gonna pull the trigger?" "What's about to happen?" "I'm looking at just his T-shirt, and what is it?" "Dorian?" "Or Dar--?" "How do you pronounce her name?" "Darian Corley." "Darian Corley did an incredible job of" " What do you call her job exactly?" "Well, she's the" "Prop master?" "Well, she's really the art director." "Okay." "Art director." "But, I mean, she just really" " He looks like he's sweating and stuff, and...." "And these are the actual Memphis firemen who volunteered to help us and...." "Jeremy did a great job all the way through post-production and production." "Jeremy really looked the part." "I mean, there was" " He was flawless." "You all right?" "It might be because he is a Memphis fireman." "Now, I remember some great direction here, David." "Mike first came up kind of very angry at me." "You said, "Why don't you play it less?"" "We backed him down just a little bit." "And that's a great" " Sometimes there's more power in stillness." "Even though it's not really apparent here, in a way, he is reaching out." "Yeah." "He's authoritative, which is what you wanted." "But you didn't want him, like, screaming at me." "And then we have some great shots of downtown Memphis and...." "With the Brent Rowan music behind it." "Now we go into Sam and Debra's bedroom where they're gonna have a discussion about you know, the fact that, you know, really they" "Their plan was, you know, once they got the church up and running and the budget was stable, that he would be a full-time pastor and that's one of the things that weighs heavily on his mind is that, you know, he's struggling between not being able to give time to the congregation and to the needs of his church and he can't do that because he's on the streets 40 hours a week as a police officer." "So...." "One of the things I appreciated in this first movie and this production and most people don't realize it until you've done some project like this there's, like, 20 to 30 people outside of camera shot right here." "Even in the bedroom scenes and in the private up-close scenes there's all these people around them outside of the camera." "It really does put a challenge on your actors to act natural and be normal." "babe, I think it's you, and I worry." "I remember the very opening scene where they have a close-up of Joy in the bed, he was actually standing in the bed over her making that shot." "Yeah." "It's amazing what you have to go through to get you know, certain camera angles and" "You know, but one of the great things about shooting digitally now is you can literally do as many takes as you want." "I've, of course, never filmed." "This was our first film, so we don't have experience with film cameras but I know the film stock itself is very expensive and you are limited in some way as far as how many takes you can do in a particular scene but it's great too now that you can go back and watch the scene you filmed and make sure you got what you're looking for before you move on to the next setup." "Of course, we were filming with one camera so every angle you see here is a completely new setup..." "...which required different lighting." "Hours sometimes." "Yep." "Hours, right?" "Yep." "It really is a miracle of God that we were able to film on schedule." "I just can't imagine that happening in anyone's first project but it's amazing how well that came together." "Yeah, just for this two-minute-- Two-and-a-half-minute scene here you're looking at about a four- or five-hour time just to pull of the different shots." "Oh, I think it's more than that, David." "It might have been a whole day." "Because, you know, J.P., man, which I liked" "What I loved about him is he did not wanna start that shot until he got the lighting and the mood just right." "And with one camera, every time you have a different angle you have to reset the whole shot." "I think it was a whole day for this." "It was probably a whole day, at least." "for this life and our beautiful children and this wonderful man you've given me." "Speak through him tomorrow, Lord, and let him rest in that." "Here's another one that gets a big laugh." "When his stomach growls." "Yeah." "I've always loved this touch here, that" "He lit this one beautifully too." "Yeah." "That Howard Klausner put in the screenplay where as we see Mac here, you can hear Debra praying for him over the shot of him coming into the garage here." "And, again, another" "Another view into the character of Mac." "Yeah, as he's watching his Hispanic neighbors." "Let me tell you a little secret coming up here." "Things kind of...." "In this scene if you remember at first, Rob, who plays my son as he's getting out of the car, he looked right at me a couple times and I said, "Does the script say he notices me?"" "And he said, "No."" "So we shot it again." "Yeah." "This is just interesting things people like to know." "This is just interesting things people like to know." "But...." "And this couple here is always late to church." "We tried to establish that." "And this is the Missionary Messiah Baptist church downtown." "Yes." "The interesting thing here, which I guess you could call movie magic even though there wasn't much magic to it:" "The interior of this church is Messiah Missionary Baptist but the exterior of the church is a very different church a church that's located near Calvary Church in Cordova." "On Morning Sun it's a little Presbyterian church, I believe." "Yes." "So we just loved the look of the interior of this church and decided to go with this for Pastor Sam's church." "And that song right there was the first of three songs that Ephie Johnson, a local choir director..." "Very talented." "...very talented musician wrote for the movie." "And so we actually recorded all of the songs in a recording studio with live instruments and a choir and, of course, the soloists and then played back the music in the church, and people" "The choir would sing along with it to make it look like the music was, of course, being performed live there." "I think we had about 1 50 extras on this day." "It was on a Saturday, so we could...." "It was on a Saturday, so we could get a good participation from various people." "We're just gonna talk about one." "I think Mike Higgenbottom really carries himself well as a pastor." "He's got" " You know, when you're" "As an actor, you have to become the-- You know when you're a cop, you're a cop." "And when you're out of the uniform, you're a different person." "You're" "You know, you" " And" "It seems like you just show up with the lines, but you don't." "So now he's the pastor." "And he just really feels-- Don't you feel like he's, like--?" "I kept calling him Creflo Dollar, you know." "I remember in his scene" "But he's got that" "When he was-- And not only was it that but he was working off of the extras in the scene because when we first shot this he's preaching and they're cheering him on." "And all of a sudden he says, "No." "You guys don't like this message." "You guys gotta help me here."" "Yeah." "That's good." "And all of a sudden, you see the message" "The way that David shot this, the message is kind of dying." "I've had that feeling many times." "Yeah." "I've had that feeling as a comedian, also, a few times." "Thankfully, not at your church." "Yeah, when Mike auditioned for the movie" "Higgenbottom?" "Yeah." "Every" " Sorry, yes." "Michael Higgenbottom here is" "As each person would come through and audition for the role of the pastor-slash-policeman, Sam Wright we made sure each person read for this particular scene as well as others." "But when he began to preach, we knew then that God had sent us the person that was intended." "We knew as soon as he walked out of the room, the decision was made." "Of course, we allowed people to continue to audition but I really felt in my heart like God had sent us the person that he wanted for that role, and I think we all decided that night." "Even though we didn't make the official announcement for several months, I think, we knew he was the one for the role." "You can see on the faces of the congregation, they're just thinking:" ""Where is he going with this?"" "That was a good shot that really showed that." "Look at it right now." "It's still." "Yeah." "And then when he's coming out, you'll see them shaking their heads at him." "That's Reverend Antonio Futch who does" "He's a Church of God in Christ pastor." "He does a great job in just his body action here." "He's my Facebook friend too." "We chat a lot." "Here he is right here." "Yeah." "Right here." "Good guy." "Look at that." "I feel for him as a pastor." "Yeah." "Oh, that was good." "It was a tad subdued." "She does a great job." "Maybe the Lord wants me to be a cop after all." "I think they just took that sermon from one of yours, didn't he?" "I hope not." "This scene was shot late in the day." "I think we had already been working for about 12 or 1 4 hours." "And we were literally-- Had been at this school the same private school, on the same day we filmed all the other scenes that were necessary to be shot at the school here." "So this was our last shot." "And we needed to be out of the school by a certain time so we really pulled off this shot right here in probably about" "Well, less than two hours." "It's nighttime already, so we brought out the big lights and tried to light it and make it look like, you know kind of a mid-morning type shot." "But the principal here, or headmaster is" "Reverend Thom McAdory." "He's our executive pastor here." "He's flawless, isn't he, Dave?" "He really is." "I mean, he's just natural." "And another one of those roles that we really already knew from the beginning that he was just made for that part." "And...." "And I think some of his" "Some of the cutaways on his facial expressions are just amazing." "Before we leave, an interesting thing." "Isn't the lady sitting there the real mother of my son?" "She is." "Your son who-- Your son who was killed." "Who was killed in the movie riding the tricycle." "Lot of little interesting tidbits like that in the film." "So here we have Blake's first encounter..." "...with the thugs." "Now, who was that kid?" "That's actually my son who is a thug..." "There you go." "...in real life." "And so he played the part very well." "But that's Houston." "All these kids are in our church here." "Your direction was, "Just be yourself."" "Yeah. "Son, just be yourself." "Be your normal thug self and you'll do a good job." But...." "A 12th grader getting picked up by his mother?" "Hello?" "Can I say something about Rob Erickson, who played my son?" "You know I've always just loved what he did." "What made him so great is I have a 1 3-year-old named Dustin and Rob looks what Dustin" " Dustin's gonna look like when he's his age." "And it was just" " In many scenes, I just replaced Dustin with him." "So the question now is, does Dustin react to you like Rob reacted to you in the movie?" "That's the real question." "Yeah." "I got three boys that do that." "So how long were you planning to keep that from us?" "Night before graduation?" "He's gonna kill me, isn't he?" "Coming up is a great scene with Dr. Vines, or Cindy Hodge." "And this is probably what really separates her as a" "As just a wonderful counselor." "Occasionally when you watch out this window here sometimes you can see the top of one of the RVs that was used for our wardrobe and makeup." "The trailers were parked just outside this office building and that's just kind of something you can see occasionally, but...." "It's also raining here, and when we cut back and forth between the different shots of Sam Wright and Lou Gossett and you come back, you know, it-- You can see that it's raining here but we tried to boost the light up enough and" "Oh, so it's almost a blooper there, kind of?" "Used enough of a shallow depth of field that you couldn't see the rain hitting the window too well." "These are some of the valuable insights we're giving to you on the commentary here." "And charging her money." "It's kind of the way counseling works." "Another tough scene, because in real life, Rob here is just the most beautiful character, great guy." "He is a great kid." "Young man." "So we kind of had to almost physically and mentally wear him down as the day progressed just so he could pull off this role of kind of the smart aleck Blake." "He really nailed this scene, though." "He did a great job with that." "for an ungrateful kid who'd rather party than turn in his homework?" "I don't need this." "And now another 20 grand for an extra year." "Oh, my bad." "It isn't." "Public school, here we come." "How's old Dad gonna take that one?" "And there just outside the window, above Dr. Vines you can kind of see the top of that vehicle sitting there." "I'm aware of your family's financial situation." "She's getting me for nothing right now, Blake." "I can't afford that, but I kind of have a soft heart for a family that's coming apart" "Now, she's about to toss him a soda here." "I was wondering how many takes that took." "Because as a kid, she couldn't throw a ball at all." "If I understand, she hit him in the head the first three times and we had to take him to the doctor and reshoot that scene, didn't we?" "you might just learn what that is." "That's not true." "No, I was kidding as well." "She did a great job." "She really pulled it off here and...." "This is downtown Memphis, right on the Mississippi River." "Now, this is happ" " Should we mention that right now that's flooded?" "Yeah." "As we're recording this, you know" "Where they're walking right now is underwater, that's right." "to some soldiers once." "This was a very, very, very cold day." "Very windy day." "It was in October, but unusually cold." "And so in between takes we literally had to get a chair for Lou wrap him up in a blanket, because it was really cool that day and we really weren't prepared for it." "when I was trying to raise your daddy." "But Lou being the awesome character that he is, you know tolerated it very well, never complained and really just was willing to do as many takes as it required to make it happen." "He was very sick this day too." "He was." "He just wasn't feeling well, but again, just, I think pulled in everything he could emotionally to be that man of wisdom, the mentor that Sam always turns to when he needs help." "It's such a windy day that I think you see it in the outtakes on the DVD, but we had to tape his pants in the back of his pants because his pant legs were..." "Fluttering." "Fluttering too much." "...flying everywhere." "Let me say as an actor, when you...." "It is not an easy thing to suddenly find yourself thrust in the middle of a scene with an Oscar-winner." "Right." "And Mike's doing a great job of not in the least bit looking intimidated." "I've seen actors who have one or two lines, let's say in a low-budget movie they seem very cognizant of the fact" "They can't focus, but Mike is really doing a" "I was very impressed when I saw this." "The chemistry between those two, they hit it off very early on, it seemed like." "And Michael Higgenbottom talked often about how wonderful Lou was to encourage and support him and bring it out from him, you know?" "It helps when you're down-to-earth and you don't carry the stigma of "I'm a movie star." Which is Lou." "Just a" "Yeah." "A wonderful man." "Tell me something." "And he loved to improvise, didn't he?" "That's a challenge." "He did, he just ran with it." "He ran with it, man." "You better keep up with him." "There's your answer, boy." "That's believable, isn't it?" "It's believable that that's his grandson." "That's believable, isn't it?" "It's believable that that's his grandson." "Alex's Tavern has been around in Memphis since, what does it say there, 1953 I think, is that right?" "So we tried to" "With Neely's Bar-B-Que and that there's a lot of historic sites." "I still have that picture in my wallet." "That's a great scene." "You know, I never gave you that picture back." "Probably put it on eBay at some point." "If you're listening, I'm selling that picture." "And the editing here was great." "And having these go back and forth between what they're talking about and what Mac's going through." "And we did a little lighting change here, we wanted to show that a little time has passed and perhaps the sun is going down now it's late in the afternoon, they've been talking for maybe close to an hour and Blake is exhausted." "And now Dr. Vines cranks it up a little bit to kind of get to the nuts and bolts of the discussion here." "Those are the kinds of things you don't think about but they make a difference." "When you watch the movie, you see that they've been there a long time now." "It's amazing that when" "We've seen the movie so many times and been in theaters many times with people watching it but when she's talking and she makes this point, everybody's so quiet they're realizing" " It's like they're" "They're in the counseling session." "They understand where she's going." "Now, the audience may not know but the guy sitting next to me in the beard is my dad." "I'm joking, he's not my dad." "We can make stuff up, they would never research it and find out." "Nobody will know." "Let's make this more interesting." "Someone's gotta throw him a line." "What does that mean?" "Something small." "Say one nice thing tonight." "See what happens." "I know what happens." "When was the last time you tried?" "How much do you have to hate someone to let them die in hurt when one kind word can make all the difference?" "This is a great line." "ls that original?" "Yeah, I think that was just one of those that came along..." "...as the script was" "You did a phenomenal job, David." "Wonderfully anointed story." "And so" " Again, an amazing thing that our location manager was able to find..." "Actually, in speaking with someone that" "Some members from our church we were trying to find a library that" "A house that had a library rather than us going out and creating one, which we had talked about doing in the church itself." "But one of our church members said, "l live next door to a priest who has a beautiful library."" "And our location manager went out to take a look at it...." "Isn't this house next door to Mrs. Bradshaw's house?" "lt is." "It's the house next door." "The character, Mrs. Bradshaw, that has the baseball bat later in the movie, this house is right next door and we literally came in and used it as-is and it worked beautifully." "And we were able to get permission to use some of the great civil rights historical photos." "You just saw a moment ago a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr." "And so we basically surrounded Lou with these historical photos that again, just plays into the discussion of the origin of the grace card and some of the things Lou has been through." "Shows him as a civil rights leader." ""--from his friend John Escue." "May 31 st, 1884."" "1884." "And this scene was actually filmed the same day that we filmed the walking scene down by the river." "So just like our other days, this was also another demanding day." "Lou was with us for a couple of days so we were limited as to how much time we had so we had to put as much into one day here as we could and again, everybody pulled through." "The intricacy of putting this schedule together for filming because you bring in actors like Lou Gossett and Dawntoya Thomason, we do all their scenes while they're in town." "It's really confusing when you're actually filming to try to keep the story line straight but when the editors get hold of it then it all comes together." "While Lou was here we not only filmed this scene, we filmed the last scene..." "...before he left." "Right." "He asked them to forgive all the people that had done something wrong." "All slave owners, whether they asked for forgiveness or not." "This line here got" "Kind of like your last sermon, huh?" "lots of laughs everywhere we would go." "your great-great-grandfather how to read." "Gave him this Bible...." "And of course, this scene is important in establishing the origin of the grace card itself, the story behind it." "And of course, we see this actual grace card in other scenes too in the film as we progress toward the finale that happens in the church when Mac comes face-to-face with the man who killed his son." "A lot of people are gonna wanna know if that's a true story." "I know the answer." "People have asked, it's not a true story at all." "ls it based on something?" "No, it's not based on anything." "It was just, again as we've discussed in other things we've done through our post-production process and different interviews we've done, it's really started out to be a play on the phrase "the race card."" "And of course, the more we looked into it the more we prayed and thought about how it would work with the movie, it gave us an actual physical card." "You know, we hear stories now of people making grace cards that are putting it to use and make a difference in someone's life." "What a wonderful way to extend grace to someone too by offering to be their friend and pray for them or forgive them." "...by offering to be their friend and pray for them or forgive them." "It's a wonderful thing that God put together here." "One of my favorite scenes in the movie and one of the favorites of others because of just the energy, the emotion that comes out in this scene is just incredible." "And the tension in this scene right here is just..." "...so thick, you know?" "Here comes an inside joke." "You remember it?" "Right here." "It's Monday night." "All the good restaurants are closed." "A comedian." "Very funny." "Only a few people get it." "I'm a comedian, by trade." "Oh, I get it now." "You get it now?" "I'm teasing." "No, you're not." "No, that was a good line." "And if you haven't caught on already we're referring to the fact that Michael Joiner..." "Professional comedian." "...is a comedian." "Tours around the country and this is a good time to plug your website." "And so check that out and does a great job" "If you're looking for an outreach event at your church you can't do better than Michael Joiner coming in and sharing his testimony..." "...and his amazing" "Jokes." "Yes." "And stories." "How many times did we shoot this scene?" "Well, many." "Again, going back to the fact that we had one camera...." "And no pretend plates." "That's right." "So the plates I crash against the wall are real plates." "We went through 10 plates?" "Is that true?" "You had no stunt plates or whatever they were called." "Oh, yeah, they were breaking every time." "So they really broke." "If they broke we had a big...." "What was it?" "A kind of a cushion blanket, taped to the wall to absorb the impact." "I had to hit the wall-- First I hit the gaffer and he was out." "Then I hit an extra." "She shouldn't have been there anyway." "She was in the way." "What?" "Just a great way" "Again, you realize so quickly they're covering something up and he picked up on it." "It's the non-verbal communication that's so good right there." "What I like about this scene is you think they're gonna have a breakthrough finally." "Because I start off and then here we go." "It gets even worse than it's ever been." "Dad, I'm not gonna graduate." "Come again?" "I'm flunking English and Spanish again, and l" "Again?" "I have an incomplete in Trig." "I'm not gonna be able to make it up." "So we have another year of this." "I'll have to finish up at Oakdale." "I can make it up by Christmas" "Oakdale?" "Joy is a beautiful lady in person and she made herself look like the beaten wife in all of these scenes." "And I might say that we weren't slamming public schools but as a true Memphian, we're going through right now a public debate between county and city schools reconciling." "That would be a line a true Memphian might make here so Michael's getting into his character here." "When he looks up at Joy here, I always loved this shot right here where he just looks across at her that's just kind of a chilling shot there." "And an amazing exchange." "She's saying a lot without saying a word." "this just in." "Just kill me, all right?" "Just get it over with and kill me fast." "Right here I'm thinking, "Hit the wall." "Hit the wall." "Hit the wall."" "You know, I believe that of course in every city across our country there's lots of people who are just like Mac." "And I think that, you know, one of the reasons when the movie was over people would sit through the credits no one would get up and leave is because I think the Macs and other people who could identify with characters it's like they're looking in a mirror at the screen and saying, "Wow, that's how I am towards my wife or my child."" "And lots of mothers who went up to Joy after seeing the movie and said:" ""You know, I'm just like you, I feel like I'm always the referee trying to step in between my husband and our children."" "And, you know, so I think that people saw themselves in the different characters." "We've actually had a lot of responses from guys saying, "l saw myself in there."" "And it really challenged them to change and become a better father, husband." "I'm thinking of one in particular where the lady on our Facebook page said:" ""My husband has been crying for two days now, and said:" "'l don't wanna be like that Mac character anymore.'"" "Yeah." "lncredible." "It's amazing how God has been using so many different aspects of this movie." "This is a lot of nice little humor too." "Joyce, who plays the nurse, is an actual nurse in real life right there." "Great job." "Actually poked Michael with the" "No, she didn't." "What is LDL, anyway?" "In your case, Mr. Wright, too darn high is what that is." "So again, that's just something that plays into the story line a bit later with Sam's blood work and the fact that he's having frequent blood draws to monitor his cholesterol." "Kind of a unique scene where he's listening to them talk about him, and that's actually taking place at the same school." "I love this lighting right here." "We just couldn't find a locker room at one of the police precincts..." "We just couldn't find a locker room at one of the police precincts that would work so we used a school." "We might mention that the fella getting the ticket is David's father-in-law." "David's father-in-law." "He is Cuban and so we have this car full of Hispanic individuals." "And again, as the conversation builds here, you know Mac knows right away that Sam's gonna believe that he pulled this car over just because it was a group of Hispanic people." "You start to see the frustration on Michael Higgenbottom's face who's playing Sam, in trying to deal with his racist partner." "Now I'm pushing it too far." "Here a breakthrough does happen." "Sorry, go ahead." "Because now I'm going a little too far." "I don't know." "Are you?" "That car was speeding." "Five miles over." "Law's the law." "We needed a long road to film this scene so this is in a part of Memphis called Shelby Farms so it's a long stretch of road so it worked great." "We didn't want to stop too much because it was a fairly long section of dialogue over a couple of pages in the script." "The problem was by the time we got to this area for filming it was around 4:30 or 5:00 in the afternoon, so it was rush hour and we had police motorcycle units surrounding the car, so we were holding up traffic." "So I think that we caused a major traffic jam that day..." "...because of this scene." "I remember that now." "Were we losing our light?" "We were, as a matter of fact, and so it was kind of a...." "Something our colorist had to work hard to give us equal lighting on each side of the car because before we did the color correction you could see that on one side of the car the sun was going down whereas on the other it was pretty bright." "So that presented a little challenge as well." "And it might be interesting to note that the car is on a trailer while they're driving, they're riding on a trailer so we have all these different shots coming through but they're not really looking at each other that much." "They're being driven." "Right." "This is really smart in the writing because we start to make a connection which is important." "When Mike talks to me about" "I realize I don't know what everybody's" "Other people have problems too, you know?" "And of course, here we're planting the seeds to...." "As we move on through the story that Sam" " We now know that Sam has a strange relationship with his father hasn't talked to him in many years." "And again, we're planting in the minds of people perhaps something's gonna come out in the story that he hasn't seen his dad in years." "What's gonna happen with that?" "No matter what he says to him." "And Michael Higgenbottom in that scene does a great job as one who's personally experienced it trying to say, "Make sure you keep your relationship with your son and your father" " Keep it intact."" "Who is this rap artist?" "This is actually a combination of several different artists." "I know that's TobyMac singing there." "Oh, is that TobyMac?" "That's Toby there." "Did we have Lecrae in here somewhere?" "No." "Oh, okay." "No, we...." "But there's someone else I thought." "Amisho Baraka plays the role..." "That's it." "...of the missionary at the end, the man who returns." "Here's Mrs. Bradshaw's home and the house next door was where the study scene was found" " Filmed." "Now, tell us about the little joke you played on us that night, David." "Well, those of you who switch over and watch the outtakes later you'll see another person who's the neighborhood-watch president who comes up also with...." "Here's another natural." "This lady's a natural." "She had us cracking up." "She knew her role well." "She's now dubbed "The Crazy Lady" at church." "She did a great job." "Myrna Smith." "No, no, thank you." "The last officer was here took a full report." "He came in and" "Yes, I was here a few weeks back." "Oh, really?" "I don't recall." "We'll make another drive past" "Again, this lady required no direction whatsoever." "She just played into it beautifully, she knew what we were looking for and did an amazing job." "Okay, good night." "And here's Mike showing, again, a guy who has the right to be offended but he's not." "You're still establishing what a gentle giant he is, you know?" "in a motion detector like the last 10 of these calls." "One of our long nights of shooting." "ls this the last?" "Next to the last night." "Next to the last?" "Okay." "And of course, this" "From this point until the time when Blake is airlifted in the helicopter that was one full night of shooting and we really did pretty much go in order here." "We started with them arriving, going through the chase going into the warehouse, Blake getting shot and the airlift to the hospital." "Pretty much went in order this night." "Seemed like we had a huge galley of people there this night too." "Yeah, there were lots of folks who gathered in that knew, "Okay, they're bringing in the helicopter let's go check it out."" "Well, we kind of said our goodbyes this night to a lot of people also." "Yes." "Right." "I mean, there's such a camaraderie." "When you work on a movie a theatrical production, in this case, a movie 30 days, you get to know each other." "You become a family." "It's really" "Not like you can just say, "Okay, maybe we'll see you out there."" "You're very close, you love these people." "Twelve, 1 5 hour days, you know?" "We shot this scene several different times because we wanted to just barely get a glance of the fact that there was something in Blake's hand." "So it was tricky with the lighting to have him spin around and let you see a reflection of" "Or just a glimpse of something in his hands, so...." "You hear a lot of people gasping in the theater when they realize who he just shot." "The injured suspect is Officer McDonald's son." "Over." "Blake!" "And again, we had great help from a company in Memphis called Hospital Wing, and they are actually the group that will go out and rescue crash victims or...." "lf there's an accident or" "They do a wonderful job." "Yeah." "It was freezing that night." "That morning." "So yeah, not only did they provide the helicopter for this scene but also provided a helicopter to do our aerial shots that you see in other parts of the movie." "Be it a shot of the hospital like you'll see coming up or the shot of the bridge or the different aerial shots you've seen of the police cars they were really willing to help us out." "And a great Christian group of people at Hospital Wing who made that happen." "Yes?" "Mrs." "McDonald?" "I'm Sam Wright." "So this is the first time that they've seen each other face to face and...." "What's happened to Mac?" "I need you to come with me, okay?" "What's happened to Mac?" "I think they threw a monkey wrench in the filming originally when they first shot that scene because they both start celebrating." "You were surprised." "Is that in the outtakes?" "That's in the outtakes as well, yes." "And again, great support from the hospital allowing us to come in and use the emergency room areas waiting rooms, patient rooms." "All of those scenes were shot, you know, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. also." "Yeah, they were actually renovating an entire wing of the hospital and it just so happened that, while we were there filming that wing was made available to us." "So it just could not have worked any better." "Get him a chest and...." "St. Francis Hospital is just down the street from David's office." "So he knows a lot of the people there anyways." "She'll be here before you know it." "You got one thing to do for me." "Relax and go to sleep and think good thoughts for both of us." "And again, every scene where we felt like we needed guidance and support you know, we had nurses and doctors there with us." "You know, to make sure everything was realistic." "I remember Michael telling Joy, "Go ahead and hit me hard."" "It was easier for" " It felt...." "She'd try to hold her smack a couple times which actually gave me whiplash, so I said, "Just smack me."" "And she had no problem doing that over and over again." "That was the most fun she had in the entire filming." "No, I'm kidding." "Stephen Dervan again." "You know, Stephen is such a funny" "He is a hilarious guy." "He's hilarious." "To see him playing a serious role is also kind of weird." "We were out of extras so that's me actually playing a doctor there." "I'm joking again." "He's actually" " He is a doctor here." "Yeah, that's Dr. Newmon Goshorn, who...." "A plastic surgeon." "He's a good guy." "Yeah, an actual plastic surgeon here in town who" "We didn't find out until after we were through filming but his wife made the comment, "He always wanted to be an actor."" "So he-- You know, God fulfilled his desires and gave him a supporting role here in The Grace Card and...." "He's a fine Christian man." "Done a lot of charity work for people in Memphis, even." "It was amazing how many people recognized him in the screenings and" "And again here" " Again, this is just one of those days where Joy was physically exhausted when we finished shooting because there's so many times in this day and these scenes that you're gonna see over the next minute that she had to just really give it all she could emotionally." "She" " I'll tell you a little secret." "She was listening to music that I think had something to do with somebody." "Her mom passed away." "Her mom's passing." "I mean, that's really smart." "You really wanna just put yourself totally into that atmosphere." "Are you saying we're gonna lose Blake?" "What I'm saying is to survive Blake needs a kidney transplant immediately." "Give him mine." "It's not that simple, I'm afraid." "I'm the father." "We tried to do research in making sure that...." "That, you know, we understood fully the reasons why a person could or could not be a kidney donor." "Because some folks will point that out." "And so it really is a little bit more complex than what we, you know, portray here." "Because not only does the blood typing have to be the same you also have to do antigen matching." "But we kind of just wrapped it around the fact that either the blood type was wrong or if you have high blood pressure." "I'm not sure of the various reasons why you can't be a donor but that was a fact as well that we brought into the script, so...." "Did Mr. Rowan do that music as well?" "Because I've always loved these pianos." "Yeah, we actually had a couple different composers who came in to do some of the other tracks." "So any time you hear the guitar as the primary instrument, that's a Brent Rowan track." "I thought, Michael, you did a great job coming out of the hospital and the way that you just portrayed the total disbelief of what you're having to go through again." "...of what you're having to go through again." "Thank you, that was one of my favorite scenes actually, right here." "And Michael Higgenbottom, who acts like he's asleep in the car may actually have been." "He was working all day and filming all night..." "...and working all day, filming all night." "And going to school." "Oh, man." "Mac." "Hey, Mac." "Nurse said he did okay." "He's gonna make it." "That music is so perfect for this." "I thought I'd wait around and take you two home to get some rest." "Where's Sara?" "She's with Blake." "And I think here you begin to sense the downward spiral." "We already thought that Mac was at the bottom..." "...but now he's really at the bottom." "Yeah, this is it." "It's like everything." "You could see he's being humbled, even, you know?" "Yeah." "This was a very intense intense scene." "Sam is struggling for the words to say and probably doesn't say them right." "And Mac doesn't give him any grace at all right here." "I'm a really good shot." "And again, none of this was planned, I don't think but J.P. might have had an insight." "But I just love the way the reflection through the grated divider between the front seat and the back seat in the squad car, casts this kind of unique shadow on your face and it just all really played out beautifully." "I did it wrong." "I shouldn't have run into that building." "You know what?" "As a director or whatever role you're playing in the crew there's certain times when you really have to be sensitive to what your actors are going through emotionally." "And while there's certain days or scenes when you can be more light-hearted this was definitely one of those times where we tried to make certain that everyone was focused on-- This is a difficult scene." "This is a difficult scene to bring for both Michael Higgenbottom and Michael Joiner." "And it's definitely one of those times where you wanna give your actors space and...." "Because...." "Can I tell a funny story?" "Absolutely." "You're absolutely right." "I prepared." "As a matter of fact, I told Mike." "I said" "When you were setting up the lights, I said:" ""l gotta prepare for this scene this is where I've lost everything and I want it to show."" "Sometimes an actor over-prepares, okay?" "And the first time we did it, if you remember I looked at Mike and he said my face looked so funny." "He was laughing-- He started laughing." "And he tried to move out of the picture." "And I think he might have some of that in the outtakes." "And...." "We just improvised a little bit and we cut." "And I said, "You know, I think I over-prepared that one so...."" "Curse God and die or give up...." "There's a fine line between just" "You know, you wanna look stressed and messed up but you don't wanna look silly." "And I think the fact that you finally have hit bottom here you portrayed that very well because you could've easily become so angry with what he said to you." "And yet, you realize he's trying to help but you're so exhausted at the grief you're going through." "That seems to be a very natural reaction." "Again, just amazing lighting here and...." "You know, for the young crew that we had" "I say "young" compared to probably how it is for most films." "These guys have maybe done one or two feature films in their careers" " I'm talking about our lighting and technical crew." "I mean, they just did an incredible job." "Again that moment right there." "That moment is a very powerful" "There was a gasp every time we were in the theater watching it." "But we were trying to be very realistic and make a statement too about the need for racial reconciliation in the kingdom of God and in Memphis, in particular." "And we're trying to deal with it honestly here." "And I think nine times out of 10, in the theater you could've heard a pin drop." "It was just-- People were so intently focusing on what was being said and done." "See the anger in Michael's face here." "Or Sam's face." "Here's Tenth-- Oh, no, that's Third Day, correct?" "Third Day." ""Cry Out to Jesus," which was a very appropriate song for the montage sequence coming up." "Showing the different characters dealing with the suffering and the emotional grief that they're experiencing with Blake's-- The follow-up to Blake's shooting." "You can just feel the weight of what a guy must be feeling right now in a situation like that." "And this is one of those great moments in a movie where something's happening and already people" "Their wheels begin to turn, trying to figure out:" ""Who's in the car right there," you know?" "Hell itself may be nothing more than eternity all alone." "It is also said that our father will never give up searching or calling for us." "Many is the man who cannot or will not hear that call  until he is completely broken." "Great lines there, David." "Great lines, and again, some great things from the Art Department." "They actually had to go out and make those stones to have for that scene." "Oh, did they?" "Yeah, I guess they did, didn't they?" "Great group of teens from Calvary Church there..." "And other volunteers from the church who are acting like they're calling for" " Trying to find a kidney." "And Mac's back in his favorite spot, huh?" "Trying to find my answer in the bottle still but knowing it's not there." "Father, you know we need a miracle right now for Blake." "We're coming to you asking that you help them find a kidney that will work with Blake's body." "You touched him." "Been there, done that, when trying to" "Those sermons he's throwing away, I saw Pastor Lynn picking them up." "I can identify with that." "There's so many times when you've got so much on your heart and so much" " So many burdens you're carrying for others you just can't put the sermon together." "Michael Higgenbottom does a great job here." "Coffee first, then talk." "That gets a laugh too, that line." "Yeah?" "It's funny, when people are keen on everything in a movie they're really getting it." "This movie just kind of draws you in." "There's so many things that people can identify with in it." "They gonna lose that boy?" "There's little things, just like pictures over his right shoulder." "The pictures of the little girls." "You know, so many things that go into" "Behind the scenes of a film and making it look right." "And oftentimes, many of the things the Art Department will prepare, just like those pictures, often will go unnoticed." "Sometimes they don't even end up in the shot." "But the hours and hours of pre-production planning to make it look like, you know, this family really is" "This really is their home as you want it to appear in the movie things that go into it." "Justin and Mallory in our church donated their home to be used for this shot and for these scenes." "And we didn't realize, again, what all went into developing the set." "There were two-by-fours nailed into their roof and for lights to hang on." "He had to do a lot of repair work." "They all were so gracious about it and so excited to be used in this ministry." "We did not pay for a single set location you know, for the entire filming." "And of course, that's not the way it is out in Hollywood." "Even if you wanna use a coffee shop you're gonna spend thousands of dollars to have that set for a day." "I did a short film once on my own." "I had to sneak in." "And do these" " On an outside shot where they have these big rocks." "I wanted to get this scene." "And they said:" ""No, the folks who live half a mile away they want $1000 if any-- Because they say any lighting--"" "I mean, it's just crazy." "I have to ride around in a cop car for 10 hours a day...." "Here you start to see Sam's real frustration coming through again and how he's been straining with the patience and perseverance to try to minister to him." "What's that got to do with you?" "He's showing me where my heart is and where it isn't." "It's not with people." "I thought it was...." "Here comes a profound statement here in a second which I think is really good, which she tells him." "This is just words to me now." "It's not real anymore." "Chasing the bad guys...." "I was sitting right over there on the sofa behind that scene." "And I'm growing there...." "This scene, just like so many others one of the things that made our filming so unique is that everyone came to the set knowing their lines." "And it made it so much easier." "Because these scenes that have, you know more than a half page of dialogue sometimes can be very challenging if the actors are not prepared." "Especially in the case where you had Mac and Sam together in their scenes." "They just went so smoothly because everybody was so prepared and their hearts were right and focused on" "Because this was a ministry and people took it very serious and, you know, made it so much easier for the crew to know that:" "Okay, once we say action we could literally go through the entire scene without stopping." "Right here." "And watch Mike's reaction." "It's perfect." "God didn't bring him into your life." "He brought you into his." "You just gotta figure out why." "It's like, "Why is she always right?"" "This is in the chapel at St. Francis Hospital." "This was shot late, or early morning hours." "As actors, this is the scene we're waiting for." "Yeah, this is the one." "We knew it was gonna be powerful." "So we're in the chapel at the hospital." "In fact, we debated on doing a reshoot and maybe showing Sam coming down the hall passing a few doctors or nurses and seeing the word "chapel" written on the door that he entered." "Because we wanted to make sure people understood that, hey, they're actually still in the hospital." "But I think most people are able to figure that out." "I do remember both these guys the intensity of this scene was so strong every time we reshot it, we had to start from the beginning because it was so" "They had to work into the emotions." "Yeah." "I'm here, aren't I?" "Yeah, I'll never forget the first take." "You know, it went perfect." "And I don't know if anybody on the set had a dry eye." "Because it was just so moving." "And again, not to take away from what's being said here but the lighting brilliantly done." "You can see the flickering of the candles in the background with the shallow depth of field that J.P. was shooting with here just really all came together beautifully." "I remember when the first time we did this scene was done John Nasraway just was standing there, just:" "I think his line was, "We had real acting here right now" or something to that effect." "It was a very powerful, powerful scene." "And we didn't keep your favorite shot, David but I remember I had schnitzel coming out of my nose and you said:" ""l really like that." "That made it very real."" "I mean, any time you've got real snot and it's an emotional scene you can't put that in artificially." "Even the cgi experts have trouble putting that in." "Sam, I...." "We've had people comment to us also how grateful they were that we didn't try to answer every question for everybody." "Where Mac asks this question, Sam responds:" ""There's just not a good answer to that."" "People have to struggle with that issue themselves and come to their own understanding as they communicate with God how to get through that burden and that grief." "I even made my 5-year-old keep riding that stupid bike." "He didn't want to." "I made him." "If I just...." "This is where you look around the theater and people are starting to wipe their eyes." "Yeah, that's one of the greatest things about being able to go to these early screenings of the movies." "Sitting back in the dark and watching everyone wiping their eyes and you know that the scene works you know that God's speaking to the hearts of those who need to hear this message." "Why would he let two little boys die and let some miserable wretch who doesn't wanna live anyway go on?" "Here's that question, and so many people ask that." "There's no answer to that question." "There's just not." "Yeah, it could have been." "It could have appeared way too staged..." "...if he had an answer to that." "Right." "what is there to believe in, man?" "What--?" "What's the use of any of it?" "But you see the true struggle of the human journey..." "And you know, Sam is trying to minister to him and love but not try to have all these pat answers out there for him either." "Every time I think I got it all figured out I get a curveball thrown at me." "I only know we're in this together, Mac." "And somebody put us here." "And it wasn't to make us suffer, either." "We brought that one on ourselves." "I might mention there's a lot of ad-libbing that these two did as they worked on this scene." "And they really...." "They really did do a great job in bringing it together." "When we practiced it, we realized that, you know we just felt God even showing up at the rehearsal." "Yeah." "I said, "Mike, let's not block this." "Let's not practice this too much." We both agreed." "Let's kind of just go with it." "And again, as Pastor Lynn mentioned a moment ago this isn't one of those scenes where you can stop right here and say:" ""Okay, cut." "Let's do that line one more time."" "I mean, it just cannot happen that way." "And so to do the different setups required us to go..." "...back to the beginning." "All the way back." "And again." "lf I recall, we started this scene at 2 a.m. and finished it at 6 a.m. I mean, they were worn out." "They were...." "The intensity was so strong, they had to start from the beginning go all the way through every time we had to reshoot." "And I remember, as we were leaving there was no question in anybody's mind whether or not we had captured the emotion that was needed." "And that shot right there of the hand coming down" "Very symbolic." "Yeah." "A lot of folks cheer right here." "You know, one thing I wanted to do-- And this is" " I gotta" "Someone told me that they saw this." "I prayed that when I walk into this next scene we know I'm now a Christian." "I prayed that the people would see the demeanor." "Because you should see" "There should be a weight lifted." "Right." "And you do your preparation as an actor and hope they notice." "A couple people have told me that, which is really nice." "They said, "l see that you're-- You got joy in your heart and you're a different person."" "And I mean, you've seen that in real life." "Right, yeah." "You see the transformation..." "...take place, yeah." "Over time." "Like right here, I wanted them to see..." "...something different in this guy." "There's a different peace about him." "I think this is another one of those scenes that really spoke to fathers and sons, you know." "And I think, again, in the years to come that this scene in The Grace Card will be a scene that will..." "Classic scene." "...help many families." "Yeah." "Over the years as people begin to share this on DVD that it'll speak to families around the world, we hope." "My son, Dustin-- This scene means a lot to me." "He was visiting for his birthday, if you remember and he was watching this on the monitor." "And you can see Mac struggling still to, in his own way, apologize." "But the fact that his heart is wanting him to apologize is where that" "You can see that transformation taking place." "Hey, none of that." "Look, we're-- We're gonna beat this thing, okay?" "They think they found a match in Canada" "Dad." "I'm sorry, Dad." "Every day we would have visitors that would come on set from our church or from other churches." "People who were perhaps working, for example in the hospital, wanted to see how it was going." "I remember about six or eight ladies standing around a monitor all watching this scene." "I remember all of them with tears streaming down their faces." "I said, "That's another pretty good indication that this scene is working."" "You know, when people are there and you don't have the final coloring in place, and the music but just the raw footage of what's being shot was speaking to these people, so...." "And in the theaters, you hear people sniffling and crying in this scene." "So you know it's really-- The message is getting through." "Do you realize how much I love you?" "I love you, Blake." "And you think of all the years it took him to hear that." "And, of course, this is the reveal scene when we learn that Sam is gonna be the donor for Blake." "The kidney donor." "And this scene here is actually a reshoot." "Because the original script, the reveal was done in a different way." "Oh, no kidding?" "Yep." "But here we came back" "Was this shot after the whole movie?" "A couple months later." "No kidding." "And we filmed this scene...." "How about that." "I think the original way that we had it just seemed a little too manufactured." "And this scene, it made a lot more natural." "Oh, it sure does." "It'll give me something else to think about." "And that was just after you, David thinking we could do that differently and you rewrote it." "And it just so happened Michael and Dr. Goshorn were here..." "...to reshoot." "Yeah, they happened to be here." "That made all the difference, I can tell you." "That's a good scene." "So you mean that l--?" "That's almost funny the way he reacts right there." "And that music, I love it." "Justin Tolley there with the mask on." "Yeah, is that Justin?" "He's our...." "He was my right-hand man." "He did whatever." "We get a large laugh in the audience from the being an overachiever." "And it's unique to see both surgical beds crossing in the hallway here." "And don't forget my garlic bread, either." "It's almost like a whole new bright movie now." "Right there, there's another line that's just" " Another scene...." "And again, we move pretty fast through the story here once we have the actual surgery." "But one of the ways I realized we could slow it down was to insert this montage of different clips." "Because it moved too fast from one scene to the next." "So we inserted the montage and, again, after this great moment here between Mac and his wife." "Some people ask what I whisper and what I said was, "Sorry I threw your meatloaf up against the wall."" "I wasn't really a romantic type of guy so I didn't know what else to say." "I remember this was, I think, 4 in the morning also..." "...for this scene." "Here's Pastor Lynn." "Isn't that sad?" "The best wink you'll ever see captured on film." "Yes." "Mommy, we had a question." "I wanna get a T-shirt with this line." "It's the best line of the film too." "lt is." "On the inside, we're the same." "Yeah." "white boy?" "Well...." "That's Pastor Lynn, folks." "Oh, that's a shame." "Every time you see me" "You look good on film." "Every time you see me, I have a different hairdo." "No, I think you're the perfect-- That was just wonderful." "There he is feeling the stick again." "I think though, I enjoy this more than any other scene in the movie because everything's coming together here..." "...and TobyMac's music is great." "That song was written for this film." "First time we heard that song, we said it's gotta be in the movie." "I thought it was a great idea to do this montage of memories." "It really is, man." "And I was surprised how touched I was when I saw this." "Were you there in the editing room kind of helping figure this stuff out?" "Well, you know, it was later when we first started-- Later in the editing process." "It just kind of jumped from that scene with Dawntoya and the two girls right to the church scene." "lt just seemed to move too fast, so...." "No kidding." "I sent a note to the editor saying go back and pull in some bits from just showing..." "...the history of their relationship..." "What a difference." "...and it really did work beautifully." "lt made all the difference, man." "We had about 250 on set for this scene that we're about to see." "That was our biggest extras set, I believe." "We needed more extras this day than any other day." "And...." "My wife was visiting." "That's Ephie Johnson up front who wrote some of the original music, singing that song." "David, you said this was...." "Coming up, this scene, you always said you weren't sure if I could cry." "Because we filmed this before." "Right." "This was the second weekend of filming." "Yeah, one of the earlier scenes." "The first time that required, you know, an emotional response from Mac the first time he would have to cry on camera." "I remember, huddled around the monitor, I was just praying, "God I know that this is the person you wanted for this part." "But I'm still not sure he can cry, Lord."" "And, wow, what an emotional moment it was when this person comes down the aisle." "Because, you know, we didn't know what was gonna happen." "We just let it go." "We told the audience to react to what's happening." "Good way to do that." "And...." "One of the interesting stories behind this scene is that the camera broke." "There was only one other Red Camera anywhere in the near vicinity and that was a God thing, that we could get it." "We had an impromptu church service right there while we were waiting on the new camera." "Yeah, really an amazing day." "This church has a balcony which, in the wide shots like this one you can't see what's above the screen there, but there's a balcony." "My wife is actually up there." "It's full of many people who are watching the filming as it happens." "It was pretty full, the whole balcony." "Pray for you every day." "Everybody stuck with us that day for so long and still had the energy at the end of it." "And of course this is a special service because Sam is coming back." "This is his first service after he's recovered from surgery." "If you watch through the crowd, you see some different characters." "Dr. Vines." "The police sergeant, Chris Thomas, is there." "Yeah." "The lieutenant, I'm sorry." "And some of the other police officers that you've seen in some of the earlier scenes." "I remember Joy commenting, "It's the only scene..." "..." "I can actually have makeup on."" "Yeah." "Now, six weeks ago, right here...." "There's a line coming up I probably ought to explain because we've had so many people comment about it." "When he talks about, "It's not justice we need, it's grace."" "Henri Nouwen made the statement years ago that normal is what God created but natural is what it has deteriorated to by our own efforts." "What we were referring to here was that justice happens in the natural but grace and forgiveness happens in the supernatural." "We always need justice, but justice comes after the...." "What is needed, you know" "It's the supernatural that comes after justice doesn't respond the way it needs to." "I don't know if I said that well." "You communicated" "We're not trying to say we don't need justice, but justice is what is needed after the theological, the spiritual solution has been ignored." "When we brought Lou Gossett in..." "...that was a great moment." "Yeah." "We had a great introduction for him and of course..." "...a standing ovation as he came in" "And there's your wife beside him." "Yeah." "Needless to say, Lou is a very popular actor." "Because of the number of people we had here it was hard to give" "Let everyone have an autograph or shake his hand." "So even though we announced, "Hey, just please give Lou some space, we gotta get through this scene,"" "...people were still asking him, "Hey, can I get a picture?"" "Esther stepped in..." "He was very gracious." "...and sat next to him, just kind of to help him make sure we got through the scene in the time that we had there, but...." "And I promise to pray for each of you every single day to forgive you whether you ask for it or not." "All right." "Amen, now." "And to ask you to forgive me." "This scene was actually supposed to end when Mac extends his hand and they take each other's hand." "It wasn't supposed to continue with the all the emotional follow-up." "As I was saying a moment ago we just asked people to kind of go with it give us what you think would happen naturally." "When we saw everyone begin to stand, we decided..." "Keep filming." "...we gotta let the scene continue." "I think that worked." "Never hurts to have more." "That's right." "He does a great job here as well." "And I think 99 percent of people in the theater when they watch this they say, "Oh, it's Sam's dad coming back."" "That was our intentional" "People tell me that." "We intentionally wanted people to think that." "my crime with eight years of my life." "Justice was served, but not to this family." "I owe them a debt I can never repay." "I'd like to thank the Catholic Church for lending us their communion tablecloth for that outfit because we didn't know what he was supposed to wear." "That's an actual outfit from-- -ls it really?" "Yeah." "You guys went all out." "Go ahead." "Very authentic." "With all my heart...." "This guy really did a great job." "And again, going back to what we were saying this is that moment when we're watching and we realize that:" ""Hey, our actor can cry." "He can really cry."" "And there was such intensity in this room when we finally got to this scene." "But again, this is early on in the filming of the" "And you know, it's amazing how the final scene was early on." "You didn't know what I was gonna do, right?" "I could pull out a gun." "Exactly." "This actor, he's not sure what I'm gonna do." "Do you validate?" "I'm sorry, I couldn't" "I couldn't resist that." "And again, just the emotion here that we got from the crowd the response of the people that were in the congregation." "Because a lot of these extras just responded to a call in the paper." "I mean, it's-- They realize that Memphis needs this story and they were really into it." "Yeah." "I'm telling you, folks everywhere are saying it's the most powerful ending they've ever experienced and I think it is." "And I think it's because God really shows up there." "I've been in very few movies where there's applause at the end." "A lot of times, spontaneous applause would break out right here." "And then they just sit there, and just like" " Because" "There's stories of-- I know we heard that in one city that when the movie ended in one showing the whole audience began singing "Amazing Grace."" "And stories of people getting up to leave and turning and seeing other people standing and embracing someone next to them." "I know one mother said that following this movie on the ride home, it was the first normal conversation she had had with her son in a number of years." "You know, we just" "We praise God for these different ways that lives have been touched." "Great reports of what is coming out through this movie." "In fact, even right now as we're recording this audio it's playing in theaters in Australia and New Zealand." "So there's no telling what all God is going to do through this effort." "And again, just before we close here, just these credits are about twice as long as you would find in a normal feature film just because of the hundreds of people who volunteered their time who donated food and locations and things to make it happen." "And really, this is one of the only things they got in return was just being able to see their name in the credits." "And, you know, we're grateful for the hundreds of people who made it happen." "You know, David, I worked on a lot of productions and I could not tell who was volunteer and who was professional, they did their job so well." "You know, Byron Tyler and all his kids, for instance." "And just-- I mean, they just learned really fa" "And they did it professionally and it was just incredible." "It really was amazing how God brought everything together." "Not only from the beginning when he gave David such an anointed story but with all the wonderful attitudes and willingness to work long hours and to make this happen to bring glory to him." "And our prayer is that God will take this movie and heal relationships, bring reconciliation have grace and forgiveness to be offered in a much more realistic and natural way, and easy way." "And we're getting those stories." "I mean, God is working through this film in marvelous ways." "And we're just delighted to be a part of the ministry of the kingdom." "And we thank you for listening in to the commentary here and ask for your prayers for Calvary Pictures in the years ahead and the projects that God we pray will bring to us and we will tell the stories that he wants us to tell." "And, you know, continue to play the grace card every day in your own life with the people that you come in contact with." "And if I can just say that if you're watching this remember to return it to Red Box on time or they will charge you another dollar." "Thanks, guys." "Good to have you with us."