Adapting Dickens: The Story Behind "Carol"

Matt: 00:00:00

Yeah, welcome to another exciting episode of the Faith and Family Filmmakers podcast.

Matt: 00:00:05

My name is Matt and I am really excited today to have my new friend James Tew on.

Matt: 00:00:10

Um, James, I, I've, not gotten a chance to see this movie, but I saw the, uh, the, the trailer and the trailer really makes me excited to have you on.

Matt: 00:00:18

Uh, James is the executive producer of a movie called Carol.

Matt: 00:00:23

Thanks for coming on the Faith and Family Filmmakers podcast.

James: 00:00:26

I appreciate the opportunity to, come on here and share a little bit.

Matt: 00:00:29

Yeah, let's tell folks who you are.

Matt: 00:00:31

So, uh, James is an award-winning journalist.

Matt: 00:00:33

He's a public relations professional for more than 30 years.

Matt: 00:00:37

Um, he followed God's leading into film with the blessing and support of his wife Shannon.

Matt: 00:00:41

And lesson number one, uh, future filmmakers of the world.

Matt: 00:00:45

Uh, if you don't have your wife's blessing and support, you may wanna work on that first before you follow your calling.

Matt: 00:00:51

Um, so that was a smart, smart man I can tell already,

Matt: 00:00:54

So your feature film Carol, it began as a church Christmas play and it was designed to deliver the gospel message through an, an original story that, kind of follows the framework of A Christmas Carol.

Matt: 00:01:04

And so through these God-ordained connections, the project went on an 11 year journey to become, uh, a really wonderful Christian feature length Christmas musical that you released in 2024.

Matt: 00:01:15

So the first thing that kind of jumps out at me on this bio is the.

Matt: 00:01:19

patience of, Job and, the wandering of Moses for 40 years in the desert of this 11 year journey you went on.

Matt: 00:01:25

I think as filmmakers, a lot of times we get this feeling that, Hey, I just wrote a first draft.

Matt: 00:01:30

God told me to do it, therefore it's ordained and we should be in production of this thing by next Tuesday, maybe next month at the latest.

Matt: 00:01:38

So, uh, you were a patient enough man to realize that that's not exactly the journey that we are all led to.

James: 00:01:45

Well, uh, there were definitely times that felt like the wandering of Moses, particularly, I think in, in the financing end of it.

James: 00:01:52

Um, but, uh, you know, there were a lot of things.

James: 00:01:56

the, uh, original play, was written for a bunch of high school students to perform.

James: 00:02:01

Three of those, high school students were my sons.

James: 00:02:04

And so, um.

James: 00:02:06

we were putting kids through college and had some other things kind of going on.

James: 00:02:11

Originally when the play was written, like we didn't even have a feature film in mind.

James: 00:02:17

It was just, uh, you know, the church did an annual Christmas play.

James: 00:02:21

This was a way to do an original story but still familiar story one people could have some connection to, uh, that had a gospel message in it.

James: 00:02:32

And, uh, what happened was, um, people afterwards said, oh, this is really great.

James: 00:02:38

You should make a movie out of it.

James: 00:02:39

And my initial reaction was kind of, uh, you know, well, yeah, right.

James: 00:02:43

That's a nice thing to say.

James: 00:02:45

I don't know about that.

James: 00:02:46

But, as it turned out, the newspaper chain I was working for at the time had, written an article about George Johnson, who's a, Christian film director based in this area.

James: 00:02:56

And so.

James: 00:02:57

I, sent the script.

James: 00:02:59

I sent, um, a link to the YouTube video of the play performance to George and, uh, just, you know, said, Hey, we did this.

James: 00:03:07

A couple people thought it might make a good movie.

James: 00:03:09

What do you think?

James: 00:03:10

Uh, fully expecting to either get no response or maybe, you know, a nice email saying, you know, thank you for your submission.

James: 00:03:17

It's not appropriate at this time.

James: 00:03:19

Uh, to my shock, George emailed me back.

James: 00:03:22

In later conversations, he said he not even entirely sure why, uh, I mean, in the sense of he usually doesn't, respond to those kind of emails.

James: 00:03:32

But, uh, he emailed me back and said, um, yeah, it would make a good movie.

James: 00:03:37

There were two obstacles, um, and those were, were kind of what, we worked at.

James: 00:03:43

Once we got the kids through college over the next 11 years, one was financing.

Matt: 00:03:47

And that's always the big one.

James: 00:03:49

it is, it is.

James: 00:03:51

And then the other one was the, with the original play, it was a musical.

James: 00:03:55

and so we just used, you know, a lot of popular Christian songs.

James: 00:04:00

Um, even some, you know, all I want for and you know, that would cost a lot more to get all those song rights than making the movie.

James: 00:04:10

Um, so the 11 years between, uh, play and movie were one, getting the financing put together and then number two, uh, getting original music to replace the songs 'cause we wanted it to stay a musical.

James: 00:04:26

It's just, it's a lot of fun that way.

Matt: 00:04:28

Yeah, if you think making a film is hard, try getting original score or original songs written to it, that sounds like a, a whole extra layer of, complexity.

James: 00:04:38

It Well, honestly, that was very much a God thing.

James: 00:04:43

Um, you know, I had never written music before.

James: 00:04:47

My, uh, my musical background was.

James: 00:04:50

Being forced through two years of piano lessons from by my mother and, uh, playing trumpet through high school.

James: 00:04:57

so I, you know, I'd done a lot of writing, but never written a song.

James: 00:05:02

but as we were, you know, as we started to go back and look through the script and looked through the songs honestly, God started putting songs on my heart.

James: 00:05:10

I started writing down lyrics.

James: 00:05:13

Um, In the meantime, I'd had a job change and we had moved to a new community and the worship pastor, at the church we were attending in the new community, had a background in songwriting.

James: 00:05:25

He had traveled with a Christian band and so I wrote some of these lyrics and sent them to him and he said, yeah, these are actually pretty good lyrics.

James: 00:05:32

Kind of, you know, same reaction, like getting the response from George.

James: 00:05:36

I was a little surprised.

James: 00:05:38

So then I sat down with him and he did some, you know, did some chorus writing.

James: 00:05:45

I sat down on a keyboard with my two years of piano and kind of plunked some things out and we put together, original songs.

James: 00:05:54

Now those, songs were refined, uh, quite.

James: 00:05:58

A bit between what we did and what wound up in the final film.

James: 00:06:02

but that was the beginning of it.

Matt: 00:06:04

You know, going back to, George Johnson for a second.

Matt: 00:06:07

Um, I don't know, George, we're Facebook friends.

Matt: 00:06:10

As you know, once you get into this community, you're, you end up becoming Facebook friends with a lot of folks.

Matt: 00:06:15

One thing I notice, well, first of all, I think we need to have him on this podcast.

Matt: 00:06:18

I, I have not talked to George.

Matt: 00:06:20

I don't think that, uh, Jeff and Jaclyn have, but that's gonna be my next target is talking to George.

Matt: 00:06:25

One thing I noticed about him, because you know, you said you just kind of reached out to him, cold.

Matt: 00:06:30

George is one of those guys who somehow stays very busy.

Matt: 00:06:34

He's always got a project, uh, going just from being Facebook friends with him and, and, they all look like pretty substantialized projects.

Matt: 00:06:45

So it's, I think like you said, it was a God thing and kinda lucky to get somebody of his caliber on board.

James: 00:06:50

Yeah.

James: 00:06:51

I would say blessed.

James: 00:06:52

I mean, you know, like he said, very much a God thing that, and, you know, besides the fact that he's done like six feature films, George also has done a number of music videos.

James: 00:07:02

So he had a background, um, that lent itself very well to doing, uh, doing a musical and, it was a project that appealed to him, I think for that reason that, he, kind of brought both those elements to it.

James: 00:07:18

And, you know, George had a lot of, uh, a lot of great connections that, you know, Carol is a low budget Christmas musical.

James: 00:07:26

There's even line that, uh, Robert Amaya ad libs in there that, kind of pokes fun at, that.

James: 00:07:33

It doesn't look as low budget as it is.

James: 00:07:36

George just had connections to pull together an incredible cast.

James: 00:07:41

and we had, James Burgess as our cinematographer who just did beautiful work.

James: 00:07:47

We had, um, Teddy Halloran who had worked on the Chosen.

James: 00:07:51

we pulled together a team that really overachieved by far, for the budget we had, and that was a, a huge blessing.

Matt: 00:07:59

I think that's obvious.

Matt: 00:08:00

When you, when you look at the trailer alone, I hopefully we'll link the trailer and all your, socials in the show notes here, but if you, if you look at the trailer, you can tell right off, any of us can who are even remotely involved in filmmaking, you could tell how well it's shot real quickly and it's shot beautifully.

Matt: 00:08:17

It is not shot like a low budget film.

Matt: 00:08:20

I know you said that, but, but you know, any executive producer on a podcast circuit would say the same thing.

Matt: 00:08:25

But I'm telling you as an objective third party, it looks fair.

Matt: 00:08:29

It's beautiful.

Matt: 00:08:29

Beautifully shot.

Matt: 00:08:30

So.

Matt: 00:08:31

And that's, so important these days.

James: 00:08:33

Yeah.

James: 00:08:33

And that's even one thing George said afterward was just how beautiful the movie turned out you know, just.

James: 00:08:39

Some of the cinematography.

James: 00:08:41

There's one scene that's, uh, in Christmas past where it's, uh, a town Christmas dance and we shot it, um, here in Angola, Indiana, where I live at a, it's called Salmon Timber Frame.

James: 00:08:53

It's a timber frame pavilion.

James: 00:08:55

Um, we shot it at night with these Christmas lights and just the camera, you know, kind of pans across and everything.

James: 00:09:03

And there's even like a drone shot above looking on the dancers and the lights and, and everything just, it is just beautiful.

James: 00:09:11

You know, kind of has this, uh, kind of melancholy song that, that kind of goes with it.

James: 00:09:17

Solomon, who's the main character played by Aaron Fullan is singing about wishing, um, that he could go back to this point of time where he first met his wife, and he could stay at this time forever, before he messes his life up later on, and so it just, it really comes together so beautifully.

Matt: 00:09:36

Yeah, I would agree.

Matt: 00:09:37

Um, I, you know, in our next episode is we're gonna do two.

Matt: 00:09:39

I want to kind of get nerdy and really, really dive in deep about the elements of your production.

Matt: 00:09:45

'cause I think that's, all filmmakers wanna talk deep into production and, and kinda hear how it went.

Matt: 00:09:50

but for now, I want to kind of go back and talk about the origination of the story.

Matt: 00:09:55

Um, where it came from.

Matt: 00:09:57

I mean, are you you're the executive producer, but did you write the original play as well?

James: 00:10:00

Yes.

James: 00:10:01

Yeah.

James: 00:10:01

So I like to say that Carol started with A Charlie Brown Christmas, and the reason that was is because, the church, we were attending, in Kendallville, Indiana about it's about.

James: 00:10:12

40 minutes from where we are now.

James: 00:10:14

Um, like I said, they did an annual Christmas play.

James: 00:10:17

The youth, performed it.

James: 00:10:18

We had a very talented youth group.

James: 00:10:20

A lot of them were involved in theater and, um, they had done a Charlie Brown Christmas and we got a really good community reaction to it.

James: 00:10:29

Lots of people showed up because they know that story.

James: 00:10:32

and the, director, uh, at our church was kind of lamenting that there's not a lot of familiar Christmas stories, you know, things that people watch every year on tv

James: 00:10:44

that, you have that strong gospel element.

James: 00:10:46

I mean, obviously we have the Christmas story, but you know.

James: 00:10:50

Most people get into Santa and Frosty and you know, Charlie Brown Christmas, which you, you've got Linus presenting that.

James: 00:10:58

And so, you know, it was kind of turning that in my head and I'd written some skits and things and I was like, well, what could we do that kind of has that familiar, um, familiar framework, something people will know, kind of know a little bit about going in, but have a strong gospel message to it.

James: 00:11:18

and so that was kind of where Carol began.

James: 00:11:20

It's, you know, Carol is obviously shortening 'A Christmas Carol' and I wanted it to be more original than, you know, you do scrooge get saved, or something like that.

James: 00:11:29

That just seems way too cliche, so, So we set it in the modern day.

James: 00:11:34

We set it in a small town in Indiana, which is, you know, where the church was and where the movie takes place.

James: 00:11:43

And, um, you know, we have this modern day character, this kind of modern day scrooge who still goes through that framework.

James: 00:11:51

You know, the Christmas, past Christmas, present Christmas future.

James: 00:11:55

But again, then there's a, there's a gospel message to it.

James: 00:11:58

It's not just, you know, Hey, get your Christmas spirit and all is right with the world and, When we then made the move from play to movie George even felt it still had too much of the original Christmas Carol in it.

James: 00:12:14

So we even made more changes to kind of make Carol his own story.

James: 00:12:20

Um, even though we, we still stick with that framework.

Matt: 00:12:24

That's gotta be always difficult to say.

Matt: 00:12:26

How do you, 'cause I see what you're trying to do.

Matt: 00:12:28

You're trying to, like you said, uh, provide a framework for story that's, familiar enough to pull people in while still remaining original in that execution.

Matt: 00:12:37

And that's, gotta be the... I wouldn't call that the creative problem.

Matt: 00:12:40

That's the, creative opportunity the challenge that, leads to more creativity.

James: 00:12:45

Yeah, it, it's fun to go through to do that.

James: 00:12:48

And just, Solomon in particular, who's the main character, you know, lived rent free in my head for, you know, a dozen years between writing, the original play.

James: 00:12:59

And then, as we, changed him a bit.

James: 00:13:02

Um, 'cause in the, Original play.

James: 00:13:04

He was still, you know, he was still rich, he was still kind of a scrooge type in the movie.

James: 00:13:09

He's not rich.

James: 00:13:11

He is, you know, probably lower middle class.

James: 00:13:14

Um, he's younger than he was, in the play.

James: 00:13:18

Um, he's more of a slacker.

James: 00:13:20

Um, but he's still somebody whose choices have damaged those around him.

James: 00:13:26

And that's kind of what we learn, um, is how that's happened.

James: 00:13:30

And, and Solomon even comes to realize, the damage that his choices have, done, um, over the course of the movie.

Matt: 00:13:38

Yeah, and he may share the name, but I don't think his character is much like King Solomon either.

Matt: 00:13:43

Right.

James: 00:13:43

No.

James: 00:13:44

Um, so Solomon Lynch is his name, and the name came about because, In the original play, one of the songs we did was, you Are a Mean One, Mr. Grinch, but we changed it to Mr. Lynch to rhyme with that.

James: 00:14:00

Um, so that the name stuck, but that was the original for that.

James: 00:14:04

And then I wanted, you know, it's kind of, uh, paralleling Ebenezer, Scrooge Ebenezer is a biblical name, and then Scrooge was the last name.

James: 00:14:12

So we did, uh, Solomon Lynch instead.

Matt: 00:14:16

I think it's smart though to take that different approach to Scrooge 'cause it's not.

Matt: 00:14:21

It's not just rich old geezers who have this problem of actually connecting with the gospel.

Matt: 00:14:28

it's all of us.

James: 00:14:29

Yeah, and I mean the, the commonality to both versions of Solomon is that they're both very self-centered.

James: 00:14:36

Um, which again, is a problem we all have.

James: 00:14:38

I mean, you know, you see Solomon on the screen and you see.

James: 00:14:42

What I'm like sometimes, um, when I'm at my worst.

James: 00:14:46

you know, and, that's the core conflict that stayed in the movie and that works real well is that Solomon's gotta realize that, there's more to him, more than what he cares about.

James: 00:14:57

At the beginning of the movie, he flops on his couch and, you know, exclaims, it's good to be the king as he is sitting in this messy living room.

James: 00:15:05

And it's, you know, the whole course of the movie is him, learning about, you know, again, the damage that attitude has done to him, to those around him, um, even on a wider scale.

Matt: 00:15:20

Well enough about you.

Matt: 00:15:20

Let's talk about me speaking to self-centered.

Matt: 00:15:22

I'm kidding.

Matt: 00:15:23

No, it's all about dying to self.

Matt: 00:15:24

And I think that's a, a great biblical message that sometimes doesn't shine through when we talk about the, uh, the Christmas stories is that's a great part of the gospel to blend into that.

Matt: 00:15:34

I wanna go back to financing for a second, because that's everybody's problem.

Matt: 00:15:38

A lot of us think that we're gonna write the next great Christian film, and there's these people out there who just can't wait to, give you $7 million to make your, your masterpiece.

Matt: 00:15:50

But that's not how the world works.

Matt: 00:15:52

And so you, you've noticed that and you've, lived through that.

Matt: 00:15:54

So how were you able to, finance it?

James: 00:15:57

So, um, ours, from what I've talked with other producers, was a fairly unique journey in that.

James: 00:16:04

So, what happened was, as we were working, my wife and I both had 4 0 1 Ks, um, and You know, once we got the kids out of college, we kind of noticed that those 4 0 1 Ks had kind of grown to about the level of what, um, George had mentioned to me earlier would be the rough budget for a film.

James: 00:16:26

and, uh, I, uh.

James: 00:16:28

Went with a group of guys from my church.

James: 00:16:31

The, there's a thing, the, denomination does called Man Camp and everybody, you know, a bunch of men get together at a camp and we eat lots of bacon and zip line and things like that.

James: 00:16:41

And one of the, uh, speakers who was at the man camp that year, his point was, you know, are you saving all this money?

James: 00:16:48

Are you gonna retire and just retire from Jesus?

James: 00:16:52

Are you gonna, you know, vacation and whatever, or are you gonna use what you have, to further God's work?

James: 00:16:59

so I got back from man Camp and I talked to my wife Shannon, and I said, you know, I'm kinda wondering if.

James: 00:17:04

You know, God wants us to use our 4 0 1 Ks to fund this film.

James: 00:17:08

And her response was, yeah, sure.

James: 00:17:10

I've been thinking that all along.

James: 00:17:11

Where have you been?

James: 00:17:13

so, you know, you

Matt: 00:17:13

a wonderful woman right there.

Matt: 00:17:15

Wow!

James: 00:17:15

Yeah, so, so you know, you talk about the wife supporting, she's, you know, a few steps ahead of me at some of these, uh, at some of these times.

James: 00:17:23

So we worked with a company that, um, actually helps you.

James: 00:17:29

Roll 4 0 1 Ks over into starting up a small business without having to incur tax penalties.

James: 00:17:35

'cause obviously when you take 401k money out, the government has regulations on that.

James: 00:17:40

Um, and so what we did was.

James: 00:17:44

Our film company is owned by an S-corp and we rolled our 4 0 1 Ks over to buy shares in the S-corp.

James: 00:17:52

so we are, now the shareholders of this company that made the film.

James: 00:17:56

. There have been, you know, it's challenging kind of on the back end now because it makes it more challenging to put more money in if we want to.

James: 00:18:06

So we've kind of, um.

James: 00:18:07

learned to, you know, get creative with some different expenses and like that.

James: 00:18:13

but yeah, it, worked.

James: 00:18:14

We were able to get the amount, um, pretty much about the exact amount we needed to get the film made is what we were able to, put together.

Matt: 00:18:25

That's, that's an unbelievable leap of faith right there to self-fund your movie.

Matt: 00:18:30

Um, I will say that it.

Matt: 00:18:32

You know, obviously the upside of that is that now you don't have investors breathing down your neck about, you know, what's next?

Matt: 00:18:39

What are you doing?

Matt: 00:18:39

Are you, are you selling the movie?

Matt: 00:18:41

Where's my, where's my return?

Matt: 00:18:43

I've experienced that.

Matt: 00:18:44

And then rightfully so, those are the questions they should be asking.

Matt: 00:18:47

So you just get to ask that question.

Matt: 00:18:49

Your wife asked to ask you that question.

James: 00:18:51

Yeah.

James: 00:18:51

Um, This, you know, this whole thing has been a learning curve.

James: 00:18:54

there are definitely things looking back we would do a little differently.

James: 00:18:58

I think, uh, you know, one thing we didn't factor in was maybe having, I, I think when you're, you're producing a movie, you think, well, you know, the distributor's gonna pick it up.

James: 00:19:10

They're gonna do lots of marketing.

James: 00:19:12

Um, and that didn't happen.

James: 00:19:14

So the, the

James: 00:19:15

marketing

Matt: 00:19:16

your own p and a.

James: 00:19:17

And so that has been, that's been a challenge on the back end of that, um, that we, we've learned and, you know, probably wish we would've anticipated a little sooner on that, but,

Matt: 00:19:29

Alright.

Matt: 00:19:29

Ding, ding, ding.

Matt: 00:19:30

I always like to point out great moments in a conversation where a lesson can be learned, and this is a lesson that's not unique to you at all.

Matt: 00:19:38

Um, just to reiterate, for those filmmakers out there, I said earlier that the, funding is the, the most difficult part, and that's actually, I don't, I think it's the second most difficult part.

Matt: 00:19:48

The first most difficult part is once you have a, a good film.

Matt: 00:19:52

Is actually getting it distributed with the kind of marketing you need to earn that return on investment.

Matt: 00:19:58

So if your budget doesn't include, uh, marketing in the budget, it doesn't include your own p and a so that you can control it, it's going to make it, uh, a long uphill battle.

Matt: 00:20:10

Because, like you said, distributors, they wanna distribute, they wanna manage the process, but you know, gone are the days where.

Matt: 00:20:17

where they'll, they'll actually put up their own, I mean, used to like 10, 15, 20 years ago, you'd get a distribution deal that includes p and a. P and a, if you don't know, is prints and advertisements is the old, um, not for you.

Matt: 00:20:30

I know you know this, but for listeners.

Matt: 00:20:32

It's the old term that basically means marketing, the cost of actually getting it into theaters and marketing it to get into theaters.

Matt: 00:20:37

So distributors used to, oftentimes offer you p and a and they'd even offer you what's called uh, mg, a minimum guarantee, where they'd go to the filmmaker and say, here's X number of dollars.

Matt: 00:20:48

This is for you.

Matt: 00:20:49

Hopefully it covers your production budget, and then we're gonna put in X number of dollars for marketing.

Matt: 00:20:53

And then you, as the filmmaker are, you're sitting in a place where you're at least breaking even.

Matt: 00:20:57

But.

Matt: 00:20:58

Gone are those days, and now you've gotta raise your own p and a and figure out how to market it so you can return some of that money.

Matt: 00:21:04

And it's not all about money, but you also, as a filmmaker, you don't wanna dig yourself into such a hole that you, can't make another movie.

James: 00:21:10

Yeah.

James: 00:21:11

And you know, you've summarized kind of what we've learned.

James: 00:21:15

You know, we Shannon and I went into this saying, you know, because there was one point, uh, as I was going through this journey, I actually had a chat with another, another film producer, and he, um, was.

James: 00:21:29

He came across anyway as quite bitter about, you know, things he had been promised by distributors and it hadn't come through.

James: 00:21:37

So, we were just kinda like, you know, okay, Lord, this is for you if the money doesn't come through.

James: 00:21:43

Um, well, you know, we just know that you were leading us this way.

James: 00:21:48

Um, and at this point it's a marathon.

James: 00:21:51

It's, it's not a sprint.

James: 00:21:52

Um, you know, we're still doing everything we can to, uh, market the movie, to get the word out.

James: 00:21:58

Um, you know, we're, doing some showings in some churches, promoting on social media, doing everything we can, because.

James: 00:22:06

most of the people who have seen it have responded very positively.

James: 00:22:10

It's just, you know, kinda getting it there, and letting them realize that it's there.

Matt: 00:22:15

Yep.

Matt: 00:22:15

That is the, that's the journey we all go on.

Matt: 00:22:18

I wanna bring you back for another episode 'cause I have so many more questions, but I, I do think that the last thing you said, uh, just kind of sparked an advertisement for the Faith and Family Filmmakers network.

Matt: 00:22:29

You know, one of the best ways to learn about these things other than, you know, diving in and doing 'em and learning from your, wins and your mistakes is to network, as you said.

Matt: 00:22:39

And, and so I hope everybody listening is a member of the Faith and Family Filmmakers Network and, you know, go to the table reads you can go to the networking events if you can.

Matt: 00:22:48

all helps you in your journey to, to make the right decisions.

Matt: 00:22:52

But James, I appreciate you, uh, being on this episode.

Matt: 00:22:55

Let's, come back for another episode and, uh, I wanna learn more about the process of making the film.

James: 00:23:00

Okay.

James: 00:23:01

Sounds great.

James: 00:23:01

Thank you.