Wrapping Christian Messages in Films With Popular Appeal

“Story is king in this business,” the producer proclaimed, speaking in a quiet spot away from the noisy guests who passed by the bar at the packed premiere and then quickly moved on.

But some things about this movie gala were different. Like juice and soda at the bar, and not a drop of anything harder. Or the eyes closed in prayer after the credits finished rolling.

A combination of Hollywood convention and evangelical Christian piety, the recent event at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in North Hollywood marked the West Coast debut of “The Climb,” the latest film by World Wide Pictures, movie arm of the Minneapolis-based Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn.

The new film caps 50 years of filmmaking by WWP, fruit of Graham’s visionary longing in the early 1950s to use every medium possible to carry the Christian message to the nation’s audiences.

According to WWP managing director Barry Werner, Graham’s organization saw early on that large segments of the American public were unreachable by conventional evangelistic methods.

“There’s no way they’re going to get everybody to walk into a crusade venue,” Werner said. So the idea was born to film the crusades so that people everywhere could hear Graham’s powerful preaching.

Since its 1952 inception, WWP has produced more than 125 films. Strategies for distributing its movies have changed as the film industry has evolved.

At first showing its movies primarily in churches, WWP ventured into theaters with its 1965 film “The Restless Ones.” While “The Hiding Place” gained wide recognition in the mid-’70s, the industry’s increasing reliance on multiple-screen movie houses in the ‘80s made it harder for WWP films to compete. So the studio concentrated on churches, television syndication and home video until the late ‘90s.

At that time, WWP began a journey back to the big screen, coupling theatrical releases in targeted cities with expanded showings of its films on television.

Scheduled for theaters in four cities before airing in national TV markets in June, “The Climb” embodies WWP’s most recent marketing and movie-making trends.

Shot for $2.5 million on a whirlwind 18-day schedule in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah in April 2001, “The Climb” tells the story of two men thrust together in a once-in-a-lifetime adventure to scale a killer peak in the Chilean Andes.

In the movie, the two climbers are brought together initially by a harrowing mountain rescue in which they save the son of big-time Denver developer Mack Leonard, played by Dabney Coleman, the star power in the film.

Grateful for the rescue, businessman Leonard offers to bankroll the men’s fantasy climb.

People who know Hollywood point to the challenge WWP faces in its attempt to package a distinctive Christian message in a film with popular appeal. “To me that seems a tough formula for success commercially or spiritually,” said film and television producer Ralph Winter. “Maybe God is using what they do for a specific purpose, and I won’t criticize that.”

But the Rev. Scott Young, director of a yearly Los Angeles film festival that brings together critics, industry professionals and theologians to discuss issues of faith in classic cinema, believes WWP has carved a niche. He says the blend of evangelism and entertainment has its place: “There is a role for intentional religious filmmaking, in this case, Christian.”