Film
Taking Chances Steve Taylor and jeff obafemi carr. The Second Chance, PG-13, Opening Friday at area theaters. photo: ericengland.net
On Jan. 18, as the rest of America’s independent filmmakers were converging on Sundance, Steve Taylor went someplace about as far from Indiewood as he could get. He went to church.
Granted, in size and clout, the Prestonwood Baptist Church could be considered the Sundance of churches. Housed on a massive campus in Plano, Texas, it’s a suburban cathedral with a 7,000-seat sanctuary and its own food court. (The Starbucks goes without saying.) For Taylor, who mortgaged his home to make a religious drama called The Second Chance, a stop in Plano was as mandatory as an appearance at Park City by the Weinsteins.
On Friday, The Second Chance becomes the latest film to test the commercial power of an audience Hollywood still regards somewhat warily: church groups. Released by Triumph Films, a subsidiary of Sony Pictures, the Nashville-shot feature opens in 35 cities, with more to come if its opening weekend shows a mandate.
A starring vehicle for contemporary Christian singer Michael W. Smith, the movie would present a challenge to a major-studio marketing department. It has no steamy romance, no dismembered teenagers, no stunts or gross-out gags to hype in the trailer. Instead of the usual mass-media blitzkrieg, it’s being promoted with the kind of grassroots campaign that aided the out-of-nowhere success of The Passion of the Christ and Diary of a Mad Black Woman. One Chicago religious group volunteered the services of its phone tree.
Directed at church groups like Prestonwood’s, the movie’s website lays out an impressive week-by-week itinerary of study questions, discussion topics and group ticket buys leading up to the movie’s opening. It resembles nothing so much as a political campaign. While Taylor says The Second Chance is not a political movie—a precarious stance at a time when church and state are practically bedfellows—he compares the experience to “running for office.”
|
---------------------------Advertisement---------------------------
|
|
---------------------------Advertisement---------------------------
|
And yet the movie’s touchy subject matter poses a different challenge. A warm, modestly scaled human drama that makes terrific use of Nashville locations, The Second Chance tells the story of an associate pastor (played by Smith) at an affluent suburban tabernacle who gets exiled to its neglected sister church: an inner-city outpost in the projects. As he butts heads with the sister church’s skeptical African American pastor (a juicy role for Nashville actor and playwright jeff obafemi carr), he starts to wonder if his own megachurch has lost its way.
To mainstream moviegoers primed for Final Destination 3, The Second Chance is the kind of movie that will seem hopelessly conservative. And yet, by addressing the continued segregation of black and white congregations—and the abandonment of the former by the latter—it could strike its target audience as almost radical.
“That’s the story of my life!” Taylor exclaims, jiggling an already shaky table at Bongo Java. A Nashville artist, producer and record-label impresario who produced Sixpence None the Richer’s 1997 crossover smash “Kiss Me,” Taylor has made a career straddling the fields of Christian and secular music, which coexist uneasily.
“Part of the reason I started the record company [Squint] was to bridge those two worlds,” Taylor explains. As he rocks forward in his chair, his large hands involuntarily parenthesize the air, as if he were catching an imaginary basketball. His outburst gets a laugh from carr, who is as calm and relaxed as Taylor is excitable.
To carr, who grew up among the black Baptist churches of South Nashville, the movie helps lift “the veil of white privilege” that prevents an acknowledgement of the divided city portrayed in the film. He cites the recent flap over minority contractors at the proposed downtown baseball stadium—an issue that indirectly surfaces in the movie—as proof that the city remains polarized along lines of race and entitlement.
“I encourage people to be honest,” carr says. “I would much rather that somebody hurt my feelings. Because once dialogue is initiated, the issues can be addressed.” A natural place for the discussion to begin, he says, is the church, “where people love one another and treat one another with respect.”
For carr and Taylor, the discussion began with a table reading of the script nearly three years ago. At the time, Taylor and his writing partners, Ben Pearson and Chip Arnold, hoped to cast a Hollywood name like Don Cheadle or Jeffrey Wright opposite Smith. For the reading, Arnold suggested carr. Because, as carr remembers with a laugh, he “had nothing to lose,” he pointed out details in the script that just didn’t ring true—such as a scene in which local gangstas use the word “nigger” in church.
“I’ve been in church in bad years and nice years, and that just doesn’t happen,” carr says. “Everything changes there.” His candor impressed Taylor, who thought it was exactly how the character would act. By the end of the reading, the director says, “I couldn’t see anyone else in the part.”
Now, as the release date approaches, carr, Taylor and Smith have barnstormed the country, using unconventional means to steer their movie into the public’s radar. Last fall, carr found himself atop a homemade float in TSU’s homecoming parade. “Smile and wave, wave and smile,” he says, laughing, “but there were 35,000 people lining Jefferson Street who now know the name of our movie.”
The Second Chance has been screened for lily-white congregations and for a largely black audience at Fisk, which booed when the sole African American on the megachurch’s board voted against the inner-city outpost. At Fisk, the audience also reacted favorably whenever they saw someone they knew onscreen—like carr’s cousin, Robert Fitzgerald, who plays a gangbanger.
But what about the reception at churches that could pass for the movie’s big-box house of worship, with its 21st century Jumbotron razzle-dazzle? At Prestonwood, where a post-film discussion was led jointly by a white pastor and an inner-city African American minister, Taylor says he was pleased by the upbeat, supportive and “surprisingly frank” reception.
“In my solo career, I talked about some controversial things, and my impression was that my fellow Christians don’t mind criticism,” he observes. “They just mind it coming from outside.”