Kirk Cameron is a born-again Christian evangelist and former teen star who believes that God sometimes miraculously grants the wishes of true believers. If you were Kirk Cameron and had some kind of movie career, you might believe it too. Those who were children or just had no lives during the 1980s may remember Cameron from the Alan Thicke sitcom Growing Pains. It was during the run of that series that Cameron, already well-established as the show's meal ticket, discovered religion and reportedly started throwing his weight around backstage, demanding script revisions when he was unhappy with their "moral content" and even sparking a rumor that he had a hand in the dismissal of a supporting cast member who had posed nude. (He also chose not to invite any members of his "TV family" to his wedding, a slight that he later apologized for.) In 1989, Cameron starred in a major feature film about heroic college debaters who appear before the Supreme Court and make an unanswerable argument against legalized abortion. (The film was called Listen to Me. Last year, when director Kasi Lemmons made a movie about a black ex-con turned radio DJ who connects with Washington, D.C. audiences and helps counsel them through the travails of the 1960s and early 1970s, it was called Talk to Me. In a comparison of the two titles, one might detect the key difference in conservative and liberal pop culture, in a nutshell.) Since that film bombed, Cameron has mostly focused on "Christian-themed" projects: he starred in the movie versions of the Left Behind books. Now he's starring in a new movie, Fireproof, "about a firefighter who saves his marriage by turning to God." As Julie Bloom reports in The New York Times, it was made for $500,000 by "an almost all-volunteer cast and crew" and in two weeks has made more than twelve million dollars. Miracles are breaking out all over.
Fireproof was directed by Alex Kendrick, whose previous credits include Flywheel, about a crooked used-car dealer who finds Jesus, and Facing the Giants, about a faith-powered high school football team. (It was co-written by Kendrick and his brother Stephen, who also worked with him on the script for Giants.) Their work pretty much comprises the output of Sherwood Pictures, described by the Times as "a tiny production company affiliated with Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga., about 100 miles southwest of Macon." The church's senior pastor, Michael Catt, is credited on the movies as their "executive producer." In a world where conservative Christians are forever complaining that mainstream entertainment isn't geared to their family viewing needs, Pastor Catt is trying to put his church's money where its mouth out and "offering realistic alternatives” instead of pointing fingers, which does make for a refreshing change. He and, say, Mike Eisner might have very different ideas of what counts as realistic when it comes to filmmaking: "“We just announced," the pastor says, "We’re going to start on a movie, and if you’d like to volunteer we’ll take you though a boot camp. There’s a sheet outside in the atrium, and you can sign up." (They wound up with a cast and crew of about 1,200 people. The church has a membership of three thousand.) The finished product wound up in the hands of Provident Films, a branch of Sony that was created to reach out to the Christian audience; as Hollywood found out with The Passion of the Christ, this is an audience that has to be talked to, slowly and carefully, in its own language, but once they're convinced that the pitchman is one of them, they're a gold mine that's been lying around untended.
In the case of Fireproof, the gold mine has now extended to publishing. In the movie, Cameron's character finds his way back to the right path with the help of a Scripture-themed marital how-to book called The Love Dare. The book was the invention of the screnwriters, but at some point, the hard-working Kendrick brothers decided to actually write it. Originally, the deal they made with the Christian-themed B & H Publishing Group called for the book to come out in time for the DVD, but the movie is doing so well, and so many people are coming out of screenings wanting to know where they can get them one of those Love Dare books, that a paperback edition was rushed into stores; this Sunday will mark its debut appearance on the New York Times' miscellaneous paperback bestseller list. As for Kirk Cameron, he wants it clear that he's "not on a professional crusade to inject Jesus Christ into every project that I do. But when a good project comes up that is about marriage and is based on what I think is really going to help marriages, and is worthwhile, I’ll jump in with both feet.” Clearly he has a sense of obligation to give something back to his faith. “As a teen idol who makes it to 37 without being a crack-smoking transvestite stuck in a drug-rehab center over and over, I’d say, wow, those values have served me pretty well.” Not that he has anything against crack-smoking transvestites who've been in and out of rehab, mind you. Some of his best friends, etc. You've got to be able to keep a lot of balls in the air in this business.