The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 22 – Brian Godawa

Episode 22: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Dr. Jeff Show, host Dr. Jeff interviews Brian Godawa, a screenwriter and novelist who has written feature films including To End All Wars, Alleged, and The Visitation, as well as fiction novel series like The Chronicles of Nephilim. The conversation explores how biblical worldview intersects with media and film, with Godawa sharing his journey from spending nearly 10 years writing before his first movie was made through self-educating in screenwriting and moving to California to be closer to the industry.

Godawa discusses his philosophy of “subversion” in storytelling, understanding cultural narratives and redefining them with Christian definitions, and explains how all stories embody worldviews through characters’ choices and consequences. The discussion also covers practical advice for aspiring Christian filmmakers, with Godawa arguing that Hollywood has become hostile to Christians and recommending the independent filmmaking route with alternative distribution methods.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:02):
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show. We interview major thought leaders on this show from many fields of influence, showing how worldview changes everything.

My guest today is Brian Godawa. He wrote feature films, including To End All Wars, Alleged, The Visitation, and many fiction novels, including The Chronicles of Nephilim, The Chronicles of the Watchers, The Chronicles of the Apocalypse. He’s a writing machine, and he has a lot of great advice, not only how to get involved in good writing, but good storytelling and how to be a more intelligent consumer of media from a biblical worldview. Fasten your seatbelt, this is quite a discussion. Brian Godawa, welcome to The Dr. Jeff Show.

Brian Godawa (00:49):
Thanks for having me, Jeff. Had to get that sip of coffee ready to go.

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:54):
It’s exactly the right moment.This is fun because you have spoken at Summit Ministries programs before. I have really admired your screenwriting, the work that you have done. Our students get so excited when you have been part of one of our programs. I love your movie To End All Wars, which made me read the Ernest Gordon book, which you based that on. And that was a major motion picture.

So there’s so many different directions we could go in this conversation, but what I’m hoping is by the time we’re done, we have a pretty good sense of how biblical worldview and media and film all kind of fit together. So let’s just dive right into it. How did you get into screenwriting in the film business? I get asked this question all of the time by students, “How do I do this?” What’s your story?

Brian Godawa (01:49):
Well, I want to encourage them to say that there’s a million ways to get in. And literally, everyone has such a unique story many times, so that’s encouraging because you know that there’s not one way and if you’re worried like, “Oh, am I doing what I need to do?” People have gotten in by writing one script or just moved to California and all of a sudden got a sag card because they got hired right away for stuff. I mean, that happens all the time.

But then there’s plenty of stories where, in fact, mine was that I think I had written, oh man, I don’t know. I must have written almost 10 years before my first movie got made, but I did it. The other great thing was that as a writer, at least, and I’ll speak as a writer because directing and acting, these are all their own unique categories.

(02:40):
But as a writer and incorporating worldview into storytelling, I’m a professional storyteller. I basically researched and educated myself on screenwriting. Now, when I started years ago, there were only a couple books on screenwriting, right? And now, of course, there’s gurus all over the place. There was one story guru, his name was Sid Field, and now there’s dozens and they’re better than him and all that.

But nevertheless, I did all that I could and I went to conferences and it was an educating yourself type of thing. And in fact, I think that in some ways that’s the best course to take where you just, if you’re going to go to college, which I wouldn’t recommend these days, but if you’re going to and you study the humanities, you study history and you get a good wide birth of knowledge, of philosophy of everything you possibly can, because as a storyteller, you need that wide birth of knowledge. And I think that that’s what I did.

(03:35):
By the time I went into college and what I read on my own, I was trained to be a visual artist, but I did a lot of my own reading because I’m a book lover. And I think that that’s what helped me the most to get a wide birth of trying to understand reality. But then when I got my day job as a graphic designer, what I did was I went to every conference I could on screentelling. I read every book I could. I took a course, I paid the money.

And then I bought books and now, like I say, there’s many of these books that you can get on Amazon stuff, like How to Break Into Hollywood as a screenwriter or something like that. You can easily find these books. And they’re written by people, even if they’re not successful, they’ve been around enough to know all the different things that you can do.

(04:19):
And I followed those books and just did everything they suggested, which was like cold calling producers, going to these pitch fests. So I just did everything I could. But I had done that for many years. And then I was writing scripts, you always should be writing. If you want to be a storyteller for life or professional, you’ve got to be doing it all the time. So I was doing that for 10 years. And the irony of it all was that I moved to California, that was one of the crucial elements at the time, because that’s where the action is happening. Just like if you want to be on Broadway, you move to New York.

(04:49):
So I did that. And so I was closer to the action, but what was really ironic was that my first movie got made by, actually, I did all those things and I still recommend you do them all because it’s all part of learning and growing and getting into the system of things. But ultimately at the end, I do really believe that it’s about relationships and who you get to know.

So it’s more about while you’re doing all the things you can to break in, it’s developing relationships with your peers at your level because as you grow older and as people break in, then they work with you. And that’s kind of what happened to me. But more specifically, I’m living down in Orange County and I go to church and I meet one of the pastors who’s had a passion for producing movies for most of his life and we connected up and he had this project he wanted me to write after he realized I was a writer he liked.

(05:36):
We had the same vision, both trained in thinking through, Francis Schaeffer was our hero. And so my first movie, which was $200 wars that got made, actually had nothing to do with all the things you do to break in Hollywood, and it was independently produced. And my career from then on has been on the independent side, not the studio side. So it is unique, it’s a world of its own.

However, as a Christian, we’ll talk about this later. I think it’s just about the only possible way you can make movies now anyway. But yeah, so I’ve been in the independent realm because of that. But as I grew, all my work came from relationships that I developed with producers and friends, et cetera, who, peer level. And then as years went on, they became more successful and they would call me to write a project for them or what have you.

(06:25):
So that’s one way that a lot of people do break in, but also nowadays it’s not unusual to struggle for years before you get your first project. Now the problem with that is that, and I still think this is a problem, is that it’s so hard, it’s so competitive, particularly in movie making and such, and even in the independent realm, that on the outside, there’s no real difference between a genius and a diluted, untalented person. What I mean by that is both of them could take years and nothing happened.

And so of course, every one of us thinks we’re the undiscovered genius, right? But it’s so hard for people to be able to be outside of themselves and come to realize that I don’t have the gift for that, or I am wasting my time and maybe I should go somewhere else. But unfortunately, even good writers experience the same kind of lack of success for a long time.

(07:30):
And quite honestly, that makes it very difficult, which is why I do believe, though, that you should be involved with a lot of people, a lot of friends, ask their opinions, join contests. I did a lot of contests where I would place highly so that even though I wasn’t getting any movies made, I was placing highly in contests. And that at least was an objective reference point to tell me, “Okay, you’ve got some skills here. You’re not diluted and it’s not your mother telling you that, no, you’re really great. Keep going.”

But I think it’s an important thing because Hollywood is filled with that cliche phrase, Boulevard of Broken Dreams. It’s really true. And when I lived there in LA for over 20 years, 30 years in that area, I met and saw a lot of broken souls and even Christians who had been struggling forever to try to break in and their lives were devastated because they never kind of did and they just kept going and going and going. So there’s a lot to talk about that. We could talk about that for a couple hours.

Dr. Jeff Myers (08:31):
Yeah. Well, that’s such great advice. The question people are always asking me is, how do I get started? How do I break in? I believe that I should be living out my Christian faith by doing this writing. And you’ve made it very practical for us. There are objective reference points: entering contests, meeting people, continuing to do the writing.

Brian Godawa (08:55):
Getting the opinions of professionals or people in the business, not your friends and family, that kind of thing. Seeking to get that objective verification or validation. But you have to give it to, I mean, it took me a long time because I didn’t go to school, so I didn’t study screenwriting.

So it took me a few years before I felt that I was even a good, I mean, honestly, probably took me over 10 years to get to the point where I felt like I was a good writer and now 20 years to get to the point where I feel like I’m at the top of my game, only in these last few years if I felt like I’m on the top of my game and I really know what I’m doing because it just takes so much work and so much practice, but that’s what being a professional is all about.

(09:37):
And this isn’t, and of course, as we’re talking about this, I think this is important too, because while I support the notion of having a calling, a sense of calling in your life, and that’s a whole area to talk about how do you know what your calling is, but I know a lot of people, a lot of Christians will feel that they have that calling, and I think that it’s not enough.

It’s not enough to just think you have a calling because we may be wrong, right? And I mean, unless you think God speaks to you in words that you can hear or whatever, then that’s another issue to talk about. But in general, most people, when they say they’re calling, it’s that they have a strong feeling based on experiences and what they’ve done. And okay, even if I disagree with that, I’ll accept that on one level and I’ll say, okay, that’s one step.

(10:16):
But the truth is, if you don’t have any objective validation of that, then maybe your calling is really, I don’t want to use a harsh word, but maybe you’re just wrong because you’re letting your feelings drive you rather than more objectivity. And so this is where professionalism comes in. Even if you do feel that you have a calling, you have to accept that I’m going to have to embark onto a life of the professional. And the life of the professional is a lot of hard work.

(10:47):
Particularly I would say, I mean, actually, isn’t it like that for most crafts, right? But in particular, I think, movie making and whether it’s directing or writing. And what that means is you give up a lot of your personal fun time that you spend with friends, you spend a lot of time alone working on your craft when everyone else is out playing, having fun, right? And it even can affect your ministry involvement if you’re a Christian. It did that to me and you have to find a balance, but you’re not going to be as available as other people are to do things.

So you have to really focus and you have to spend a lot of time and a lot in practice. And it has to be, in my opinion, it has to be the thing you want to do more than anything else such that I tell people, if you can do anything else well or you enjoy doing something else, do that because the competition is so cruel and so fierce and you experience so much rejection over so many years that only those who don’t want to do anything else can make it.

(11:48):
And I remember when I started many, many years ago, I prayed about this and I thought a lot about it and I read those books that told me how hard it is. And I accepted you’re preparing as a professional and I’m going to do this because I love it no matter what. And even if I’m not successful, I actually had to commit, realizing the reality that 90% of people don’t get anywhere with it.

So I asked myself, if I’ve been working at this for 10 or 20 years and I don’t make a movie or maybe only make one movie, will I be willing to do that and look back on my life and think like, no, it was worth it because that’s what happens to most of us. And even myself, I’ve had a few movies made, but really not that many.

So many people might look in my life and say, “Well, you’ve got some movies made, but it’s so little for 25 years or whatever.” And they might actually say, “You put all that time and effort and it wasn’t really worth it. ” And I would say yes, because A, I did it for Christ and it wasn’t about success confirming to me necessarily. It was, do I honor Christ with everything I do no matter what?

So I did it for him. I wrote stories to glorify God and I left the results up to God, but I also did seek to have that professional validation, which did come, but even then I had so few movies made, but for me it was all worth it because I would never want to have done anything else in my life.

(13:17):
Nothing else would be more valuable to me than telling stories in this capacity. But I also had to become aware of God’s timing and God’s plans because they’ve changed recently in my life within this last couple years actually. And we can get into that in a minute, but you have to be open to those objective realities that can steer you because at the end of the day, Greg Kogel says this all the time, and I think it’s the heart and soul of what it really means to live your life for the kingdom, and that is bloom where you’re planted. You could live for God’s kingdom, whether you’re a famous director or whether you’re a plumber.

(14:02):
And that’s the attitude we all have to have and understand in order to, I think, serve him in a way that I think will honor him and enable you to handle things like success. Because another thing is, if you become successful in something like this world, entertainment, it obviously has all the pitfalls of going to your head and narcissism. And oh gosh, let me tell you, I mean, the entertainment world is full of narcissists.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:29):
Yeah, that’s a whole other topic to dive into. One thing I’ve noticed is you’ve been sharing, you’ve used the term screenwriting, but you’ve also used the term storytelling. And I suspect that’s because, because I read several years ago, I read your book, Hollywood Worldviews, that you see all of life as a narrative, as a story, and that what you’re doing when you’re writing any individual movie is sort of drawing from God’s truth down into that story.

Could you talk a little bit about that process and feel free to make comments about what that looks like on a daily basis. What does it mean to be a writer from the time you get up in the morning to the time you go to bed?

Brian Godawa (15:18):
Yeah, no, that’s an excellent question and it does open up some helpful avenues. And when I first started, I was a screenwriter for God. I never really wanted to do Christian movies, so I’ve never sought to do that. Now I have done a couple and I’m open to it. I never wanted to originally, I wanted to make Hollywood movies, secular movies with the Christian worldview, so to speak, if you understand what I’m saying.

But as a Christian, I also, being trained to think through Francis Schaefer’s ideas, it made me realize that I wanted to have a strong worldview understanding of my Christian faith and how it applies to my storytelling. But I consider myself a screenwriter because that’s what I wanted to do.

Dr. Jeff Myers (15:59):
Okay.

Brian Godawa (16:00):
What happened was over time, so then as I studied screenwriting, I started to see connections with what I was learning from these godless storytelling gurus. But because they were studying it, storytelling, shall we say, objectively or within the context of Western civilization, I started realizing there’s a lot of that that actually connects with the Bible and with the storytelling that goes on there. And so I sought to develop what I call my aesthetic, which is my approach to how God uses the imagination and storytelling and images and art and all that.

And it started with the Hollywood Worldviews book, which was helping Christians understand the nature of storytelling. So I explained the craft of storytelling that I had learned, but in the context of as a Christian and how it applies to my faith and how storytelling, actually the act of Western, particularly Western storytelling, actually embodies the paradigm of conversion that mostly accords with Christianity, but it can be of course used for other worldviews.

(17:05):
But if you look at it, there’s so many elements that I was just so excited to see, but let me use one element. When I thought about it, I realized the act of a screenwriter writing a screenplay is very much reflective of the biblical notion of God’s sovereignty and providential control over all things.

(17:27):
And of course, what that means is, I as a writer have my ideas of exactly, I know how everything’s going to end. When I begin, I know how it’s going to end and I work towards it end, but I craft my characters and you’ll hear storytellers say, “Oh, the characters started getting away from me and they became themselves.” Well, the reason why they speak that way, there is a kind of reality, but that’s because they created them in the beginning with that propensity, see.

And once you let that self work it out, it actually, everything they do really does come from how you originally created them. But if you’re allowing them that freedom to be who they were to be created as characters, they will follow paths that will sometimes go beyond what you had intended, but still you’re going to craft it so that it ends the way you want it to end.

(18:11):
And so that’s a real, I think that that’s a picture of God’s providential control, which if you think about it, if that’s true, then. Or let’s put it this way, if you’re an atheist, ultimately there is no providence or control. It’s just either chance at the foundation of all universe or you have some kind of humanistic belief that you have some kind of power in yourself, but all of that contradicts the notion of you as a screenwriter writing that story for a movie.

Those are the kind of things I started realizing and putting together and crafting my aesthetic, which is really how a Christian approaches storytelling. But as years went on, and my necessity for growth and expanding, oh gosh, maybe 11, 12 years ago, I had a couple bad years of screenwriting, wasn’t making much money at it at all, almost nothing actually.

(18:59):
And by the way, that’s common. That happens as well to the best of us. But it forced me to reevaluate and redefine myself. And I started writing to try to direct, but I also started writing novels. That’s a whole other thing that became what’s behind me.

Dr. Jeff Myers (19:14):
Yeah.

Brian Godawa (19:15):
Chronicles of the Nephilim, Chronicles Watch. It all began with, I’ve got to do some other forms of storytelling. And I wasn’t really a novel writer. I’m like, I wasn’t excited to become the great American novel writer. I did it out of necessity because Amazon self-publishing with Kindle opened up and that allowed me because I tried to get a Christian publisher with my first novel and I couldn’t. My books were too biblical. They had sex and violence in them, PG-13.

And so I couldn’t get it published, but because of self-publishing, which was still kind of young, it allowed me to actually put the book out there and it just exploded, and it showed me, “Hey, I can make a living doing this.” And so since then I’ve written, I don’t know, 20 books, 20 novels, and it’s now my main income. And I still write movies, but it’s more my hobby now, but that’s connected to another thing we’ll talk about, breaking into Hollywood now and all that.

(20:12):
What’s the hoax? That’s another issue. Let’s get to that by the end. But right now, that was me trying to, I had to give up my personal desire. I wanted to serve God by writing movies, by writing movies. But when I realized that God was giving me another avenue that was fulfilling my gifts and interests, because I basically write theological novels. A lot of Christians don’t like theology. It’s just boring and whatever to them. And I understand that to a certain degree. It’s not for everyone.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:42):
Now you need to explain when you say theological novels, explain that a little.

Brian Godawa (20:47):
So I love Hollywood movies and entertainment.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:49):
Yeah.

Brian Godawa (20:50):
So I combine them both. And so my number one priority when I’m writing a story is that it’s entertaining. It also must have truth as I understand it, but the entertainment value is not secondary. It’s equally important as the theology.

(21:06):
But it forces me to put that theology, which can be too intellectual for some people or too, what’s the word? Abstract, right? Yeah. Well, storytelling allows you to, and by the way, this is what I wrote about in Hollywood Worldview. Storytelling allows you to incarnate, this is the key phrase, incarnation. You incarnate the abstraction of ideas into characters of storytelling, and you make it come alive.

So this is where I started to explain how worldviews are actually embodied in all movies, in all stories. How? Because each of the characters, the choices they make in the story that’s being told are based on the way they see the world, and the consequences of those actions are the working out of their ideas. Ideas have consequences, right? So in a very real way, a movie is a way of showing how worldviews result in certain consequences.

(22:03):
And the clash of worldviews is the drama. So the hero has one way of looking at the world, the villain has another, and usually they’re exactly opposed. And the whole point of it is to show this worldview is better than the other. But also within a good story, you’re going to have secondary characters that are also struggling with the same issues as the heroin villain, but from different perspectives. So in a way, you’re able to really explore a full theme of understanding of the world.

Like for instance, say maybe you do a movie about suffering and you’re going to have or a story about suffering and you’ll deal with how all these different characters, one person may become depressed and commit suicide. One person may be naively positive and think that, oh, I’ll overcome this terminal sickness. Some people may be more realistic. So the great thing about storytelling is it allows you to work out the important issues of life, but also the ideas of life in a way that can appeal to everybody, not just the intellectuals who want to study philosophy or theology.

(23:04):
But in fact, my argument from the days of Hollywood worldviews to now is that storytelling is very philosophical. It’s very worldview oriented. And it’s okay if you don’t understand that. I think you need to understand how it does affect you because if you don’t understand it, it’s going to affect you. And that’s the worst problem of all is when people are being drawn into the storytelling and the entertainment of it, and they don’t realize how their values are being deeply affected in a negative way, as well as a positive way.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:34):
Well, they become passive recipients of the entertainment without really grappling with the issues that the characters are having to grapple with. So a good character should change us is the way I would look at it.

Brian Godawa (23:47):
Exactly. Now, the second part of my storytelling journey, so that was where I started realizing, hey, I’m really a storyteller, not just movies, but really all along, that is the most important element anyway, because storytelling is storytelling. It doesn’t matter what form it’s in, right? And the power of storytelling can affect you in all these different mediums, whether it’s novels or, and so widening my birth has actually been more fulfilling.

And I’ve got, more people have now been exposed, been affected by my storytelling than I ever did as a screenwriter. And I’ve made more money as a novelist than an exclusive screenwriter than ever. But I also then developed, my next sort of development of my aesthetic was embodied in a couple of other books. Here we’re talking about worldview stuff. Now, truth is, I’ve got like 20 novels, but there’s a few of my books that sort of explain my aesthetic, my philosophy behind how I apply my faith to the art of stories.

(24:45):
Well, anyway, I did a biblical approach to it. How does God use story and imagination in particular? So I wrote two books. One’s called The Imagination of God, which described my own journey through intellectualism of my faith and apologetics and understanding how imagination can become a crucial part of your understanding of God along with the rationality and the intellect, but we often overstress one or the other and create an imbalance.

And then God Against the Gods. And that was a book that, which I promoted, one of my main messages for the last 20 years has been the power of subversion in storytelling. What I mean by that is as storytellers, what we do is one of the ways in which we can affect people, this isn’t completely universal, but it’s almost universal. And that is, it’s what I call by subversion. And I actually drew from the Bible to show how God does this.

And what that means is it has to do with the storytelling or the narratives of a culture. And what you do is every cultural epic or era or time period or geography, whatever, like this particular era has certain stories that are very popular. Now, you might consider those to be something like genre, like zombies movies are now a part of our era, right? And they’re very, a lot of them, right?

Dr. Jeff Myers (26:08):
Right.

Brian Godawa (26:08):
Or it could just simply be a famous story that has become really well known, these kinds of things. And so subversion is the ability to understand what the cultural narratives are. Right now, we have this narrative of wokeness in our culture that’s destroying all of Western civilization and threatens to reduce us into a race war because of their hatred and violence, but it’s dominating the culture.

So you have to understand what are the narratives that they’re telling, and then you enter into that narrative, which means you understand it and you start to use its elements and components because they’re familiar with the culture, but you redefine them with your own definitions or your own ultimate intention, right? And that’s how you subvert the storytelling of the culture. That’s the overall philosophy of it.

Dr. Jeff Myers (27:05):
Okay. I love that in theory. I want you to give an example of what that would look like with one of the issues we’re facing in our culture right now.

Brian Godawa (27:17):
Okay. So first of all, I’m not, it’s funny, I’m sometimes not very good about the most recent things unless someone can throw out things to me. Sometimes I draw from older examples that are strong examples.

Dr. Jeff Myers (27:37):
Sure, go for it.

Brian Godawa (27:38):
Forgive me, but I can give one that’s relevant to today, even though it’s a little bit old. I mean, this is happening a lot. Oh, well, okay. So I mentioned zombies, right? I love the zombie movie genre, but it’s extremely popular, Walking Dead, everything. I mean, just every. So those movies often reflect the prevailing view of the medical or scientific dangers of our culture. So for instance, decades ago, how were zombies made? They were made by nuclear radiation, right?

And why? Because the essence of the zombie genre is that, two things. One is the danger of science destroying us, our humanity, if it goes too far, nuclear radiation ends up destroying us so we shouldn’t be taking it to its limit, which ends in nuclear war, et cetera. But also, how do we define our humanity? The ethic of survival versus the Christian ethic of sacrifice, that’s one of the primal elements of zombies.

(28:54):
The zombie genre is what makes us human. And ultimately, usually it’s those who sacrifice for others rather than those who seek to survive and protect themselves, which is interesting. And that’s the evolutionary ethic versus the Christian ethic. So in my argument, zombie movies are kind of, in that sense, intrinsically supporting the Christian worldview. However, this notion of what makes us zombies, well, what’s been happening in recent years? It’s biohazards that create the zombies.

Well, one way of doing that might be a zombie movie where you see the zombies are created because the government forced everyone to have an inoculation against some disease, and it ended up years down the road, it ended up just changing their DNA. Well, you would do that if you want to show the danger of, look at what’s happening to us now by becoming compliant, passive submission to tyrannical government control, which is against our constitution, but we’ve given into it. We’re giving our freedoms over, right? That’s extremely dangerous. Well, that’s how you might tell that story, is by embodying that in the genre. Does that make sense?

Dr. Jeff Myers (30:08):
Yes, it does.

Brian Godawa (30:10):
Like I said, maybe that’s not a specific movie that’s going on now, but that might be one way that I might approach it. You know what I’m saying?

Dr. Jeff Myers (30:16):
Well, the cultural critique is built into the nature of the narrative itself. And that’s what I think is really cool. You could be really hem fisted about it, but I’m not a big zombie movie fan, but I do remember watching the introduction to Sean of the Dead and it’s just all of these people standing in line down, looking down like this with their phones. And all of a sudden you realize, yeah, we all look like zombies. We’re all just in our own little worlds. It was a pretty powerful but whimsical introduction that is unforgettable in its critique of the person who’s watching.

Brian Godawa (31:00):
Forgive me for, again, drawing from the past. I’m sure I could draw stuff from the present. Unfortunately, there’s so little good stuff now because of the way Hollywood’s gone. But another classic example is Mel Gibson, who in my opinion is one of the best directors in history and his movie Apocalypto. Apocalypto is a raw entertaining chase story. And it takes place in the Mayan culture of the past where a little family, these Mayans are just taking over and enslaving these various tribes in order to use them as human sacrifice.

Well, all the story is, is just this one man who his wife and kid get captured by them. And so he goes on a journey to save his wife and kid and he’s being hunted by other guys and animals. And it’s just an entertaining story. But the very heart and soul of it particularly destroys the argument that has gone on of the noble savage in our culture, the humanistic belief that civilization corrupts us and we need to return back to the environment and worship the environment and get rid of all these Christian shackles and all this kind of stuff and get back to nature, whatever.

(32:14):
All those elements of the Noble Savage myth. Well, this movie shows that that noble savage that is in tune with nature is actually a murderous psychopathic culture that engages in human sacrifice. So that is a strike against the paganism that is driving a lot of our stories. Like today, there’s a lot of movies about the Gaia. In fact, there’s a movie called Gaia coming out, and it’s the same old thing, the same thing as Avatar. Nature is a living organism and it’s going to fight back because of how badly we treat it. Well, that’s literally paganism.

Dr. Jeff Myers (32:48):
Yeah.

Brian Godawa (32:48):
And it’s been in movies, Noah, the movie Noah. By the way, that’s how the godless always subvert our stories. They took our story, Noah, and they subverted it into a picture of a cruel and ruthless God, as well as the movie Exodus, Gods and Kings. God is a temper tantrum throwing child. The movie made by atheists, both of those movies made by atheists. The movie Noah was taking our story, retelling it because we’re familiar with them, right?

And then they retell it to be an environmentalist paradigm of earth worship. It’s literally turned into the opposite of what it was. That’s the power of storytelling. And that’s what we can do as Christians. And that’s what I do in my stories is I go and I try to grab the elements that the world is familiar with and I try to retell the stories within my Christian worldview.

(33:39):
So for instance, we need more Christians out there telling the stories of atheist biographies, like Nietzsche or Freud or Marx. We need to write those biographies because then we can tell their story within our paradigm, just like they do when they take over our stories. And we have so many examples. It seems like every time Hollywood makes a movie about some Christian story, like the last one was Unbroken, fantastic story.

Their book is awesome, but they completely took God out of it. So it was all just about survival. They do that all the time. They turn Christian stories into humanist parables. We can do the same thing and we should do the same thing. It’s part and parcel of the cultural war that’s going on.

Dr. Jeff Myers (34:20):
Yeah. Brian, as I’m reflecting on this, I think we’ve given a lot of food for thought to people who are thinking about storytelling, thinking about screenwriting, thinking about maybe writing a novel. What does this aesthetic of storytelling that you’ve described look like for the person who works in an office or is in the medical field or a police officer or some of the things that people do where they don’t necessarily see the connection between what they do and God’s story?

Brian Godawa (34:56):
Wow, good question. Really good question because if I can take one example, yeah, you have to begin to see, and I think we kind of all do this a little bit intuitively. I’ve always made the argument that we are the heroes of our own stories. Now we’d like to say that God is the hero of our story, but we live our lives as the hero of our story because the protagonist or the hero, it’s their story, their journey, and it may be a journey about discovering God or truth, but still as you’re telling your story, you’re seeing it through your eyes. That’s the hero, right?

And so in a way, we’re all heroes of our own stories. And then I think people are beginning to get that more, particularly with the advent of social media and all that. So they see it more that way, but that’s how we have to see it, whether we’re a doctor, a lawyer or a cop or whatever.

(35:48):
But the classic problem is the narrative of the anti-authoritarian and anti-anti-authority and anti-police worldview that is just spreading across America. Well, as a cop, then how do you count them? Well, you have to begin to see and understand the narrative, and then you have to act. And what that narrative is that all cops are hunting black men and they’re all brutal. And so then when you interact with people, you know what their bigoted views are of you. And so it helps you to be able to operate and interact with them in such a way that can counter that narratives and disprove them.

And I mean, isn’t this what we do as Christians in general because of the bigoted views that many godless people have in our culture about what Christian is, Christian is the Bible thumper and the judging everybody. And then when they see you and they’re realizing you’re not judging them, it’s like, “Hey, you’re cool and you’re a Christian?” That’s subversion, that’s subverting the stereotypes, right?

(36:54):
Yeah. And I think stereotyping is part of human nature. Of course, we know a stereotype exists because it’s partially true, but it’s the embracing of the stereotype as ultimate reality that makes us bigots or prejudicial. And so understanding stereotypes is how we can then dismantle them or live against them, which it’s hard sometimes because sometimes we fall into those. The reason why stereotypes exist is because there are a lot of people who do fit them.

(37:25):
But understanding it through those memes. And that’s how the secular culture is seeking to undermine Western civilization. They are casting America or Western civilization in stereotypical terms so that they can destroy it. So in other words, they won’t have nuance. They’ll say, “Well, so all the founding fathers had slaves, so therefore they’re all evil.” It’s like, well, that’s the black and white stereotypical thinking that makes it easy for them to cancel.

But when you pull back and look at history, you say, “Wait, wait, wait, wait. Now, number one, we don’t judge previous eras by our own values because people to a certain degree are part and parcel of their culture. So they don’t always see things as clearly. So you can’t judge them all extremely that way.” But also, there are more elements to that. Every human being who existed in all of history has a good side and a bad side.

(38:23):
So if you cancel anyone because of anything bad they’ve done and they’ve done a lot of bad things, then we wouldn’t have anybody worthy to elevate in history. So there’s a way to be able to look at a hero. By the way, this is the essence of good storytelling. You have a definitive hero. The cynical view or the postmodern view is there’s no heroes. We’re all just diluted and there’s no truth and it’s just power. But a great storyteller, which will tell a more fulfilling story than a postmodern storyteller.

(38:54):
A hero is definitely the hero, but they have flaws. And that’s the ability to see that, okay, just because they’re a hero doesn’t mean they’re perfect and doesn’t mean we can’t analyze them with self-critique. And that’s how we should address the leftism that’s seeking to destroy our culture now. We can acknowledge certain elements and components.

Yes, slavery is evil and racism is evil and such. However, to claim systemic is to go beyond the individual and you’re denying the nuance. And so you tell the stories by showing that a character who may be flawed can grow and overcome that flaw and have redemption. There you go.

(39:37):
And of course, the problem with woke culture now is there is no redemption. It’s Soviet communism. It’s, they want you to admit it and admit that you’re evil. And then when you do, they don’t forgive you. They destroy you. So like the Soviets would do, and the Maoist communists, they get you into the reeducation camp and they force you on your knees and you have to confess that you were evil and then they kill you.

And so that’s pretty much the same heart and soul of the totalitarianism that’s seeking to destroy Western civilization. So as we counter it, we would tell stories where we show the negative side of the heroes, but we show that they can also transcend that because that’s the one element that woke culture does not believe in. And well, they believe in it for themselves, of course, because that’s human nature, but not everybody else, right?

Dr. Jeff Myers (40:27):
Well, yeah, for somebody to say the truth cannot be known, it’s all socially constructed, usually is the carpet bombing campaign that precedes the ground invasion, right? So they don’t really actually believe there’s no truth. They just want you to believe that your truth is not true so that they can put their truth.

So Brian, we’re recording this in the summertime. A lot of people, it’s going to be really hot. They’re going to say, “Well, let’s go inside in the air conditioning. Let’s watch something.” And you want them to watch intelligently, not passively. What kinds of questions should people be asking in order to intelligently consume media from a biblical worldview?

Brian Godawa (41:07):
Well, if you understand that the story is not just for entertainment purposes, but most stories are telling the journey of a protagonist/hero. I use that term hero because it’s easier to see in those terms, but it also does have kind of a bias that makes it sound a little too pure hero.

(41:24):
Protagonist, the lead character. Every story usually has one main character like that. And they are, if you understand that that story is about their journey beginning as they seek some kind of objective or tangible goal in the world, whether it’s to Braveheart, to kick the King of England out of Scotland because he wants to be free or whatever story is out there now, Corrella Deville, Cruella, I’d like to get revenge on the woman who killed her mother and all this.

Once you understand that that’s the nature of it, then you can watch it and say, “The main character is going to be the good person, so to speak, that we follow, that we’re sympathetic with.” Let’s put it that way. Not good, but sympathetic. And what is their flaw? In the beginning of the story, look for the flaw. What’s the flaw of the hero?

(42:19):
They see the world wrongly in some way, even though they’re still sympathetic, there’s going to be something wrong about the world, and it usually has to do with the theme of the movie. And it’s usually embodied in the battle against the villain or the antagonist, right? So look and see, what is it that they’re battling over, sort of thing.

(42:40):
And it has both an abstract element as well as a tangible element. And so, like I say, I like to use my old movies because they’re my favorites and Braveheart. He wants freedom, but that’s a little abstract, isn’t it? What he actually wants is to kick the King of England out of Scotland. So that’s what obsesses him with his drive to go out and fight.

And of course, that’s the drive of the movie. But then there’s also something in the character that has a flaw. And in Bravert in particular, it was that the king killed his wife, he killed his love. So he was a man of war that had lost his love. And that’s the kind of flaw that he had to relearn sacrifice and love. And the way he does it was, the whole movie is about obstacles to the hero trying to achieve their goal.

(43:24):
But the goal is often something physical, but the spiritual or transcendent meaning is about the why. Why are they doing it? And that’s what you’re looking for. What is it that they’re seeking to do and what’s wrong with them? What do they have to learn about the world? And then by the end of the story, the hero is going to be brought to the end where it looks like he’s never going to achieve the goal and everything’s going to be lost. That all is lost that usually happens or usually someone dies at that moment.

But then the hero faces himself in some way and faces his real inner flaw. And he realizes that I need to change who I am. That’s what matters, not this external goal that I have. But when they do change their inner person, whether they’re a selfish person and they realize the sacrifice or something, then it allows them the ability to vanquish the external foe that they’ve been battling with through the whole story.

(44:13):
Just understanding that that’s how stories go helps you to look for those elements and then see that whatever the hero learns about themselves that helps them overcome and win the battle at the end is usually that moral theme of redemption that the story is saying, this is how you have to change. The classic example is, of course, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, he’s going after the Holy Grail, the Holy Grail, Holy Rail with his father.

And then of course, at that very point where he gets it and he has it, he has the choice, do I get rid of the grail, the thing I’ve been searching all this time to save people? Well, of course I save people. So it’s like you realize people are more important than these things that you’re seeking to give you meaning, right? Those are the kind of meanings and messages that the storytelling itself embodies, and it’s usually focused on the hero’s journey themselves.

(45:06):
What is it they are seeking after? Why? And then how do they change their mind? And what changes their mind is the conversion basically. And that’s what the storytellers are wanting you to also see in your own life as well.

As you become sympathetic to the hero, you are identifying with them, then that’s how technically your guard is down and you’re willing to listen to, because you sympathize with the hero, you’re willing to follow the hero’s journey with them, and that’s how it affects you in terms of the morals, which is why if it’s an immoral movie that has a theme maybe about a character needing to realize that religion is what kills people and you got to get rid of God, like the Handmaid’s Tale, right?

You got to get rid of God because God’s just a tyrant and all these people are tyrants and they’re murderers. Well, that’s the journey that the hero’s going on. Well, then that’s an immoral conversion into a godless worldview.

Dr. Jeff Myers (46:03):
Wow. Man, you have given us so much to think about. It’s fun to see a little insight into the screenwriting craft, how that translated in your life into being a fiction writer of novels, but then the whole idea of story and what we should be looking for in being more intelligent media consumers. Brian, thank you. I’m so grateful that you came on the show today.

(46:26):
Thank you to Brian Godawa for joining me on the show today. You can find his movies and books at godawa.com. That’s G-O-D-A-W-A dot com. You can follow him on Twitter @briangodawa. You can follow him on Facebook at facebook.com/brian.godawa.author. All that’ll be in the show notes too.

You may want to read his book, Hollywood Worldviews, to understand that everything that we see in the books we read and the movies we watch, these aren’t just stories. These are packages of worldviews that we need to review with discernment. So whatever you do, go out with a bold heart, a discerning mind, and go in Jesus’ name. We’ll see you next week.

Ryan Dobson (47:13):
Hi, everyone. I’m Ryan Dobson from the Rebel Parenting podcast. When my parents, Jim and Shirley Dobson, sent me to the Summit Ministries Worldview Conference when I was 17,we had no idea the impact it would have on my life. It changed me so much in two short weeks, I’ve returned every summer for 34 years. This summer, your student can attend an in-person conference. That’s right, in person.

Summit Ministries Worldview Conference challenges students ages 16 to 25 to think deeper about their convictions and their faith by engaging with today’s top worldview thinkers and apologists. Can you imagine in-person, with other students, learning about the Christian worldview? If not, they can attend Summit’s virtual experience, and it’s amazing. Change your student’s life forever by partnering with Summit Ministries’ worldview conference today. Find out more by clicking the link in the show notes.