출처:http://www.libertyfilmfestival.com/libertas/index.php?p=332
5/5/2005
A Conversation With Gavin Polone, Producer of ‘Revelations’
Filed under:General Interviews— Govindini @ 11:59 am
I recently spoke with Gavin Polone, executive producer of the highly-rated NBC miniseries Revelations currently airing Wednesday nights. In “Revelations,” a physicist (Bill Pullman) and a nun (Natascha McElhone) race against the clock to see if an end-of-the-world apocalypse can be averted. This acclaimed series is already being praised for its fair portrayal of Christian faith, high production values and exciting plotline.
Gavin Polone is a veteran Hollywood producer whose diverse body of work includes such suspense thrillers as Panic Room , Secret Window and 8MM and numerous successful TV shows, including two Emmy-nominated TV series: “The Gilmore Girls” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” He got his start as an assistant at International Creative Management (ICM), then joined boutique agency Bauer/Benedek, which evolved into the powerhouse United Talent Agency (UTA). Polone was made a partner at UTA, but then left in 1996 to create his own production company with Judy Hofflund, Hofflund/Polone. After numerous successes, Polone formed his latest production company, Pariah, in 2001. “Revelations” is Pariah’s latest project, and bodes well for the other productions they have in store.
We’ll also add that Gavin Polone is a Republican, and one of the rare Hollywood producers who is open about his conservativism. His work - from dark, edgy fare like 8MM to family-friendly movies like the upcoming Little Manhattan to spiritual material like Revelations belies the common liberal claim that conservatives are only interested in safe, anodyne entertainment. Conservatives should take the advice that Polone gives: if you want to change Hollywood - get out there and do whatever it takes to get your project made!
Interview by Govindini Murty.
GM: What inspired you to produce “Revelations"?
GP: I’m always looking for projects that are original, and specifically, dissimilar from anything that’s on the air. When I was just a boy, I read Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, which is a book that applied Biblical prophecy, as foretold in the Book of Revelations, to the contemporary world of the 1970’s. I thought it was fascinating and scary, and it just seemed time to try and do that on a television series.
GM: Were you at all inspired by The Passion ?
GP: First of all, I was inspired by The Passion, but not necessarily to do a television show. We had started this television show before The Passion came out, so the two aren’t connected, but I was inspired by The Passion just because I thought it was such a great movie.
GM: Though you started the series beforehand, did the success of The Passion reaffirm to you that there was an audience for religious material out there?
GP: I always knew that there was an audience for religious-themed material if done properly, and I always felt that what I had seen on television that had any kind of a spiritual bent didn’t really reflect the belief system of people in the United States, which tends to be more specific to a particular religion, meaning, people tend to be some form of Protestant Christian, or people tend to be Catholic. When you watch shows like “Highway to Heaven” or “Touched by an Angel,” you never see any mention of a religion, nobody ever says “Jesus Christ” or speaks of Jesus Christ. I thought it was time that we try to do something where we had a very clear belief system, and characters who believed in religion as it’s described in the New Testament.
GM: Do you think Hollywood has been unfriendly, or unwelcoming, to such religious material in TV and movies?
GP: I wouldn’t say unfriendly or unwelcoming, I would think just remote from the cultural identity of the country. I think that’s why a tremendously successful filmmaker like Mel Gibson has to spend money out of his own pocket to make, market, and release a film like The Passion of the Christ which ended up being so very commercially successful. Obviously any studio would have done it if they had known about the potential, but because the culture of the entertainment industry really revolves around a very small group of people in New York and Los Angeles, who tend to be out of touch with what’s culturally relevant to the rest of the country, you can really see how this type of programming in television or theatrical features would end up being ignored.
GM: What are your own religious beliefs?
GP: Well, David Seltzer, the creator of the show, and I have made a sort of vow that we wouldn’t talk about our religious beliefs because when it comes to religious-themed entertainment, I think automatically the viewer presupposes that whatever they’re seeing on screen directly reflects the beliefs of the filmmaker, and that there’s some kind of prejudice in that way. I believe that our show “Revelations” is really an entertainment program first. I’m not a theologist, David Seltzer’s not a theologist, and I think that my beliefs are irrelevant - that this show could be enjoyed by an atheist, by a Jewish person, or a Hindu, as well as by people who are of the Christian faith in all its forms.
GM: Beyond the religious message then, was there any other sort of message in ‘Revelations” that you and David Seltzer were inspired to pass on to the public?
GP: I think the message has to do with the perseverance of the characters, which is something that I always like, and the hopefulness they have that they can correct the things that are wrong in society. That’s what I like to see, myself - people struggling, and hopefully overcoming, continuously persevering along a path of goodness and righteousness. I think that’s the only message I can really put out there.
GM: The series seems to have a pro-life theme - the plot has a young girl who’s hit by lightning, and a nun fighting to save her from being taken off life support. Certainly, the people who are fighting to keep the girl alive come across a lot better than the doctors who seem overly hasty in wanting to take her off life support. It’s interesting that at the very time that the Terry Schiavo case was going on, this series was coming along - what do you think of the parallels between the two stories?
GP: There’s a tremendous number of parallels all the way through. It’s not only between the Terry Schaivo case and the girl who’s in a persistent vegetative state. There are certain questions about the Pope, and then the Pope died at the same time, and on Friday, I noticed that they found this planet in a distant solar system that nobody had found before, and there’s an element coming in episode five that has some similarities to that. I’m sure they’re all coincidences, but going back to your original question about this having a pro-life point of view - I think it’s a lot about perspective. If you’re looking for these things, you can sort of find the parallels in the show, or you can look at it from the other angle as well.
GM: I guess what made it seem to have a pro-life message is that you are fair to that side, and that very rarely happens on TV or in the movies. The pro-life side is generally given short-shrift.
GP: Oh absolutely, they’re always looked at as the villains. Irrespective of my personal opinion, what I want to see on a television show is something that makes sense for the individual character. If you have characters on a television show who are religious or who are Catholic and then you see them not taking that kind of position when it comes to disconnecting somebody from an apparatus that’s keeping them alive, that would seem nothing but false. And maybe there are other circumstances in which it would be different, and maybe there are other characters in future episodes who will have a different kind of view. As long as it’s true to that character, that’s good filmmaking. If you try to do something’s that’s false, to represent how you feel, that’s bad filmmaking
GM: “Revelations” has been very successful so far, and obviously The Passion was tremendously successful. Do you think this will inspire Hollywood to reach out more to people who are religious or conservative?
GP: Most likely. One thing you can really bank on is that a success breeds imitation in the entertaintment business, and I think that’s part of what’s wrong in the entertainment business. You can see it in very direct ways - for example on CBS you have three different “CSI"s, and I’m sure soon there’ll be a fourth “CSI.” You have two other shows by the same producer of “CSI,” that seem just like “CSI” and then there are four “Law and Order"s on NBC. It just seems to be the way they handle their business - they try to find genres or subject matter that connect with the viewers and then they just beat it to death by replicating it over and over again. It’s kind of pathetic.
GM: Was this series an effort on the part of NBC to reach out to conservatives or Christians?
GP: I think that everything NBC does is part of a strategy to better the ratings of NBC. So if they think it’s going to better their ratings, they’re going to do it. I can’t speak to them trying to reach out to religious groups in any way, but I can say that they are keenly aware of their need to increase their audience base.
GM: It would seem that there is a very large conservative audience out there that is being ignored nowadays by Hollywood.
GP: That’s true, and wherever I go, being personally a political conservative, I am always the odd man out in a conversation. This weekend I was at a dinner party with people who were in the entertainment industry and everybody looks at me in shock when I express my disagreement with the views that they have.
GM: What are your thoughts on potentially more conservative-leaning content coming out in the years to come?
GP: I think that the entertainment industry serves the public, ultimately. If you’re not providing entertainment that seems relevant to your audience, then they will stop being a market for your product. I think it’s clear that we live in a much more conservative country than the entertainment industry had thought it was, and it would be much smarter for them to move in that direction.
GM: If Hollywood is just about the bottom line, why do they so often seem to go out of their way to offend conservatives or Republicans?
GP: Well, ultimately it’s a business where people are so heavily influenced by their own environment - as I said, if I’m sitting at a dinner party and people make some joke about the President or some joke about evangelical Christians or some joke about tax policy as it stands today, or the war in Iraq, or you know - this just happened on Friday - my girlfriend and I will sort of look at each other, and just keep silent and let these things kind of play out. But they really approach it in a manner that they feel like everybody agrees with them, because they’re so insulated, and I think that has to have an effect on their work. At the same time, there’s enough evidence that some of the choices that they’ve been making are not resonating with the American public - that there might be a possibility for them to broaden their market base. I think that that’s going to slowly turn this gigantic aircraft carrier around and bring it a little bit more to the center. And I think that’s where things need to be. If we were to move more to the center, so that all points of view were incorporated, that would be the healthiest thing for the industry, and I think that would be the most satisfying thing for the country.
GM: Creativity is certainly always served by a healthy competition of ideas. What we’ve heard through our work with the Liberty Film Festival, and through our contacts with people at all different levels of the film industry, is that conservatives feel that the source of their creativity, which is the freedom to express their ideas, is not allowed to take place.
GP: Fortunately technology is the great equalizer, so therefore people who are making movies that are going to be distributed directly to DVD or potentially on-line, are now going to have an opportunity whereas they wouldn’t have in the past, because it takes this huge distribution machinery to theatrically release features. That’s also been true of TV, but now someone can potentially do a thirty minute TV show every week on a website. The technology is there to make it more egalitarian than it has been in the past.
GM: That’s very true. The digital revolution has been a major factor in freeing up filmmaking. We’ve had a lot of filmmakers who’ve been able to make films and express different viewpoints who wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. Of course the ongoing challenge continues to be distribution, in particular theatrical distribution. Now, you’ve mentioned you’re a conservative and a Republican, and that you’ve been open about that. Has that caused any problems for you in Hollywood?
GP: I’m sure it has, but I don’t really think to much about it, and I don’t really hide it anywhere. People know that I am, and I know other people have different political beliefs. I try to keep myself as tolerant as I can possibly be of everyone else’s beliefs because I think people should be tolerant of mine. I have more work than I can handle, as it is right now, so I don’t really think that it’s evident to me that there are people who discriminate against me because of my political beliefs. But at the same time I don’t discriminate against anybody else, and I’ll do business with anybody. I believe that it’s the nature of our country and the nature of a democracy that we do have different beliefs and that we can express them and we can act on them, and yet we’re still able to get along. That’s what freedom is about to me.
GM: Have you ever had anyone tell you that when they brought conservative or pro-Republican material to a network or studio, there was an attempt to water it down or change the material in any way?
GP: I’ve never heard anything about that, no. But there’s not a lot of people trying to do it. Most of those people in the entertainment industry tend to be very liberal and that tends to be mirrored in their work. So I’ve never seen anything that seemed more conservative in its political approach get squashed in any way, because it’s usually just not done.
GM: What do you think would make it possible for more politically conservative people to come forward with projects and get them made?
GP: I think it’s just having more of them interested in that particular area. It may be that there are currently not as many people of a conservative bent who are interested in making movies and television shows as there are people who are liberal - and maybe that will start changing. Maybe when they start becoming inspired by seeing Mel Gibson make movies like The Passion of the Christ - they’ll step forward. Maybe people who are currently thinking “maybe I’ll go into radio or maybe I’ll write a book” will instead say “maybe I’ll become a filmmaker.”
GM: A lot of conservatives have gotten demoralized and now don’t even go into Hollywood because they see no hope of a career there. Hopefully, as you said, with successes like The Passion, they’ll be inspired to get involved. Though Mel Gibson had to make The Passion with his own money, and couldn’t even get Fox or any other studio to distribute it.
GP: True, but he did it, and it was a gigantic success and he’s going to earn back hundreds of millions of dollars back from that investment and that will change things, there’s no question.
GM: Very true - that and the digital revolution as well. What advice would you give to our conservative readers who are interested in entering the film industry and successfully making projects with conservative themes?
GP: I’d give them the same advice that I’d give to someone who seems politically neutral or to a liberal person: you’ve got to just keep doing the work. You’ve got to keep writing scripts, and then eventually if someone won’t make your movie, you make it yourself. I’ve made ten movies and numerous television shows, but I’ve run up against it. I had a little movie I wanted to make, and I financed it myself. We did it digitally, and shot in my house and in my offices and used my cars and all my friends are in it and I was in it. Just go and scrap your way into getting it done and then go to film festivals and enter all the film festivals and eventually if you are that persistent - it does relate back to the theme of the television show about perseverence - and you have the talent, then you can succeed.
GM: That’s great advice.
GP: And that is true - you know most of the people who are successful as filmmakers did it just that way, irrespective of how they feel politically.
GM: What was the film that you made?
GP: It was a little romantic comedy called Seeing Other People.
GM: That’s great. What are your upcoming projects?
GP: I have a TV show we’re going to start shooting in August that’s called “Thief” that stars Andre Braugher and will be on FX, and then we have a movie that will come out this fall with Fox called Little Manhattan which is a really nice little movie about a ten-year old boy who falls in love with a little girl for the first time. It’s a really sweet movie. And we have another movie called Population 436 that’s starting in Canada this June, and more television after that.
GM: Beyond that, what are the ideal projects you would like to make?
GP: Honestly, I love historical dramas.
GM: Really!
GP: Yeah, so if I could do a sweeping epic about the life of Alexander Hamilton or something like that, a revolutionary war kind of movie or something historical. Those things tend to interest me the most - but those are also the most difficult kind of movies to get going.
GM: They certainly are. What are your favorite historical dramas?
GP: Oh you know, Bridge on the River Kwai is a movie that I really love. I’m sure that if I sat and thought about it, I could come up with a few others. That’s the kind of stuff that I really enjoy.
GM: How about Abel Gance’s Napoleon ?
GP: I love that movie. That’s a great movie.
GM: It’s a fantastic movie.
GP: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
GM: Well thank you for your time today. We very much appreciated speaking with you.
GP: Thank you. It was nice speaking with you too.
5/5/2005
A Conversation With Gavin Polone, Producer of ‘Revelations’
Filed under:General Interviews— Govindini @ 11:59 am
I recently spoke with Gavin Polone, executive producer of the highly-rated NBC miniseries Revelations currently airing Wednesday nights. In “Revelations,” a physicist (Bill Pullman) and a nun (Natascha McElhone) race against the clock to see if an end-of-the-world apocalypse can be averted. This acclaimed series is already being praised for its fair portrayal of Christian faith, high production values and exciting plotline.
Gavin Polone is a veteran Hollywood producer whose diverse body of work includes such suspense thrillers as Panic Room , Secret Window and 8MM and numerous successful TV shows, including two Emmy-nominated TV series: “The Gilmore Girls” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” He got his start as an assistant at International Creative Management (ICM), then joined boutique agency Bauer/Benedek, which evolved into the powerhouse United Talent Agency (UTA). Polone was made a partner at UTA, but then left in 1996 to create his own production company with Judy Hofflund, Hofflund/Polone. After numerous successes, Polone formed his latest production company, Pariah, in 2001. “Revelations” is Pariah’s latest project, and bodes well for the other productions they have in store.
We’ll also add that Gavin Polone is a Republican, and one of the rare Hollywood producers who is open about his conservativism. His work - from dark, edgy fare like 8MM to family-friendly movies like the upcoming Little Manhattan to spiritual material like Revelations belies the common liberal claim that conservatives are only interested in safe, anodyne entertainment. Conservatives should take the advice that Polone gives: if you want to change Hollywood - get out there and do whatever it takes to get your project made!
Interview by Govindini Murty.
GM: What inspired you to produce “Revelations"?
GP: I’m always looking for projects that are original, and specifically, dissimilar from anything that’s on the air. When I was just a boy, I read Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, which is a book that applied Biblical prophecy, as foretold in the Book of Revelations, to the contemporary world of the 1970’s. I thought it was fascinating and scary, and it just seemed time to try and do that on a television series.
GM: Were you at all inspired by The Passion ?
GP: First of all, I was inspired by The Passion, but not necessarily to do a television show. We had started this television show before The Passion came out, so the two aren’t connected, but I was inspired by The Passion just because I thought it was such a great movie.
GM: Though you started the series beforehand, did the success of The Passion reaffirm to you that there was an audience for religious material out there?
GP: I always knew that there was an audience for religious-themed material if done properly, and I always felt that what I had seen on television that had any kind of a spiritual bent didn’t really reflect the belief system of people in the United States, which tends to be more specific to a particular religion, meaning, people tend to be some form of Protestant Christian, or people tend to be Catholic. When you watch shows like “Highway to Heaven” or “Touched by an Angel,” you never see any mention of a religion, nobody ever says “Jesus Christ” or speaks of Jesus Christ. I thought it was time that we try to do something where we had a very clear belief system, and characters who believed in religion as it’s described in the New Testament.
GM: Do you think Hollywood has been unfriendly, or unwelcoming, to such religious material in TV and movies?
GP: I wouldn’t say unfriendly or unwelcoming, I would think just remote from the cultural identity of the country. I think that’s why a tremendously successful filmmaker like Mel Gibson has to spend money out of his own pocket to make, market, and release a film like The Passion of the Christ which ended up being so very commercially successful. Obviously any studio would have done it if they had known about the potential, but because the culture of the entertainment industry really revolves around a very small group of people in New York and Los Angeles, who tend to be out of touch with what’s culturally relevant to the rest of the country, you can really see how this type of programming in television or theatrical features would end up being ignored.
GM: What are your own religious beliefs?
GP: Well, David Seltzer, the creator of the show, and I have made a sort of vow that we wouldn’t talk about our religious beliefs because when it comes to religious-themed entertainment, I think automatically the viewer presupposes that whatever they’re seeing on screen directly reflects the beliefs of the filmmaker, and that there’s some kind of prejudice in that way. I believe that our show “Revelations” is really an entertainment program first. I’m not a theologist, David Seltzer’s not a theologist, and I think that my beliefs are irrelevant - that this show could be enjoyed by an atheist, by a Jewish person, or a Hindu, as well as by people who are of the Christian faith in all its forms.
GM: Beyond the religious message then, was there any other sort of message in ‘Revelations” that you and David Seltzer were inspired to pass on to the public?
GP: I think the message has to do with the perseverance of the characters, which is something that I always like, and the hopefulness they have that they can correct the things that are wrong in society. That’s what I like to see, myself - people struggling, and hopefully overcoming, continuously persevering along a path of goodness and righteousness. I think that’s the only message I can really put out there.
GM: The series seems to have a pro-life theme - the plot has a young girl who’s hit by lightning, and a nun fighting to save her from being taken off life support. Certainly, the people who are fighting to keep the girl alive come across a lot better than the doctors who seem overly hasty in wanting to take her off life support. It’s interesting that at the very time that the Terry Schiavo case was going on, this series was coming along - what do you think of the parallels between the two stories?
GP: There’s a tremendous number of parallels all the way through. It’s not only between the Terry Schaivo case and the girl who’s in a persistent vegetative state. There are certain questions about the Pope, and then the Pope died at the same time, and on Friday, I noticed that they found this planet in a distant solar system that nobody had found before, and there’s an element coming in episode five that has some similarities to that. I’m sure they’re all coincidences, but going back to your original question about this having a pro-life point of view - I think it’s a lot about perspective. If you’re looking for these things, you can sort of find the parallels in the show, or you can look at it from the other angle as well.
GM: I guess what made it seem to have a pro-life message is that you are fair to that side, and that very rarely happens on TV or in the movies. The pro-life side is generally given short-shrift.
GP: Oh absolutely, they’re always looked at as the villains. Irrespective of my personal opinion, what I want to see on a television show is something that makes sense for the individual character. If you have characters on a television show who are religious or who are Catholic and then you see them not taking that kind of position when it comes to disconnecting somebody from an apparatus that’s keeping them alive, that would seem nothing but false. And maybe there are other circumstances in which it would be different, and maybe there are other characters in future episodes who will have a different kind of view. As long as it’s true to that character, that’s good filmmaking. If you try to do something’s that’s false, to represent how you feel, that’s bad filmmaking
GM: “Revelations” has been very successful so far, and obviously The Passion was tremendously successful. Do you think this will inspire Hollywood to reach out more to people who are religious or conservative?
GP: Most likely. One thing you can really bank on is that a success breeds imitation in the entertaintment business, and I think that’s part of what’s wrong in the entertainment business. You can see it in very direct ways - for example on CBS you have three different “CSI"s, and I’m sure soon there’ll be a fourth “CSI.” You have two other shows by the same producer of “CSI,” that seem just like “CSI” and then there are four “Law and Order"s on NBC. It just seems to be the way they handle their business - they try to find genres or subject matter that connect with the viewers and then they just beat it to death by replicating it over and over again. It’s kind of pathetic.
GM: Was this series an effort on the part of NBC to reach out to conservatives or Christians?
GP: I think that everything NBC does is part of a strategy to better the ratings of NBC. So if they think it’s going to better their ratings, they’re going to do it. I can’t speak to them trying to reach out to religious groups in any way, but I can say that they are keenly aware of their need to increase their audience base.
GM: It would seem that there is a very large conservative audience out there that is being ignored nowadays by Hollywood.
GP: That’s true, and wherever I go, being personally a political conservative, I am always the odd man out in a conversation. This weekend I was at a dinner party with people who were in the entertainment industry and everybody looks at me in shock when I express my disagreement with the views that they have.
GM: What are your thoughts on potentially more conservative-leaning content coming out in the years to come?
GP: I think that the entertainment industry serves the public, ultimately. If you’re not providing entertainment that seems relevant to your audience, then they will stop being a market for your product. I think it’s clear that we live in a much more conservative country than the entertainment industry had thought it was, and it would be much smarter for them to move in that direction.
GM: If Hollywood is just about the bottom line, why do they so often seem to go out of their way to offend conservatives or Republicans?
GP: Well, ultimately it’s a business where people are so heavily influenced by their own environment - as I said, if I’m sitting at a dinner party and people make some joke about the President or some joke about evangelical Christians or some joke about tax policy as it stands today, or the war in Iraq, or you know - this just happened on Friday - my girlfriend and I will sort of look at each other, and just keep silent and let these things kind of play out. But they really approach it in a manner that they feel like everybody agrees with them, because they’re so insulated, and I think that has to have an effect on their work. At the same time, there’s enough evidence that some of the choices that they’ve been making are not resonating with the American public - that there might be a possibility for them to broaden their market base. I think that that’s going to slowly turn this gigantic aircraft carrier around and bring it a little bit more to the center. And I think that’s where things need to be. If we were to move more to the center, so that all points of view were incorporated, that would be the healthiest thing for the industry, and I think that would be the most satisfying thing for the country.
GM: Creativity is certainly always served by a healthy competition of ideas. What we’ve heard through our work with the Liberty Film Festival, and through our contacts with people at all different levels of the film industry, is that conservatives feel that the source of their creativity, which is the freedom to express their ideas, is not allowed to take place.
GP: Fortunately technology is the great equalizer, so therefore people who are making movies that are going to be distributed directly to DVD or potentially on-line, are now going to have an opportunity whereas they wouldn’t have in the past, because it takes this huge distribution machinery to theatrically release features. That’s also been true of TV, but now someone can potentially do a thirty minute TV show every week on a website. The technology is there to make it more egalitarian than it has been in the past.
GM: That’s very true. The digital revolution has been a major factor in freeing up filmmaking. We’ve had a lot of filmmakers who’ve been able to make films and express different viewpoints who wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. Of course the ongoing challenge continues to be distribution, in particular theatrical distribution. Now, you’ve mentioned you’re a conservative and a Republican, and that you’ve been open about that. Has that caused any problems for you in Hollywood?
GP: I’m sure it has, but I don’t really think to much about it, and I don’t really hide it anywhere. People know that I am, and I know other people have different political beliefs. I try to keep myself as tolerant as I can possibly be of everyone else’s beliefs because I think people should be tolerant of mine. I have more work than I can handle, as it is right now, so I don’t really think that it’s evident to me that there are people who discriminate against me because of my political beliefs. But at the same time I don’t discriminate against anybody else, and I’ll do business with anybody. I believe that it’s the nature of our country and the nature of a democracy that we do have different beliefs and that we can express them and we can act on them, and yet we’re still able to get along. That’s what freedom is about to me.
GM: Have you ever had anyone tell you that when they brought conservative or pro-Republican material to a network or studio, there was an attempt to water it down or change the material in any way?
GP: I’ve never heard anything about that, no. But there’s not a lot of people trying to do it. Most of those people in the entertainment industry tend to be very liberal and that tends to be mirrored in their work. So I’ve never seen anything that seemed more conservative in its political approach get squashed in any way, because it’s usually just not done.
GM: What do you think would make it possible for more politically conservative people to come forward with projects and get them made?
GP: I think it’s just having more of them interested in that particular area. It may be that there are currently not as many people of a conservative bent who are interested in making movies and television shows as there are people who are liberal - and maybe that will start changing. Maybe when they start becoming inspired by seeing Mel Gibson make movies like The Passion of the Christ - they’ll step forward. Maybe people who are currently thinking “maybe I’ll go into radio or maybe I’ll write a book” will instead say “maybe I’ll become a filmmaker.”
GM: A lot of conservatives have gotten demoralized and now don’t even go into Hollywood because they see no hope of a career there. Hopefully, as you said, with successes like The Passion, they’ll be inspired to get involved. Though Mel Gibson had to make The Passion with his own money, and couldn’t even get Fox or any other studio to distribute it.
GP: True, but he did it, and it was a gigantic success and he’s going to earn back hundreds of millions of dollars back from that investment and that will change things, there’s no question.
GM: Very true - that and the digital revolution as well. What advice would you give to our conservative readers who are interested in entering the film industry and successfully making projects with conservative themes?
GP: I’d give them the same advice that I’d give to someone who seems politically neutral or to a liberal person: you’ve got to just keep doing the work. You’ve got to keep writing scripts, and then eventually if someone won’t make your movie, you make it yourself. I’ve made ten movies and numerous television shows, but I’ve run up against it. I had a little movie I wanted to make, and I financed it myself. We did it digitally, and shot in my house and in my offices and used my cars and all my friends are in it and I was in it. Just go and scrap your way into getting it done and then go to film festivals and enter all the film festivals and eventually if you are that persistent - it does relate back to the theme of the television show about perseverence - and you have the talent, then you can succeed.
GM: That’s great advice.
GP: And that is true - you know most of the people who are successful as filmmakers did it just that way, irrespective of how they feel politically.
GM: What was the film that you made?
GP: It was a little romantic comedy called Seeing Other People.
GM: That’s great. What are your upcoming projects?
GP: I have a TV show we’re going to start shooting in August that’s called “Thief” that stars Andre Braugher and will be on FX, and then we have a movie that will come out this fall with Fox called Little Manhattan which is a really nice little movie about a ten-year old boy who falls in love with a little girl for the first time. It’s a really sweet movie. And we have another movie called Population 436 that’s starting in Canada this June, and more television after that.
GM: Beyond that, what are the ideal projects you would like to make?
GP: Honestly, I love historical dramas.
GM: Really!
GP: Yeah, so if I could do a sweeping epic about the life of Alexander Hamilton or something like that, a revolutionary war kind of movie or something historical. Those things tend to interest me the most - but those are also the most difficult kind of movies to get going.
GM: They certainly are. What are your favorite historical dramas?
GP: Oh you know, Bridge on the River Kwai is a movie that I really love. I’m sure that if I sat and thought about it, I could come up with a few others. That’s the kind of stuff that I really enjoy.
GM: How about Abel Gance’s Napoleon ?
GP: I love that movie. That’s a great movie.
GM: It’s a fantastic movie.
GP: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
GM: Well thank you for your time today. We very much appreciated speaking with you.
GP: Thank you. It was nice speaking with you too.
