© Copyright 2002 Stan Williams
Dr. Stan Williams is Executive Producer and Managing Director for SWC Films, an independent feature film development company seeking investment partners. His website is www.StanWilliams.com and he can be reached at Stan@StanWilliams.com.
Global Impact
He has also written several features and network Movies of the Week the most recent of which was Call Me Claus executive produced by Garth Brooks and starring Whoopi Goldberg and Nigel Hawthorne. A while back I had the opportunity to interview Brian. Here are some noteworthy excerpts:
Williams: Why did you pursue a Hollywood writing career?
Bird: It was evident in school that I was cut out to be a writer. After a short stint as a journalist, I began writing for World Vision and later became their Director of Public Relations. I loved my nine years working there. I traveled the world, went to every hot spot in the globe, a hugely enriching experience. During that time, I met a producer on Fantasy Island who had read some of my stuff in print, and encouraged me to write a script for their show. Eventually I did and it was produced. Then the show got cancelled and I thought little more about it. But several years later, in 1986, I was in Ethiopia, post-famine, doing an update for World Vision. I was in the hotel there in the capital, Addis Ababa, flipping through the channels, and Fantasy Island was on, and it was my episode. I don’t mean to say this was huge miracle, but there was a message in that. About that time I also found out that the most popular name given to baby girls in India was Lucy.
Williams: Which is for?
Bird: Lucille Ball. The television reruns in India are mostly I Love Lucy. I just said, Lord, this is a global village. I realized that something as trivial and as meaningless as an episode of Fantasy Island is going to impact other cultures. Well, who exported all of that?
Williams: Hollywood.
Bird: Yes! The power, the potential that is here, to do something in a much more positive way in pre-evangelism is just waiting for us. If we [as Christians] can provide and control the stories and scripts, we're going to make a huge impact.
Williams: But, Brian, we still see so much offensive stuff on television and in films.
The Real Power
Bird: I say, that’s true. A lot of stuff gets through, but you should see the stuff that gets stopped at the gate…
Williams: …by production company interns who happen to be Christians?
Bird: Yes. And also by below-the-line staff like production assistants and set dressers. You'd be surprised at the impact even they have. But the real decision making ability and power is with the producers. People who produce their own films, or produce, write and direct, and to a greater degree studio producers, have all the power. The way to appropriate that power is through the written word. Now, a lot of producers are non-writing producers and they’re quite successful at it because they have a good eye for commercial material. But, from my own experience, if you have any writing skill at all, go for it. Because that’s where the need is, in the software. The power is not with the hardware people, being a camera operator or gaffer for instance.
Williams: Because you’re going to have little influence.
Bird: Right, you’re not going to have any decision making power. But if you own a piece of property that was created in your head and people want it, all of a sudden there’s power there. Especially if you can negotiate terms. Suddenly, you can not be fired from the project. The producers have to keep coming back to you for whatever changes they want to make in the script. And if they want it bad enough they’ll do it.
God is a Writer
Bird: Late one night, I was sitting at my computer terminal. I was frustrated, I had hit a wall, I didn’t know where to go with the scene I was writing. I felt like I should throw it out and start over, and all of that, all the things you hear writers talk about…it really does happen. I was saying to myself, you know what, this is just a meaningless exercise. What am I really doing? I’m putting words on paper, what good is that? I had been overseas feeding the hungry, and had seen the tangible work being done there. And I felt, TV and film is so transient. It’s an image that goes out over the airwaves. What is that? You can’t hold it, unless you get a videotape. But still the thing that goes in your brain is just an image, a picture. What good am I, who is this? Then I said, wait a second. God was a writer. He communicated to us with words. The Gospel says, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God.”
Williams: If God thought verbal and written “words” were important enough to communicate with us, then I guess writing is an important craft.
Bird: I say the same thing about storytelling. Stories comprise 75 to 80 percent of the Bible. Writing stories must be important because God did it so much. Jesus did it all the time. St. Matthew wrote: “Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable.” If it's something Jesus did, we ought to be doing our best to follow his example.