A Bittersweet Love Story
Alexis is becoming known for her role as Rory Gilmore on TV's The Gilmore Girls, for which she recently won the 2002 Family Friendly Forum Award for Best Actress in a Drama.
Jonathan Jackson is best known for his role as Lucky Spencer on ABC-TV’s General Hospital for which he was nominated for six Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Younger Leading Actor, winning the award three times.
Although Babbitt wrote the novel in 1975, Tuck Everlasting is considered by many a classic, if not for it's bittersweet love story, Victorian setting, and immortality themes, then for its huge popularity among teens and school districts across the country who have included it on required reading lists.
Targeted solidly at the family film-going segment, the film nonetheless has attracted conservative Christian criticism for what one critic describes as “pagan metaphors…couched within an environmental message about protecting sacred nature.”
Just before the movie was released I had the opportunity to talk with Tuck's director, Jay Russell about the film's Judeo-Christian content. Pleasant and gracious, imagine Jay's voice with a slight Arkansan drawl softened by a few years in New York where he earned his MFA in filmmaking.
The Philosophy of the Movie
Williams: Tell me a little about your upbringing and the presence or absence of any religious faith in your life?
Russell: I grew up in Arkansas, raised conservative and classic Southern Baptist. I was always interested in religion as a big topic. While in college I took courses in world religions and philosophy and did as much studying in that as I could. My wife was raised as a practicing Catholic and we sort of blend the two at this point.
Williams: Wow! Southern Baptist and Catholic.
Russell: Yea, we get it from two different directions. (chuckles)
Williams: During the film's development stage, was there any discussion about what moral message might or might not be conveyed in the final film?
Russell: Yea, we discussed a great deal what exactly was the bottom line of philosophy of this piece. And it's stated in the rowboat scene by the Angus Tuck (William Hurt) character. In one sentence he states the theme which is “Do not fear death; fear the unlived life.” In fact that's a tough scene for an actor to play because you're asking the actor to state the theme of the movie and I believe that's hard to pull off in a believable and conversational way. But I thought Hurt did a good job.
Williams: There's a line when Miles (Scott Bairstow) says: “Immortality is not all the preachers crack it up to be.” But Miles isn't talking about the kind of immortality that Christian preachers talk about, is he?
Russell: First of all, obviously Miles is a very bitter character and to me likely the most complex character in the piece. Instead of “eternal (Christian) immortality,” immortality on earth has become hell for him. When Miles says, “It's not all the preachers crack it up to be,” he is taking a bitter, cynical point of view, as someone would in his case, considering his character's past. And I think that's accurate.
Williams: Is he equivocating?
Russell: We see a melt in him in that scene. At his most cynical, and his angriest, he is angry at God. I feel that he thinks that God has played an awful trick on him. He is angry. But when we see him melt in that scene, I think we understand where the anger is coming from. He is confused. He's horribly confused, because he's got himself outside of the plan as we know it.
Williams: The gravesite burial scene at the end of the movie is very Christian. The minister speaks of the resurrection with our Lord Jesus Christ and how our corrupt bodies will be made incorruptible. But I also noticed that the voice of the minister was mixed very low under the music. It was hard to hear the lines. Was there an effort to keep the lines understated, because the presence of those lines makes a very significant point in light of Miles' comments?
Russell: Well, first of all, you did hear it. Secondly, someone said to me once, “It's easier to get people to listen to what you're saying if you speak in a whisper opposed to a loud voice. I felt that by being very subtle with that it was going to force the audience's ears to arch up a little bit, and given the fact that you remember it so clearly we might have accomplished it.
Williams: Well, actually I was looking for it. Someone had told me about it. I wonder had I not been to a number of Christian funerals if I would have recognized the lines.
Russell: I've had a lot of people, who are not looking for it really zero in on it. They do pick it up. In an early version it was played without the music and then interestingly you didn't listen to it at all.
Williams: It came off like preaching?
Russell: Yea, and at times like that people have a natural tendency to flip the OFF switch.
Williams: Is the gravesite funeral scene and those words of the minister in the book?
Russell: No, no, that is not in the book.
Williams: How did that get added?
Russell: We were looking for an appropriate copy to be read at the gravesite, and we read all different kinds of passages. And what we used not only fit the scene but it seemed to fit the philosophy of the movie.
Kids Are Interested in the Spiritual Stuff
Williams: One Christian critic said of Tuck Everlasting “It relies upon pagan metaphors like the Wheel of Time and The Circle of Life couched with an environmental message about protecting sacred nature.” Do you think that's true or a fair comment about the movie?
Russell: Anytime you begin to approach philosophical issues I think people instantly read into it what they want. I would offer up, just as food for thought for that particular writer, that in traditional Judeo-Christian thought God did create this planet and world as we know it, and nature as something for us here and not something to be destroyed. I would argue that it's not pagan or naturalistic at all, and that was never the intention of Natalie Babbitt the author. It doesn't bother me if people want to read things in and start to debate it. I think that's a good thing. It's fun watching the movie with kids, but one of the greatest thrills I've had on this movie is to follow them into the lobby after the movie and have them begin to debate it.
Williams: Many Christians think Disney and other studios don't want to include traditional Judeo-Christian themes and values in movies.
Russell: There were a number of life and spiritual themes in my previous movie, My Dog Skip. As we got ready to release that film Warner Brothers was concerned that a lot of this stuff was going over the heads of kids and therefore they wouldn't be interested in the film. What they surprisingly found is that kids are very interested in spiritual stuff, and they're riveted by it.
Williams: Why do you think that is?
Russell: I think it's because no one ever talks to kids about things like that anymore. They're just put in front of the PlayStation and that's that.
The unedited version of this interview can be found by clicking here. Stan Williams is Executive Producer of SWC Films. He can be reached at SDavid@StanWilliams.com or via his website at www.StanWilliams.com.
