Re: Christian Villain: Is an actor’s pretend sin still sin?

Luro — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 16:05:38 -0000

As an ex-actor and current producer married for 6 and a half years to my actress wife, this question has come up a number of times. As we both wrestle with God in trying to understand his calling in our lives and to this industry, we find the question of how to portray characters and still maintain our Christian morals a fine balance. While I think there is a lot of minutia that can be discussed RE the above posts, I do think there is a macro view that is also important to take. What is the ultimate message of the drama being portrayed? Is there a redemptive thread that the actors performance with help bring home which could unlock people's lives? Luckily, as a producer, I am largely able to control the content I produce and my wife and I are very particular about the roles she takes, but we are often faced with the question of being relevant to a real world who doesn't understand our views.

Of course this macro view needs to be weighed up against a very strict and pre-decided set of moral "What I will do and what I won't do" codes. All that to say that while I do not believe in the adage, "The ends justify the means" at all, I do believe that certain stories demand realistic performances that could be considered as sin. Take for example The Passion Of The Christ - the extreme violence and brutal beating of Jesus, in my opinion, is absolutely necessary in portraying the story. The manipulation of Judas and his betrayal of Jesus is also totally necessary for the story to be told authentically. Whether these may be considered sins for the pretending actor who performs them or not is something to be debated but they do lead to the crux of my point - taking biblical stories which contain clear sins and portraying them on celluloid surely has a greater good at it's core.

Take the story of the prodigal son, or as Tim Keller calls it, the prodigal God - it's my opinion that the full impact of a feature film retelling of this story would not be complete without seeing the depths of depravity that the prodigal falls to - how these depths are captured on screen is where the rub lies and is something I think the Christian actor battles with. On screen, there are literally a million ways to shoot and infer a sin in being committed, but not all of them involve the act of actually committing a sin between two actors on the stage. It may seem untenable to expect actors to demand scenes are shot in a certain way, but take for example the film Fireproof with Kirk Cameron - in the final climactic build up, the script calls for main husband and wife couple to kiss. Cameron refused to kiss anyone other than his actual wife who was not acting in the film. the film makers devised a way for this to happen and the scene was shot in silhouette as Cameron kissed his real life wife and the other shots were edited together for it to seem like he was kissing the actress... Cameron's insistence of not compromising his morals acted as a powerful testimony to the crew as well as the audience who found out about his actions. the trick is, as an actor who doesn't have a say over the script, it's not always possible to make these kind of demands. This is where we rely on God to make a way and have to stick to our guns.

That being said, we're not perfect and this whole being a Christian actor/creator of content in a dark industry is a mine field we navigate with God as our guide - but we do feel called to this industry. Thought I'd just talk about our less abstract theoretical point of view as well as raise the issue that the end result of a story being told is often much more powerful than the individual parts thereof which is to be considered as well but not abused as a license to sin.

PS - Howzit Clint, long time... Luke Rous here.

Re: | catto | curious things from Ricky Catto |

Disqus - Latest Comments for Luro

Re: Christian Villain: Is an actor’s pretend sin still sin?