at the National Catholic Register<\/em>; lots of interesting material, but this was my favorite part and the part which makes me really look forward to Deliver Us from Evil<\/em>:<\/p>\n Where did Father Mendoza come from? <\/em><\/p>\n I owe a lot to the actor, Edgar Ramirez, who played him, for that character. \u2026<\/p>\n So I went after Edgar. He was the only person I went after for the role. And he read it, and he passed on the script. He said, \u201cThe movie could be great, but there\u2019s not enough there.\u201d So I said, \u201cWell, let\u2019s have lunch and talk about it.\u201d And so we sat there at lunch for four hours one day in Beverly Hills, and what really opened it up for me was him starting to talk about a Jesuit that he knows in Venezuela \u2014 a good friend of his who is a Jesuit priest, who had struggled with addiction in his past, which was instrumental in him converting and becoming a priest. And he had made mistakes even as a priest and was very human.<\/p>\n And as we started to talk about the role that guy had played in Edger\u2019s life, I thought, \u201cThat\u2019s what I want.\u201d That\u2019s where this whole idea Mendoza says comes from: \u201cA saint is not a moral exemplar. A saint is a life-giver.\u201d This man who had dedicated his life to helping people, to giving his life to people \u2014 I was really interested in trying to write a character like that.<\/p>\n As Edgar and I continued to work on it, what became most interesting to me \u2014 the movie never says it; it\u2019s pure subtext, but it\u2019s always there \u2014 is we said, \u201cThis is not a guy who sees himself as the exorcist warrior, who\u2019s out there battling demons.\u201d He\u2019s not the demon-hunter, he\u2019s not the demon-slayer at all. He\u2019s out there helping people. He doesn\u2019t care about the demons. He knows this is what can help people. He\u2019s doing this to try to release and liberate the individual.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n