The Second Chance, written and directed by Steve Taylor and starring Michael W. Smith and jeff obafemi carr, comes out on DVD this coming Tuesday, and I recently acquired a review copy of the disc.
Watching the movie for the first time in five months, I was impressed anew by how much more “authentic” it looks and feels than most “Christian” movies — thanks to the gritty street-level realism and the hand-held cameras, etc. — and I think I may even be a little more willing to accept the fact that Steve Taylor’s first movie was not the satire or comedy or just plain crazy flick that a lot of his fans were hoping for. Taylor’s music has always had a serious undercurrent, and if this film is more of a ‘Jenny’ or ‘The Finish Line’ than a ‘Guilty by Association’ or ‘Cash Cow’, then, well, it still fits with the rest of his oeuvre.
There’s a nice array of bonus features on the disc — deleted scenes, featurettes, etc. — nothing flashy or unusual, but decent. The audio commentary includes a couple interesting anecdotes, too.
The one that grabbed my ear concerns how, when the inner-city pastor played by carr speaks at the suburban church and says “Keep your damn money”, Taylor shot all the close-ups and similar bits in an empty sanctuary, and then for the wider shots he brought in the extras (i.e. the congregation), among whom were members of the cast and crew’s families, etc. For these shots, carr tried to remember to say “darn” instead of “damn”, but there was one take where he was just so in his character’s groove that he said “damn” instead — so some of the dismayed reaction shots in the congregation might, in fact, be genuine. Now that’s just the sort of story you don’t hear in a regular DVD audio commentary.
It was also interesting to hear that the inner-city church where much of the film was shot was built several decades ago for a Presbyterian congregation, but had become a Churches of Christ sanctuary by the time the film was made — so Taylor was a little nervous at first about whether they would allow him to put a cross back on the steeple and a piano in their sanctuary, because Church-of-Christers don’t do that sort of thing. And apparently, at some point during the negotiations, the people who run the church said they couldn’t be part of an R-rated movie, and Taylor did a double-take and said no, no, of course it won’t be R-rated, it’s got Michael W. Smith… Which, of course, raises the question of whether Smitty ever would consider acting in an R-rated movie — and if not, why not! (I hear he liked The Passion, after all…)
Final, trivial note: I happened to watch this disc on my laptop, so I noticed that three of the previews — for Facing the Giants, Left Behind III and Madison — are letterboxed, as is the music video, whereas the trailer for The Gospel, a more mainstream release, gets the anamorphic, enhanced-for-widescreen-TV treatment. I am mildly curious as to how that distinction came about.
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