My interview with Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, directors of the documentary Jesus Camp, is now up at CT Movies. I may post a longer version here in a few days.
SEP 16 UPDATE: Here it is, the full unexpurgated interview!
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By Peter T. Chattaway
The children who go to Becky Fischer’s Kids on Fire summer camp may be too young to vote, but they’re hardly politically unaware. In addition to the usual praise and worship at their Pentecostal services, the children offer prayers for President George W. Bush — by actually laying hands on a life-size cardboard cut-out — and burst into tears while asking God to fill the U.S. Supreme Court with “righteous judges.”
Jesus Camp, a new documentary about Fischer’s camp, opens this week in several U.S. cities, and will expand in the weeks ahead. The film made news last month when Magnolia Pictures acquired distribution rights to the film and tried to have it yanked at the last minute from Michael Moore’s Traverse City Film Festival; the distributor said it wanted conservative evangelicals to see the film, and did not want the film to be tainted in their eyes by association with a liberal like Moore.
Similarly, filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady — whose previous film, the award-winning The Boys of Baraka, concerned inner-city kids from Baltimore who attend a school in Africa — say they say they have tried to be as objective as possible with Jesus Camp, and to let the campers and the film’s other characters speak for themselves. These include National Association of Evangelicals president Ted Haggard and liberal Christian talk-show host Mike Papantonio; Fischer herself has already endorsed the film.
The filmmakers spoke to Christianity Today Movies from their office in New York City.
I watched your film The Boys of Baraka yesterday — I hadn’t seen it before — and then I re-watched Jesus Camp after that, and you seem to have a thing for movies about precocious kids.
Grady: [ laughs ]
Ewing: Kids are great subjects, because they’re honest and they’re extremely candid and usually they are not as self-conscious when it comes to the camera, and it takes a much shorter period of time for a child to get used to a camera and be natural than it does for an adult. So it’s not just that we want to make films about children, by any means, but it’s wonderful to have children as subjects in films, for that reason.
When you set out to make this movie, were you initially looking to make another kids movie, or were you looking more for, say, the church-state angle, and kids happened to be a way to get into that?
Grady: Actually, we were looking for a film that focused on children and faith, and we were inspired by Devon Brown, who was in The Boys of Baraka. And we just thought, neither one of us had ever met a child that was so devoted and focused on his church and the church was really the bedrock of his entire community, and it just made us think, Are there other kids out there like this? So actually, initially, we weren’t looking for a film that focused on even the evangelical movement in general, we were looking for a film that would focus on children and faith in a general way. But when we found Becky Fischer’s camp, the film took a different turn.
Ewing: And even after we found the camp and filmed the camp, the events that transpired in the country while we were shooting — namely the nomination and confirmation of two different Supreme Court justices — that really was an event that the people in our film and the evangelical community at large was really chattering about, on the radio and also at prayer conferences, and it just kept coming up and up and up again, and to ignore the political seemed almost irresponsible as filmmakers. And so the film definitely started to take a much more political turn when those events transpired and when the people in our film brought the political into the religious in the churches. So that just sort of naturally occurred.
It’s interesting that you say this was inspired by Devon Brown, because one of the questions that occurred to me, watching the two films so close together, was that both films have boys who are preaching already, and in the case of Devon Brown in The Boys of Baraka, it seems to fit in with what seems like a general theme of uplift in that film, the community is playing a positive role in giving the boy an identity and so forth —
Grady: Mm-hm.
— whereas most people I know who have seen the trailer for Jesus Camp — Christians and non — say that the trailer looks kind of scary. So it’s almost like what was positive for Devon may, to some people, not be so positive here. How would you characterize the differences or similarities — which would you emphasize more, between the two films?
Grady: Well, I think the key to your question, that really the impression that you get from our new film Jesus Camp, really lies initially with your outlook to begin with, and that where one person would see it as scary, another would see it as invigorating, and I think that we’re going to have that response a lot, with this film. Faith — and unbeknownst to Heidi and I, before we made this film — faith and politics both sort of serve as polarizing forces, and I believe that because we very painstakingly tried to leave our point of view out of the film, and really let the characters and the scenes speak for themselves, that depending on your position on a variety of things, is how you’re going to feel and see the movie.
Ewing: You know, Eamon Bowles, who is the head of the distribution company, Magnolia, called this film a Rorschach test for how you feel about religion, and people who see the film seem to see different movies, even though they’re the exact same 84 minutes, and that’s been really fascinating to us. Also, in terms of our trailer, I think, you know, that was not edited by us, but they’re meant to look exciting and to get your attention, and I think that’s sort of the reaction — although there is a softer trailer that’s come out as well that’s probably a little more tolerable, I think, to a lot of people, which I’d love to send to you.
But you know what I think — you asked, back to the differences between the emphasis on the church in The Boys of Baraka and in Jesus Camp, and I think it comes down to stakes. And a documentary film always focuses on what’s at stake in the film. And in The Boys of Baraka, their very education and survival was what we focused on. Devon’s religious beliefs are obviously a side story, and what was at stake for them was an education, and an escape from an environment that was toxic.
Whereas in Jesus Camp, what is being focused on in the media and also in the trailer and partly in our film — what’s at stake is basically the direction of this country. There’s a story about a summer camp, and there’s a much broader story which I think is of interest to everyone, because I think many people feel that the separation of church and state issues, and also the abortion issue, and stem cell research and a lot of hot-button issues — gay marriage — are really being influenced in some way by the evangelical movement, which is very, very organized and involved, politically. So I think everyone feels like there’s something at stake here that affects them, in this film.
I think that’s what the trailer is also trying to capitalize on, is that, maybe this affects you, even if you don’t think it does, even if you don’t know any born-again Christians or if you feel that religion is unrelated to your life, that in the greater scheme of things, the movement as a whole could affect your life and the legislation of this country in some kind of way.
So again, I think it comes down to stakes, and I think the trailer is trying to just show the greater stakes, and that’s why it’s so dramatic.
How did you find Becky Fischer?
Grady: We just lucked out, really. Like I said, we were looking for a film that focused on children and faith, so we were looking for some sort of place where children that were seeking a more deep faith would go, such as a camp or a school, and basically stumbled upon her website and found it fascinating, and Heidi reached out to her, and we just developed a relationship with her and we went and met her and interviewed her and filmed her working with the kids in her community, and we thought we had a movie.
Ewing: And even before we ran across the website or whatever, I had been making some phone calls to different evangelical churches, asking about their children’s programs, and her name actually came up a few times. “Oh, you should talk to Becky Fischer, she used to work here in North Carolina.” And her name came up three or four times, and then when I hit the site eventually, it made sense, because she had been known among some circles of children’s ministers in some of the Pentecostal churches in the country where she had worked previously.
What sort of research did you do beforehand in terms of the culture or the activities there?
Ewing: We had actually seen some film, some tape that she had taken, of the camp, last year’s camp, and we met with her in North Dakota and spoke with her at length, and then we went to a prayer conference that she was leading in Missouri. That was a research trip, but not that much; it was sort of lightly filming, and that’s when we started talking to people and getting to know that community. So mainly in her prayer conferences, we attended a lot of services in Missouri at the church that she goes to. And we also did some research on some other camps, like Dry Gulch, that had been referred to us by some of the kids, and cross-referenced some of the activities going on there. But mainly it was just by talking to people and going there and seeing it for ourselves.
Grady: it’s sort of like in any documentary. Heidi and I are doing this to discover ourselves. We’re both incredibly curious people and genuinely interested in learning about different life experiences happening here on our planet Earth, and there was definitely a learning curve that happened while we were shooting. Although once we started filming and learning more about this particular part of the evangelical community, we were interested in the evangelical community at large and learned more about other types of churches, and obviously this is just one kind of — this is only one type of worship, and the evangelical community encompasses 100 million people in the United States, so there’s a huge range.
Ewing: What did you think of the film, Peter? Let us ask a few questions!
Grady: Did it change from viewing to viewing? You said you saw it twice.
Yeah, you sent me a screener about four months ago, and I saw it then, and —
Grady: You should see the new version.
Has it changed?
Grady: Well, the score changed.
Ewing: We changed every note of music in the movie, and if you’re going to mention that in the film as part of the tone, we will get you a new copy, because we removed every piece of music that you’ve heard, because we thought it was too creepy, too scary, too —
Grady: Judgmental.
Ewing: — judgmental, and we ripped it all out and started from scratch.
That’s interesting, because I did notice the music, and did find myself —
Grady: Would you be willing to watch it again?
Yeah, actually, I would.
Ewing: But back to what your opinions of the film were!
Me! Well, one question I do have — and so if I can turn this back into a question again — you talk about the range of evangelicals that you came across, and Mike Papantonio, would he self-identify as an evangelical?
Grady: No, he’s not evangelical. He’s a Methodist, he goes to a mainline church, but he’s quite devoted to his church.
Right. One question that I would have coming out of the film is did you make any attempt to contact, shall we say, liberal evangelicals — people like Jim Wallis or somebody like that — to set up a dialectic within the evangelical community?
Grady: Well, we definitely wanted to have a conversation within the Christian community at large, maybe evangelical or people who hail from the mainstream or mainline religious affiliation. We definitely felt like we wanted to have that dialogue. We ended up, I guess you would say “casting” Mike, because he is a radio personality, and we already had the radio device going in the film. So for us it was very organic and it made sense, creatively. It wasn’t forced, or it wasn’t — it was more natural to the movie.
Ewing: We also didn’t want to set up some kind of talking head, point counter-point, in the film, that’s not the style of film we make. But I feel that Mike was a good choice because he echoes what a lot of the liberal evangelicals have said about the politicization of the evangelical movement. And of course we follow the liberal evangelicals as they have slowly started to come out, publicly — and there’s not that many, in the press — and say that they’re uncomfortable with the political nature of the evangelical movement.
Well, Mike is not officially a born-again Christian, he does echo a lot of the concerns that these gentlemen have, and we thought this was a more creative way to vent those concerns, because he is a Christian, he has no problem with any form of worship at all, he just thinks that the politicization of the church is going to be the downfall of it, and it’ll trickle out to all Christians, and he doesn’t like that association. So officially, no, he’s not a born-again, but he does, I think, speak very well for the concerns of Christians that don’t like the political nature of the evangelical movement, or at least of the far right part of that movement.
Grady: Peter, I’m just curious, do you know the name of that pastor up north, he’s a megachurch pastor, there was an article about him in the New York Times, and he’s sort of speaking out against the Christian right right now?
This wouldn’t be Greg Boyd, by any chance, would it?
Ewing: Pastor Boyd, yeah.
Grady: Is that who you’re talking about, someone like that?
He also came to mind as another example of that, yeah, but Jim Wallis is the one I mentioned — he’s associated with Sojourners magazine — and there’s others. One of the reasons I ask is because Jeffrey Wells, in one of his Hollywood Elsewhere columns on Jesus Camp, he said, “Oh, come on, admit it, does anyone know an evangelical who voted for John Kerry?” And, well, I do. So this film may perpetuate a certain stereotype.
Ewing: But really, Peter, if you look at the numbers, seriously, the vast majority vote Republican politics. So to find the needle in the haystack, y’know — I don’t know if that’s our responsibility — I don’t know if that’s very accurate, to portray that there’s a lot of liberal evangelical Christians that vote Democratic, either. I think that would — I don’t know. If you look at the numbers, conservative people, religious, will usually vote conservative politics.
Grady: And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Ewing: No!
Grady: And I don’t think that’s even what the beef of Mike Papantonio is. I think his concern is that the church is not the place to be having those conversations.
Ewing: And he doesn’t think that a religious group should be affiliated with a political party either. So I think right now, people definitely see the two as hand-in-hand, and I’m kind of glad to see that some evangelicals are coming out and going against the grain and saying, “You know what? We’re not all in agreement.” And I totally encourage that. But that is sort of a newer trend, it seems to be a newer trend of those pastors who have the courage to come out publicly and speak out against this giant behemoth.
Grady: And in fact, when they do speak out, it gets on the cover of the New York Times, because it’s unusual. But I think that it’s part of a general trend that’s happening in this country, and I think that our film happens to have good timing. Hopefully it’ll ride the wave of this conversation and will be a catalyst for more conversation, amongst all Christians.
How do you feel about the criticism that some have made, that the film, by focusing on Becky Fischer and her community, focuses on a more extreme form of evangelicalism. For example, people who believe Harry Potter is evil. Christianity Today, the magazine or website that I’m writing for, years ago came out with a column saying Harry Potter is good. So the kind of evangelicalism that you see in the film is a little more on the extreme end. And I say this, by the way, as one who went to a Pentecostal high school, so I do know people like that.
Ewing: I think it’s hard, as a filmmaker, to be all things to all people, and we look for compelling stories, some smaller stories that can help tell a greater story. We look for compelling characters who are articulate and fascinating. And we were interested in what Becky was doing. And that was the choice that we made. We identify her as a Pentecostal, and I think it’s impossible to make a film that represents all Christians. And I just think that that’s a criticism that we’re going to get, regardless.
The Harry Potter issue? We heard a lot about that — actually, we listened to a lot of Christian radio programs that are broadcast nationwide, I think I even heard on the Dobson program once, and American Family Radio, conversations about Harry Potter as being a real big issue. So it wasn’t just in Becky’s church that we had heard this criticism of Harry Potter. And of course not all Christians feel that way, but the Christians in our films do. And I’m not sure how many other Christians do, but it seems like it’s a pretty substantial amount. So we decided to leave that in, because it was something that the kids were often talking about, and it was sort of like forbidden fruit, so we wanted to include that.
Grady: And also, to speak to that question, that’s why it was important to us to include a figure like Ted Haggard in the movie, who really represents the more mainstream, and obviously as the head of the National Association of Evangelicals, he represents a large chunk of the community, and the people in our film are constituents of him, so there is a connection.
Just so you know, by the way, and I don’t know if you knew this or you recognized my area code or anything, I’m calling from Canada, so —
Grady: I recognized your accent.
The accent? We have one?
Grady: Yes.
Ewing: Maybe we have one.
All right. Well anyway, I mention that just because, as a non-American, you can’t help but be exposed to a lot of the American issues and debates, but I might not be exposed to as much of the kind of thing that you’re talking about. For example, I don’t know how well you know Canada, but in terms of the religious community, well first of all, we have four or five national parties —
Ewing: yeah.
— so there’s no way to polarize it in that kind of Republican versus Democrat kind of way.
Grady: Mm-hm.
Ewing: I kind of like that.
So while you do find some issues that polarize people, it would be extremely difficult for anybody to say that because you’re a Christian you should support this prime minister.
Ewing: It’s kind of a foreign concept to you as a Canadian.
Yeah. I mean, there are elements of that. Did you hear about Stockwell Day a few years ago? I don’t know if he’s Pentecostal, but he’s definitely charismatic. He led a political party and it became a huge issue because he was a creationist, so there are elements like that here, but the fact that his career as leader of that party came to such a very quick end, speaks to the fact that that stuff doesn’t fly very well here.
Ewing: Yeah, it seems to fly, in the western world, pretty well here only. When it comes to that affiliation, not even in England is that common to have, to have people speaking about their faith while running for office. It’s really — I think we’re kind of an anomaly in the western world right now. I mean, you could make a million comparisons to fundamentalist states, and people have a field day with that. But in the western world, we seem to be on our own when it comes to this increasing marriage between the two.
One question I had was, did anything that happened on camera catch you by surprise. For example, speaking in tongues — that’s exotic even to me, and I’ve seen people do it, but for people like you, coming to this with not too much familiarity with this culture, how was it just being in that sort of environment, and shooting that, and just sort of letting it unfold in front of you.
Grady: It’s one of those things that is sort of surprising initially, and you get used to it very quickly. Heidi and I have both filmed spiritual ceremonies of all different kinds of religions. I mean, Heidi made a film where they do body piercing and things that are much more shocking, really.
Ewing: I mean, that was in Sri Lanka, but still, y’know.
Grady: But I guess it became more of the — it became a little more exotic because we had never seen Americans being so devout and being so charismatic in their worship. But it’s one of those things. It wears away very quickly, and I think both of us feel that everyone is entitled to worship however they want, and I truly believe that, I don’t judge anyone for how they want to express their faith.
Ewing: And that’s one of the reasons why we didn’t really focus — We had a lot more scenes like that, that focused more on the practise of the charismatic faith, and we sort of started to shy away from including a lot of details and information and explanation of all of these different things, because we didn’t want to marginalize charismatics, number one, but again, it’s just a practise. In the end, they all believe in the same Bible and they all listen to the same radio and read the same publications as evangelicals who don’t speak in tongues, so we felt like they had a lot more in common with the greater evangelical movement than they didn’t, and so that’s why we didn’t start focusing on a lot of their differences. We actually kind of held back on some of the material that we had, that might distract people and confuse people and freak people out too much. So we felt that we actually toned it down a bit.
It was definitely surprising at first. I had never seen that before, in any Christian religion, so once we figured out what was going on, and it was explained, and we looked it up and researched it, it was kind of like, All right, well, what else is there? Let’s dig deeper. And that’s how I think we got to the greater issue.
One other reaction that I had to the film was that it might make a very interesting double bill with Saved! — you know the one I mean, with Mandy Moore?
Ewing: I just saw that. You mean the comedy? I just saw it a few weeks ago.
Yeah, at the time, there were some Christians reacting to it and saying it was too much of a caricature. I actually interviewed the director of that film, because I went to Christian schools as a kid, and apparently he did too, and I actually recognized a lot of stuff in the film —
Ewing: I did too! Some of the language is spot-on, from a lot of the things that I’ve heard, making this film.
Yeah, and what was funny was that, when I interviewed him, he said that there was one thing in the film he thought might have gone too far, the scene where Mandy Moore tries to cast a demon out of her schoolmate, and then I said to him, “Well actually no, I saw something like that, so–“
Ewing: Actually we saw something like that, too, and didn’t put it in the film. We had a couple scenes like that. Again, it’s so hard to capture that and explain what’s going on without making people look too nutty, and we just made a decision not to include some of that material. But yeah, I saw that a couple of times. That scene, I thought, was really accurate.
Yeah, and one scene in your film is almost a word-for-word echo of that movie is the scene where the youth leaders are leading the kids in a service and saying, “Who’s in the house? Jesus! We’re kicking it for Christ!”
Grady: Yeah, we have that scene in our movie! When I saw Saved!, I was like, We have that scene!
Exactly, and it’s almost not a parody, it’s actually what happens.
Ewing: And also, like, when they do those big events, and they’ve got the disco balls and all the lights and all the sort of hip-hop feel — Ted Haggard’s church has a whole children’s church that goes parallel to his services, and it was exactly like that — smoke machines and disco balls and synthesizers and it was a lot like what goes on in the high school there in the movie.
Yeah, see, for me, what I found really interesting about your film — and this may be because I’m not an American, so the question of who gets elected isn’t quite so important to me — was not so much the political thing, although cardboard cut-outs of george bush are interesting. It was more just that tension or whatever between being part of the culture and yet somehow apart from the culture. Becky actually says in one scene that she likes living in American culture, but there are times when she wishes she could just get out of there, and just that weird sort of attempt to be “with it” —
Grady: It was so interesting, we discovered as we were making the film, the depth of the parallel culture that exists in this country. Everything that exists in this country, there’s another version of it. And it was an amazing discovery. And once you are tuned into it, you see it everywhere.
Yeah. And yet there’s something just slightly off about it, too. There’s the girl in your film who appears to be breakdancing, and then she says she loves “heavy metal rock music” —
Ewing: “Christian heavy metal rock and roll”. She says, “My favorite kind of music is Christian heavy metal rock and roll.”
Well, “Christian heavy metal” doesn’t sound so odd to me, because I listened to that when I was in high school, but her dance moves didn’t quite seem like heavy metal style moves.
Grady: [ laughs ]
Ewing: Yeah, she’s mixing things up a little bit. But you know what’s interesting, because — it seems that, once upon a time, the more conservative Christians thought, Well you know what, let’s remove ourselves from this society, because it’s immoral, and let’s just go on our own journey, and then they decided to join the fray again, and say, “You know, the only way to actually save souls and change the culture is to get involved in the culture and get involved in the political, and don’t shy away from it and don’t be afraid of it.”
I think the people in our film have really embraced that philosophy — but yet, they don’t feel that what they’re doing is political in any way. And we’ve explained to them and told them that, for people who are not extremely religious, everything you’re doing seems political. And for them, they think it’s funny, and we say, “You’ve got little children with plastic fetuses screaming ‘righteous judges!’ and talking about the Supreme Court, and most people think that’s political,” and they would say, “Well, we’re just doing the right thing, teaching our children our values and our morals,” and of course abortion is clearly wrong in their minds, and that’s it. So I think there is definitely a disconnect there, as well. You mentioned a disconnect between being with it, being part of it and not really part of it. They don’t even see the political the same way that secular people do.
I’m reminded of an article I read in the Atlantic Monthly, five or six years ago, on the Left Behind books, about how there’s this desire in evangelical circles to reject the world and yet achieve success on worldly terms, and yet even in doing so, they still sound slightly off. There’s a scene in your film where Becky describes the attention she’s getting as being just like being “on the cover of Rolling Stones“!
Grady: I know.
Ewing: She almost got it! Exactly, like, slightly off. Aware of it, but not part of it.
And that’s still her cultural reference point, that she still compares things to.
Ewing: That’s an interesting observation.
I was struck also by the way that — and I don’t know if this was the effect you were going for, and again you’ve changed the music and everything, so maybe it would come across differently now — but the way that Mike Papantonio appears in his radio booth, he seems very isolated. You’ve got this culture of people, and all the right-wing radio hosts, we hear their voices over images of scenery and so forth, so it’s almost like those people are a part of the landscape — and then you’ve got Mike Papantonio in this very dark, closed-off studio. Was that an intentional effect?
Grady: It’s funny that you ask that. It was not intentional, but that is just what it looks like where he works, and we wanted him in an organic environment. But people pointed that out to us, once we started screening it publicly, and I definitely see how you could look at it that way. But we started with the Christian radio first, the more conservative Christian radio was just woven throughout the film initially, over shots of the country, and we were really trying to make the impression that, as you’re driving across this country, this is what you’ll see, and if you turn on your radio, this is what you’ll hear, because that was our experience. So, no. I could see how it would come across that way, but we weren’t trying to make it look like the liberals are sitting in the dark, they’re all by themselves, they’re a voice in the dark — not intentionally.
And any comment on the Michael Moore controversy, if I can call it that?
Ewing: The Michael Moore thing. We want the film to be seen by everyone, as far and wide as possible, but at the same time I understand a distributor not wanting to be affiliated with, like, the most firebrand liberal in America right from out of the gate. I think they wanted the film to have a chance to speak to audiences in whatever way it’s going to speak, and not be co-opted by one side or the other. And Magnolia had actually passed up opportunities to be in extremely right-wing conservative film festivals that were going on, that invited our film, and they wanted to do the same for the extreme left wing; they wanted to not participate in either group, on any extreme side. So I understand why they did it. It did seem a little overblown, and definitely a slow news day, and we really kind of stayed out of it.
It did get attention for your film, though.
Ewing: Right, which I guess is a good thing!
Right. One quote I believe I remember reading from the two of you, back when the film was first on the festival circuit, was something to the effect of, “Christians are raising their kids and instilling them with values, and liberals maybe aren’t doing as good a job of it, and maybe a movie like this will encourage them to do that.”
Ewing: I think the film definitely asks questions of an audience about parenting and how they’re raising their children, and I don’t think that people who identify themselves as secular humanists are sending their kids to summer camps where they memorize the Bill of Rights or memorize every stop on the Freedom Trail. I don’t think there’s, like, a liberal indoctrination apparatus in place. It just doesn’t go along with the whole — with liberal thinking, or with the secular humanist philosophy. So I think that there is definitely, right within that, I don’t know if it’s a problem, but it seems like Christians are a little more on the same page and are in agreement on a lot more things than I guess liberals are.
So if people have a problem with the way these children are being raised and are afraid of the children or afraid of this kind of education — and of course these families and these people aren’t doing anything illegal, they’re doing what they think is right — I think it’s interesting at least for discussion, to look at how we raise our children in all different communities, and I think there is definitely a less vehement rigid structure in liberal parenting than there is conservative parenting. And I don’t know, there’s no answer — that just seems to be something that we’ve observed, that they’re in less agreement than the conservative Christians are.
Do you think liberals should “indoctrinate“? I mean, it is another one of the interesting questions in the film, is how do you impart values and teach kids, and how do you draw the line between that and indoctrination.
Ewing: That’s such a difficult question. I don’t think anyone has the answer to that question, and it’s such a fine line.
Grady: I believe that, if you want to use the word “indoctrination”, fine. I think all parents do indoctrinate their kids. That’s what you’re doing when you’re raising your child, in a way. You want your kid to have the same values as you do. So I think that is happening. I just think that the focus and the definitions are different.
Ewing: I think that people have a problem with the word “indoctrinate”. I mean, if you want to take the word “indoctrinate” out of it completely, because it’s a completely loaded word, you could just say that people raise their children the way they see fit, and parents seem to have the right to do that while children are still minors, and it happens all over the world. People are raised with specific values, and I think this film is evidence of that. And I think some people don’t like how these children are being raised, and so they find fault with it. But they still have the right to raise their children in a way that they see fit. So it’s a perplexing question that people come out of our movie asking themselves, and I have not heard an answer, but I think it’s definitely an interesting question.
Last question. Some of the kids talk about what’s fulfilling in life and what’s not fulfilling; do you think the kids have any valid critiques, or do you think they are just being indoctrinated?
Grady: You know, the kids that we focused on are, I think, are too young, right now, for us to answer that question. I really do. Two of the kids are nine, and one of the kids is a 12-year-old boy, and I just– I did hear them of course, we even have a scene in the film, where one of the kids is critiquing the society at large, and I think he describes the majority of society as being trashy, and I think we need to wait. I think we need to wait 10 or 20 years to see what he has to say about society. I think at this point, all 12-year-olds or 9-year-olds repeat what their parents tell them. I did.
Ewing: At the same time, I did notice some very admirable qualities to the children in our film, and they’re extremely articulate, and they’re smart, and they do good things for other people, and they think about others, and they lack vanity that I’ve seen in other kids. So on one hand, they’re being raised very well. They’re kind and thoughtful and obedient, and it’s complicated, because one might not agree with the adult that this person might become, or the direction this child is going. However, as children, they’re extremely pleasant, and they’re very pleasant to be around, and have a lot of things going for them. So I think, again, this whole film falls into a really big grey area. Which is what I think makes it a good movie.
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