In between appearing on HBO’s “Billions,” being a cast regular in NBC’s “The Blacklist,” and acting in a bunch of other things, Harry Lennix had a dream — to turn Christ’s Passion into a musical that would resonate with believing African-Americans.
The result is “Revival: The Experience,” a film that combines genres and transcends traditional narrative to translate the Gospel of John into dramatic and musical form.
Take a look …
Danny Green directed from a screenplay by Lennix, with much of the music written by gospel star Mali Music, who also plays Jesus. Here’s how it’s described at the IMDB:
REVIVAL is hybrid of every film idiom: Broadway musical, Hollywood musical, animation, green screen technology, and sound stage. Revival is the hippest experience of The Gospel the world has yet seen.
As you saw from the trailer, there are big names in the cast. They include Victoria Rowell, Paula Newsome (as Mother Mary), Michelle Williams (of Destiny’s Child), Wendy Raquel Robinson, Obba Babatunde (Nicodemus), Chaka Khan (Herodias), T’Keya Crystal Kemah, and Lennix as Pontius Pilate.
Lennix has formed a company called Black Faith Entertainment, through which he hopes will fill a void of faith-focused entertainment (without the raw comedy of a Tyler Perry, for example), for black Christians.
He recently dropped by the Family Theater Productions offices on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood to talk about “Revival,” which is still seeking a means for a wide release.
(Note: Since we spoke, the film has lined up 10 markets for a release the second and third week of December. More when we have it.)
Here’s some of what he had to say:
Lennix says “Revival” began as a Passion Play…
“Revival” started as a passion play at a church, basically. Where I go to church is Church of God in Christ in South Central (Los Angeles). I had been involved with their theater ministry, their arts ministry, for decades, really. My partner in business is a certain Dr. Holly Carter, who is a producer of some note. She has a couple shows on television. She’s one of the producers on the movie called “The Gospel,” and an excellent musician herself.
But she was the one who got me over to the church. People in the church wondered if we were going to do something for Easter, and I thought about it and decided to write a Passion Play based on gospel music, gospel music that I had fallen in love with.
I wanted to do something that celebrated the religious-cultural experience that is reflected in gospel music, and no such thing existed. Even the musicals that did exist about Jesus, they didn’t, that were popular or well-known, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” which is really an opera, and “Godspell,” which is really a pantomime of some sort. It’s a clown show.
Jesus is a clown, literally a clown. That said, I enjoyed it when I was a younger person, but I didn’t see anything where the evangelical message, as it were, the Gospel itself, was being celebrated with Jesus as a divine manifestation.
George Stevens is the best one ever. “The Greatest Story Ever Told” is the quintessential faithful version of the story that I’ve seen, at least in film. So I wanted to do something similar, but an extrapolation from there, both musical and faithful. Authentic. I did the translation myself from the Latin, actually, the Vulgate.
(Note: The Vulgate is a late 4th-Century Latin translation of the Bible, largely the work of St. Jerome, which the Catholic Church affirmed as its official Latin Bible at the Council of Trent, in 1545-’63.)
It really was just a church play. When I saw the response from the audience and when I realized that there was nothing else like it, I thought that more people should have access to it. We set out to do a very low-budget thing where we just kind of filmed what we had done at the church.
It’s been challenging to find a distributor…
We showed it to a couple of people. The people liked it, but they didn’t know how to market it. They didn’t think that they had figured out a way that it would make sense for what they do, and so … The few that we talked to. They were interested. Everybody seemed to enjoy it, but they don’t know how to get it out from their methodology.
We’re formulating (a plan) now with a group called Tricoast Worldwide. They’re basically going to be our sales rep co-distributors, and then literally we’re going to go to towns that most people pass over and motivate the congregants, as you say, and get them out to the theaters, where they’re generally ignored.
Lennix would like Black Faith Entertainment to serve an underserved audience…
Yeah, there’s a group called Liquid Soul that markets to the demographic, but they don’t have any content for that demographic. There’s a number of people who know how to get the people out in that demographic, essentially the Tyler Perry demographic. Black female Christians between 18 and 65.
That’s what makes Tyler Perry a sure thing. But Tyler Perry’s not doing faith-based entertainment. He’ll put a scene in a church, and that’s enough because people are starved for content.
People are easily duped into supporting things that are faith-adjacent in some way, but that are not answering the questions that people are dealing with from a spiritual point of view, from a spiritual base. Point of fact, I don’t even consider “Revival” faith-based. It is, in fact, the very basis of the faith. It’s the Gospels.
We wanted to make something authentic and true to a very faithful demographic of people. Black people are the most faithful people on the planet and go to church more than any other ethnicity demographic at all, probably combined, and yet there’s no content for them.
Lennix feels “Revival” holds up as a representation of Scripture…
I am absolutely confident that it would withstand any scrutiny from a theological point of view. I could defend it if I had to put it in front of a bunch of judges or scholars or academicians or theologians, because that’s what it says. That’s what it says, and if you’re going to, outside of just building a statue or making a painting, if you’re going to show Jesus doing a miracle, walking across the water or getting up from, getting out of that tomb somehow or whatever, it has to be interpretive.
But there’s an acceptance. There’s a suspension of disbelief that a theater audience will allow you. But even if we look at what Christ did, it is essentially … Much of it is performance theater. There’s a great theologian who says that when he fed the 5,000 in one version and 7,000 in another one or whatever, that’s dinner and a show. That’s dinner and a show. That’s great. It is! Jesus Christ was very careful about when he performed publicly.
Lennix foresees tackling other Biblical tales…
Anything is possible. That is, again, the faith market is a very loyal market. They’ll go see anything, even if it’s not terribly faithful to the message or the principles as we understand them, or our religions and so forth. Understand, but I think anything’s possible. I would like to do more stories from the Bible. For example, I’m fascinated by the book of Ruth. I’m fascinated by Job.
I’m not necessarily going out trying to convince, trying to bait and switch people into seeing what I’m referring to as faith-based content or Bible stories or Black Faith Entertainment, which is what I’ve been saying. To tell the story that is resonant, that resonates with so many black people throughout the world, why do we have to continue to pander and try to sell it as something it isn’t?
People are either going to see this and they’re going to respond to it or they won’t. I’m happy with that, but I’m not going to dress it up in a blonde wig and pink ponytails and make it into something it’s not. This is gospel set to gospel music. That’s what it is, the Gospel of John set to gospel music.
If it doesn’t make any money, so be it, but this is an authentic celebration of black church, basically. This is how black people do faith in some way. The dance ministry, as it were, put in display. The music, obviously, put on display. And the story, that’s what it says. That’s what it says.
Images: Courtesy Jupiter Film Group, Releve Entertainment, Exponent Media Group
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