By Carol Baass Sowa
Today's Catholic
This is the second in a two-part series.
SAN ANTONIO • Director David Nixon spoke with Today’s Catholic on the making of his recently released film, “Letters to God,” and his work in creating faith-based cinematic fare. “Letters to God” tells the story of Tyler Doherty, a young cancer victim, whose letters, mailed to God, become the inspiration for a disheartened postman.
TC: Any particular challenges you faced in making this film?
NIXON: I think the biggest challenge was to make it real, because this movie’s a true story and we had the father of the little boy on set with us. In fact, his whole family was there every day on set and my challenge was to make sure that when you go watch this movie, you totally believe that this is real and you empathize with those characters up on the screen.
So we worked very hard in the casting to get the right cast and the right actors that could portray those characters in a real sense. I see every night now, when we screen the movie and people come out, they shake my hand and they’re so emotionally moved by the movie. And they say, “I went through cancer and this is exactly what I went through,” and “thank you for making this movie.”
So that was really my biggest challenge, especially with a movie about cancer, that it wouldn’t be manipulative, but that it would be real and it would touch your heart. That was the main reason that we wanted to make the movie.
TC: Now the boy’s father was the one who first did the story?
NIXON: He did. He wrote the original screenplay. Patrick Doughtie’s his name, and after his son passed, he went through a depression for a couple of years and then God kind of put it on his heart to write this thing down and tell the story.
He’d never written anything, let alone a screenplay, so he went and bought a book on how to write a screenplay. He wrote the original screenplay, and I had a good friend who’s a writer here in Orlando who helped him kind of polish it and he brought it to me and he said, “This is a great little story!” And when I read it, I was in tears and I immediately got on a plane and went to Nashville and met with the family and I said, “Can we make this movie?”
We then took it a step further and I put it in the hands of my writer, Sandra Thrift, who’s my partner, and she kind of gave it the magic and she added some characters and really polished it to the point where it’s a real movie script. But the original screenplay was written by the father, and a lot of the dialogue and a lot of the situations in the movie are exactly, word for word, the way it was in his family.
TC: Is he happy with how it turned out?
NIXON: Oh, he was blown away. It was difficult for him on set, as you can imagine, because the little boy who plays Tyler, Tanner Maguire, looks so much like the real Tyler and he has the same mannerisms. And there were days when the dad had to kind of turn away, it was so close to reality. It was difficult, especially when we did the scenes in the hospital. That was very difficult for him.
TC: Any special moments during filming?
NIXON: There were so many. But having prayer on the set just radically changed everything. I remember one night we were filming a scene where we were actually shooting all the way through the night, and that’s always difficult. Our lead actress, Robyn Lively, who plays the mother in the movie, she was having difficulty with one of the scenes – and she’s a fabulous actress. And I went to her and I said, “Robyn, what’s the matter? You’re really having trouble tonight.”
And she said, “I just got a call from my sister. Her little son, my little nephew, they just raced to the hospital and they don’t know what’s wrong with him and I’m really troubled by that.” So I said, “OK, let’s pray about it.” So we just stopped and we got the entire crew together and we all got in a circle and we prayed for Robyn’s little nephew. And that just calmed her heart so much that we were then able to go on and shoot that scene and she was peaceful and she did her job. Then, about an hour later, she got a call from her sister to say that the little boy was fine, he was out of the hospital, everything was OK, and thanked us for praying.
So it was those kinds of things that happened day after day that you couldn’t say those are coincidences. They were total “divine appointments.” God was with us during this entire production and there was just this wonderful spirit that kind of floated over us the whole time.
TC: How do you want the audience to feel leaving the theatre after this film?
NIXON: Well, really, the bottom line is we want people to understand that God is real and that you can have a connection with him. And we don’t do that in an overt or a preachy kind of a way. It’s strictly this little 8-year-old who’s going through cancer and these little prayers, these little letters, that he writes to his best friend, God, every day.
We hope that people can see the faith that this little 8-year-old has and the hope that that forms, because God is the ultimate hope, no matter what you’re going through, whether it’s cancer or any difficulty you’re going through. So we’re hoping that people get that inspiration while they’re watching this little 8-year-old and they come out of the movie with such a feeling of hope and to know that you can have a connection with God.
TC: What films do you have coming up?
NIXON: We’ve got two more we’re going to be shooting this summer. One is a Christian comedy called “Saving Livingston,” and then another one is another true story called “To Write Love on Her Arms.” Both of those we’re in pre-production right now for and we’ll shoot this summer and then finish them and they’ll be out next year.
TC: Anything you’d like to add on “Letters to God?”
NIXON: Well, there’s more to it than just the movie. We really created a movement around this movie, because we talked to so many cancer survivors who said when they were going through it, the doctor gave them all the medical information but there was nobody to help them get through their life. So many times, people who are going through this lose their jobs and lose their cars or lose their houses and their insurance and all these things happen to them.
So we’ve created resources and it’s created this whole momentum and movement around the movie that will go on long past the movie, where people can now get resources on “How do you not lose your insurance?” There’s lots of resources out there, but we kind of pulled them all together, with web pages and cancer societies and counseling services and music and books and all of these things that have just kind of snowballed around the movie.
It’s really created this movement. We’re calling it a “Community of Hope,” because we believe cancer touches everybody, whether it’s a friend or a family member or yourself, and the church needs to be ready to deal with this. So we’re trying to create resources for the church so that you know how to talk to somebody who’s going through this and you can counsel them, because obviously that’s when people turn to God, when they’re at the darkest moments of their life.
When you hear the word cancer, that usually is about the worst thing that’s ever happened to you. People always turn to God and they turn to the church, so we’ve created all these resources so the church can use that to create a bridge between cancer and God. That’s all on our web site – letterstoGodthemovie.com. There’s a button on there that says, “The Movement,” and that takes you to all these other resources.