Note: This interview was conducted in the fall of 2009 before the movie came out. This is a great movie! It is now out on DVD and Blu-Ray. It would be worth a look. ~ Clash

Since Sherwood Baptist Church caught national attention with Facing the Giants, churches around the country have decided to expand their ministries to filmmaking. Jim Britts, writer and producer of To Save a Life, attended Biola University, where he obtained a filmmaking degree with an emphasis in screenwriting. But a summer internship made him realize his heart was in youth ministry, and he followed that passion.

Then two and a half years ago he decided to combine the two interests and make a movie that would reach teenagers with a message of hope and healing. In the midst of a whirlwind round of screenings, I sat down with Jim and his wife Rachel to discuss youth ministry and their new film To Save a Life.

Jim, you're a Biola grad. What inspired you to be a filmmaker and when did you decide to go that direction?

Jim: I went to Biola thinking that I wanted to be a broadcast journalist and be the next voice of the Sacramento Kings basketball team. My freshman year I had a radio show at Biola, and I hated living in this box, so I decided I didn't want to do that. I also took a screenwriting class my freshman year, and I loved it. So I came out of that class thinking I needed to change my emphasis and get into writing.

So my plan through my junior year was to live in Hollywood and be a screenwriter. The summer before my senior year I got invited to be an intern with high school students at a church in Sacramento. I cancelled a Hollywood internship to go up there and work with students 80 hours a week, and loved every minute of it. I came back going, "I think I'm supposed to be in youth ministry." So I went in to get a film degree but came out of thinking I should be in youth ministry.

For years, I thought I had messed it up, choosing the wrong major. My wife and I continued to do some screenwriting on the side just for fun. About two and a half years ago I started thinking about writing a film we could actually make. From the get-go, I said it's got to be about help hurting and lonely teenagers because that's so much of what we do in our lives. It's been really cool to see that combination of interests work together, because there's no way we could have written that script without being in youth ministry for 10 years first.

So many of the scenes, and every single character, are based on students that we've worked with, so to connect the major with what we've been doing is exciting.

Rachel, are you also a writer?

Rachel: I'm an English teacher, so I've always been writing. This is my first time to put it into practice this way.

How was it collaborating on this project?

Rachel: It was great. Jim is the creative genius, and I'm the one that tries to make it sound nice.

Jim: When we did the novel, we thought ideally we'd sit down and work on it together, but it didn't work out that way.

Rachel: We did with the first draft, then I went through and fixed it, then he'd go through and fix it, and then we did the edits together.

Did you want to do the novel at the same time as you did the screenplay, or did one come first?

Jim: Definitely the screenplay. We wanted to make a movie and then Outreach came along and said it looked like this film was going to make a huge difference in people's lives, so what about writing a novel alongside it? We said let's do this together. It could be really cool.

Rachel: With the movie, it's packed full of stuff for two hours. But there's only so much development you can have, so we were really able to develop some of the characters and the plotlines and add a few things to it.

Jim: A lot of the scenes we didn't use got to be in the deleted scenes for the DVD, so that will be fun. Stuff that we found was really expensive to film, we were able to write back into the novel.

Is the timeframe the same, or does the novel go further?

Jim: The timeframe is the same, but there's a lot more character development, and some of the characters that aren't really developed in the movie, you get to find out a lot more about them.

When I first watched the film, I thought there was so much in it that it's almost overwhelming. Was that an intentional decision, and what's been the general audience response to screenings?

Rachel: It seems that adults are the ones that are concerned there's a little too much, and teenagers are really able to relate to it.

Jim: It was really intentional on our part. After hanging out with students, you know that every student's got a story, and if they're not in the middle of something, it's right around the corner. So we thought, "How many places can we connect this with students?" So each character in the movie has a different issue they're going through. We've shown this to thousands of students and they come up and go, "I related with this character, or this character," and really it's different to every student who sees it.

Rachel: I don't think we intentionally said, "Let's make a story that's jam-packed so everyone can relate to it." We were just writing the stories and characters, and knowing the students we work with, that's just how their lives are. It wasn't intentional to try and capture everything, but it was intentional to reflect how their lives really are.

Jim: And we didn't want to make a film about a topic. We wanted to just make a good story.

So you have the screenplay and script ready and are ready to go into production. At the same time, you're still a youth pastor, Jim, and Rachel, you're still teaching. How did you fit in production?

Jim: First of all, we thought it would be a cool thing that could make an impact in San Diego County, and weren't really thinking about making something big budget. We were working on getting a director and were interviewing college film students. My mom called me and said, "Your childhood friend's older brother married a woman who's brother is a guy named Brian Baugh. " So we were related really closely. He works on pretty big films as a cinematographer and also directs.

Rachel: So we were like, "Yeah, whatever."

Jim: So I got his cell phone and gave him a call. He said, "I'll skim the script and pass it on to somebody who'd work on a project that size." Then a little bit later he called back and said, "I really connected with the main character. That was me in high school. And one of my best friends since childhood committed suicide, so I need to do this." So immediately the whole level of the film just skyrocketed.

We were looking at casting directors, and someone said to look at Liz Lang, who did the casting for Lemony Snickets, The School of Rock, One Night with the King, and a bunch of movies. They said she'd read it and then pass it along to someone who would work on a project that size. She read it and an hour and a half later said, "I need to do this. In fact, this morning I was praying, 'God, please show me where I can use my gifts in casting to make a difference in the world,' and an hour later I got an email from you. So I need to do this."

There are all kinds of stories like this that happened, and all of a sudden it's a bigger deal than we thought because people read this and said, "Yeah, this has got to get out there to be seen by every teen in America."

Rachel: Then last summer we had all kinds of volunteers who didn't know what they were getting into, and we all just kind of went crazy.

Jim: Yeah, but with Brian Baugh as our director, and a professional cast (with Liz's help), it was such a high level that we knew the quality of the film would be great. And getting to team up with people we knew and work with them was great. Our students got to play a huge role in making this film happen, and giving input into it, I think it's why so many kids say it's so real to their lives. They say their lives are like that when they walk on campus.

One of my favorite characters was Andrea, the girl with all the bracelets.

Jim: She and Johnnie are the two favorite characters. I think people relate to Johnnie because they feel like they're going through really difficult stuff alone.

Andrea is a very real character. She seems like a very gifted actress. How much of your cast was brought in by Liz Lang, and how much was volunteer or from your church?

Jim: Every major role was cast by Liz Lang. There are a couple of smaller roles who had one or two lines, and all of those were from our group.

Rachel: And those students aspire to acting, so it was a really cool experience for them. Anything non-speaking …

Jim: Yeah, any of the non-speaking extra roles were filled with students from our group or people from the community.

You had a lot of locations; a couple of homes, a high school, a church, etc. Was that difficult securing them all?

Jim: It was harder than we thought it would be. The church is our church. A lot of them were donated, and people bent over backward to make it happen. With schools, our first optioned school was set and then two weeks before cancelled. Option two cancelled four days before shooting, and the location we actually had it at cancelled, but two days before we got there, we got it back. So that was pretty nerve-wracking.

For the most part, almost all of our sites were free and people really worked with us. We had a premise of the film that we'd give to people. They'd read it and go "Wow, a film like this needs to be made."

Rachel: It's a real community effort.

Jim: Our location managers were a couple of college students who were determined to do what they could to make it happen.

Rachel: As well as my sister who works in Hollywood. She's done all sorts of things, and really stepped in and helped when we needed it.

How long was the shoot?

Jim: Six and a half weeks.

Were you "on duty" at the church at the same time?

Jim: The church gave me and our executive pastor, we're the two producers who started the whole thing, two and a half months off. It wasn't really a vacation. I wasn't a youth pastor, but I hung out with more students than I ever had before. Every day there were so many on set.

What was it like bringing in Hollywood cast members and working with them? Were they aware they were working on a film that's pretty evangelistic in tone?

Jim: It was great. Every single actor we had was an amazing team player. They're used to having a trailer of their own, or maybe sharing it with another person. Instead, they're hanging out with a bunch of teenagers, and enjoying being with them. In our casting, we also interviewed them, and walked through what it would look like.

Several of them, including the main actress, told us they don't normally work on projects this small, or even read scripts this small. But she read the premise script and said, "I want to be part of something that matters." So they really fully got it, that this was more than about making a movie.

We never really set out to make a film; we wanted to make a difference in the world. We said that teenagers are going to see movies and this is how we need to do it. I think our actors really got that. A number of them we'd definitely call friends. We sent them Christmas cards.

Are you planning to do a premiere and have your cast in attendance?

Rachel: Oh, yeah. The Johnnie character has been at a few screenings, and the girl that played Andrea has been at a couple as well. They're coming on their own to these different showings, so I'm pretty sure they'd be interested in a premiere.

You mentioned that you set out to make a difference in the world through this project. It's been a year since the production. What kind of differences are you seeing already without it being in general distribution?

Rachel: The first story we read was from one of my students. I had the script out for my students to read during SSR (Silent reading), and he asked if he could bring it home. The next morning he was waiting by my classroom door. He told the guys he was with that he'd catch up with them later, then turned to me with tears running down his face. He said, "This is where I'm at."

He'd been struggling with drugs and depression and friends committing suicide and pretty much a lot of these issues. So we were able to have some great discussion, and he's thrown away the drugs. He's since moved, but came back to visit me the last week of school. That was before we even started filming, and we got to see that we were already having an impact.

Since then, there have been many stories?

Jim: Recently we had a screening in L.A. and the next day a student emailed me and said, "I walked out and threw away my razor blades. I'm not going to do that again." We've heard from about 100 students who had friends who had committed or attempted suicide, and they were so blessed by this film. They realized that there's a response. It's not just to be sad, but to realize that they need to walk on their high school campus differently and start looking out for the hurting and lonely, and that a simple act of kindness can save someone's life.

They're living, I think, in the most hurting generation that's ever been, and I think we're going to find that someone else coming and pouring into them will not mean as much as other students stepping up and saying we need to fix this and reach out to the hurting and lonely and left out and lost. That's really what we're hoping: to inspire students to live differently.

That was captured really well in the film without being overly dramatic. You focus on the impact one person can make, even at lunchtime.

Rachel: Lunchtime is one of the loneliest times for students because they can't hide out in class forever. We've had a number of students say they saw someone sitting by themselves and asked them to eat with them. Of course, half the time the kids said no, but you never know.

Jim: I was in D.C. showing the film to some students, and one kid came up to me afterward and said they were going to start a circle like that at their school. Our Facebook page has a place for kids to share stories, and hopefully it will inspire others to share too.

What's next for y'all?

Rachel: A break.

Jim: Definitely a break. But through all this, I've realized that my main purpose on this earth is to pour into teens and help other people pour into teens. I really like the "second world" of getting to make this film. I think we'd like to make another one. I can't say much about it, but I think that the next movie that comes out could wipe out poverty in half of Africa through a student movement in the United States. But we'll see.

Rachel: The cool thing about this project is that we've just been along for the ride. We haven't been pushing it as much as it's been happening. If it's meant to be, it will be.

Jim: The two audiences I've gotten to show this to are youth workers, who say they can't wait for their students to get to see the film and reach out to their friends, and students, both churched and unchurched. They've loved it too. It's been cool, so it will be interesting to see what happens as we continue to show it before opening weekend.

We've gotten some negative responses. But we feel like we were called to make this movie, and we did it, so we'll see what happens.

Rachel: One of our favorite responses was a guy who walked up to us after a screening and said he thought we could use some stronger curse words. He said, "With a PG-13 rating, you can use one F-word. Did you know that?"

Jim: The very next guy in line said, "Hey, you really need to clean that up. The language was terrible." So what can you do? You can't please everyone.

Everyone has their own filters. For some, it's language, for others, it's implications of sexual activity, for others it's nudity or bare skin.

Rachel: It's interesting because I work in a public school, and I showed my kids the film. They said, "Yeah, you made a movie. Whatever." But when they saw a couple of the scenes, they said, "Whoa! You made a REAL movie!" I think that's what got their attention. They realized we weren't trying to whitewash it.

Jim: We wanted it to be PG-13 because we wanted it to be real.

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