Faith Filled Family Magazine November 2016 | Page 82

Thank you. I mean that was really important to make it feel
very real because we really do
want to connect with people on
an emotional level. I mean, yes,
we want to entertain people- absolutely! I do think the movie’s
entertaining and funny. There
are some really funny moments
and even in the midst of some of
the really hard moments, there
is humor as well. So we kind
of wanted to be able to incorporate every emotion where you
are laughing, you’re crying, and
hopefully you’ll be feeling hopeful about the future.
As a viewer, I was devastated
at Ava’s outcome! It was unexpected. I felt the pain that the
husband was going through.
What led you to take this route
with her instead of healing
her? Do you feel that the movie would have had less of an
impact had she been healed?
I think it was kind of always the
plan. When Drew had pitched
the story to me, it was originally
intended as a short film. It dealt
with the death of the lead character. So, for me, as long as
I’ve known this film, death was
always the fate of the lead character. Now, I’m not saying that
I’m OK with it. I mean, there are
definitely time when we were
shooting that it was difficult for
me because I had grown to love
her so much.
I remember at one point bursting into tears over it, and I said
to our director, “I don’t want to do
this to our audience! I love Ava!
I don’t want to do this to them!”
But I think it would be less impactful because I think it would
be more predictable, that’s sort

of what we said, and that’s not
true of life. I mean, the illness
that she faces, you truly want the
best, but the message we wanted to send was to fight the good
fight with as much positivity as
you can. Sometimes the good
guy doesn’t always win, and
sometimes things don’t work out
the way you had hoped. The
point is that it’s inevitable in life
at some point, and when it happens, it happens to all of us.
It is something that we never
hope for, and that is out of our
control. Then the question is,
how do I handle it? Life is not a
fairy tale, and things don’t always
work out, but it doesn’t mean
that we don’t still have a full life,
we don’t still have hope, and that
things don’t come across our
paths. Things happen that are
unexpected, and take us on a
totally different journey than we
thought we would go on.

much feedback on the chemistry
between the two of us. People
say how believable that is to
them. I think that the movie is
really romantic and really sexy.
Nobody ever has to take their
clothes off. So we get see a
healthy married couple.
So I think that’s part of it is that is
great and it’s a beautiful love story. It’s one of those movies that
you can recommend to your girlfriend. Normally with the movies
it’s like that was great, but you
might not want to take your husband because there is that “one
thing”, you know.

So we really believe that this
could be the movie that could
make that crossover that will
appeal to a wide audience. We
want to appeal to those people
who want to see movies that
are inspirational, but don’t have
things that make them uncomfortable. I don’t think the movie
New Life may break ground needed a sex scene. I think acas a wide audience movie that tually it would have been out of
also appeals to faith film fans. place.
Why is that? And how does it
affect your making and mar- What type of message do you
keting of New Life ?
want the audience to receive
Well, our production company from watching this move?
is committed to a very specific One of the one of the things we’re
type of story. Our approach to hoping will happen is that they
our storytelling is we think that a walk out with hope that whatever
good story does not require gra- circumstances they’re thinking
tuitous objectionable content. I of, whatever difficult time they’re
mean, it’s hard to find a romance going through, this is not the end
film that doesn’t have sexual of your story and that you can
content, and we wanted to show wake up tomorrow and have joy.
that it is sexy to be married and
it is sexy to be in love with your Very often your circumstances
husband.
will change because we have
that line in the movie where it is
In order to get that point across, said that “We changed our permyself and Jonathan Patrick spective and the world changed
Moore- who plays my husband around us” and that’s what we
in the film- we keep getting so want people to do. We want