Narnia Radio Broadcast

My first real experience as an actor was in a sixth-grade production of H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man. Our teacher had the brilliant idea of staging it as a radio play, broadcast to the entire school over the intercom system. The day of the production, the school office was transformed into a live-radio broadcast booth, complete with all the requisite sound effects to pull off a convincing audio experience for the student body. For the next two hours, the school was spell-bound. And I was hooked. I've worked in theatre ever since.

Unfortunately, though, I've never again had the pleasure of being part of a Radio Theatre production. It's a unique artform, one that captures the immediacy of a live stage performance and yet the sense of deliberate art direction that we get from film. When I've tried to direct stage productions with a similar kind of evocative auditory design, actors have rebelled. They feel it takes away some of their improvisational liberties. And they're right. It does. Radio Theatre is less about the actors being "in the moment" and more about putting the audience "in the moment."

If you've never experienced Radio Theatre, I highly recommend the Focus on the Family Radio Theatre production of C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. Despite state-of-the-art sound design and editing (and, in part, due to that very design), this pre-recorded theatre broadcast completely captures the immediacy and power of live Radio Theatre.

One reason is that writer/director Paul McCusker is devoted to the art of Radio Theatre, and has an extensive resume that qualifies him for the task. Another reason is that the British cast, which includes Oscar-winner Paul Scofield (A Man for All Seasons, 1962) and David Suchet (TV's Hercule Poirot), is mostly well-acquainted with Radio Theatre. This contrasts starkly with American actors, who, by and large, tend to have very little exposure to the art.

The really good news is that McCusker has also taken great pains to present an adaptation that is wholly faithful to the original book. There are the natural failures of radio to fully convey the visual sense of the book, of course, such as the character-defining facial expressions that Lewis describes during Edmund's first encounter with the White Witch. And the necessities of putting into dialog what Lewis glosses in descriptive passages lead to some oddities, such as when Aslan says "Thank you" when Peter hands him his sword for his knighting ceremony.

But these are very small shortcomings. With very few exceptions, McCusker makes sound choices in dividing the story between narration and dialog, and perhaps only steps wrong for family audiences when prolongingly dramatizing Aslan's death. Certainly, this scene is less surprising now than it would have been prior to the release of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Still, it may be too gruesome for some children to bear.

In addition, Suchet's vocal characterization of Aslan may strike some as overdone. McCusker explains that Suchet was aiming at an enunciative style that would be consistent with the facial gymnastics necessary for a lion to speak English understandably. From that standpoint, the delivery makes sense, but is still distracting at times.

Nonetheless, this production of The Chronicles of Narnia (at least, based on the one volume I listened to) is well worth your time, particularly if you spend a lot of time with your family in the car. Begun in 1997 and originally completed last year, the series is being given another full run on the radio this summer. Visit the Narnia Radio website for a schedule and list of participating radio stations.

Better yet, buy a copy. If you listen to this series once, I think you'll want to listen to it again.

And if you're leery of this adaption because of the Focus on the Family connection, don't be. McCusker's calling is art, not politics or evangelism.

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The Perfect Man

“This world is not my home, I’m just a-passin’ through,” we used to sing. I grew up in church, you see, and forty years ago that was one of the new-fangled choruses that found its way into the “Youth Sings” songbook. That meant the song was okay to use at evening services or around campfires, but wasn’t suitable for Sunday mornings. Too lively. Not reverent enough. Just too new. Maybe even theologically incorrect (gasp!). Some would whisper, “Think that way and you’ll be so heavenly minded that you’ll be no earthly good!”

But the sentiment is one that won’t die. Fifteen years ago or so, the song showed up on a Lone Justice album, and even the band’s anthology album was titled “This World is not My Home.” Switchfoot’s Beautiful Letdown riffs on the feeling that “I Don’t Belong Here.” Somehow, the theme of our transitory existence just keeps coming back.

The Perfect Man deals in part with this very issue. Granted, the question isn’t posed in an existential fashion but is rather grounded in sitcom-ish workaday realities. But isn’t that where the rubber hits the road?

As the movie opens, Holly is excitedly trying on a new dress, dreaming of the possibility of actually living in one place long enough to emotionally invest in attending a school dance. At that very moment, quite literally, Holly’s mom Jean yet again finds romance on the rocks—and Holly knows from the Patsy Cline tunes in the living room that it’s time to move on yet again.

So the family lands in New York. Determined to prevent her mom from landing once again in a too-soon-started and too-soon-ended relationship, Holly invents the Perfect Man to be her mom’s secret admirer. Naturally, the unsuspecting accomplice upon whom Holly bases her Perfect Man gravitates into Jean’s life and the ensuing complications drive Holly—not her mom—to the conclusion it is time, yet again, to move on. Holly just can’t seem to grow roots anywhere.

But the lesson Holly and Jean both need to learn—and learn they do, through the not-so-convincing and not-so-entertaining device of cinematic instant-messaging sessions—is that, most often, the perfect place is right where you’re at.

So, yes. This world is not our home. We are just passing through. But while we’re here, God wants us to be here. Toward that end, Jesus died to save us from the penalty of the mistakes we make while we’re here, and the Holy Spirit is with us to help make things better as we go. Like Holly, and like Jean, we’ve just got to learn to stop running from the trouble that surrounds us (and the trouble that we make), and learn to persevere a little.

It’s just too bad that the characters in The Perfect Man, aside from Holly, never seem to feel (or think about) anything very deeply. In the Perfect Movie, the lesson might have been more convincing.

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Perfectly Serious

A TALK WITH HEATHER LOCKLEAR AND HILARY DUFF

In the Universal Studios film The Perfect Man, Heather Locklear plays Jean, a single mom bedeviled by failed romantic relationships. A perpetual fugitive from her failures yet equally eternally optimistic, she moves her family from town to town, following job after job, hoping merely for things to work out at some point. Her standards are not impossibly high.

Her oldest daughter Holly, played by Hilary Duff, is the true cynic of the bunch. Her idea is that perfect man doesn’t exist—but if she could just convince her mom that he did, the family wouldn’t be forced to move yet again simply because her mom settled for far too little. So to keep the wolves at bay, rather literally, she invents the perfect man for her mother.

The man that Holly invents turns out to be pretty darn terrific, if not actually perfect. The man on whom Holly’s invention is based turns out to be even more so.

Sure, The Perfect Man is just romantic summer fluff. So we probably shouldn’t take that suggestion of perfection too seriously. Or should we?

In recent interviews, Locklear and Duff offered their personal opinions about that quest. “Perfect doesn’t really exist,” said Locklear. “There’s no perfect man, there’s no perfect woman or person… It’s just people who have their imperfections, which is more exciting.”

Duff was quick to offer a clarification, observing that “there’s people who can be perfect for each other.” To which Locklear responded: “But not perfect woman, perfect man.”

This attitude certainly plays itself out in the context of the movie. Neither Holly nor Jean, certainly, are perfect. And along the path to the movie’s conclusion, Jean comes across plenty of guys like Lenny, the earnest if misguided baker who pursues Jean. Not that there’s anything “wrong with the Lenny’s of the world,” says Locklear. Duff’s words of advice for guys like Lenny? “Stop trying so hard.”

But maybe trying too hard (in general) isn’t really the problem. As C.S. Lewis observed in Mere Christianity, “the only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.” At the same time, Lewis says, we can be confident that perfection of any kind “will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God’s help.”

So Locklear is right, certainly. No man, no woman, can be perfect. And even with God’s help, Lewis goes on to say, the next step toward perfection may only be the ability to “ask forgiveness, pick yourself up and try again.”

But that’s a heck of a lot better than settling for too little, isn’t it? We just need to stop trying so hard all on our own.

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Cinderella Man

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Cinderella Man is the movie that Seabiscuit wanted to be. It shows us a side of humanity, a side of the specifically American and yet universal experience, that Seabiscuit could only tell us about in voice-over.

Both movies take place during the depression and the years leading up to the Second World War. Both movies are about the triumph of unlikely underdog heroes. But Seabiscuit’s story was literally lifted from the pages of history, trimmed, cleaned of all the unpleasant interwoven messiness that characterized those very dark times, and sanitizingly mythologized. It asked us to believe that a horse and a jockey were what gave the American people sustaining hope.

Cinderella Man also mythologizes the depression. Any mere movie must do so, given the period’s extraordinary complexity. But director Ron Howard’s mythologizing is at least contextualized and satisfyingly dramatized. He shows us that, yes, the American people did champion heroes like Seabiscuit and boxer James J. Braddock because they demonstrated the potential of the discarded and the disenfranchised. But Howard also gives us at least a sense of the global forces that came to bear on American politics and labor relations; he shows us the hardscrabble existence of the literal masses who were so busy surviving that they couldn’t possibly have cared about race tracks or boxing matches; he paints a picture of a nation, embodied in a single family, struggling to keep its faith in the face of endlessly closed doors, empty stomachs and no prospects for work. In short, Cinderella Man earns a place alongside great depression-era films like The Grapes of Wrath and Bound for Glory.

But Cinderella Man doesn’t preach, either. It still works on the level of gentle dramas of the period such as Steven Soderbergh’s King of the Hill. Sure, the true story of Braddock’s riches-to-rags-and-back-again career is compelling enough in its own right. But the real power of Howard’s rendition of the story, and Russell Crowe’s performance as Braddock, lies not in the inevitably predictable and triumphant boxing scenes but in a series of very real, quiet human moments—moments that portray the universal struggle for dignity and peace.

The first of these moments comes when Braddock and his wife, played by Renee Zellweger, find their family of five literally down to their last half-bottle of milk. Howard’s subtle visual composition tells us that the Braddocks do have options; they don’t live in vacuum. But right or wrong, they don’t ask for help, and they don’t help themselves to what’s not theirs. They tighten their belts and remain true to their principles, as tough as that may be. The remaining milk is mixed with water and the hope for a better tomorrow.

Later, one of Braddock’s sons violates the family code of self-respect by lifting a salami from the local butcher. But this is not an occasion for mere lesson-learning. Yes, Braddock sternly takes his son by the arm to personally return the stolen meat to its owner; but Braddock knows the hunger and desperation that has driven his son to such an act, and he makes a promise to his son that he knows he will have a hard time keeping. Discipline meets compassion in a truly loving fashion.

Braddock himself, after all, knows the same hunger and desperation. Even before a boxing match, he goes without a meal so that his children can have a rare second helping. And when the worst of times comes, Braddock, like most of us, finds himself “all prayed out.” Faith is just a nice idea until its tested; but when the testing comes in force, it sometimes seems more than we can bear—though, of course, it never is.

Finally Braddock learns the lesson of contextualization. He learns that no man—no family, no nation—is an island. He learns the hard lesson of humility, even humiliation. To keep his family, to keep that hard promise to his son, he must ask for help. He finds that sometimes the most hard-earned dignity and self-respect is the most precious. The only principle that he must sacrifice to survive is the illusion of indepedence.

And in the end, Braddock learns—no, Ron Howard has the genius and sense to show us—that the heart of human existence is not in the glory of boxing titles. Neither is it in the pathos of the Hoovervilles, the well-intentioned championing of political causes nor the nation-building exercises of countries struggling to find meaning, peace or prosperity. The whole wealth and breadth of human experience may just be found in what we do with a simple bottle of milk.

Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' —Matthew 25:37-40

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