Max McLean, star of The Screwtape Letters play, hosts Douglas Gresham, son of C.S Lewis and Executive Producer of Voyage of the Dawn Treader the movie, for a Christian Post exclusive interview in New York City.
Their discussion ranges from the challenges of writing and acting from Satan’s perspective in The Screwtape Letters, to an inside look at the upcoming release of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, to Lewis’ interaction with Tolkien and the Inklings literary group, to the impact Lewis’ words still carry today.
Video production for the interview provided by Goodnewsline, megachurch sermon streaming website.
Mr. Gresham talks about the theme of temptation that is present in the film, as well as his role of protecting the meaning of the books as translated to the screen. He mentions that each of the main characters confronts temptation in the film, and how they deal with it is the important thing. He says that it is a beautiful and moving film with scenes that are very emotional.
MithLuin took the time to transcribe the part of the video that is relevant to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:
Interviewer: How did your personal relationship with him inform the work you are doing as a producer of the Narnia films?
Douglas Gresham: Completely and totally is the easiest answer to that. Everything that I do in trying to make sure that the messages that Jack was building into the books he wrote always reach the screen all comes from a direct liaison with Jack, from knowing exactly how he thought, and knowing what he wanted in his books to say. He realized, as many people did, that we really needed to get back to the nineteenth century concepts of honor and duty and personal responsibility, personal commitment to chivalry and all of those things that we threw away in the twentieth century on the grounds that they were somehow out of date. Well, they aren’t, they’re eternal, and we need to get them back. Having thrown them away in the twentieth century, we’ve had to watch all of our society crumble around us into ruins, which is happening faster and faster. So we need to get those things back, and it’s my duty, I believe, my inherited duty, to make sure they play as prominent a part in the movie as possible, in every movie we make, as much as it’s possible to achieve. Of course, the books are not written as film scripts, so they have to be changed, certain changes have to be made, and I work very hard with my colleagues to try to make sure that any change made is one that is needed, and that it works for the sake of the film, and yet that the film will still carry the important essence that Jack built into those books. You will find that the essence of Voyage of the Dawn-treader is…. Dawn Treader is Screwtape for kids, in a sense – it’s all about temptation, how it afflicts you and what you can do about it. And that’s all still very strongly in the movie, and you’ll see it, you’ll see them being tempted one after the other, and how they cope with it, where they fail and where they succeed. So all of these things are very important to me. I think I inherited a moral responsibility to look after these things.
Interviewer: What can people expect in the upcoming movie?
Douglas Gresham: Well, that’s a difficult question! I don’t want to give too much away. A lot of excitement. A great deal of beauty. I have to say that Michael Apted and Dante Spinotti, our DP [Director of Photography], have filmed it absolutely magnificently…there are such beautiful scenes in it. Also, there are some very, very emotionally moving scenes in this film. There is a great deal of easy to understand scenes of temptation – different people get tempted in different ways, in different places – tempted to fear, tempted to greed, tempted to this or that or the other thing. The instructional part of this is how you can cope with this or win through it. One of the problems we have with temptation today is everyone believes it is impossible to defeat. And you can never really know how strong temptation is until you have defeated it. If you just give in, all you’ve discovered is the level of your own weakness, not how strong the temptation can become. If you want to know how strong Mike Tyson is, you have to get into the ring and beat him – and that’s tough.
Max McLean: That’s a good analogy.
Douglas Gresham: That’s the case, though, really. This comes out, I think you’ll find, in the movie – you cannot know how strong these temptations can be until you actually fight them and defeat them. Some of our heroes and heroines come pretty close to the edge at times in this movie. I think you’ll find it’s going to be a beautiful and exciting film.
Big thanks to MithLuin for transcribing this!