SR: I always loved ‘Chariots of Fire’ I have to say that. I loved ‘Ushpizin’; it’s a modern day Abraham and Sarah. ‘The Bucket List’ I thought was very Catholic even though it never mentions it, it’s very Catholic, have you seen that?

SFC: Not as yet – it’s on my list of things to see. (Note: between talking to Steve and typing up this interview ‘The Bucket List’ has now been reviewed).

SR: Well the story is that Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman are both dying of cancer and before they die they come up with this list of things to do before they die; before they “kick the bucket”. The impact that Morgan Freeman has on Jack Nicholson for the good is just amazing, so recently that has to be one of my favourites too. With respect to an all-time top five or ten? I’d have to say ‘Babette’s Feast’; because it represents the feast of the Catholic Church and the lady goes out and sells all she has to create this feast, and the protestants didn’t know what they were getting in the midst of this great banquet, which was just beautiful. ‘The Ninth Day’ showed the humanity of the priesthood. ‘The Passion of the Christ’ is not a movie I watch very often, even though I think it’s one of the great Christian movies of all time, because it’s so very painful to watch, I watch that very infrequently. And then some I like because of the Christian message, but some also just for the human message they give. Like ‘The Scarlet and Black’; that is a great film.

SFC: The films in the blue font are the films I haven’t seen yet, and I suspect many of our readers won’t have seen either. You mentioned ‘The Ninth Day’ and ‘The Bucket List’ already – are there any others of those you’d recommend?

SR: Well let’s see, ‘Anne of Green Gables’ is about a young girl; if you have kids, then that is a great film to watch. ‘The Gods must be Crazy’ is from Australia, it’s just a fun, crazy, rollicking film. ‘The Yearling’ is a great story about a family, it’s made in the 1950s, they live out in the pan-handle in Florida all by themselves, a very rugged life, and they have a young boy and he raises a baby deer, and when the deer is a year old he has to kill the deer because it’s eating all the crops. And so you realise that when the deer is growing up to become a Yearling, the boy is also growing up, and the Yearling is really him; the boy. Actually the movie is as good as the book.  ‘The War of the Buttons’, that’s from Ireland, that’s kind of fun too; groups of school boys after school go out and have a war – they battle each other, it’s a delightful movie. ‘I Confess’ is an Alfred Hitchcock movie is about a priest who witnesses a murderer, and then the murderer accuses the priest of being the murderer, and he goes to court, and I don’t remember if he gets convicted or otherwise, but he’ll never violate what he heard in confession because this man confessed to him, and so he couldn’t say a word, but he’s willing to go to trial and prison himself rather than to divulge the information of the man he knew had done it. It’s just the nobility of the priesthood, it was wonderful. ‘The Cardinal ‘also was good; he decides to become a priest, then he’s not sure, and he takes a hiatus, and he comes back, during the days of slavery in America, and Hitler, so you go through some really cultural extremes and see how he relates to them, so that was nice too.

SFC: How about ‘The Spitfire Grill’? It’s not available in the UK but I’ve heard good things about it.

SR: Yeah I get ‘The Spitfire Grill’ and ‘Fried Green Tomatoes’ mixed up. ‘Spitfire Grill’ is the one where a girl is convicted of murder and goes to work in a small town and it’s all about redemption. It’s a nice movie. ‘My Dinner with Andre’ is just these two guys talking Philosophy, and it’s just one of those nice movies, it never actually leaves the restaurant table, you’re just there listening to these to guys talk about philosophy and Eastern Religion and the meaning of life. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it but I’m actually going to watch it again now that you’ve brought it up here. Then there’s ‘Black Robe’ and ‘Assisi Underground’; both of those are very Catholic movies. ‘Black Robe’ is about the Jesuits that come over here to the American Indians and they get murdered and their thumbs cut off, suffer martyrdom. ‘Assisi Underground’ is also a very Catholic movie. ‘Follow me Boys’ is an old Fred MacMurray boy scout movie that just teaches boys morals, and to be men and to stand up for what’s right; my dad took me to it when I was about ten, and it had a profound positive impact upon me; it talks about standing up for friends, and loving your enemies and defending justice and beauty and goodness.

SFC: On your favourite films list there are quite a few films that have been produced in the last ten years; how do you view the state of contemporary movie making versus that of your youth? How have things changed over that time?

SR: Well because of DVDs and because our lives are so busy we don’t end up going to the cinema too much, but what I don’t like about the Hollywood movies these days is a couple of things; first of all, the explicit sex and immorality; it’s gratuitous, most of it is not necessary, it’s just there to titillate the audience and to try and push the limits and excite peoples’ baser instincts; which I don’t appreciate. I don’t want to be insulted by that. And second, I don’t like the movies that are loud and bombastic and full of these non-stop-action, fireball scenes that they think they need to have to keep people interested. I would much rather go to a quiet movie that’s doing a character study of some people; finding out what makes them tick and finding how they interact; this to me is much more interesting and much more endearing. I also would mention - I don’t know if you saw a movie called the Perfect Storm?

SFC: Yes I’ve seen that one - it stars Mark Whalberg and George Clooney.

SR: Right, and I realised when I watched that how dishonest movies are too, because the guy never stops to pray and say “Dear God help us we’re in trouble”, but in the real world those people would be crying out to God for mercy, saying “Save us God, help us God”, a movie like that doesn’t even acknowledge that, but that’s what people would do, so it’s dishonest; through silence it portrays a message that there is no God, and even if there is he’s irrelevant and no one pays attention to him. Whereas in the real world they would have been on their faces crying; they would’ve been more interested in praying than trying to get a life boat off.

SFC: One rare film that was quite good in that respect recently was ‘United 93’, I don’t know if you’ve seen that. And there is a moment in that actually where they take a moment to say the Our Father, and I thought that was good.

SR: Well I appreciate that because it’s a much more honest approach, and so I agree. So I think the three things would be the gratuitous violence and sex - it’s just unnecessary; the old movies were much better than many of the new ones and they didn’t have to do that either, just suggesting it was enough and it was a lot more endearing. And the loudness and the bombastic elements, and the view that God is irrelevant, because that’s completely contrary to human experience.

SFC: Changing track a little now, throughout your travels around the world and the Holy Land in particular (when filming ‘The Footprints of God’ series), are there any particular locations you’ve seen, or perhaps stories in the Bible you recall, for which you think this really could be a good setting or a good story for a motion picture with a good budget behind it?

SR: I remember standing at the place where St Paul was converted and looking out down over Damascus; it’s just around the bend at the curve, it’s kind of desert turning into this valley and the beautiful city of Damascus nine miles down in the valley, and that was kind of stunning to me – I wept when I saw that. Just to think what Jesus did there 2,000 years ago and how much that seemingly insignificant event had on the whole of history; I mean just you and me talking today. That was a place that just was stunning to me. Out in the wilderness at Sinai too was stunning; it was kind of an austere beauty, and I remember standing at the foot of Mount Sinai where the burning bush is, and St Catherine’s monastery is there, and I was thinking about God, saying “…this is Holy Ground remove your sandals”, whereas the day before it was just dirt and dust. It’s the same now; whatever God touches it changes things. That to me is a very austere and stunning site, and I enjoyed filming there both from the air and from the ground. Another one is the streets of Jerusalem which are so chaotic and so bizarre; throbbing with life and contradictions, it seems like there could be a lot done there. And then obviously Rome. That’s a tough question though!

SFC: On my travels, although it’s not very Biblical, I remember being in India, and there’s a city in the West of the county there called Jaisalmer, which is nicknamed ‘The Golden City’, and it’s a city based around this huge fort, and that whole city was like walking around one big movie set [you can see by typing Jaisalmer into Google images].

SR: Right, we’re going to India in 2010 actually.

SFC: You mentioned Rome in your list, does it annoy you when a film like ‘The Da Vinci Code’ get a budget of $125 million thrown at it when there are so many more worthy things that could be produced?

SR: I didn’t see that film on principle, and I heard it was kind of boring and long and tedious anyway, but I read about it. You get that money thrown at it, and you think what we do with our Footprints of God, with a crew of six and all the post production and everything for about $200,000 each, and so yeah that is disappointing when you think what could have been done with that money.

SFC: You touched on ‘The Footprints of God’ series there, can you expand a bit on that for us; explaining how hard it is to bring something like that together; the budget etc. How do you even start with something like that?