SR: Well you know the whole thing is kind of a fairy-tale story. It’s what people dream of doing and so I can’t believe I’m actually doing this, because my wife and I never went to college, we just got out of high school and started a business and raised our family. And I just worked hard; I was a working stiff, a redneck! And when I wrote my conversion story which was really just a letter to my dad that became a book, and then I kind of got on a roller coaster from there on.

You see I remember going to the Holy Land with my teenagers and seeing the impact it had on them seeing those places, it really profoundly impacted their lives; they came home and really wanted to follow Jesus, as champions. And I woke up in the middle of the night in the year 2000; I don’t know why I woke up to this day – it could’ve been the voice of God, an Angel or just indigestion, but I woke up and I remember sitting up in bed and grabbing my poor wife who was still asleep and shaking her and saying “Janet, Janet, wake up! wake up! we’ve got to do a ten-part video series called ‘The Footprints of God’ that will tell the salvation story from a Catholic perspective”. And she was shaking because I woke her up like that, and she said “Are you kidding me! You woke me up to tell me that! You’re crazy – we can’t even take good pictures, how does God expect us to make movies?”

So she went back to sleep and I got up out of bed and typed the whole outline up that night; my fingers were on fire! It had to be ten parts, and it had to go beyond the New testament, because I wanted to show that the Holy Spirit didn’t quit on us after that; that he’s still here working with us through the Church. And they had to be biographies about the main characters so it would be interesting, and it had to be a travelogue so you could actually see these places with your own eyes; see where Mary walked, see where Jesus was really crucified, and I also had to show what it would’ve looked like at the time. So I’m trying to juxtapose all of these things; it had to be apologetics, it had be catechesis but more than anything it had to be a rollicking adventure! So you’ve got me falling in the mud, falling off horses, wrestling with snakes and it had to be fun so that the kids would enjoy it.

So after I thought it through we called Ignatius Press and told them the idea. They said come out for a board meeting and tell us what you want to do. And we sat down for lunch with them and there was this bottle of red wine at one end of the table and a bottle of white wine at the other end of the table; I waited until both were completely empty until I went to finalise the deal! So as to maximise my chances you know.

And they said go for it, we’ll fund it. And that was a dream situation, because they shouldn’t have done it, and I later told the Ignatius directors there that they probably shouldn’t have done it because I didn’t have either the experience or the knowledge to do this, but they said let’s do it. It seemed they knew it would work. So I hired a good videographer and a good producer; Joe Reynolds at Skyline Production, and I learnt a lot from them and we just kind of learnt as we went, and the very fact that it’s working and going all over the world, being enjoyed by families and kids, and everywhere I go the kids want my autograph, the fact that’s it’s working for me demonstrates the fact that God has a sense of humour!

SFC: And is the project self-financing by now?

SR: It is not up to this point because Catholics don’t buy much! For example ‘Apostolic Fathers’ cost $280,000 to produce, not counting marketing, but it’s done very well; better than most people expected. And I think that if we look at that one right now, the ones that we have sold have covered what we put into it, if not close. But they’re still going to be selling now for another 20 years because the things in them are not the things that are going to get dated easily. So they’ll be around for a long time and I’m confident they’ll turn a profit in the long run.

SFC: That’s good to hear. But the thing about art is that the value is not in the budget anyway, and so it doesn’t become so much about the return really.

SR: Well you see Ignatius Press made an interesting statement to me at the start of all of this – they’d be willing to lose money on a good project that’s going to save souls. And you see my wife and I wanted to have more kids, I’m 54 now, so I was about 47 at the time, and my wife Janet is two years younger than I am, but it didn’t happen. And my wife specifically wanted to raise a priest, and she prayed about it every day for several years. But we now feel that this video series is going to do that for her. We’re hoping there’s going to be a whole generation of young men that see these videos and realise how exciting and how much to offer the Catholic Church has, and then decide to become priests. And so she’s hoping all these young men will be coming up to her and thanking her for all she sacrificed so that they could become inspired to become priests. That’s our hope for the future.

SFC: That’s excellent.

SR: You asked about budgets and things; we never could figure out what a budget would be, I told them (Ignatius) that there was no such thing as a budget, we would give them a guesstimate, a SWAG; a silly wild-assed guess. Because when we were in Egypt for example we were stuck there for three days because they wouldn’t let us out of there, and they were talking about us paying a new tax that they’d just come up with that week! And we ended up paying this $5,000 tax which I know somebody just put in their pocket, and that lost us three days of production. So that kind of thing, there’s no way we could’ve planned for that or budgeted for it.

And moving a thousand tons of equipment between Turkey and Syria and Israel and Jordan, like for ‘Paul’, which went through six countries. It’s a nightmare sometimes; you’ve got to have a lot of good humour, tenacity, fortitude and good partners that work with you and don’t get emotional and tempered. The first guy I worked with had a temper and I replaced him. I remember on case when he was so mad at the Egyptians that he started pounding on the helicopter door so hard that he knocked the window panel out of the window over the Red Sea, just because he lost his temper! And he almost cost us $15,000 and all of our footage because of that. So you’ve got to have a good team in order to work seven days working all the hours under the sun, and re-charging the batteries and getting everything ready overnight, you’ve got to have people with steady temperaments.

And getting permits for these places can be hard too. For example we didn’t have any permits for Syria and Turkey, and I went to the embassies in Washington DC, six months ahead of time, and I couldn’t get them. So when we were finally leaving I just kind of said “Lord, if you want to mess this up, it’s your problem; I’ve done everything I can do, and if you mess it up I’m going to tell everybody it’s your fault!” tongue in cheek you know! So we’re leaving with all of our suitcases heading out of the door, and my fax machine rings and I went back to see what it was and it was our permits for Turkey! And I still do not know to this day why we got them.

Then when we were shooting throughout four countries we ended up being in Rome, shooting for ‘Paul’ there, and I went to the Syrian embassy in Rome, to see if they would help me at the last minute to get the permits to go to Damascus. And she said “no that‘s impossible; even politicians and diplomats can’t get permits!”. And I said “you don’t understand, I’m doing this story on St. Paul and I need this because that’s the pinnacle to the story!” She said “didn’t you hear me! It’s impossible! You think you’re Saint Paul and you’ll have a miracle!?” I said “not Saint Paul, but I believe in the same God that Paul does, so I believe I’ll have a miracle – in fact ma’am I’m coming back at 10 O’Clock tomorrow to pick up my permits, and I expect you to have them ready for me!” They threw us out of that embassy!

So anyway, I was at the Church of St Paul’s outside the walls, shooting that afternoon at the tomb of St Paul, and my cell phone rang when I was on camera. And I answered it and the guy said “Hello, my name is Ali, I’m the Minister of Information at Damascus, I hear you want to shoot a video in my country?” I said “yes sir, I do”, he said “I personally invite you to come to my country. I will send my people to the airport to meet you, when you’re done I’d like you to come to my office and we’ll get a picture taken together”. And then he said he’d like me to do something for him, and I asked him what that was, and he said “I have an embassy in Rome; I need you to go there tomorrow morning at 10 O’Clock and pick up your permits”. So I walked back in there at 10 O’Clock the next morning, and that same lady was there who had no idea that this man would ring me, and she was not amused at all! But the next day I got the permits and we were filming in Damascus.

SFC: That’s brilliant! And to finish with I understand you have a story about the filming of Moses and the burning bush that is quite amusing too?

SR: That’s right; we were at the foot of Mount Sinai, and it’s just rugged desolate territories, the only people out there are Bedouins, there are just a few pilgrims coming and going, they don’t get very far from St Catherine’s and the hotels there. So I wanted to have a burning bush, you know I wanted our movies to be interesting. So I got half a can of gas, and I thought, right I’m going to pour the gas through the sand and make a trail, and then I’ll pour the rest of it on the bush. And my wife was five feet away, and I said to her “when I get to the words ‘Holy Ground’ you light the match, and the fire will go whoosh across the ground and the bush will explode”. And it went great and the bush went up in flames. But as soon as we did it a white jeep comes ripping, bouncing through the desert and they arrest me for burning a protected bush! I said “there are no signs! Where are the signs?” they said “it’s a new law we just passed it!” So they took me to the police station and I was there all morning and I had to sign a document that was in Arabic, and apparently it said ‘I admit I broke one law in Egypt, but I promise I won’t break another one’. As soon as I got out of there I bought another half gallon of gas, went right around the other side of the mountain, we looked on the horizon every which way, we lit the bush, we got the footage, and we got out of there as quick as we could!

SFC: Sticking to the spirit of the law and not the letter of the law! That brings this interview to an end, so I thank you Steve; I really appreciate that, and if you’re ever in London you’ll be welcome at many an event I’m sure. God bless you.

SR: Well thank you, and thank you for pushing me out of my comfort zone in getting to use this webcam technology!

Keep up to date with Steve’s adventures, buy one of his CDs, books or DVDs, or invite him to speak at your parish by visiting his website at: www.JerusalemJones.com.