c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) If you think the life of a successful Hollywood screenwriter involves a little typing, a little schmoozing, lunch, a little golf, maybe a nap, and lots of cashing of residual checks, try keeping up with Mike Rich.

In anticipation of Friday’s (Dec. 1) premiere of “The Nativity Story,” his version of the events leading up to the birth of Jesus, Rich racked up multiple frequent-flier miles to explain and promote his work.

Rich has been through the publicity mill before: “Nativity” is his fourth film to reach the screen, after “Finding Forrester,” “The Rookie” and “Radio.” But the stakes here are high: The film follows the controversial and highly successful “The Passion of the Christ” as a large-scale Hollywood version of a Bible story, and it’s been produced by New Line Cinema, the company behind the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

Rich agreed to an interview just after he returned from a barnstorming publicity trip to Toronto, Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, Virginia Beach, Va., and California’s Orange County, and just before he flew to Rome, where the film premiered in front of 7,000 viewers at the Vatican on Nov. 26. This interview has been edited for length.

Q: Your publicity itinerary has brought you to the heart of the evangelical media world. How has that community responded to the film?

A: It’s been incredibly favorable. There certainly is an aspect of preaching to the choir, of course. But you wanna just show these religious leaders that you didn’t mess it up. And they wanna make sure that they can give an endorsement to their congregations.

Q: There was some anxiety over the news that your star, Keisha Castle-Hughes, announced that she was pregnant although she’s 16 and unmarried. That must have given the PR people some sleepless nights.

A: Well, Keisha made the decision not to participate in the publicity. She told the studio that right now she just wants to focus on her pregnancy and motherhood.

The rest of us get asked about it a lot, and my response is that I have a 22-year-old daughter and a 20-year-old daughter, and if either one of them had come to me when they were 16 years old and said they were pregnant, I would have been very aware of the difficulties of a person that age facing motherhood and I would love them and support them, and I’m supporting Keisha as well.

Q: She gives a wonderful performance. There’s something in her expression that’s at once modern and timeless. And she doesn’t have a lot to say.

A: That’s right. The dialogue is really spare. There are rarely instances when Joseph or Mary have more than two sentences tied together. I’ve learned to trust my actors in advance. You have to approach it with the thought, “I’m writing for a good actor, not a deficient actor.”

Q: I was a little unsettled by the opening of the film, which drops us in the midst of Herod’s slaughter of the innocents. Why did you choose to start at that moment _ near the end of the story _ and then jump backwards?

A: I wanted to very quickly establish for the audience that this was not going to be a conventional telling of the story, even though there are many linear aspects to it. I just wanted people to notice in the first 30 seconds that this was not going to be your father’s Nativity story. So instead of starting in Nazareth, I wanted to start in the moment which would make the audience buckle up a little bit and realize this was different. And that’s never a bad thing.

The way that movies are presented nowadays … is that there’s a desire to make films for the cinematically challenged. Anything that’s a bump from telling a story in a purely linear way is usually discouraged. But I as a writer _ and certainly Catherine Hardwicke as a director _ was keen on getting away from that.

Q: The ending is also an interesting choice. You don’t leave the family in the manger but rather on their flight into Egypt, which is a moment of real uncertainty.

A: Uncertainty yet hope for what lies ahead. The flight into Egypt is a key moment of the story. The adoration is the moment when the audience is satisfied. But it would have been a premature conclusion if we didn’t see that urgency to get to a place where they could raise this child.

Q: Up to now you’ve been pigeonholed as a writer of sports stories. But this film makes it clear that you’ve always written stories about redemption and transformation.

A: I think if there is a common theme, it’s ordinary people doing extraordinary things. That’s what’s interesting to me. Redemption. Opportunity. Granted, that’s all elevated slightly with the story of the Virgin Mary, but it’s there nonetheless. And it’s a common thread that runs through all the films.

KRE/RR END LEVY

(Shawn Levy is a staff writer for The Oregonian of Portland, Ore. He can be contacted at shawnlevy(at)news.oregonian.com.)

Editors: To obtain a photo of Mike Rich and stills from “The Nativity Story,” go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.