How did you come up with the idea for your screenplay?

A great problem I was having with writing Christian themes was considering the role of God and the transference of the Holy Spirit, i.e., communicating what happens when God touches your soul and relaying that supernatural intercession in a person’s spiritual development to a reader/viewer completely removed from the actual events. In depicting my characters in the Depression, Tom--who is poverty-stricken--and May who is poor, relay to the reader/viewer the problem of "humbled spirit" and the "contrite heart" and how the arrogant are in the eyes of God. Having a contemporary film shot in black and white, with only a few moments of "color" was an experiment to show God's stirring the soul of these characters in moments of extreme hardship; the Depression-era farmers offered a ready resource for discouragement and confusion about God's love for his children as they suffer hardship and loss and that provided the opportunity of introducing the Holy Spirit as a viable character in a film.

What or who was your inspiration?

Harriet Beecher Stowe said, "I didn't write it. God wrote it. I just took dictation." Some obvious references are "The Grapes of Wrath," both the book and film, and of course, the Scriptures as well as Catholic theology regarding sufferings and trials; the book "Job" as well as "J.B." by Archibald MacCleish. I also recalled innumerable stories related by grandparents and great-grandparents about how they lived before and during the Depression. But I also try to give all my characters a philosophical consistency and that usually determines how they want to be involved in a story and help the story’s plot, e.g., Ruthie, as the good woman struggling with her sin of a sharp tongue, made it clearly known to me several times that she wasn’t going to keep quiet when she should.

How long did it take for you to write your script?

Within a month and a half the story was written and major editing completed. After experiencing some trials in my own life, a period of about five months, I returned to the story and made a few adjustments to deepen the metaphysics of the events; I’ll probably go back now and make even more adjustments.

What were some of the challenges that you faced during the writing process?

I was torn about the ending, it appears so sad and May's trials and sufferings all for nothing, yet the reader knows also that Justice has been fulfilled. The philosophical implications of Tom's Free Will in denying God and the result of his freely choosing to hurt others and, in consequence, hurting himself by refusing to ask for May's help, involved careful study of the Theological doctrines of Free Will, Destiny and Determinism, which was a great reward for me personally in developing my relationship with God as well as helping me in creating these characters in a way that Christians can identify with and non-Christians can - hopefully - be inspired by them. There was also the temptation to include more scenes than those of the farmhouse and the immediate area: in order to make the poverty of Tom and May real, I severely limited the number of scenes so that the reader/viewer would have a sense of claustrophobia that financial difficulties bring.

What is your writing background? Do you have formal training as a writer?

I wanted to be a writer (novelist) since high school; when I realized I couldn't write dialogue, I gave that up to become an Art Historian, still writing, but academically. It was during this time that I fell away from God. After taking several film criticism classes, I felt a desire to try a screenplay and during that time I came back to God. It's ironic given that a screenplay is ninety percent dialogue and that's always been my greatest challenge, so it must be God's work. I haven’t any formal training in writing, but I have extensive training in Theory studies, Film criticism and Philosophy; I guess one could say that I’ve done everything backwards.

Have you won any other contests?

I won first place in the Colman Screenwriting contest at Wichita State University in 2000 for "The King’s Journey."

Do you have advice for other writers who are dealing with Christian themes?

Don't be afraid to work with silence, it's the first language of God and there are many rewarding ways in which it can be experimented with and can enhance a situation for a character(s). The visual vocabulary for Christian screenwriters is so very limited that it makes it terribly difficult, but also encourages us to seek God's help to really be creative in an unexplored region of cinematic history; given this, I think Christian screenwriters could be known for making the greatest creative leaps by accepting such great challenges that God is blessing us with. I think we also need to be willing to explore sin in characters: not just big, obvious sins than any heathen would condemn, but the small ones that may actually make an entire character real to the audience but talking about sin will just be heedless preaching unless we also communicate God’s unsurpassable Love for us all.