THE ART OF ADAPTATION

Machine Gun Preacher

Point of View
An eye-opener that will break your heart and make you take a new look at the world around you. Marc Forster astutely paints an abominable portrait of war and shows the brutal affect it has on the soul of its victims and wounded survivors. It poignantly questions the difference between mercenaries and humanitarians and allows the story to speak for itself, never allowing it to become forceful or didactic. Evil inflicted on mankind through ruthless dictatorship of insane megalomaniacs is strongly contrasted with the afflicted anguish suffered by innocent bystanders (particularly defenseless women and children who become victims of unfortunate circumstances). Gerard Butler is superb in his dual role of vigilante and guardian, brilliantly capturing the frustrated anger and suppressed aggression as well as the emotional conflicts of a man on his journey of redemption. Discerning audiences will find reward in its honest and hard-hitting exploration of issues that turn the world into chaos, and captures the essence of harmony in action.  Reviewed by Daniel Dercksen. Rating 5/5

The Story
The inspirational true story of Sam Childers, a former drug-dealing criminal who undergoes an astonishing transformation and finds his unexpected calling as the savior of hundreds of kidnapped and orphaned children in war-torn Sudan. Gerard Butler (300) delivers a searing performance as Childers, the impassioned founder of the Angels of East Africa rescue organization in Golden Globe^®-nominated director Marc Forster's (Monster's Ball, The Kite Runner) moving story of violence and redemption.
When ex-biker-gang member Sam Childers (Butler) makes the life-changing decision to go to East Africa to help repair homes destroyed by civil war, he is outraged by the unspeakable horrors faced by the region's vulnerable populace, especially the children. Ignoring the warnings of more experienced aide workers, Sam breaks ground for an orphanage where it's most needed--in the middle of territory controlled by the brutal Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a renegade militia that forces children to become soldiers before they even reach their teens.
But for Sam, it is not enough to shelter the LRA's intended victims. Determined to save as many as possible, he leads armed missions deep into enemy territory to retrieve kidnapped children, restoring peace to their lives--and eventually his own.

Director
MARC FORSTER (Director and Producer) is best known for the unique aesthetic and attention to detail evident in each of the wide-ranging list of films he has directed. In 2008, Forster founded Apparatus, a Los Angeles-based production company.
Forster is currently in production on World War Z, starring Brad Pitt. The film, a joint venture with Apparatus and Pitt's Plan B Entertainment, is based on Max Brooks' post-apocalyptic horror novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.
Born in Germany in 1969 and raised in Switzerland, Forster came to the U.S. in 1990 to attend NYU Film School, graduating in 1993. The helmer's style was immediately made clear in Forster's first film, Everything Put Together, which he also co-wrote. This searing psychological drama was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. At the Independent Spirit Awards, Forster won the Someone to Watch Award and was nominated for the "Best Feature under $500,000" honor.
Forster's true directorial breakout came in 2001 with Monster's Ball, a critical and commercial success that received two Oscar nominations with Halle Berry winning for Best Actress. Featuring commanding performances by Berry, Billy Bob Thornton and Heath Ledger, the film offered a powerful glimpse into the legacies of race, loss and redemption.
In Finding Neverland, Forster recreated turn-of-the-century London in the semi-biographical story of the inspiring friendship between J.M. Barrie, author of the beloved stage play "Peter Pan," and the four young boys and single mother who lived next door. Starring Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet, Finding Neverland was one of the most celebrated films of 2004. It was recognized as Best Film of the Year by the National Board of Review and received seven Academy Award® nominations, five Golden Globe® nominations and 11 BAFTA nominations. Forster himself received a Best Director nomination from his peers at the DGA.
Forster's next film was 2005's reality-bending thriller, Stay, starring Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling. He followed that with the imaginative comedy Stranger Than Fiction, starring Will Ferrell, Maggie Gylenhaal, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. Stranger Than Fiction premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival to critical and audience acclaim, culminating in a Golden Globe® nomination for Ferrell.
In 2007, Forster adapted the New York Times bestselling novel The Kite Runner. Forster's film garnered a Golden Globe® nomination for Best Foreign Language Film and a BAFTA bid for Film Not in the English Language.
Following the critical success of The Kite Runner, Forster was sought out to direct the latest installment of the James Bond franchise, Quantum of Solace, in 2008. The film became the highest-grossing film in Bond history with a worldwide box-office total of $587 million.

Screenwriter
JASON KELLER (Writer) has penned a handful of feature screenplays that quickly attracted Hollywood's most desired talent and served to establish him as a go-to writer of muscular, character-driven projects. With Melissa Wallack, he wrote the still-untitled Snow White film for stars Julia Roberts, Sean Bean and Lily Collins. The project, a wildly original reimagining of the Snow White tale, is now filming in Montreal with director Tarsem Singh.
Keller also has a project in active development at Summit Entertainment, the actioner The Tomb. Bruce Willis is set to star and Antoine Fuqua to direct with Mark Canton and Robbie Brenner on board to produce.
Keller is also writing the tentatively titled Go Like Hell, his adaptation of A.J. Baime's Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans. The book chronicles the exciting 1966 rivalry as Ford tried to unseat Ferrari as the dominant player on the international race circuit. Michael Mann has signed on to direct.
Born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, Keller was attending Ball State University when a professor recommended him for a yearlong theater and film studies program at Regents College in London. There, he studied old Westerns and wrote and directed plays.
After the program, Keller dropped out of college and moved to Los Angeles to pursue a writing career. Success eluded him for many years and in that time he worked in almost every capacity of film production: as a grip, a gaffer, an assistant and countless other jobs the aspiring writer was happy to take in order to soak up the filmmaking experience.
Keller was recently hired to write the screen adaptation of Justin Cronin's epic 2009 novel The Passage for 20^th Century Fox. Matt Reeves, director of Cloverfield and Let Me In, has been developing the project and chose Keller as his collaborator. The story is set in the future, after a government experiment to lengthen human life spans turns people into vampires.

Read interview with screenwriter Jason Keller

The casting
Gerard Butler, who portrays Childers in Machine Gun Preacher, has played his share of larger-than-life warriors, including the Spartan King Leonidas in 300 and the Norse hero Beowulf in Beowulf & Grendel, but Childers' exploits blew him away. "When I first read it, I thought, are you kidding me?" admits Butler. "This couldn't all have happened. But it did and much more. The man has experienced more than most people would in 10 lifetimes."  Read more

Two Sides of Sam
Fom small-town Pennsylvania to the sun-baked scrub forests of Sudan, Machine Gun Preacher follows Sam Childers' journey between two very disparate landscapes. For the filmmakers, it sometimes felt like they were shooting two separate movies: one in Detroit, which doubled for Childers' hometown, Central City Pennsylvania; another in South Africa, which stood in for Sudan.
"Sam's life is divided," says Forster. "His family is in Pennsylvania and the orphanage is in Africa. In the movie, he essentially abandons his real family for a new family in Sudan. He has a purpose there that he never had in the U.S. I feel these two worlds represent his inner and outer lives and to juxtapose them against each other in the film is really interesting."
Representing both worlds with equal authenticity was the most difficult part of writing the screenplay, says Jason Keller. "I always wanted them to feel interwoven. If Sam Childers is in Pennsylvania, I want Africa to be right over his shoulder. While he is in Africa, I want his family to have a presence. The two worlds are constantly intersecting. It was very difficult to keep them playing against one another and show the dance of two worlds that make up Sam Childers' life." Read more

From real life to reel truth
When Sam Childers first visited the Republic of Sudan in 1998, he was galvanized by the suffering he saw around him, particularly that of the children. For most of the past half-century, ongoing civil conflict has disrupted and destroyed lives throughout the African nation, devastating generations of Sudanese. The country, particularly the southern region (now South Sudan), has been plunged into almost constant chaos by wars born out of religious conflicts, scarcity of natural resources, geopolitics and ethnic conflict.
"When I went into Sudan on my first trip, I saw the body of a very small child who had been blown up by a landmine," says Childers. "And I said right there, I'll do whatever it takes to help these children. I didn't realize it was going to change my entire life. I didn't realize I was going to have to walk away from everything I knew, but that's what happened."
An unlikely hero, Sam had reinvented himself only six years earlier after a lifetime of violence, crime and addiction. He kicked drugs and alcohol, and rededicated his life to his faith and his family. A trip to Uganda to help rebuild a war-ravaged village was meant to be a one-time event, but once Sam had seen the incredible need there and in neighboring Sudan firsthand, he became a man with a mission.
He founded his first orphanage using a simple mosquito net suspended from a tree. Now it is one of the largest in Sudan, feeding up to 1,200 injured, abandoned and traumatized children a day. "Thirty years ago, I couldn't read or write," says Childers, who is now in his late 40s. "If I can do it, anyone can do it."
But hunger and displacement were not the worst of the problems Sam discovered. The Lord's Rebel Army (LRA), a notorious guerilla group led by the charismatic mystic Joseph Kony, was kidnapping small children and forcing them to commit unthinkable atrocities. Kony quickly became Childers' personal nemesis. "I found God in 1992, but I found Satan in 1998 in Sudan," Childers says, referring to Kony.
Never one to run from a fight, Childers began to lead heavily armed "rescue missions" to find and retrieve children whose lives had been shattered by the conflict. He brings the children to the Angels of East Africa orphanage, where they are housed, educated and rehabilitated.
Childers offers no apologies for what some see as his unorthodox method of saving lives. "A lot of people ask if it's right for a man of God to have a gun," he notes. "If we look in the Old Testament, there were a lot of men of God that were warriors and soldiers. I'm not going to say that everything I do is right, but if somebody took your child and I said I could get your child back, what would you say then?"
When Sam Childers' extraordinary story was featured on the news magazine show "Dateline," it attracted the attention of two determined women who would become the first producers to sign on to the film. Deborah Giarratana, a long time visual effects artist, remembers watching transfixed as Childers talked about his work.
"I saw this man sitting with a shotgun next to him and a Bible in his hand," says Giarratana. "They were interviewing him at his orphanage. He started to talk about why he was in Sudan. He was incredibly angry that nobody was fighting for the innocent children who were trapped in this political quagmire. He felt that somebody had to get in there and do something."
Giarratana, whose father was a Pentecostal preacher, was deeply moved by Childers' story and the role of faith in his transformation. "It spoke to me on a really personal level," she says. "I was so taken with this character. Not only did I think I could help this guy, I also knew this would make a great movie."
She tracked Childers down at his church in rural Pennsylvania and offered a proposal. "I told him I wanted to get a movie made that would tell the world about his work in Africa, and get him the money he needed to advance his work," she recalls. "But he was still relatively unknown, so I suggested he start by writing a book."
She worked closely with Childers as he wrote what became Another Man's War: The True Story of One Man's Battle to Save the Children of Sudan, a memoir published in 2009. But her goal was always to find a way to tell Sam's story as a motion picture

As it happened, veteran producer Robbie Brenner had also seen the "Dateline" interview. "I saw the story of this renegade biker-turned-preacher who was saving children in Africa," says Brenner. "I said, I have to make that movie! It seemed to me like the world had turned its back on Africa, but here was a man who was doing something that counts. He was such an amazing, charismatic, magnetic, brilliant guy and I became obsessed with finding him."
Brenner reached out Giarratana, who had by then become Childers' manager. "Deborah explained to me that she had helped arrange his book and was trying to put a movie together," says Brenner. "She introduced me to Sam. You don't often meet people like him. He is very powerful, and unpredictable. He can be dangerous, and yet he's very gentle. One moment he was telling stories and he was so angry, and the next moment he was crying. I told him I wanted to help bring awareness to what he's doing, and he said okay, but I don't think he really believed me."
Brenner's first order of business was to bring in screenwriter Jason Keller. "Robbie gave me a two-minute pitch about this guy's life," says Keller. "I was intrigued, but I didn't believe it at first. The story was so incredible--building an orphanage, saving these kids, and who he is as a person."
So Brenner arranged for Keller to meet Childers over coffee. "Sam basically said, who the hell are you?" she remembers. "Why should you write my story? Have I seen any movies you've written? He was testing Jason and Jason passed. Jason's very strong himself, with a bit of a dark side, and they really connected."
Keller listened rapt as Childers outlined his background. "As he told me the story, I knew I had to write this movie," Keller says. "But Sam Childers is a handful. He's an intimidating guy and I was going to need him right there while I was writing."
Keller researched his script extensively, familiarizing himself with the history and politics of the region, as well as spending several weeks with the Childers family in their home in Central City, Pennsylvania. "I met his wife Lynn and his daughter Paige, who are so important to the story," says the writer. "I slept in their house and cooked breakfast with them. When I went back to Los Angeles, I would call him and get him talking about his adventures. Getting to know him made things even more complicated for me as a storyteller. He is a very intense, still crazy guy doing really heroic things. I had to understand who he is before I could reconcile both sides of Sam."
Keller spent most of a year and half learning about Childers before he began to write in earnest. In the meantime, Brenner needed to raise the money to get the project off the ground. "I knew I didn't want to make this movie inside the studio system," she says. "It is so topical and so urgent. With a studio, you can never guarantee that a movie will be made in a timely fashion--or ever. We needed to find somebody to finance the script who was equally passionate about it."
So she approached Gary Safady, an old friend who worked in commercial real estate. Safady had always loved movies, but his previous involvement in the entertainment industry was limited to owning a movie theater in Alabama. He quickly agreed to put up the money for the preparation of the film.
"Five minutes into the story, I had already decided I wanted to do this," Safady says. "It was an amazing pitch--a moving story about Sam and his life, with so many different side plots. The story had to be told for the children of the Sudan, Congo, and Uganda who have been suffering this persecution, as well as for Sam and his trials and tribulations. I committed then and there, and it's been an exciting time for me."
Brenner also approached another old friend, director Marc Forster. In the 20 years since they attended NYU film school together, Forster had directed eight feature films, each one unique and critically acclaimed. "I don't call Marc every day and say I've got this great story for you," says Brenner. "But I knew he would bring the right scope to it: the elegance, the characters, the emotion, the depth and the layers that he's brought to movies from Monsters Ball to Finding Neverland to Quantum of Solace to Kite Runner. I've worked with so many directors and Marc is so calm, so Zen. He treats everybody from the lowest man on the totem to the biggest star with grace and dignity."
Forster's work had taken him all over the world, a plus for a film that would eventually be shot on two continents. But it was his work with children that made him Deborah Giarratana's first choice. "He has a strong connection with children that you can see in many of his movies," she says. "And the children are the real heroes in this movie. Sam Childers will tell you that he did not save the children of Sudan; the children of Sudan saved him. They are so resilient and forgiving. Marc Forster was the only director to direct this movie because he gets that."
At first, Forster thought Childers' unlikely story was almost too tailor-made for a movie. "I thought, this is a fascinating character, but is this story really true?" he says. "I couldn't believe that all these incidents took place, until I got to meet Sam. I spent some time with him in Pennsylvania and really took it all in."
"The fascinating thing about him is that he is a very flawed character," he continues. "He has been abusive to himself and others throughout his life. Those are just facts. At the same time, he has put his life on the line to save hundreds and hundreds of kids. There is this conflict within the character that makes for truly interesting storytelling."
The myriad contradictions he saw in Childers captivated Forster's imagination and intellect. "Sam's story is full of juxtapositions," he says. "Every time you start to judge him, you realize that there is another perspective. What is the right thing to do? Is it to stay with your family and love them when you have seen hundreds of children killed on the other side of the world? Can you live with that? Or is the right thing to do to leave your family behind and try your best to save those children? Is Sam a mercenary or a humanitarian? I believe violence creates more violence, but then again maybe Sam's path is the only effective way. To this day when I see Sam, there are days where I find him charming and lovely and wonderful, and there are days when I think he is probably a mercenary. But I'm not putting my life out there on the line to save kids. He has done that and I admire him for it."
The story is sure to raise important questions that moviegoers will debate as they leave the theater, says the director. "If we get it right, we can affect a lot of people," Forster says. "I don't know if this movie can change anything, but it can at least cause a discussion. Popular films leave very strong imprints on our culture. This is a film that deals with a situation that has been going on for years, but people are not so aware of it. I hope it will be great entertainment, but at the same time I hope people walk away with a wider knowledge of what is happening in the world."

THE ART OF ADAPTATION

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