THE ART OF ADAPTATION

Machine Gun Preacher

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."
Many top actors were interested in the role, says Brenner, but Butler's intense personal passion won the filmmakers over. "Gerry had a real connection to the material," she says. "It's actually like nothing else in his body of work and it really challenged him in a profound way. Sam is complex and checkered and so volatile. Yet he tries so hard to walk a righteous path. Gerry really wanted to bring integrity and honesty to the role of Sam. He rolled up his sleeves and did immense research about the children of Sudan. He worked with a dialect coach to get Sam's idiosyncratic way of talking. He was incredibly meticulous and focused on creating and understanding this character down to his very core."
The actor immersed himself in the details of Childers' life, reading books and watching videos about Sudan. If his character had to fix a sink or repair a roof or ride a motorcycle, he trained with plumbers, contractors and tattooed bikers to make sure he got it right.
Director Marc Forster praises Butler for his ability to maintain the precarious balance between Childers' personal flaws and his extraordinary actions. "Gerry brought an incredible amount of passion and commitment to this project," says Forster. "The character he plays could easily be dislikable, but he manages to walk the line. He has that charismatic screen presence and brings real depth to this role. I think he really gave it everything he has."
For Butler, the script's ability to capture those two aspects of Childers and his astonishing life story are what make it unique. "It takes place on two continents, in two completely different cultures, which so perfectly expresses the duality of Sam," the actor says. "Sam in Africa, Sam in America. The younger out-of-control Sam with no God but himself and his pain and his pleasure, and then the Sam who found this higher purpose.
"It's a harrowing and powerful story," he continues. "Jason Keller has written an astonishing script that takes us through this man's life, so that we understand what made him end up in Africa doing these extraordinary things." 
Butler made a pilgrimage to Pennsylvania to spend time with the Childers family in preparation for the film. "I watched him preach in his church," says the actor. "I taped hours of conversations so I could listen to how he expresses himself. He's such a fascinating guy and he has an awful lot of amazing stories. I found I sometimes had to reel myself back in and think, how does that relate to this movie?"
The scenes in Africa were more emotionally wrenching than the actor could have imagined. "I really had to take myself to places that I had never been before. Sam is the eyes and ears of the audience in Sudan. What he sees is heartbreaking. It is beyond our imagination what people are capable of doing to each other."
The importance of the work Childers has shouldered has made the film more important to Butler on a personal level than any other role he has played. "It's the one that I've been most involved in as well," he notes. "Marc and I worked closely together for over a year and every day was epic. It's just been a marathon. On a single day, we might do a scene where Sam breaks down like his life is over, then another scene where he's been high on crack for a month and has to deal with his family. In between, I'm sitting with my folders of visual aids, images from Sudan of kids burned, people hacked up, cut-off, babies… Sometimes I would think, I can't do this again. It was a hard movie to make, but it's the hard ones that pay off big."
Equally important to understanding the remarkable journey Childers has made is his wife Lynn, played by Michelle Monaghan. Lynn provides Sam with the emotional ballast he needs to keep going. "Lynn is a very strong woman," says Forster. "She is courageous on many levels and she has stuck with him even though she was left behind, not just once, but many times. There are not many women who could do that."
Monaghan counts herself fortunate to have been involved in the project. "The script was so powerful," she says. "And I just thought, this story has to be told and I really want to be a part of telling it. I don't want to make movies that I don't want to watch, and this is a movie that makes me proud."
Monaghan says screenwriter Keller perfectly captured Lynn's voice in his script. "Jason poured his blood, sweat, and tears into this project and it shows. He had spent so much time with her so he really wrote in her voice. I felt I understood her even before I met her.
Once Monaghan did meet Lynn Childers, she learned how significant her role is in Sam Childers' life and work. "It became very apparent to me that Lynn is a quiet giant," the actress says. "None of this would have been possible without her. She has endured a lot and always maintained a very strong sense of family and faith. It can't be easy to keep your family intact when your husband leaves for months at a time to risk his life in a dangerous place. But she gave him the strength and the confidence to pursue Angels of East Africa and she is the one who keeps the show running in the U.S."
The actress says Lynn Childers was generous and open with her as she prepared for the role. Nothing Monaghan wanted to know was off limits. "She allowed me to ask her  anything I wanted. She opened her home and her heart to me, and it was invaluable to have the freedom to pick her brain. I was impressed by how comfortable she is in her faith. She says all she needs is God, Paige, and Sam, in that order."
Monaghan says her co-stars and director surpassed her wildest expectations. "Marc is just a terrific filmmaker. He breathed such life and authenticity into this movie. He has such ease and confidence, and that makes him amazing with actors. Once he finishes casting, he has complete faith and trust in them. He's very specific with his direction and I found that he's always right.
"And it's a dream cast. Gerard is incredibly talented and I have been a fan of Kathy Baker for so many years. She didn't disappoint on any level."
Baker plays Childers' mother, Daisy, the other rock in his foundation. "Daisy is a real firecracker," says Baker. "She's a woman who is so passionate and so full of belief that she feels everything that's happened with Sam and this movie is because of God. She knows her son went through a great deal to get where he is today, and she believes that it was her faith and Lynn's faith that got the family through it all. They called on God to help them turn Sam around and He made it all happen. Talking to her, you can imagine what it would be like to live in a house of women who are quietly, faithfully and patiently guiding Sam, letting him act out and go crazy, knowing he's going to come back to the fold in time."
Baker's only doubt about playing the part was purely sartorial. "I wanted to play her exactly as she is," says the actress. "I wanted my hair to be just like hers, and my clothes. Then at one point, Lynn sad, 'Daisy loves shoes and she always wears these little high heels.' And I thought, oh gosh, I'm not going to be able to do that. But Marc assured me that he didn't want an exact replica; he wanted me to make the character my own. So I keep her inside me."
In order to try and save children in Africa, Sam Childers had to leave his own child behind in Pennsylvania. In Machine Gun Preacher, Sam's daughter Paige is played by two young actresses. Ryann Campos is Paige as a child and Madeline Carroll plays her as a teenager. Campos, who was 8 during the production, makes her screen debut in Machine Gun Preacher.
Carroll is a more experienced actress whose movie roles include Legends of the Fall, The Spy Next Door, Swing Vote and Flipped. Carroll, who, along with her family, is active in their local church, says the movie's themes appealed to her.
"I was already involved with Zoe International through my church," says Carroll. "They rescue kids in Thailand and the Philippines from child prostitution and slavery. I also work with Mutual Faith, which rescues kids and families in different countries. They are awesome organizations, so I really identified with the work that Sam does."
In addition to its inspiring story, Carroll says the film's cast and crew made the production a dream come true for her. "Gerry is like a big kid. He's really cool to everyone!  And Michelle was a real sweetheart, so considerate of everybody. Michael Shannon was really funny. And I am such a fan of Kathy Baker. It was such an honor to be able to work with them. Marc was so calm and kind and he really set the tone for the set."
Michael Shannon, who has made an indelible impression on moviegoers in films as diverse as Revolutionary Road, The Runaways and World Trade Center, here plays Sam's best friend, Donnie, a composite character drawn from a several of Childers' real-life associates from his early days as a violent criminal. "Donnie is a part of his past," says Forster. "Sam tries to help him escape from the life they both were leading, but eventually, he becomes focused on saving all these other lives and leaves Donnie behind, much as he does with his own family."
The relationship between the two troubled, but very different men attracted Shannon to the role. "They've known each other since they were little boys," says the actor. "They got into a lot of trouble together over the years. When Sam went through his transformation, he tries to help Donnie out of his hole as well. Donnie is a good guy but he doesn't have Sam's strength. He is more like the rest of us. I can't think of many people that could do what Sam has done."
Forster gave Shannon the freedom to create a complex and layered portrait of a man who desperately wants to be better than he is. "The part has a few more levels to it than your average druggie, burned-out type," notes Shannon. "When I was reading through the screenplay, I didn't know where he was going. He always keeps you guessing. Marc didn't want to hit the nail right on the head. For example, Sam asks Donnie to keep an eye on his family while he's in Africa. That is the genesis of Donnie's turnaround. But Marc makes it really quick. It's all there, but in one little moment. That's Marc's style. He trusts that people will get it, and that you don't have to show the audience everything."
Forster cast Souleymane Sy Savane, a native of the Ivory Coast, in the key role of Deng. A soldier from the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA), Deng becomes Sam's right-hand man in both establishing a shelter for the children and brutal bush combat. "The SPLA have been fighting the central government for over 30 years," Savane explains. "The rebellion was sparked by the way the north was pumping natural resources out of the south without giving anything in return." 
Savane accepted the role knowing it would make him a voice for some of Africa's ongoing problems. "As an African actor living in the states, I don't see a lot of roles that I think show what's really going on in Africa," he says. This role allows me to be the voice of what is going on here and that is something dear to me as an African. There is a dark curtain over the continent that needs to be lifted. What is behind it is not pretty, but if we want to resolve these problems, the truth first has to be exposed. That is one of the main things that attracted me to this project."
The actor says that what's happening in Sudan is a story that can be told about the Ivory Coast, or Brunei, or Uganda. "Wherever you go, this is a sad African story. I'm so excited about this project, because it really gives me the chance to not only talk about Sudan, but talk about what's happening in my own country and all over the continent."
His character provides Sam with balance in a world that is dangerously off-kilter. "Deng is very honest," he says. "He's very humble. He loves his family, but he's got to fight the LRA. Sam is the type-A personality in the relationship and Deng is the calming influence. When we would see him in the orphanage, he is like a father to all the children. But on the battlefield, you wouldn't recognize him. He's been handling a machine gun since he was a child. He's not a natural-born killer, but he has to do what he has to do."
Forster selected one of South Africa's leading acting talents, Fana Mokoena, to play the crucial role of John Garang, the leader of the SPLA during the Second Sudanese Civil War, and, briefly, first vice president of Sudan. Mokoena compares John Garang to Nelson Mandela and the late South African freedom fighter Chris Hani. "He is a very interesting, well-educated individual who abandoned a comfortable life to go into the jungle to fight for his people," the actor says. "Because of the status of the man, Marc's vision was to play him with unadulterated authenticity. If he isn't believable as someone of that stature, it would ruin the movie."
Mokoena notes: "It is probably the smallest role I have played, but the biggest effort that I have put into a character. Marc and Gerry worked in a very collaborative way with me. It was an experience that lifted my spirit as an actor. When you work with talent like that, it forces you to try harder."
In South Africa, Forster cast a core group of 20 children as the residents of Childers' orphanage and the inspiration for his rebirth. "The children were incredible," says Forster. "Working with them was pure joy for me. The role of William, the young boy searching for his missing brother, is played by Junior Magale. It is a difficult role, because his journey has a lot of emotional intensity, but Junior has an instinctive naturalism. It is extraordinary how he was able to inhabit this character."
Other South African actors playing key roles are Percy Matsamela as Nineteen, Muduzi Mabaso as Marco and Ronnie Nyakale as A.J., characters who are all real life SPLA soldiers and friends of Childers. "These are well-established actors," says Savane. "Here in South Africa, they've been acting for 15 to 20 years. They're just flawless. They bring an authenticity to the film, and it was a pleasure to work with them."

The two sides of Sam
From 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."
Executive producer Louise Rosner accompanied Keller and Forster to Sudan and Uganda in January 2010 for preproduction research and scouting. "Going to Sudan was especially intimidating," says Rosner. "Our government recommends that you don't even go there. We had to take out very expensive insurance against kidnapping and dismemberment and things that you would never think of. But it was very important to Marc to go to Sudan. He is unable to tell a story without actually having seen the place and the people."
Stopping briefly at Childers' home in Kampala, Uganda, the filmmakers headed north into Sudan by car. After more than 11 hours on some of the roughest roads they had ever seen, they arrived at the orphanage in 125-degree heat. "There were children who had bullet wounds or had lost limbs," says Rosner. "There was girl who was maybe eight, walking around with her baby sister on her hip. Her parents were gone. It was a constant barrage of pain and suffering, but at the same time you saw great joy in the faces of these people and it makes you realize what an incredible thing Sam has done." 
For Keller, the trip crystallized his ideas for the script. "It was very emotional to see people walk through the gates of this orphanage that I had been imagining for a year and a half," he says. "Meeting the real Deng and some of the children that I had written about was very moving and very important for the process."
With Childers by their sides, the filmmakers entered the reality of the preacher's world in Africa. Billeted in a small tukul, a traditional African hut with rounded walls and a cone-shaped thatched roof, Forster, Rosner and Keller lived the life their subject has chosen. "It was an essential part of the journey to visit Sudan," says Forster. "Sam showed me places where he had been ambushed. There were signs warning of mines. The LRA had attacked and burnt down so many villages. Children had been abducted, and hundreds of civilians mutilated, raped and killed. He was always armed and accompanied by soldiers wherever we traveled. It was clear he is both respected and feared there."
Forster's commitment to experiencing the truth made a big impression on Childers. "Marc went above and beyond what I expected," says Childers. "We didn't just talk about it. He stayed at the orphanage for a week and spent time in the bush. He was there to live it for himself." 
Shooting in Sudan proved impossible, but the filmmakers were firmly committed to making their movie in Africa. "It is a quintessentially African story," says Rosner. "South Africa has a very large infrastructure of crew and cast and equipment and everything you actually need to make a movie. We scouted all over the country to find somewhere that looked like Sudan. It's very brushy, incredibly hot and dry, which took us to an area north of Johannesburg."
They selected Bassora Ranch for their South Africa locations. Close to the Haartbeespoort Dam and surrounded by the majestic Magaliesberg mountains range, the ranch is just a few miles from the "Cradle of Mankind"--named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO--just forty miles outside of Johannesburg. This site has produced some of the oldest, hominid fossils ever found, dating back as far as 3.5 million years. Bassora Ranch served as the main location for sets including two orphanages, an entire village, a mission, and a Church, all built by the film company.
But filming first took place in Detroit, where the filmmakers set the scene for Childers' spiritual awakening, tracing his life from troubled past to redemption, and introducing the audience to his family and friend Donnie. "We chose Detroit for a number of reasons," says Rosner. "We wanted to convey a sense of claustrophobia that would contrast with the vast vistas of Africa and we were able to find a wealth of locations in Detroit that did that. We decided to shoot in Detroit first to give Gerry a chance get to know his character better."
The company filmed among the boarded-up houses of downtown Detroit, as well as in the suburbs' luxurious mansions, at Wayne County Detention Center, in a vacant airport and the sprawling wood frame house that served as the Childers' home. As it turned out, the mercurial Midwestern weather posed more problems than producers had anticipated stateside. "We had a tornado warning, a flash flood warning and a heat advisory, all in the space of 45 minutes," Rosner recalls. "So we had to find shelter for 400 people and stop shooting as the tornado passed by."
Forster's devotion to details continued in Africa where the scope of his story, with battle scenes, sprawling refugee camps and undeveloped countryside called for a different approach. "All the footage that we shot in Detroit is very intimate and character driven," says Brenner. "Once we got to Africa, it became epic. We built two orphanages, one that we also burned to the ground. We built an entire village that also gets burned down. We had thousands and thousands of extras, as well as people to help with the over 700 dialects spoken in Sudan."
Forster's determination to tell Sam's story with complete authenticity affected every department of the production. "At the beginning of every movie I put together a book of images and present them to every department to set the color, look and texture of the film," he explains. "It was Sam's world that I wanted to recreate, and we all agreed that it should not be obviously designed looking."
He shared the book with production designer Phil Messina, costume designer Frank Fleming and director of photography Roberto Schaeffer. "Marc was adamant about getting the detail down and that influenced the aesthetic of the film," says Messina. "He was passionate about telling Sam's story with complete veracity."
With that in mind, Messina created an environment that Sam Childers could plausibly have built with limited resources. "Sam was a contractor in Pennsylvania, so he had some construction knowledge," says Messina. "Everything we built for the orphanages is based on research and as close to reality as we could manage."
Locally sourced architecture provided Messina with some surprises. "When I looked at the reference photos I knew the tukuls were made of thatch and mud, but I didn't know the secret ingredient was cow dung!" he says. "It was an unexpected building material. But it has a naturally beautiful, shiny patina and crackled texture to it. To break up all the brown in the villages we used a lot of recycled plastic cans, which is very authentic. Our aim was to illustrate the poverty and economy of means."   
Roberto Schaefer, Marc Forster's longtime cinematographer, worked to marry the story's two disparate locations as seamlessly as possible. "I wanted them to be consistent, because it's all still Sam and his journey," says Schaefer. "The light is different in Africa, but I didn't do anything heavy-handed, like filter one half of the film blue and the other half yellow, for instance. It's a gradual journey, as it was for Sam, into a new world. It's epic, in terms of the scope and drama in Africa, but realistic, in terms of Sam and his demons, his relationship to his friends and his family. We didn't want it too much like a documentary. The goal was more naturalistic than cinéma vérité."
Forster elected to use as much available light as possible during filming in Africa. "I am a very big fan of natural light," he says. "I told Roberto I would like to minimize artificial light. Even at night sometimes we decided not to light it. The light in Africa is so beautiful and I really wanted to take advantage of that. I think it really works with the story."
Schaefer used the Arriflex 416, a Super 16 mm camera that evokes a widescreen anamorphic frame, using lenses that have rarely been employed in American films. "It's a great hand-held camera," says Schaefer. "It's ergonomic, it's compact and it's the only camera made with a viewfinder made for the 1.3 squeezed anamorphic lenses." 
Using Super 16 allowed the filmmakers a speed and flexibility that would have been impossible with most other processes, says Schaefer. "Using 35 mm would have made it a whole other show in terms of lenses and film stock. And I didn't want to shoot the film digitally, because we wanted the grain and texture of film." 
Machine Gun Preacher is packed with the same considerable action that Sam Childers encounters in daily life in Africa--ambushes, firefights, the burning of villages and orphanages. Forster insisted that the action sequences have the same level of integrity as the rest of the film. "Marc is a purist," says Rosner. "He wanted the explosions to feel real. He didn't want anything exaggerated. So he actually asked the SFX team to pull back in some scenes."
According to the film's special effects coordinator, Cordell McQueen, "Marc wanted to tone down the explosions so that they were realistic, rather than in the style of a Hollywood blockbuster."
McQueen had the significant task of devising large-scale effects for the movie, but he also had to be concerned with smaller day-to-day scenes involving smoke and campfires, which were a special concern in a harsh, dry environment vulnerable to uncontrollable wildfires. "The sets were surrounded by dry grass," he says. "Setting a village on fire posed a huge risk of spreading to the surrounding grass if a wind picked up. We shot in a very controlled manner."
South Africa-based stunt coordinator Adam Horton received his first brief from Marc Forster via conference call while the company was still shooting in Detroit. "He was clear on one thing and that was: keep it real and don't go too big," Horton recalls.
Staying faithful to Forster's brief, Horton says, "We tried to show the gore and intensity of Sudan's situation without going too graphic. It's not a horror movie; it's about the emotion of it."
Gerard Butler insisted on doing his own stunts. "He knows how to handle a gun and stunt drive, so it made our job easy and the stunt double redundant," says Horton.
The actor says doing action sequences is one of his favorite things about movie making. "The action in this movie completely comes out of the character and out of the story," he explains. "Our approach was not to interrupt a powerful story with a big action sequence, but to make it a natural part of the movie. When we first set up the stunts, I thought this looks so real. It felt like we were actually in armed combat, but the action was never gratuitous."
Costume designer Frank Fleming has developed a keen understanding of Forster's approach to filmmaking over the course of the four films they have made together. "Marc and I agreed that we should stay true to each of Sam's environments," he says. "In Africa, people survive on very little, and this wear and tear is reflected physically. We portrayed the wear and stress by breaking down the costumes. There are subtleties that define each region; in South Sudan, the women in rural areas wear a headscarf folded into a triangle. The women at the orphanage dress very practically and use elements that exist in their daily life."
  Fleming also researched the uniforms worn by the LRA and SPLA soldiers, and found that there is no "correct" uniform. "They are a mixture of British, Ugandan and Belgian military," he says. "Those countries all influenced this part of Africa at different points in time. The soldiers create uniforms from what they can find, so we tried to paint a portrait of an LRA uniform that could have been acquired over time."
Another historical point is that many LRA army soldiers are identified by their cornrowed hair. "We asked Sam how he knew who he was fighting," says Fleming. "If the soldiers have cornrows, you don't ask questions, you just start shooting." 
As Sam Childers has learned throughout this process, it is hard to take 48 years of a man's life and create a truthful and compelling two-hour film. "But Marc Forster has a reputation as one of the top filmmakers in the world and I am confident that in his hands it will be a good movie," he says. "Everything in the script is based on the truth and I'm very pleased and very happy to have the story told."
Childers wants his story out there, not as a monument to himself, but as way to bring even more help to the children of Sudan. "I want people to realize that there are still children in South Sudan who need our help," says Childers. "There's people dying right now as I sit here, so please don't just go to the movie and watch it--act on it. I've always been a man of action. If I see something, I work on it right now. So, anyone that sees this movie, remember if you want to save a life, you've got to act now."
And, ultimately, that is the filmmakers' intent as well. "For me, the most important thing is that we're making a movie that has something to say," says Brenner. "It's a story that resonates in today's world and speaks to what one person can do. Sam likes to say he's just a hillbilly from Pennsylvania who comes from nothing. But he's gone to Africa and he feeds 1,200 children every day. He has three orphanages and he is single-handedly taking on Joseph Kony. It's inspiring and I feel blessed to have been part of this movie. It will be commercial and entertaining, but at the same time, it is thought provoking and has great integrity. Perhaps Sam has, in a sense, swapped his former addiction to violence and alcohol and drugs for an addiction to Africa, but he makes a world of difference there. It's very, very powerful."








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