Joyce and I play husband and wife in this intriguing romance, produced and directed by
Daniel Knudsen, who I met on the set of
Christmas Grace. He also directed me in
Creed of Gold,
The King's Messengers, and the upcoming film,
Lifestone Velocity.
There's a scene in which Joyce and I are playing with our characters' children. The plan had been for me to swing a backpack around in Central Park, and then the actor playing my character's son would be spun around in a park in Michegan by someone wearing the clothes I had on in Central Park.
Just before we filmed with the backpack I told Daniel we might be able to find children who would want to be in the movie. We prayed at the top of a hill, walked to the bottom, and there was a family with a boy and a girl the right age for our film family. Daniel explained the idea to their father in a very professional way, and he listened with a very stoic look on his face. After Daniel finished, there was a brief pause, and then he said... "Sure." We had such a great time filming with them, and it turned out that they lived close enough to Detroit to see the premiere, which made us all so excited. Unfortunately Daniel said, "They lived in Wisconsin and had a scheduling conflict." He sent them a screener link and said, "They LOVED the movie..." and, "the dad told me that this made his son want to pursue acting."
In January, 2017, it was in theaters in Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois, and it's now available for
streaming and on
DVD through
CourageousLoveMovie.com and it was launched on
www.PureFlix.com on Valentine's Weekend, facing off against 50 Shades Darker. In the interview below Daniel does a great job of expressing how Hollywood tries to tell a compelling love story, which has elements of the greatest love story, the Gospel.
Daniel has a real heart for the Lord and a vision for telling God's truth in powerful ways, and we were thrilled with how it turned out! It has one of the most creative arguments for the reality of God I've seen on film.
The first two films in which we played husband and wife were
Indescribable and
The Unexpected Bar Mitzvah.
When Joyce and I had our pre-engagement counseling session, our counselor drilled us with all the questions you don't want to ask when you're getting to know each other: political affiliation, denomination, etc. We were firing on so many cylinders I thought it would be safe to throw in some humor. When the counselor asked how many kids we each wanted I threw out twelve, just for laughs. Joyce nearly fell out of her chair. We have a big laugh about it now, especially since
Rather to Be Chosen has brought us our twelfth screen child!
 |
Our screen children connected with
me at the 2016 Christian Worldview
Film Festival. |
Since then we played husband and wife in
Mayflower II and
A Matter of Perspective, so we now have 20 screen children and one screen grandchild!
Courageous Love was an official selection at the
2016 Christian Worldview Film Festival with the original title, Rather to Be Chosen.
"The Making of Rather to Be Chosen" was an official selection at the
2015 Christian Worldview Film Festival.
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