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Record Live is a conversation about life, spirituality and following Jesus in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
The Hopeful_ an Adventist movie _Part 1_
[00:00:00] Hi there, everyone. I'm Jared. And I'm Zenita. We are your hosts of Record Live, a podcast where we talk about church, faith, and living well. We believe as followers of Jesus, faith is more than just a set of beliefs. It's a way of life, something we put into practice. Let's go live.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Hello everyone, welcome to Record Live. It's just me today, you'll notice, , Zanita has a bunch of things to do. So we're gonna play today for you a pre recorded interview I did with the director of the movie The Hopeful. The Hopeful tells the story of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. It is, , the early beginnings with William Miller and Ellen Wyatt.
Jarrod Stackelroth: It introduces some of those characters and it will [00:01:00] actually be played in cinemas in October. Now, this is very exciting as a church we can, see a story of our origins, , going up on the main stream. And we can invite people to see the movie and perhaps explain where the church came from., the signs magazine has done a special August issue, which you should be seeing floating around soon, which you can use to share with someone.
Jarrod Stackelroth: They can hear a bit about the story of the magazine, , of the movie, and then they can go with you. You can invite them to the movie. So we're going to watch that today. We're going to, talk to Kyle and get a bit more of the background behind that. This is the first part of our chat with Kyle. We'll do part two next week, but without further ado, he is Kyle Portbury, the director of the hopeful
Jarrod Stackelroth: welcome back to Adventist Media. Yes, good to be here. It's really nice to have you. Um, been flying around.
Kyle Portbury: Yeah, we just released, uh, The Hopeful in cinemas in the [00:02:00] U. S. in April, so prior to that I was all over America, um, promoting and speaking and, you know, doing media engagements everywhere.
Kyle Portbury: It was a lot of fun, actually. It was, what was fascinating to me, Jared, I think, is that suddenly you're, I'm never one that's really ever talked about being Adventist before, like publicly, like it's just not a thing that, you know, I'm not the guy. Uh, and whilst I respect this. Ellie's, uh, people I look at and I go, wow, that is an incredibly tough job, particularly in 2024.
Kyle Portbury: It's not my spiritual gift, but I respect that it's somebody's, right? But not something that I've ever been comfortable doing. Door knocking, never. Just not my thing, right? So what I think is really fascinating is to kind of get an opportunity where you're forced by the fact that you're releasing a film, which is the origin story of Adventism, essentially.
Kyle Portbury: in mainstream cinemas in the US. And so therefore the question comes up, what is this film about? [00:03:00] And you find yourself suddenly talking about things, even in post production actually. Because you've got, you know, industry professionals working on it with you, they'll be working on a scene, um, where someone's talking about Sabbath, and then they would ask you about, so tell me more about this Sabbath business, because I work seven days a week and I'm burned out and you seem to show up on Monday morning looking quite fresh.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Yeah.
Kyle Portbury: So there's obviously something to this, like. Yes. One day off a week business, like, tell me more. And you suddenly. You're in that position where you're like, I have never, ever in my entire life been asked to explain why Sabbath before. So the first time it happened in the post house in Sydney, you know, which, I mean, these guys were working on the fall guy or Elvis or, you know, like Jane Campion's pair of the dog.
Kyle Portbury: And so you're sitting there going, how do I actually articulate to someone who's never engaged with an Adventist before, so that I [00:04:00] don't come across or my faith base doesn't come across as weird or kooky. And then I realized actually, you just have to be honest about your experience and then it doesn't come across weird and kooky, right?
Kyle Portbury: Like it's, Thanks. It's just, well, this is my relationship and my, and the way that I do that Sabbath period in my own frame of reference. And then it's really interesting, like, the follow up questions that they have to that, and even just the openness and receptivity. Mm. To, oh, wow, like, so you have Like a 24 hour period of time where it's guilt free, responsibility, like, wash out from, oh wow, like, well that sounds really appealing just on any level, let alone, like, forget the religious aspect of it, that just sounds appealing.
Kyle Portbury: And so I think that was really fascinating for me to kind of see the openness where you, you kind of, I think sometimes, uh, and I, I think where I put it at is that you're not [00:05:00] forcing that conversation onto somebody, you're actually answering a legitimate question that that person has in response to their engaging with the story.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Yes.
Kyle Portbury: Translate that then into people watching it in cinemas in America, and what you're getting is a lot of feedback from Adventists over there going, well, we're having the same experience as well. Like, people that went to the cinema with us are asking us questions about our faith that they've never asked.
Kyle Portbury: A lot of times it was people that they'd known for 5, 10, 15 years. And they'd kind of friend zoned that faith conversation back when they first got in relationship with that person. And once Once you get to a certain history of friendship, it's very hard to revisit a, like a foundation set of questions, right?
Kyle Portbury: So why do you, like, disappear for, like, to church on Saturday, right? Like, that's probably not coming up again if you didn't have it at the beginning. So yeah, a lot of, a lot of people were saying to us, hey, this [00:06:00] was a really great way to reintroduce, like, why we do what we do, you know? And I don't know about you, like, this We have cultivated, I think, a really unhealthy sense of we're a peculiar people and we're weird.
Kyle Portbury: So, and we're okay with that, but we would never like share that with somebody outside. So we're just going to It's almost a badge of honor sometimes. That we're weird and we're different. Yes. And you know, I don't, I don't want to be weird and different. You know, half, half of the reason why I approached the story in the hopeful, the way that I did was for the simple reason that I didn't want to sit in a cinema or on a couch next to people I know, the majority of whom aren't Adventist and aren't Christian and feel uncomfortable with what they were watching and then feel like I was going to be embarrassed about when they turned to me after watching it and be like, really?
Kyle Portbury: That's what, that's how you see the world? Wow. That's like, let's not be friends [00:07:00] anymore. Right. You know, like that is not something I wanted to experience. So like I approached almost Every day in the edit, every decision about how a, how a moment and a character interaction was going to play out with how am I, as an Adventist, going to feel when someone who isn't Adventist sits down next to me and watches this, you know, am I going to feel embarrassed by that moment or am I going to feel like, Oh, wow, like actually the basis for which I'm I form my decisions in life is actually pretty legit.
Kyle Portbury: And it's credible. And actually it's appealing to people that have never engaged with it before. And I think that that's been really special actually for me to see the response of people that have never had anything to do, didn't even know Adventism existed before seeing the film.
Jarrod Stackelroth: And
Kyle Portbury: just their openness to being like, wow, we had no idea that basically modern, the modern way that we look at health, and whole lifestyle [00:08:00] choice really finds its roots in this woman's experience from the 1800s.
Kyle Portbury: Yes. You know, and you've got things like Blue Zones on Netflix at the moment, which has peaked a lot of interest. Both in the U. S. and also internationally. So I think those conversations are ripe. Mm hmm. One really interesting one I had the other day is a guy from New York emailed me and I had, he's an Adventist, I'd cold called him because somebody had said, oh, you should talk to this guy because he lives in in downtown Manhattan.
Kyle Portbury: So one of, one of the cinema locations we had was like the main AMC cinema in Times Square. Yes. Yes. AMC 25 Empire, which is a beautiful place to have your film screen.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Yeah.
Kyle Portbury: Unbeknownst to me, he actually went, I didn't know that he was going to go. He went and he said the majority of the people in there, like it was basically a full screen for the two nights that applied there.
Kyle Portbury: were not Adventist and were just cinephiles. So there were people that were tracking the films that [00:09:00] were coming out and they just liked going and watching movies. And he said afterwards he just went out. Into the foyer and just started having conversations with people because it's one of those movies that generates an after film foyer conversation, which again is great.
Kyle Portbury: Yes. And he said what he discovered were 10 of those people were so engaged with having never heard of this community or these people and they were like, who is this Ellen White woman? This is like, she's like really fascinating to us. that they all went out and ate afterwards. So he'd never met these people before.
Kyle Portbury: Wow. They had no idea who Adventists were. Two weeks later, two of them showed up to his church, just unannounced. Wow. Based on that conversation that he'd had at dinner. And I think that that to me is kind of, that encapsulates the opportunity and the value of storytelling. Particularly cinematic storytelling, right?
Kyle Portbury: Because it affords a relational conversation [00:10:00] that you don't have to prompt. Yeah, it's a backtrack to what I was saying before about like the discovery that I made about suddenly being asked questions that I've never been asked. And I would never be willing to proffer without, you know, any, any sense of setup.
Kyle Portbury: Like I would never just go, Hey, Jared, we just met. Let me tell you about my Adventism. Let me tell you about the Sabbath. Let me tell you about Sabbath. Yes. There's a. Great way to like not have a relationship with someone really quick, right? Right. Because there's no frame of reference for that conversation at all.
Kyle Portbury: Whereas I think the, the beauty and the power of the hopeful particularly is that it's the opportunity for that conversation to take place. Now we were just talking before, I think one of the interesting things about Adventist culture is that particularly Australian and New Zealand Adventist culture, we're really skeptical and we're really cynical.
Kyle Portbury: Yes. Yeah. particularly about stuff made by Adventists. And for good reason, because a lot of the time
Jarrod Stackelroth: we don't make great stuff. I think [00:11:00] it's a general Christian thing as well. We, we look at films that are put out by Christians. Yes. And sometimes they're below par.
Kyle Portbury: Yeah. And I, and I don't say that with all due respect, I don't say that going, what I mean by they're not that great, is they're not that great at commercial storytelling in the sense like, so they're great at storytelling, which has a.
Kyle Portbury: an outcome that's predetermined, right? Which in the sense, you know, you've got to proselytize because you need
Jarrod Stackelroth: We don't believe in predeterminism as an Adventist, so But we do believe in it from a media standpoint, right? We do believe in it when we're telling stories for the media, yeah.
Kyle Portbury: What we will do is we will set up a story where we're like, hey, like, look at this interesting archaeological thing.
Kyle Portbury: So this and this and this means exactly this, can't you see that, right? And if you can see that, here's how you get in touch with us to do, which there's nothing wrong with that, right? Like that's actually the mission and the role of the church. But when you step that out as the first point of contact for someone that's never heard [00:12:00] anything about your, they're so used to now seeing a documentary, for instance, on Netflix, which presents all sides, every facet of that argument and just simply goes, Hey, what do you think after, after hearing all of the different answers and all of the different explanations.
Kyle Portbury: Which one do you, it's almost like choose your own adventure, you know, and societally, and Adventists are no different, we're the same audience as everybody else,
Jarrod Stackelroth: right? It's the worldview, it's the prevailing worldview of the Western culture is to ask questions and to not necessarily, yeah. We don't like, in fact, when people shove answers down our throat.
Jarrod Stackelroth: We want to have some critical, we, we imagine it's critical thinking before we arrive at our predetermined answers. Timid
Kyle Portbury: answer. But we want to feel like we've got some agency in that storytelling, right? So we want to feel like at the end of whatever we've engaged with, that we can walk out [00:13:00] thinking and feeling whatever we want.
Kyle Portbury: You know, and I think that that's where, um, when you, you watch films particularly, if they kind of close that loop for you, there's nothing to really do with it afterwards because you've, you've kind of, you've pigeonholed what I can think and feel into just this. So whether or not I want to think and feel anything else, you're not allowing me, I guess, subconsciously to do that.
Kyle Portbury: So what's nice about. You know, you go and see something like Oppenheimer, for instance, and at the end of Oppenheimer, you're left, depending on your worldview and the way that you view science and technology and the way that you view human nature, thinking and feeling anything that you feel like, right?
Kyle Portbury: Like you can walk, you know, the big takeaway, I don't, you know, it'd be interesting to see what you took away from it, Jared, but like my big takeaway from that is. Man, if somebody [00:14:00] said to me there's a 0. 001 percent chance that if we press this button the entire world incinerates I'm not the guy pressing that button.
Kyle Portbury: That's what I realized, right? I realized sitting in there, I'm like, man, alive. Like, I'm kind of glad in a way that there are people willing to take those risks, but I'm not one of them. Not in that context anyway. And so I think that that's nice because you get to walk out going, Oh, wow, like, so if I'm not that guy, what, which guy in there am I?
Kyle Portbury: And, and am I the guy that comes off looking great in that or am I going to be that person who doesn't? Oh, wow. So what's, like, who am I and what is my thought process when I'm given situations where I have to make life and death choices, you know, and who am I storytelling,
Jarrod Stackelroth: good storytelling challenges.
Jarrod Stackelroth: And because we, we come out with maybe an understanding more of who we are, but at the same time with a challenge to that. And [00:15:00] is that, is that what you've tried to do with the hopeful? A hundred percent.
Kyle Portbury: Right? Like, because it's, there's no value in approaching a story, particularly an origin story like the hopeful, right?
Kyle Portbury: Which is, it's just about, you know, if you're Adventist, you've heard about these people for a very long time to the point where they almost have lost their humanity. Yes. So what you, what I particularly focused on is, well, who were these actual people, right? Because they're no different to you and I, just because they existed in the 1800s, the, the same pressures and, and real world realities of, um, so we feel like we have a mission, right?
Kyle Portbury: But we also have a family. So that mission is going to interrupt. The way that that family unit works, right? And that hasn't changed, like that's been the case for millennia, right? Like a dude in a cave goes out all day to go and forage and hunt for food. Meanwhile his wife and kids are back in the cave waiting for him to [00:16:00] return.
Kyle Portbury: And if he doesn't return because he gets killed by whatever thing he's foraging and hunting, they're probably going to die now too. There's a very,
Jarrod Stackelroth: yeah, real world consequence to that.
Kyle Portbury: Somebody pointed this out to me the other day, right? Like when you, when you see someone like William Miller walking around paying more attention to his Bible and ignoring his family, right?
Kyle Portbury: I had never stopped to think that that's no different to us walking around with a phone in 2024. So in 1824, here's a guy walking around in a field going,
Jarrod Stackelroth: just give me a moment.
Kyle Portbury: And we look at that and we go, Oh wow, isn't that amazing? Like look at all the, he's doing it. And we don't look at the fact that he's neglecting his family to what detriment or what value, who knows? Right. So, but he's sacrificing time. And to me, that's a great, just real world human reminder.
Kyle Portbury: You know, we're, if I'm putting so much focus and [00:17:00] energy into the mission and the things that I want to do and the, you know, the career aspirations that I have, then I'm forgetting to, to have that little moment where I cut a window in a cardboard box for my daughter and stick my head through and poke my tongue out at it.
Kyle Portbury: Like if I'm forgetting that, because I'm so focused on this and it almost doesn't matter what that is, like that can be like really great biblical truth. Bible. Right. But if I'm ignoring the fact that there's a relationship over here, that this is telling me that I'm so, and I'm not doing, then I'm not really balancing my life or serves, and I'm in the same position in 2024 that these guys are in and wrestling with and grappling with in 1824, you know, so, and I think that's a big wake up call for us, right?
Kyle Portbury: Like just because we've gone, these people have this huge canon of goodness that we recognize And they, they started a movement that we're all a part of today [00:18:00] doesn't mean they didn't get stuff wrong. Right. And getting stuff wrong is totally fine. You know, you hear a lot of like, I guess, detractions about Ellen White.
Kyle Portbury: Well, she didn't get everything right. Right. And what about this thing that she wrote? And what about that? I'm like, well, welcome to failure. Welcome to the
Jarrod Stackelroth: human experience. Welcome to the
Kyle Portbury: human experience. Like we do not get 100 percent of everything that we do correct and neither should be, right? Like people view failure, I think in 2024 particularly, and maybe it's social media influence, who knows, right?
Kyle Portbury: Like plenty of more intelligent people than me have done those studies. But what I can say is that from my experience, if you don't embrace failure, and you don't learn to love it, success is never a going to happen because you're just not going to try stuff. Success, quote unquote, perceived or otherwise, only happens because you failed enough times to learn how to not fail.
Kyle Portbury: That set of mistakes, and so you get this [00:19:00] perceived success, but that's going to come with a whole bunch of other mistakes that you didn't realize that you were inadvertently making that are going to lead to a whole bunch of other failures, but then you're going to have this success over here, you know, so I think it's particularly in the context of something like 1844, we have looked at that and we in fact call it the great disappointment, which when you actually think about what it did, It reframed what exactly Miller's focused message was, which when you go back to what he's really focused on and preached about and what Ellen gravitated to and everybody else gravitated to, it's this unique character of Christ that is wholly different to what he was hearing in the pulpit at the time.
Kyle Portbury: So what he is hearing in the pulpit at the time is God or Christ or the Holy Spirit is Vengeful, judgmental, um, you should be afraid of anything that you're doing bad because it's [00:20:00] judgment time, you know, what Miller discovers in his own words is he found a friend in Jesus.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Yeah.
Kyle Portbury: And in finding that friend, he then got into studying who that person and their character was.
Kyle Portbury: And then he found a prophecy that he thought pointed to something. And he was wrong. Okay. Big deal. Right? People are wrong about stuff all the time. But when you have a look about what that wrong misstep, that failure of understanding actually led to, you look at the fruits of it and you're like, well, that's the positivity of that movement down in this year is the largest Protestant healthcare network on the planet, for example, which has done untold amounts of good for untold amounts of people across the planet.
Kyle Portbury: You've got organizations like ADDRO, which are in 120 odd thousand, you know, 120 something countries. Not 120, 000. That's all the other dimensions and all the other multiverse realities. Multiversal, yeah. Sorry. I'm [00:21:00] with you. You, you get what I'm saying. But those, you know, when you have a look at that, you go, they would not exist today without that failure.
Kyle Portbury: Wow. Right? So that success is built off the back of learning and failing, learning and failing, learning and failing. Oh, success. Okay. So what can we learn from that? Oh, okay. So let's do this now. And oh, okay. Failure and failure and failure. Now a little success over here. And so I think if we embraced more the value of that failure in our origin story, and we realize that that's actually okay to get stuff wrong, because at least you did something, at least you tried, you know, and in doing and trying, you will then move on to the next thing.
Kyle Portbury: You know, and you'll move forward instead of just stagnating and being too afraid to try anything and do anything else. That to me is the big encouragement again for us, like as Adventists, go and try what it's like to sit in a cinema. with a group of people [00:22:00] that have no idea who you are and what you believe other than you're in a cinema with them.
Kyle Portbury: And then see what conversations happen afterwards. Take the people in your world who aren't Adventists. And if you don't have non Adventists in your world, my encouragement to you would be to go and find some relationships that are non Adventists. Get out of
Jarrod Stackelroth: the bubble.
Kyle Portbury: Get out of the bubble and actually like go, okay, so My life and my context, if, if I can shed a little bit of hope and healing, which is that unique Christ character that Miller discovered and then passed on to all of these other people and have extrapolated out down to 2024 as a movement of, you know, 22 million people globally who at, at our core, we are simply a people who view the character of Christ has been hopeful and healing as the forefront of, Right?
Kyle Portbury: Like that's, that's kind of our, our take out to the world. Yes. Um, why would we ever be embarrassed or ashamed about [00:23:00] that? That's a pretty positive thing to go out to in relationship and in conversation with. You know, all the other stuff, you know, probably doesn't matter as much that, that matters. I think more than any of the policies or any, you know, any other established, right.
Kyle Portbury: You know, that simple truth that those handful of people really locked into and engaged with in the mid 1800s. Through a failure, right? And that should be a beautiful message to all of us. I tell my kids all the time when they come home and they're really bummed out about like, not doing well on a spelling test.
Kyle Portbury: I'm like, well, you will never get those words wrong again now, will you? The value of that is that. I mean, who actually cares about the grade in reality, right? Like that's just a metric that's made up for whatever reason, because we have to assess. And we've got to give you something in your, your school report at the end of the day.
Kyle Portbury: But the value for you is actually, Oh, okay. So that's affected me in a way now. [00:24:00] So I'm going to look at that word and I'm never going to get that word wrong again. Right. Or you're going to go, Ooh, I failed. I don't like failure. I'm never trying. So I'm just giving up now from this point, you know? So it's that I think to me speaks to the power of cinema more than anything, because you then, you know, go back to what we're saying about Oppenheimer and our relationship to characters.
Kyle Portbury: So when you sit in the hopeful, I think we all like to go, Oh, it'd be the hero in this story. I sit in the hopeful. And I go, I'm actually probably more likely going to be the person who's ridiculing the heroes on the street. And I'm probably going to be Ellen's sister, Elizabeth, who's like, you know, I'm probably one of the people that's fallen off the path and I'm done with prayer groups in reality.
Kyle Portbury: So if, if we're provoked by that story and we're honest about where our kind of leaning is going to be, if we recognize ourselves in a character, Who isn't the most [00:25:00] appealing, quote unquote, from a pious religious point of view. You know, the value of that's really massive actually, because you go, well, why would my default be ridicule of someone who's giving it a shot?
Kyle Portbury: Is it because I'm afraid of looking stupid and I'm afraid, Oh, maybe I don't like, Oh, you know? And so I think what it does is it helps you to process who you are and what your natural response is. And then what am I going to do to combat that? How am I going to work against that if that's not the person I want to be?
Jarrod Stackelroth: Yeah.
Kyle Portbury: So if I've recognized I'm leaning into that, you know, cynicism and cause it's much more, It's easier to be cynical than it is to be passionate, you know, like cynicism is a real, it's the lowest common denominator there is, like I can rip you off, you know, any day of the week, it's a very low burn energy wise, but for me to get passionate about something and to go, No, this is what [00:26:00] this looks like, and I'm going to hang my hat on this, and I'm going to be passionate, and I'm going to be the advocate for this.
Kyle Portbury: Man, you better be ready for some slings and arrows, right, because all the easier thing to do is to chuck a barb at somebody. Speaking of
Jarrod Stackelroth: barbs, critical reception. How has the movie been received? You mentioned that it is stimulating conversation, but in terms of, you The actual scope, how, how did it do in America?
Jarrod Stackelroth: It's been released there. It's, we're still waiting for it in Australia. Yes. Coming in August. We're coming soon, you know, but what, what's the reception been like and some of the critical reaction and also the reaction of those who have seen the movie. Actually
Kyle Portbury: fantastic. Which has been great to see. Like if you go onto Rotten Tomatoes and have a look at our audience score at 93 percent audience rating.
Kyle Portbury: And yet most of those responses from what I can tell aren't. It's just people that go and watch movies and like to comment because that's the whole point [00:27:00] and the way that Rotten Tomato works, you can't game that system, you know, they'll pick that their algorithms good enough to pick that gaming and then they'll readjust it on you.
Kyle Portbury: What's been really, I think, pleasantly surprising is that that story, because it's a human story with real world, universal value, you know, we all persevere, we all anticipate something, we're all disappointed from time to time. And we all have to make a decision about how we're going to deal with that disappointment moving forward.
Kyle Portbury: Those real recognisable, relatable characters, I think, are having audiences come out going, Oh, wow, this is actually just first and foremost, a great story with great characters. But also I'm gaining an insight. One of the most fascinating things to me is people going and researching this period of time or these people after the fact, and then coming back onto social media and go, Oh, well, I just discovered this about, you know, I'm like, there's a [00:28:00] huge hospital down the road that both my kids were born in.
Kyle Portbury: And I had no idea it was an Adventist hospital, even though it's got Advent health written on it. So I think it's been fascinating to see what the general public in America have done, which is the It's really dispelled, I think, some big misconceptions about, you know, if you didn't know Adventists existed, well, now you do.
Kyle Portbury: And now you're recognizing their existence in your community, which you didn't recognize before. You just knew that was a hospital. But now you know it's got this basis and this historical underpinning. The other one is most, most people we found particularly in, in our non denominational research think that Adventism is either an offshoot of Mormonism or Jehovah's Witness.
Kyle Portbury: And so just simply being able to clearly differentiate what those three denominations actually are, and they're very unique and very separate to each other. [00:29:00] You Adventists are obviously not derived from either of those. Yes. Is a great identity opportunity, right? And, and the feedback we've gotten from a lot of Adventist audience that went there is, Oh wow, it's like, it's really fascinating to have taken people who thought they knew who I was.
Kyle Portbury: And have realized they didn't at all. And the conversations that sprang out of that for them have been really, it's re inspired them to feel proud of their heritage in a way that they hadn't before. And we've gotten a lot of that emails and phone calls about that, which is, it's pretty cool because that's, in the end of the day, I think what I always set out to do was give our origin story.
Kyle Portbury: An angle that hadn't previously been done, you know, it's a, it's a story from the perspective
Jarrod Stackelroth: of this guy, right? Yeah. Tell, tell me a little bit more about why you made the movie. You've, you've said that. It's [00:30:00] changed the way you can now have conversations. You've been able to have conversations, but when this was still.
Jarrod Stackelroth: Uh, an idea, why you and why this movie, like, where did it come from for you? Why did you want to tell this story?
Kyle Portbury: Well, I think, you know, so, you know, I shot tell the world for the church. So that was a, you know, six part mini series that went into a lot of depth and detail and, and it's fantastic. A lot of people really loved it and it did, it did a lot of great stuff internally from a church perspective.
Kyle Portbury: Um, I think what I always saw, cause the hopeful was filmed at the same time. So it existed and, and has sat there for, I guess, the best part of the last 10 years. Yeah. Um, I looked at that and I went, wow, there's, there's a different way of approaching this story. So it's like, if tell the world takes it from this angle, what would happen if you came around this side of it and you focused on a different set of characters and the characters even that are the same, that, uh, you know, same actor, [00:31:00] same character and tell the world and hopeful.
Kyle Portbury: But what if I looked at them from over here instead of looking at them from over here? And I went, actually there's a really great Story sitting in there and what a shame it would be for it not to come out because of this reason, because there is this unhealthy shame about who we are and almost a skepticism about an organization telling stories, right?
Kyle Portbury: That we talked about. So again, there's nothing bad with an organ organization, storytelling, right? It's just, it's going to be very different to an individual storytelling. You know, and I guess I was pretty fortunate that there were a few people at, um, different levels of the organization that controlled that IP.
Kyle Portbury: That kind of heard me out and were like, okay, we, we see what you want to do here, right? Like this is a, it's a very different approach to this story and it's a personal approach. It's like, it's Kyle, the storytelling professional [00:32:00] wanting to dig into the sinewy fiber of storytelling and character in a way that was never possible in Tell the World, you know?
Kyle Portbury: And so. I, I think what it, what it allowed when there's one person whose vision is this is how I want to express, I guess, my curiosity about who, who these people were and why they did what they did. Um, that's a very different thing to a committee of people going, well, you know, we, we shouldn't allow this because that.
Kyle Portbury: Right. You know, like, we can't have characters arguing with each other because what does that, or right. And again, there's nothing wrong with that, but that's, that's a, what do you call it? It's a safe way of approaching, right? Because you, you, you have to play it safe at that level. Yes. Um, I don't have to play it safe.
Kyle Portbury: That's the fabulous thing about [00:33:00] being this guy, right? Like I can be like, well, actually people argue and it's okay to see them argue. It's okay to see. Ellen and James with a baby and the baby crying and them causing more distress by the argument that they're having. Cause guess what? I've had those situations before, you know, because that's what happens with real people.
Kyle Portbury: Just because you are a prophet of God doesn't mean you don't argue with your husband or wife, you know, just because you feel called to something doesn't you don't make mistakes and get stuff wrong. I think it's really healthy for people to see that too. Like it doesn't, it doesn't, um, what's the word for it?
Kyle Portbury: Not downplay, but it, it doesn't take away from the fact that you can still have that experience and still have that drive and that desire and still stuff up and get stuff wrong. Yes. Regularly, all the time. Yeah. You know, the human experience, the human experience. I think [00:34:00] the encouragement to all of us should be, well, well, If in, in there just regular humanity, they can still have this amazing spiritual experience that can have this legacy.
Kyle Portbury: Well, imagine what I could do even in my own tiny little sphere of influence, right? With that mindset and mentality. So I think what it afforded, um, me because they, you know, like that opportunity was, I advocated for it and was able to get there and tell that story in that way. I think what you get is a much more personal take.
Kyle Portbury: And that's why I said, like, it's now one person artistically going, let's get curious and explore the human elements of this story and how How do relationships function in this big narrative, right? So it's, it's honing it down and going, well, what's the real world reality to the people rather than, Oh, look at this big movement [00:35:00] and all the stuff that it's done.
Kyle Portbury: And it's really like laser focusing it down onto the actual human experience within that.
Jarrod Stackelroth: And we will., play the second part of that interview. Next week, we get in more in depth into the characters, some of the characters like Ellen White, Joseph Bates, and what Kyle learned from their experience and, , more of his experience making the movie. As I said, the hopeful comes out in October. So keep an eye out for that and what you can do to make sure that it comes to your local cinema.
Jarrod Stackelroth: , and maybe you can take your church as a group to see it. , the signs, the hopeful signs magazines will be floating around in August. A number of conferences have ordered many of those, so they will be a really good, Invitational tool to share with people who you may. Think about taking to the movie.
Jarrod Stackelroth: So that's all we have time for this week. We'll see you again next week on record live. God bless and have a good week. [00:36:00]