“FAITH” IN THIS ECONOMY As the anti-stimulus mega-movie, ATLAS SHRUGGED grabs today’s headlines, it is Faith Ties, an indie film with a message of hope that plans to capture this year's audience—and box office, as well! This is what Executive Producer Dean Blagg (Local Color, Flip the Script) believes will happen when his newest project, Faith Ties, is released thisholiday season.
“Hollywood is a lot of things to a lot of people,” says Blagg. “But Hollywood has ignored a few large audiences—audiences who, when marketed directly, come out in force to show their support.” Blagg points to the success of independently-produced, faith-based films like Facing the Giants and Fireproof as well as the complete works of Tyler Perry as examples. Unlike its stimulus-package sized competitors, Faith Ties, with a budget of only $1.2 million, calls upon us to have "faith” as the economy struggles to recover.
“This film makes people look at how much they are relying on just themselves and how much they are applying faith,” says Blagg.
Blagg is not the only person to make this faith-filled assessment. After reading the screenplay, television legend Demond Wilson (Sanford & Son) agreed to come out of retirement to play one of the film's lead characters.
“This script was everything I thought it was going to be and more,” said Wilson, who gave up acting in 1993 to become a pastor and prison minister. “Faith Ties not only speaks to our time; it also presents the same elements of hope during times of adversity which Capra captured in It’s a Wonderful Life—elements that will make this film a timeless classic, as well,” Wilson added.
Blagg discovered the script after hearing about the support given to the Los Angeles-based performances of the original play, Faith Ties: A Christmas Story, written and produced by John “Rusty” Proctor and directed by James Dobkowski. Immediately, Blagg teamed up with Proctor and Dobkowski, who collaborated and adapted the play, to bring Faith Ties to the big screen.
Faith Ties focuses on the congregation of Bethel Church, a fictitious urban church community in Troy, Michigan. All appears calm until the new pastor receives a vision for a ministry that he feels compelled to pursue—the purchase of an abandoned bread warehouse to expand the church’s outreach mission in the “wrong part of town.”
Problems arise when the parishioners, whose hearts are hardened by the uncertainty of today’s economy, discover that their young pastor has leveraged his family's home, as well as the church’s building and property, as collateral on the loan. Life goes from bad to worse when the possibility of becoming homeless challenges the pastor’s wife’s faith in God and in her husband. She believes she is on the vergeof losing everything until a chance meeting with Chris Nicols (DemondWilson), a loudmouthed, homeless drunk who has already lost it all, guidesher back to the path of Faith and Hope.
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