{"id":1993,"date":"2012-02-20T07:58:31","date_gmt":"2012-02-20T12:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/faithmediaandculture\/?p=1993"},"modified":"2012-02-20T07:58:31","modified_gmt":"2012-02-20T12:58:31","slug":"emilio-estevez-on-hollywood-faith-family-and-the-blue-raydvd-release-of-the-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2012\/02\/emilio-estevez-on-hollywood-faith-family-and-the-blue-raydvd-release-of-the-way.html","title":{"rendered":"Emilio Estevez on Hollywood, faith, family and the Blue-ray\/DVD release of &#8220;The Way&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s today&#8217;s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Emilio Estevez keeps it positive. <\/strong>I recently had my second my second opportunity to engage in a conversation with Emilio Estevez, this time on the occasion of the Blu-ray\/DVD release tomorrow (Feb. 21) of his recent faith-themed film <em>The Way<\/em>. (BTW: The first three readers to contact me at john@jwkmedia.com will receive a free DVD copy of the film.)<\/p>\n<p>Estevez\u00a0 wrote, produced, directed and acted in the movie which stars his father, Martin Sheen, as an America doctor who learns that his son was killed while embarking on the historical pilgrimage through the Pyrenees known as &#8220;The Way of St. James.&#8221;\u00a0 The doctor soon finds himself deciding to complete the journey himself and, in the process, finds that there&#8217;s more to life and people than he previously spent much time thinking about.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve read <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/faithmediaandculture\/2011\/09\/the-way-four-likable-people-on-a-believable-and-captivating-faith-journey.html\">my review<\/a>, you know I love this movie.\u00a0 Man, if only the rest of Hollywood would take its cue from this guy.\u00a0 Checkout the trailer below.\u00a0 Our conversation is below that.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"The Way - Movie Trailer (2011) HD\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/o5VZKWcgw6c?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK:<\/strong> Are you happy with the audience reception of the film?<\/p>\n<p><strong>EMILIO ESTEVEZ:<\/strong> Yeah, the audience reception has been amazing. I think I mentioned <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/faithmediaandculture\/2011\/10\/1390.html\">when we met in New York <\/a>about how the reaction has been across the country.\u00a0 We kinda did a promo tour that would be more in line with a bigger studio release. Literally, we were everywhere&#8230;I will say that (through) the feedback of some of the folks on Facebook and Twitter\u00a0 and even email coming into the website, (we know that) people were driving two and three hours, actually making pilgrimage to get to the theaters to see it.\u00a0 But you\u2019ve got to make it available for people to see and not everyone\u2019s gonna be as willing or as brave to want to get in the car for two hours to see a film.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK:<\/strong> Which is why it&#8217;s great it&#8217;s out on DVD. Regarding the movie&#8217;s limited release in theaters, do you find that distribution for these kinds of films is a problem? If it had wider theater distribution, it might have even done more business.<\/p>\n<p><strong>EMILIO ESTEVEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0 I think it would have for sure. Based on the feedback and based on the exit polls which we did, it was all very, very positive. The numbers were very, very strong. You know, it\u2019s interesting. Hollywood\u00a0 likes to hold itself out as being proudly secular and I think there are a lot of people in this town that were scared of the film. They saw it as Martin and I delivering a message or that it was Catholic dogma when, in fact, the movie is not that at all.\u00a0 You\u2019ve seen it. You know.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0JWK:<\/strong> No, <em><\/em>it&#8217;s a good character-based story. There&#8217;s nothing preachy about it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>EMILIO ESTEVEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0 No&#8230;If anything it\u2019s a spiritual journey and that\u2019s a thing that people in Hollywood could probably use a little bit more of.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK:<\/strong> I wrote in <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/faithmediaandculture\/2011\/09\/the-way-four-likable-people-on-a-believable-and-captivating-faith-journey.html\">my review<\/a> that I thought the film deserved Oscar consideration.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I don\u2019t think it received any nods.<\/p>\n<p><strong>EMILIO ESTEVEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0 No, no. Unfortunately, that\u2019s a rich man\u2019s game. As one of our producer\u2019s mentioned, he said it\u2019s sort of like playing polo. To play on that field costs a lot of money.\u00a0 You have to buy the awareness. You have to have a performance or a product where there\u2019s mass agreement that this should be one of the finalists. We were in consideration but we didn\u2019t make the cut.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK:<\/strong>\u00a0Do you think there\u2019s a certain fear of the subject matter in Hollywood?<\/p>\n<p><strong>EMILIO ESTEVEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0 I think so. I think this movie is not a film that the executives in Hollywood would have made.\u00a0 Even my own agents when I was pitching the story to them, you could watch their eyes glaze over.\u00a0 You just didn&#8217;t get them excited about it because it wasn\u2019t geared toward 16-year-old boys. There weren\u2019t any explosions, or\u00a0 sex or violence. There were none of the norms.\u00a0 I really believe that people are starved for\u00a0 something better. There is a very under-served demographic out there that WILL go to the movies or rent a DVD if there\u2019s product out there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK:<\/strong> You\u2019ve said in other interviews that you\u2019re kind of embarrassed by some of the things Hollywood puts out into the culture.\u00a0 Have those comments gotten you into any trouble within the industry?<\/p>\n<p><strong>EMILIO ESTEVEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0 I don\u2019t know. I mean I don\u2019t\u00a0 really hang around with or hang out with industry types.\u00a0 I\u2019m on my journey, my path and I\u2019ve declared myself in terms of the kind of work that I want to do and the films that I want to be responsible for putting out there in the universe and I think that it\u2019s very clear what I will say no to and say yes to and whether that\u2019s hurt me or not, I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 I don\u2019t really care, frankly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK:<\/strong> What films personally inspire you?<\/p>\n<p><strong>EMILIO ESTEVEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0 Well, you know, films that are about people, films that are about relationships. When you think about, you know, a lot of the great films that came out of the seventies were character-driven films, were films where story came first. \u00a0So, you know, we just haven\u2019t seen enough of them in recent years.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK:<\/strong> \u00a0What\u2019s next for you?<\/p>\n<p><strong>EMILIO ESTEVEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0 I\u2019m working on a couple of things. First, Martin and I are writing a book that is going to be released through Simon &amp; Schuster. The street date on that is May 8<sup>th<\/sup>. It\u2019s called <em>Along the Way<\/em> and we literally are just putting the final touches on it as we speak.\u00a0 As you and I are speaking now, Martin\u2019s working on the foreword and everything is getting sent out to the publisher. We\u2019ll be in New York for a press tour I think that week, the week of May 7<sup>th<\/sup>. It\u2019s less about the film and it\u2019s really more about our journeys, both as actors, as men\u00a0 and the spiritual journey that both of us are on that has gotten us to this place<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK:<\/strong>\u00a0I take it your father has been a big inspiration for you in your life.<\/p>\n<p><strong>EMILIO ESTEVEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0 Oh, for sure he has. I\u2019ve been so fortunate to be at this age in life and to have him still in my life, he and my mother both. And the fact that they\u2019re together now 50 years , they\u2019ve put down some pretty enormous footprints and I just try on a daily basis to honor that and try to stay in step as much as possible.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK:<\/strong>\u00a0 Do you anticipate working together with your father again?<\/p>\n<p><strong>EMILIO ESTEVEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0 Not in the near future.\u00a0 I\u2019m working on creating another family film franchise. It\u2019s really more in the vein of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0104868\/\"><em>The Mighty Duck<\/em>s<\/a>. It\u2019s set in the world of competitive harness racing&#8230;The idea is to reconnect to that <em>Mighty Ducks<\/em> audience.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK:<\/strong> Any television in your future?<\/p>\n<p><strong>EMILIO ESTEVEZ:<\/strong>\u00a0 You know, I don\u2019t rule it out but it\u2019s not something that I\u2019m currently looking at.\u00a0 It\u2019s just not something that I&#8217;ve gotten into. My dad obviously had a great run with <em>The West Wing<\/em> and Charlie, of course, had a great run with <em>Two and a Half<\/em> (<em>Men<\/em>) and he \u2018s going back to TV but my work has almost been completely confined to film with the exception of directing a couple of TV shows and that was a great learning experience for me but TV is not where my focus is right now.<\/p>\n<p><em>Encourage one another and build each other up \u2013 <\/em>1 Thessalonians 5:11<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s today&#8217;s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture. Emilio Estevez keeps it positive. I recently had my second my second opportunity to engage in a conversation with Emilio Estevez, this time on the occasion of the Blu-ray\/DVD release tomorrow (Feb. 21) of his recent faith-themed film The Way. (BTW: The first three&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":225,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Emilio Estevez on Hollywood, faith, family and the Blue-ray\/DVD release of &quot;The Way&quot;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2012\/02\/emilio-estevez-on-hollywood-faith-family-and-the-blue-raydvd-release-of-the-way.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Emilio Estevez on Hollywood, faith, family and the Blue-ray\/DVD release of &quot;The Way&quot;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here&#8217;s today&#8217;s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture. 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Kennedy","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/e5d5ef9caeb6b01bcbf08ca6de6591c2","name":"John W. Kennedy","description":"John W. Kennedy is the founder and Dir. of Development of The Creative Universe Entertainment\u2122, a media consultation and development company focusing on the creation, development and support of high-quality mainstream entertainment that upholds positive timeless values, including trust in God. Current projects include \"Bryant Park\" (an uplifting romantic-comedy) and \"Photo Finish\" (an award-winning sci-fi TV pilot). He has written over 100 children's novels based on episodes of the Cartoon Network series \"Ben 10\", \"Ben 10: Alien Force\", \"Ben 10: Ultimate Alien\", \"Ben 10: Omniverse\" and \"Generator Rex\" among others. He also writes Beliefnet\u2019s \"Faith, Media &amp; Culture\" blog. Previously, he has produced successful news and talk programming for CNN, Fox News, Pax TV and SiriusXM. Specialties: Script Writing, Movie\/TV Novelizations &amp; Adaptations, TV Content Creation and Development, Creative Consultation, Producing and Booking News and Talk shows. He can be reached for writing, producing and consulting services at 516-640-1182.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/author\/jkennedy"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1993"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1998,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1993\/revisions\/1998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}