New Around the Mission
Director Steve Taylor Brings
February 15, 2011
Steve Taylor
From the moment Steve Taylor finished reading Blue Like Jazz in 2004, the musician-turned-filmmaker wanted to make the best-selling memoir by Donald Miller into a movie.
“The story had many parallels with my own story,” Steve says. “I grew up in a conservative Baptist home, then went to college at Colorado University in Boulder, an environment that had a fair bit in common with Portland and Reed College [where Don went to school].”
These connections, plus several scenes Steve felt would be visually compelling, convinced him Blue Like Jazz was his second full-length feature film—following The Second Chance starring Michael W. Smith. Though he’d always been interested in filmmaking, it wasn’t until after his trajectory as a Christian music icon in the ’80s and ’90s that he became a fulltime filmmaker.
To Steve’s delight, in 2005 Donald Miller agreed to adapt Blue Like Jazz into a film. Over the next year, he and Steve began working together to develop a screenplay around the topical themes of the book, but with a more defined plot.
“Don’s a great collaborator and a great hang,” Steve says. “He's exactly the guy you'd hope he'd be after reading his books.”
Despite their great teamwork, Steve was fighting an uphill battle.
"My ambitions for this movie far exceeded our budget, but I wasn't willing to scale them back—I really felt this movie needed size and scope,” he says.
The crew, cast and background talent were willing to make sacrifices to see the movie happen, but funding still fell short. Then 4,500 Blue Like Jazz fans unexpectedly rallied to donate $350,000 via Kickstarter.com, a crowdfunding site. Combined with a handful of other investors, Steve and Don were able to finally make the movie after four long years of trying to secure funding. Filming began in Nashville in late October 2010, followed by shoots in Portland and the Oregon Coast in January.
An unusual ally in the process was Steve’s church, Church of the Redeemer, an Anglican Mission congregation in Nashville. It not only supported the project, it plays a starring role in the film. “Our church subs for Don's Baptist church in Houston,” Steve explains. “Father Thomas [McKenzie] has also been a huge help—I bounced an early version of the screenplay off him, and he gave me some very helpful notes. It's hard for me to imagine this movie coming together without my church's involvement, including a number of people who have been praying for it for years.”
What does Steve hope churches and viewers nationwide say about Blue Like Jazz the movie, scheduled to release in theaters this fall? “If the movie resonates with people the way the book has, I'll be happy and relieved,” he says. “The movie has no ready parallels and doesn't easily fit within any current genre, so I'm curious how people are going to respond.”
Learn more about this project at BlueLikeJazztheMovie.com.
Posted By: Cynthia P. Brust
Categories: Faith in Action
