The Eric Metaxas Show - Max McLean

Episode Date: October 26, 2021

Max McLean drops by the studio with interesting behind-the-scenes stories about his new film based on the life of C.S. Lewis, "The Most Reluctant Convert."

to the Eric Mettaxas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Eric Mattaxas show coming to you from the west coast, wait for it, of the United States. Did you see that coming? I'm staring at the Pacific Ocean. I always thought that I preferred the Atlantic, but right now, I'll take any ocean. This is beautiful. I mean, it is so beautiful.

I just saw a pelican eaten by a shark. It was fascinating. nature red in tooth and claw, as gruesome as it was, it was beautiful confirmation of the circle of life. Don't you think so, Chris, Chris Heimes? Yeah, and I actually hate to be somewhat of a downer, but I just read on my Twitter feed that Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, it's requiring the ocean to wear a mask. So you got at least a couple more hours before the ocean is unmasked. That is unbelievable.

And in other news, a Pelican, actually, it's a whole flock of Pelican. is going to nibble him to death later this week, which, you know, it's a sweet gesture when nature reaches out and crushes the Marxist pretty boy. Isn't that it's just a sweet thing that we live in the natural world. And I just want to say thank you, Pelicans of California for promising to nibble him to death. Listen, in hour two, we're talking to John Smirik. It's going to get crazy. But in hour one, we're talking to Max McLean, who, this man has brought more C.S. Lewis to the stage than anybody on the planet. And they've made a film directed by my dear friend Norman Stone. I cannot wait to hear about the film. It is called the Most Reluctant Convert. And it's about C.S. Lewis. So we're going to talk to Max McLean in a couple of minutes. Chris, we've got to talk about a couple things here. The Alliance Defending Freedom. We're doing a fundraiser for them. somebody i just got an email this morning that somebody took me up on my sham offer i say if you give

ten thousand dollars uh to the alliance defending freedom we can have dinner together and spend all this time together everybody knows i don't mean a syllable of that i'm blowing smoke i just want the money okay you'll never see my face oh all right since i'm a christian i can't do stuff like that this is it's such a joy for me when somebody gives that kind of money to an organization i believe in because the Alliance of Fending Freedom is defending freedom. Doesn't that make sense? The lines defending freedom, they're defending freedom. They don't talk about it.

It's not a bureaucracy. They are defending our religious liberty on a level that is almost incomprehensible. This is so extraordinary they exist. Please go to the website, metaxis talk.com. Metaxistocococ.com. Click on the banner. We all need to do our part. This is, it's better than paying your taxes because this gets you results.

in favor of American-style self-government. It is a wonderful thing. Alliance Defending Freedom. It's at the website Metaxistock.com. If anybody else is able to give $10,000, it is always my joy to have dinner, to get to know people. It's the least I can do,

and it's one of the few things I can offer in my busy schedule. I would be delighted to figure out how to do that. You have to go to our website, Metaxistalk.com, click on the banner, Alliance Defending. freedom later today i'm told it may be i may already have done it by the time this air is but i'm supposed to be on the dennis prager show today uh to talk about my new book is atheism dead uh i'm doing a lot of media around that that's why i'm set up in my new temporary studio here on the pacific coast um i've noticed a number of typos in the first edition of is atheism dead uh it says this is so silly

I don't know how this got past the editors, but there's a lot of little typos. But the one that struck me is that it claims that Albert Einstein was a rodeo clown for the first 50 years of his life. I'm almost sure that that's nonsense. I apologize to people who are looking for a substantive book to have to read something like that. And it says that Max von Planck, sticking with the theme, was conceived in a rodeo barrel. you know, the ones that the rodeo clowns hide in. So all of that stuff is not true. Everything else in the book is true.

But actually there are a couple of silly typos like it says that the diameter of Jupiter is 900,000 miles when it's 90,000 miles. Things like that that we didn't catch. But we're printing a new edition and all the rodeo stuff is taken out, that's taken out. So I just want to be clear that the first edition, we kind of rushed it. to print. And we are, we, we, we've, we've worked on every single one of those little, little nits. We've picked all the nits out like a, like a mother monkey. And we're, we're ready to, we're printing the new edition and we're very excited about it. It has been selling well, thanks to most of you. I hope you find what's in it, at least as fascinating as I do, because there is some stuff in it that is

just, and, you know, I didn't make it up. This is all true. it's all true it's all true stuff I'm speaking all over California this week tonight doing something in San Marcos, California which is north of San Diego pretty much the whole country is north of San Diego

but San Marcos I'll be doing something in Thousand Oaks this weekend go to my website Ericmetaxis.com if you go to Ericmetaxis.com you'll see my whole schedule. I'm talking everywhere. I eventually by December, I will be speaking in Billings, Montana.

That's not a joke. Hey, Eric, is it true that you guys are doing a seance tonight to reach out to atheism to see if it is in fact dead? The spirit of atheism does not respond. I mean, we've done so many seances and we say, and we say, spirit of atheism, if you're there. So even if it's dead, it's so dead that it doesn't even have a spirit. It's kind of sad, really.

It doesn't live on. It's a relief, though, I guess, on some levels, too. Well, listen, in the book, what I say, people know this, all right? It doesn't mean that you can't be an atheist. It's just that you can't be an intellectually honest atheist. You're just, you just become part of a tribe that calls themselves atheists. If you want to say I'm an agnostic, well, we can have a conversation. But according to what's in my book, which, of course, only scratches the surface,

the concept of a world without God, without a creator, it's not intellectually sensible. There, too much information has come out in the last 50 years. I want to be blunt about that. I simply think that's a fact. And if people want to say, I think Christianity is stupid. It's a free country. But I don't think you can say there is no God because the evidence has become so overwhelming,

mainly from science, which of course has great, in fact, delicious irony, because it's often atheists that say that science is the enemy. of faith and turns out not so much. Yeah. Science, I feel like it allows people to say to other people that they're dumb without really having any facts to back it up. They just kind of point to science as a blanket. At the end of the book, I mean, the first part of the book is like scientific facts and theories and the second part of the book is biblical archaeology, some of which is truly just like crazy, funny stories, true stories. But the third part of the book, I deal with.

with this issue of the atheists. And it is hard for me to believe how intellectually sloppy they are. I mean, they talk about, they say, we all believe in reason, reason, reason, reason, and being rational. I mean, not like those faith people. We talk about reason and rationality and read it. They talk about it, but they're in fact not reasonable and rational. So I think that's now called gaslighting.

and the idea that you it's like talking about I'm pro math I'm pro math but you don't even know what math is and you don't do math that's kind of the conclusion I came to they're just they're just sort of angry materialists who turns out don't have an intellectual leg to stand on which is not a good thing and I so I think we have to be honest and talk about agnosticism rather than atheism because I think atheism has it's like to cover the The book is a snake swallowing its own tail. Ultimately, you know, that we know that a snake can't eat itself. It's a metaphor. But it is, it's an idea. But it's an important idea that things have to stand up on their own. And I think atheism has had its day. And I think we can now say that it doesn't work.

If that makes you angry, read the book and tell me what I'm missing. Or if you don't have time to read the book, buy a copy. Thank you very much. Okay, we'll be right back today. We're talking to Max McLean. Wonderful, a man of the theater and now a man of the film industry. And after that, John Samirak, don't go away. Hey, folks, I've got to tell you a secret about relief factor that the father, son, owners, Pete and Seth Talbot have never made a big deal about. But I think it is a big deal. I really do. They sell the three-week quick start pack for just 1995 to anyone struggling from pain like neck, shoulder, back, hip, or knee pain, 1995, about a dollar a day. But what they haven't broadcasted much is that every time they sell a three-week quick start, they lose money. In fact, they don't even break even until about four to five months after.

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800, 800, 8384, relief factor.com. I use it. It works. Have you heard about C.S. Lewis? Neither have I, but somebody has evidently made a movie about him. You know what? I just realized C.S. Lewis, that is the writer C.S. Lewis. That's right. Max, I've seen you perform on the stage of C.S. Lewis many times. I get so excited about C.S. Lewis that when I heard you were doing a stage play, I flipped out. It is now a movie. Right. And that's why you're here.

That's right. How did this happen? This is, I mean, look, you know that it just doesn't get bigger from me than C.S. Lewis. Right. I want the whole world to know about this guy. You have spent much of your life making him known to the world. I know there are probably people listening or watching who actually don't know. who he is. And I'm telling you folks, he's one of the greatest writers who ever lived.

Who ever lived? One of the greatest writers who ever lived wrote in innumerable genres, mastered just about all of them, just a genius and a profound Christian. And one of my greatest heroes in life. So I've lived long enough to where my friend, Max McLean, has made a film called The Most Reluctant Convert, The Untold Story of C.S. Lewis. So how did you come to make this film? Well, COVID had a lot to do with it. You know, the play was running. We were doing a lot of college tours with the play. March 15th of last year, everything ended. When did the most reluctant convert become a play and tell my audience, in case they don't know, why is it titled the most reluctant convert? Well, it's about Lewis's

journey from vigorous to bunker of Christianity to becoming the most reluctant convert in all of England. You know, I gave in and admitted that God is God. Nelton prayed perhaps the most dejected, reluctant convert in all English. So those are his famous words. And that was a long story. It started with the death of his mother at, I guess he was nine. He had a terrible relationship with his father.

He experienced the brutality of. of World War I. And this got him to the conclusion that either there's no God behind the universe, a God indifferent to good and evil, or worse, an evil God. And that's where the, that's kind of the nadir of his disbelief. And it's from there that we follow his journey to becoming the most influential Christian of the 20th century. Am I in this movie? You should be. So I'm not in this movie. Hey, Alvin, that's the code. That's when they say you should be, but you're not. I noticed, not only are you the star of the movie, but my friend Michael Ward, I just read this. He's in the movie. Yeah, he plays the vicar. Who does he play?

He plays the vicar. So we actually filmed at Hedington Quarry, the Holy Trinity, Hedington Quarry, and we hired Michael to be the parish priest. Unbelievable. I would have done it for half whatever he charged you. What a blood sucker. Michael, if you're watching, I'm on to you. Michael Ward, listen, I have to tell my audience, Michael Ward, if you've watched Socrates in the city, one of my favorite conversations I've ever had was with Michael Ward, who is a C.S. Louis scholar of scholars,

and he wrote a book, two books, one called Planet Narnia and the other, the... Narnia Code? Just genius. I mean, we don't have time to get into that. But I'm thrilled. I know, of course, he's in Oxford. And when you refer to Heddington Quarry, that's the church where Lewis and his brother

Warnie worshipped. And there's a little plaque. I have a picture there. So you did film it right where much of this happened. Yeah, there was 18 locations in and around Oxford. We had 17 actors, three actors playing Lewis. We had a boy, Lewis, Eddie Ray Martin. Young man Lewis, who went off to war, became the scholar.

That's Nicholas Ralph, who started. and all creatures great and small. And then I play the elder Lewis looking back on his life and reflecting, kind of like Mark Twain looking back on his youth. It has that sort of format. Well, one of the other exciting things. Well, first of all, let's start with the headline, November 3rd. This is one night only in theaters.

This is a form that people are doing increasingly. So tickets are on sale at c.s.luismovie.com. folks, if you can get to this, please. We've got to patronize great art about great subjects, and it doesn't really get better. November 3rd, in theaters around the country, you can go to CSlewismovie.com to figure out where. There's a trailer there. You can watch it. But I was most excited about this when I found out that my friend Norman Stone has directed it.

Tell us about Norman. I love Norman so much. Norman, I've respected him for 30 years because he put together the original Shadowlands, the BBC Shadowlands, which became the movie with Anthony Hopkins and Deborah Winger. He and I met about 10 years ago at an arts conference in Santa Monica, stayed in touch. And about two and a half years ago, I called him and asked him, you know, the play was doing very well. And I said, would you consider making a movie this play? And he said, well, send me the script. And so he looked at the script, really liked it and wanted to stay close to it, but open it up for film.

And, you know, we thought it was going to be a 22, 23 project. But when COVID came, we moved it up. And he said that, this was back in June, he said that filmmaking was opening up in the UK. And so he could get a really good crew and cast if we worked quickly. because nobody was working. So I said, well, if you can verify that and verify that we have the locations we need, I'll see if I can get my board to release some funds to get it in the can, and then we can talk about post-production and distribution later. So we did. We got the rights in the C.S. Louis Estate to do the shooting. And I went in late August,

empty plane as big as Air Force One with few people on it, fewer people. people on it and quarantine for a couple of weeks and then we we did the shoot in about a month. It's unbelievable. Norman works fast. I've never seen anybody like him. He's like just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. He just gets it done. And he's directed so much wonderful stuff. Most famous, I guess, for his, you mentioned, his 1984 BBC drama called Shadowlands, which most of us know the Hollywood version 10 years later with Deborah Winger and Anthony Hopkins.

But Norman, he's been in and around the world of C.S. Lewis all these years. He actually did the Narnia Code with Michael Ward. Okay. I wasn't going to bring this up because I had forgotten, but this is true. It's because of me.

I'll never forget it. I was feeling slightly ill, and I was supposed to meet this guy named Michael Ward in New York. Norman Stone, dear friend, was staying with us in our apartment, and I said, Norman, I said, I'm not feeling well. Would you come to this lunch with me? Because, you know about Lewis and it'll be more fun if you're there because I don't know how much energy I have today. He comes to the lunch. And at some point, I said, hey, hey, he said, Norman, I'm not the kind of person to do this to a friend,

to put him on the spot, but you realize you need to make a film about this. And some of the of a gun. He made a film about it, and it was on the BBC, and it did very, very well for the BBC, but I totally forgot that I can take credit for introducing them and even even telling him, like, you've got to do this. This is so, I mean, that's another conversation, but it does lead us into why Lewis is worth knowing, because he really was an uncommon genius. There's a lot of bad writing. As a writer, I can tell you folks, a lot of times people read things by, so I I just go, you know what, that's really not great writing. Great writing is great writing. And Lewis is one of the greatest writers who ever lived. And what Michael Ward brings out the depth,

the poetic depth, the mythological depth of his writing, it's just it takes it to a whole other level that thanks to Michael Ward we now know about. So I'm thrilled, even though I joke that he's in this. But I could have played Warnie. Think of all the people I could have played. Let me ask you, before we go to a break, this comes out in theaters, November 3rd, around the country. Do we know how many theaters it's in yet? Several hundred. It's selling very, very well. Okay. I'm not surprised. Lewis has a huge following. Folks, even if you don't know who he is, trust me. And you were speaking about his words, 99% of the words in this play are his. So, you know, it's not like we're making stuff up. It mostly from his autobiography, surprised by Joy.

Well, that's what's so interesting. I mean, he wrote so beautifully, and the line that you quoted, that he was, you know, perhaps the most dejected, the most reluctant convert in all of England, he tells the truth that he was almost disappointed that he had found his way to this place because now what's going to happen to his life. You know, he's going to maybe lose some friends. And in the end, it worked out pretty well for him. It did. But at the time, he was afraid. And he wrote so beautifully in surprise. by joy that to have it turned into a play by you and now into a movie by you. It's the most reluctant convert, the untold story of C.S. Lewis. Folks, go to C.S. Louismovie.com. Tell your friends, because I know Max McLean and because I know Norman Stone, I can say you cannot go wrong. At its worst, it's going to be wonderful. C.S. Lewismovie.com. We'll be right back. Hey, folks, Eric Mattaxas here. Joe Biden and the Democrats,

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needs. If you're looking to invest in gold, call the good folks at Legacy Precious Messedm. Or visit them online at LegacyPM Investments.com. Don't leave your retirement to chance friends. Contact Legacy Precious Metals today. That's 866-473-6204. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm talking about one of my favorite subjects ever. C.S. Lewis, the author, the Christian apologist, talking to a dear friend, Max McLean. Max, you spent much of your life bringing Lewis to life on the stage. I've seen you do a number of things. They blur together in my mind. Screw tape, great divorce.

Okay, so screw tape, the great divorce, and the most reluctant convert, which I saw what, three years ago? I don't know. It opened in New York. It ran for 15 weeks in New York in 2016. Well, not only that, but I was privileged, I think, in either, maybe it was 2005 to see you, it might have been after that, to see you give the sermon the weight of glory. Oh, that was at the St. Mary's Church in Cambridge. that's the place where Lewis gave that sermon in the 50s, I guess.

41. 41. Really? Wow. One of his most famous sermons. And it's funny as a sermon because, you know, people have different ideas of what sermons are. This is just like a spectacular essay that's also a sermon. But you memorized the whole thing.

That was pretty influential in the writing of this play. In fact, it concludes with a good bit of weight of going. There are no ordinary people. We've never met a mere mortal. Yeah, I'll say. I want to convert a lot of what Lewis wrote into hard-boiled 30s dialogue. Gee, Joy, your swell. She probably spoke like that as a New Yorker.

You've done so much of this, but to bring it to the screen because that's to me, it's always been one of the frustrations of theater, is that only so many people get to the theater and that there is something when you can put it on the screen. Of course, it's different. But you had our friend Norman Stone turn it into a film. What did he do to take something that's in a theater and say, okay, now we have the whole world. Well, it exploded. I mean, it was a one-person show. you know, just one person telling his story. And then what Norman did was, was capture the memory and then put it on the screen.

So as soon as I begin to reflect, we actually see it. And, you know, and of course, we go from a one-person show to 18 locations, 17 actors, 190 extras, 270 costumes. Are you able to share the budget? It's, I think it was, it came in under three, which is pretty good for all that. And that's American dollars. Yeah. Three bucks. That's unbelievable.

That is really, I would have thought at least a sawbook for something like this. No, but it's, that is a wonderfully low budget and it gives you the ability, hopefully, to make some money on it. Because this is something, I just hope everybody goes to see it, because people are always thinking, what is out there? You can be scouring Netflix and Hulu and Amazon and whatever. And there isn't much that is a must-see, I'm sorry to say. In my opinion, this is a must-see. This is something that I don't care where you're coming from. C.S. Lewis is just one of those figures that we were talking earlier about his writing.

I am a writer, but I'm not just a writer. I'm a writerly writer. I'm a literary writer. And so there are people that they write books, but it's mostly about the ideas. For me, it's often about the writing. And what I noticed about Lewis is his writerliness. He has a talent for fiction and for other things. I don't know anyone who can top him.

There are phrases. There are passages in books like Peralandra, especially toward the end. It's some of the greatest writing I've ever read. It's that good. And it wasn't always that way. He said that his ambition is life. was to be a writer, not just to be a writer, but to be known as a writer. Yeah.

And he said in that, he failed in that because as he was in his mid-20s, I mean, his conversion was 1931, so he was 32 years old. In his mid-20s, you know, Keats and Shelley were dead. Byron Chesterton had completed their most distinguished works. Okay, but here's what's funny. This is, I love this kind of stuff. What's funny and what's ridiculous is he, is still living in a world

that's dead. He's living in a world, I mean, in the early parts of the 20th century, when he was coming of age, and it happens to all of us, right? It happened to me. I grew up at a time when, you know, I'm watching certain things on TV, and I think that when I'm an adult,

I want to do that, or I want to do that. That goes away. But you think it'll always be there. He wrote you know, long poems, cycles of poems. What is it, Dyson, and other poems. Dimer.

Dimer and other poems. Spirits and bondage. He writes this stuff. And the reason I'm bringing this up is that it was just a weird time to be alive because you're thinking like, yeah, I want to write stuff like Keats and Shelley. And the point is no one was doing that. No one could do that. Most of the poetry in the 20th century is Elstinko.

I can say that because I've read some of it. It's a funny time to be alive. So here he's trying to recreate stuff from these great. And, yeah, how old was Keats when he died? Like... 30. Yeah, like something crazy like that and he wrote this great stuff. So he's comparing himself to them.

Not realizing that he's coming into another era when people aren't going to read things like that, even though he did write some spectacular poems for a fact. But it was his conversion. It really wasn't until his conversion that he found his voice. Not so much in poetry, but mostly. and prose and the literary flow, you know, just did not cease till the day died. Yeah, because what is it that he wanted to say?

I mean, I wouldn't want to compare myself to Lewis, but I found the same thing is that that sometimes you say I want to write, but you don't have a voice. You don't know who you are or what you want to say. And my goodness, he wrote so much. I often stress how many genres he wrote. Oh, we're at a time. We'll be right back. And I will repeat the word genre.

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But what I was saying was that C.S. Lewis was such an amazing writer. I will compare him to Shakespeare because he wrote his own literature. And I don't mean he wrote literature. I mean, he created a literature. I guess Chesterton's a little bit like that. They wrote in so many genres with such genius. that they created a whole world. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you're right. You know, Chesterton was the inspiration for much of his apologetic works. Yeah. But I would say it was McDonald was his inspiration for his fantasies, you know. And also Charles Williams as well. I mean, I just read that hideous strength, and that's a Charles Williams novel. I was going to say that hideous strength, which is the third of his so-called space trilogy, which always annoys me. It's not really a space trilogy. I don't know what it is,

but it's kind of like Narnia, you know, for adults. Well, it's pre Narnia, too. And it was pre Narnia. Yeah. Well, those books are just, they're genius. I mean, I find Peralandra to be one of the great, it should be taught alongside Paradise Lost in 20th, sorry, in survey courses of 20th, I keep saying 20th, survey courses of Western Literature. It's genius. It's a retelling of Paradise Lost. It's incredible. And that hideous strength, what do you even make of the, of?

Well, it's prescient. It's prescient. It's prophetic. It is amazing. When you read that, you think, we're living through this now, unfortunately. But a lot of people aren't familiar with those books. But Peralandra and that hideous strength, they're just out of the silence. Crazy, amazing books.

But he wrote poems. Some of them are great. One of my favorite ones is the one that I was there in 1998 when they put it up in Addison's Walk behind the colleges, behind Marlund College where he was, where his rooms were, and where I bumped into you one day. Do you remember that? Yes. You were, this was before you gave you anyway. I remember bumping into you on Addison's walk.

It's a beautiful place. It is where Lewis came to faith on some level. Tell us that story. It was the famous conversation he had with. with Tolkien. Yeah. And because he, Lewis had, Lewis said that he, he said, I've come, I've come to believe in God, but not Christ. He couldn't understand how someone who lived 2,000 years ago could help us here and now. And Tolkien explained to him that when you, when you read or, or myths of Osiris, Balder, Dionysus, talking to Lewis, you, you, you like them very.

much and are mysteriously moved by them provided when you when you meet the story of a dying god like in baldered osiris you like it very much as long as you meet it anywhere except in the gospels he says well the the gospels are a myth just like the other myth with one tremendous difference it really happened it's the myth that it's the myth that became fact and what was about that conversation, it allowed Lewis, or it motivated Lewis to read the Bible differently, to look at Jesus in a mythological way. And that's where, you know, he came to his liar, lunatic, Lord. And we don't mean, when we say mythological, we don't mean not historical, but we mean in the genre of myth, except also historical. Right. You know, just like you could say what happened

And, you know, the story of Noah, the story of the parting of Red Sea, these are mythical stories. They have resonance as stories, but we believe they actually happen. Well, they're like archetypes. That's right. They hit you so deep in the soul. Right. You know, in fact, all of the Marvel and all the great film heroes are mythological stories that get retold. And the Jesus story is the story in which all of those are a point.

I can't believe you're bringing up Marvel. Marvel is just messing up everything. They've come out with a new comic book that says Liberace was gay. I don't know what the heck that's all about. We can't talk about that right now. I want to, I should have said Johnny Mathis. I think that would have been funnier. Okay, but here's the issue. Lewis really was a genius, and he wrote in so many genres, and he wanted to serve God. And because of that, in a way, he fell a foul of the academic establishment. In other words, the dons in Oxford and then in Cambridge, they really looked down their noses at him because he had the misfortune of being popular. His books were read. Especially after he did the broadcast talks that became mere Christianity,

and he became one of the most popular spokespeople in all of England. Yeah, it's hard for us to, think of him as being that famous. It's also fascinating, isn't it, to think that the BBC in the 40s would have allowed someone to be an apologist for the Christian faith on national radio. Right. Well, of course, you know, they had a thousand German planes come up, the Thames, bombing everything in sight. So, you know, London was like an ocean of flames. It looked like the day of judgment. So people, you know, when, when bombs destroy your home, talk of Armageddon no longer seem fanciful. So it's, the people were prepared to hear him. And I saw a little bit

of that at 9-11, you know, in a lesser way, because it was only a one-day thing. There, it was from September 40 to May of 41. Right. And then he began speaking in that summer. Well, it is, it's just so amazing. The poem that I was referencing at Addison's Walk, I never remember that it's what the bird said early in the year. I don't remember it either, but I... It is such a beautiful poem. But the funny thing is it speaks to me about the larger themes that are all through Lewis, how the fairy tale world is really a way of talking about heaven.

And that's sort of what Narnia is about. that poem is really about that of entering in, you know, past this sort of cyclic time and into the eternal present. I mean, it's such a beautiful poem. And I remember they put it there in 1998, which was the centenary of Lewis's birth, 1898. But yeah, he wrote some gorgeous poems. And then, of course, he wrote the poem that our friend Michael Ward, who I'm bitter to find was involved in this movie, and I wasn't. Michael Ward wrote his book, um, Planet Narnia, where he takes one of Lewis's poems and uses it as the clue, the key to unlock the Narnia books. I mean, it is just so rich. So I'm just thrilled to think that there are people

who are going to discover C.S. Lewis as a result of this. Folks, please go to c.s.lewismovie.com. C.S. Louismovie.com. November 3rd is the date. You owe this to yourself. We'll be right back. Folks, we're talking about C.S. Lewis. There is a movie coming out. One day only November 3rd. Write it down. C.S. Lewismovie.com. I'm sitting here with a man who plays Lewis and who conceived of the whole thing. Max McLean. Max, that must make you a producer. That's, well, I wrote the adaptation. An executive producer, a writer. Right. In this case, though, we have producers and that my main responsibility, is to play C.S. Lewis, which it's really a joy to do. It's fun to be that smart for 90 minutes. Where did you grow up? Well, Dad was military, so we didn't have a particular place. I'm an immigrant. I came from

Panama, came to America when I was four. In fact, the West Side passenger terminal on 48th Street is about 10 minutes from where I currently live. So it's kind of interesting that I'm close to that. First thing I had to do is master the English language. I've been working on it ever since at 4. Dad was all over. I mean, I went to 10 different schools from first grade to 12th grade. Oh, my gosh.

And when did you come to faith and how did that play a partner? Well, I'm an adult convert. I was 23. and Lewis was the, somebody gave me a copy of Surprise by Joy, which I didn't understand a word of it at the time, but the second book that was given me was the screw tape letters. And I said, oh, I know this guy. This guy has been in my life for a long time.

And that really is what sort of nailed Lewis as a key figure in my life. But I didn't read him very much until about 15 years later. Oh, no, more and more than that. maybe 20 plus years later, where I was doing a show and a theater professor suggested that I would make a really good screw tape. And I didn't know if that was a compliment or not. But I was really intrigued. And we had an idea how to do it. And he said, well, if we can get the rights, we would have a goal of it.

So from that point on, that would have been in the early 2000. So it's been about 20 years of really investing in Lewis. screw tape about spiritual warfare from the demons perspective, the great divorce from kind of the Holy Spirit perspective. In both cases, Lewis is being so transparent. He's talking about his own battles against battles with temptation and screw tape in great divorce, how he resists the Holy Spirit. And doing those two pieces made me want to go back to his conversion because he's always going back to that spot as, you know, how he resisted it, how he fought it. And we just got a minute left, but you talked about what he calls joy, the German word.

Yeah, the dialectic of desire. It's zain soot. It's hard to explain, but something that, as a kid, he remembers this, something awakened in him. And he recognizes eventually, that's my longing for God, even though I didn't know at the time what that was. Yeah, he says, I think, mere Christianity, if I find myself a desire that no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is I was made for another world. And he also says that he doesn't think that that desire is found in this life. This life is only meant to, pleasure is only meant to arouse it to suggest the real thing. and that he thought that the best he could do with his life is to pursue that desire and help others do the same.

People really don't say this often, but it occurs to me as you say this. He was a tremendous thinker and a tremendous philosopher. He put it in beautiful writing. But even those thoughts are really original, beautiful. We're out of time. Folks, you've got to go to c.s.luismovie.com. The movie is the most reluctant convert, November 3rd. Max McLean, congratulations, and thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much.