Soul Food Cinema now has its first team member on board: Rebecca Christian, a third-year film-studies student, will report from Los Angeles once every quarter, discussing the latest developments in the world of faith and film. Rebecca writes her own blog (catholicinfilmschool.stblogs.com) that she manages to update on an almost daily basis. Soul Food Cinema Editor Mark Banks caught up with Rebecca via a London to San Diego Skype webcam call on 5th July 2008. Please note the spelling used in the following transcript is UK-English.  

Interview starts with a minute of shared prayer, asking for the Lord’s blessings upon our conversation, our work, our lives, as well as for you – the readers.

SFC: Okay, Hi Rebecca, glad to talk to you face-to-face (kind of) finally. Why don’t you give us a quick overview of your faith and film background?

RC: Okay, well I’m from San Diego, born and bred. I’m an only child, was baptised and raised Catholic, but growing up we were only really ‘Sunday Catholics’; we didn’t really have a great understanding of the faith. I’ve been practising since my sophomore year in high school; when I was about 16 years old. So I’ve been a fully-fledged Catholic for about 3 years, put it that way. 

SFC: And how does film school work for you? What year are you in there and what was your background getting into film school?

RC: Well I’m at Loyola Marymount at the moment, which is a Jesuit school. When I go back in August I’ll be in my third year of what is a 4-year course. I’m a screenwriting and theology double major; so I take some production classes, but the majority of my classes are on screenwriting. Before Loyola I went to a public high school (having transferred out from a Catholic high school), where they had a media programme. I studied video there and that got me into filmmaking.

SFC: And so did you have an interest in film making beforehand?

RC: No not really; I kind of fell into it. When I was much younger I wanted to be a scientist; I wanted to be a biologist at first, and then I wanted to be a journalist when I first got into high school. I had a drama teacher that had put together a newscast project, and he asked me if I wanted to do that, so I said yes, and so there’s this footage of me somewhere sitting in front of the camera doing this news reading to camera! And so I did that and I liked it, but I was more interested in the technical side really; I was more interested in loading up the tapes and sorting the equipment out. And at the same time as that I was taking a film studies course at my high school. So I was trying to figure out if somehow I could reconcile film making with journalism, and that led me into making documentaries for a while. On top of all of that I was also playing basketball on a scholarship, but I didn’t want to play college basketball, so in the end I settled on film studies.

SFC: Really - so do you think you could’ve made it somewhere in Basketball if you’d have been motivated?

RC: Oh I don’t know about that; I wasn’t that good – just tall!

SFC: So how long have you been interested in feature films then? Where did that interest come from?

RC: Well I’ve always liked the movies and drama and things, but I never really realised that I could have a career in that. Everyone in my family plays sports, but I’m the only artist. So it was only later on that I realised that it was possible to make something more of that.

SFC: And how do you feel about the level of competition out there from fellow screenwriters? I know that tens of thousands of scripts are registered each year with the WGA. Does that faze you at all?

RC: Not really, there are a lot of talented people everywhere, but I think it comes down to how much hard work you’re prepared to put in. At my school there are a lot of talented people, who quite frankly are a lot more talented than I am, but they’re lazy, well some of them are! So when it comes down to it, it’s about how hard are you pushing. So long as you’ve got good ideas I think you’ll be okay. I’m not too worried about being successful; maybe I should be, I don’t know, I’m just not.

SFC: And you’ve got God on your side too.

RC: That’s true. See what I’m doing now is not what I thought I’d be doing a year ago, you know talking to you in London and doing all this other stuff.

SFC: So if I had asked you five years ago where you’d like be in five years time, what would you have said to that?

RC: Well five years ago, what was I doing? I was 15 at the time. Well I wanted to be Oprah basically! I wanted to star in journalism, have my own show, make documentaries and travel the whole world. But I don’t know what I would’ve said really because at that age five years just seemed so far off to me that I wouldn’t even have been able to imagine I would be where I am now. I was too young, just figuring things out; I didn’t really know what place God should have in my life and my career – that’s something I only just realised a couple of years ago. (continued on next page...)