Why Kelsey Grammer’s Jesus Freak Movie Made Film History

Have you heard the good news about our Lord and Savior, Kelsey Grammer? A whole lot of people did this past weekend, as ticket buyers piled a hefty $15.5 million atop the collection plate for the new film Jesus Revolution. It also landed an A+ from CinemaScore, the polling body that grades films based on how satisfied their audiences are—making this the historic fourth film in a row from Jesus Revolution’s director to do so.

The actor who made his name as TV’s Frasier portrays pastor Chuck Smith, an engaging orator on a mission to heal and enlighten the masses with his velvety baritone voice. In the late ’60s, he runs a musty SoCal church turned upside-down by an unexpected deluge of flower children seeking peace and love of the Christly variety.

Of course, their hippy-dippy ways are at odds with Chuck’s squaresville traditionalism. With time, he finds it in himself to accept their folk-rock and long-hairedness; Chuck eventually becomes a figurehead for the nascent “Jesus freak” movement, which peaked with the 1971 Time magazine cover giving the film its title. It’s a wholesome, inspiring tale, though the most gripping part comes after the end, when you go home and read the “Controversy” section of the real Chuck Smith’s Wikipedia page.

The pre-credits title cards reframe all this as an origin story for the megachurch reigned over by Chuck, self-fashioned prophet Lonnie Frisbee (Jesus-lookalike Jonathan Roumie, presumably cast for his experience on two previous gigs as the son of God), and their converted disciple Greg Laurie (Joel Courtney). The real-life footage of these men before their thousands-strong congregations is an apt end point for a film turning into its own shrewd money-making enterprise.

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While most mid-budget original titles flounder to find viewership, Jesus Revolution has over-performed by catering to one of the most readily rallied viewing blocs. Its efforts at aisle-crossing tolerance venture little, flattering the open-mindedness of church folks willing to extend their grace to slightly younger, funkier, predominantly white Christians. But now this feel-good softball empathy has clicked with offline audiences outside of the zeitgeist, the same sort of qualified popularity that’s made Yellowstone a ratings-topper, despite a core demo of guys who tuck their shirt into their jeans.

There are two Americas, and the Erwin brothers are huge in the other one. Director-writer-producers Andrew and Jon specialize in faith-based entertainment that shoots for the middle, their stated goal to open up the revival tent to the widest possible swath of nonbelievers. In interviews, Andrew describes their creative vantage as “firmly rooted within the church, but it’s focused out;” their movies spin uplifting biographies of the devout into meat-and-potatoes genre pieces that go down easy and keep their proselytizing to a mild preach.

In keeping with the alignment of most practicing Christians, the Erwins have staked out a moderate path that’s palatable to the mainstream, their output the cinematic equivalent of attending service every Sunday instead of going all-in on rabid zealotry. And also, like so much godly thought-leading, the bit pays. On the official Jesus Revolution publicity site, the menu’s second link leads to step-by-step instructions for groups looking to mass-book tickets.

Alabama boys born to a state senator, music video vets Erwin and Erwin got their proper start on a documentary called The Cross and the Tower. It offers a handful of post-9/11 profiles in courage woven together by a catchy anecdote one might expect from an aunt’s email forward: As first responders sifted through the rubble of the World Trade Center, they found a pair of steel beams miraculously stuck together at a perpendicular angle—you know, like a cross.

Under the guise of paying tribute to nurses, firefighters, and citizen heroes with smeary, post-apocalyptic-Thomas-Kinkade cinematography of Ground Zero, the 53-minute featurette recast a national tragedy as a crisis of faith, endured by following God’s grace. The segments reaffirm their subjects’ pre-established perspectives, meeting the question of what deity would cause such enormous suffering with an age-old answer: It’s all part of a plan far above our mortal pay grade, so don’t worry about it.

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As any franchise stooge can attest, a filmmaker can get pretty far by giving people what they want, and what is the Bible if not an endlessly rebootable piece of open-source IP? The Erwins’ early fiction projects fitted traditional Christian narratives of sin, absolution, and salvation into historical footnotes that could accommodate their party line and translate to broadly salable products. 2011’s October Baby dramatized the soul-searching of one Gianna Jesssen, born despite an attempted abortion; 2015’s Woodlawn gave a soft-focus biopic treatment to barrier-busting Black football player Tony Nathan, his relationship with the Almighty inspired by none other than the Erwins’ father Hank. (He’s played by Sean Astin, previously a source of spiritual support to Frodo Baggins.) 2014’s Moms’ Night Out, to its credit, beat Bad Moms to the punch by a couple years.

The brothers spent this period refining their approach, as they learned that partisanship fares best when packaged in an innocuous outlook. The noxious anti-choice messaging in October Baby, predicated on the notion that abortion is a deeply personal slight to a child who will grow up wounded by it, sticks out from the rest of the Erwin oeuvre in the overtness they’d shed over the following efforts. Not incidentally, it also remains their lowest-grossing scripted project, their subsequent dialing-back of culture-war rhetoric yielding more profitable results.

The brothers’ drift away from the fringe may have precipitated the 2018 schism with the former Pure Flix (now rebranded as Pinnacle Peak Pictures), the production/distribution outfit that had backed them up to that point. The studio specializes in deeper-dish button-pushing wingnuttery: the holy hokum of the God’s Not Dead trilogy; the bizarre, Mike Pence-style courtship of Old Fashioned; the reprehensible Columbine invocations of I’m Not Ashamed.

2019’s Unplanned was executive produced by My Pillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell, a full-bore MAGA kook a few notches away from Grammer’s comparatively reined-in Trumpism. If Pinnacle both represents and services the far right, the Erwins have laid claim to a slice of the center-right that doesn’t make its saner occupants feel like their brain needs a shower. (To follow through on the metaphor, a left-leaning Christian film would be something like Paul Schrader’s First Reformed or Martin Scorsese’s Silence; these offer critical perspectives on the institutional rot eating away at a noble system of belief.)

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The Erwins broke off from Pinnacle to form Kingdom Story Company, a shingle churning out God-fearing content for bona fide Hollywood player Lionsgate. Envisioned by Jon Erwin as a “Christian Marvel or a Christian Pixar”—the mind simply reels to imagine how far this idiom can be taken, all the way to “Christian A24” or “Christian Kino Lorber”—the company has streamlined its process to a steadier, more prolific clip. It scored an $86 million smash with I Can Only Imagine, which retells the pre-fame days of Christian rock group MercyMe.

Two years later, they tried to repeat their success to lesser returns with I Still Believe, in which Hot Archie Who Fucks strums the guitar as singer-songwriter Jeremy Camp. Following a limited-release documentary about the worship music they hold so dear, the Erwins returned to the gridiron for American Underdog and contoured the life of quarterback Kurt Warner to match the beats of Woodlawn. (Ironically enough, American Underdog barely broke even due, in part, to a release date of Dec. 25. Observant Christians generally aren’t the ones going to the multiplex on Christmas Day. Likewise, I Still Believe’s lackluster take can be traced back to the perhaps-pointed decision to move forward with a theatrical run during the first week of pandemic lockdown.)

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Like Jesus Revolution, these films feature actors simpatico with the cause and recognizable to Boomers, their names and faces a tacit form of validation meant to distinguish these real-boy capital-M movies from the shoddy propaganda of Pinnacle. And yet they’re all united in an abiding promise to leave opinions unchallenged and pieties untested. Their first allegiance is not to God, but to the customers they need to keep showing up.

Just as Pinnacle reaches out to the sensibilities of our most disgruntled to stoke their outrage and approve their prejudices, the Erwins do the same for those fancying themselves more reasonable and tolerant. They’ve squeezed into the sweet spot between honest, rigorous virtue and the reactionary fanaticism carried out under its auspices. It’s a dependable, self-perpetuating hustle, which can have a way of making analysis feel futile. In all likelihood, the receipts will hold, attendance unaffected by the lukewarm reviews from a dwindling number of interested outlets.

However, there’s also a possible upside to the longevity guaranteed by these steady paydays. Sooner or later, their Biblical “period musical” project titled The Drummer Boy will come together and bestow upon us a worthy successor to Cats.

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