Andy Tilsley
What's your thing?
Sports Journalism, Social Action, Media
Andy became part of the Leadership Team at ChristChurch London after spending seven years with the BBC as a news and sports journalist, primarily in radio. He’s married to Joy and they live in Putney.
Church: Christ Church London
My Articles
Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Andy Tilsley
Wednesday 3rd November 2010
My confession by rogiro
Walden Media don’t just ‘do’ films. The company not only seeks to create engaging cinema, but also works with teachers, museums and national organisations to impact education, raise literacy levels, and provide thought-provoking entertainment.
Started less than a decade ago, the firm has made an enormous impact on the film industry. ‘Amazing Grace’, ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’, ‘Bridge to Terabithia’ and ‘Charlotte’s Web’ are just some of the movies they’ve produced in that time, breaking records along the way with their innovative, culture-transforming education programme. This Christmas the latest movie in the Narnia series is released – Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Co-Founder and President of Walden, Michael Flaherty, has long been an inspiring model for anyone who wants to make a lasting cultural impact for the better. I recently had the opportunity to chat to Michael and find out a little more about the story behind Walden Media…
Can you briefly explain the vision behind Walden Media?
Walden Media was started to provide quality entertainment for families. We believe that quality entertainment is inherently educational. We have hung our corporate hat on our ability to create entertainment that ‘delights and instructs’, in a sense. We make movies we can take our own children to, without flinching or worrying. We make movies they and we would like to see, movies we’ll walk away with something to consider and reflect upon.
The image-obsessed Hollywood isn’t the easiest ‘marketplace’ for a film company with morals - what challenges have you faced in setting up Walden and what’s the reaction from Hollywood been generally?
I think it’s a great misnomer to apply as a blanket, to Hollywood—that it is somehow inherently amoral or immoral. What it is, is a business, a set of corporations, and to that end, maximizing sales comes first.
Now, with that said, I’ll grant that as a parent it often seems as though the appeal is to the lowest common denominator. But for us at Walden it’s been different. We have seen that a compelling story, generally for us adapted from great children’s literature, is welcomed by audiences and successful at the box office. We hope our films cause moviegoers to step up, not down. And the tradition of stories, of storytelling as a means to offer or point to goes back to the time of Christ and His parables.
Obviously films like ‘Amazing Grace’ and the Narnia movies have been huge successes - what are your hopes for ‘Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ - out this December?
We hope that it delights and we hope that it edifies. We hope that it is successful and we hope that it makes children and families want to keep reading the Chronicles of Narnia. We hope to engender many discussions about what C.S. Lewis meant when he said that one of Eustace Scrubb’s big problems was that ‘he read the wrong books.’ What then are the right books? Why those? Lewis is asking us to consider how we navigate our own voyage through life. What makes up our moral compass, how does great literature help with the voyage, and in what ways? Who are the people we turn to when we have a crisis of faith or belief? And Lewis’ genius is that he doesn’t preach and he doesn’t tell, he offers, through story and lets children figure it out - because he knows they can. One of the things I love best about Lewis is his complete faith in the faith of children - to see and to get it. I cringe when I read books that explain the Chronicles. I see them instead as parables; the more you think about them, the more their meaning goes on expanding.
I understand you’re hoping that C.S.Lewis’ ‘Screwtape Letters’ could be made into a movie - where are you up to with this?
We are no longer developing it but the project is in good hands with my friend Ralph Winter. It’s a tall order though. ‘From whose perspective would you tell the story?’, is one key question. Screwtape’s? The patient’s? Wormwood’s? And in the present day or during World War II? These are basic, central questions. Lewis thought of the time during World War II as morally his most productive and fruitful –paradoxically—so what happens if you shift the struggles in Screwtape to our modern-day, even though what Lewis has written is timeless? I am confident that Ralph will figure it out though.
What other films does Walden have in the pipeline? (Any sneaky cheeky exclusives would be welcome here!!!!)
We have an adaptation of American children’s author Beverly Cleary’s RAMONA QUIMBY books coming out in July. It’s called RAMONA AND BEEZUS and it stars Selena Gomez. It’s a riot and it’s very sweet. In the fall we have a documentary about public education in America coming out. It’s directed by Davis Guggenheim, who received an Academy Award for his film AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. This film is titled WAITING FOR SUPERMAN. It’s a deeply affecting film in my opinion - unsettling, in the best of ways. It’s an unflinching look at education and why and how it might better serve all children, ‘other people’s children’ not just our own.
How do you pick the stories that will be made into films?
There isn’t really one set process. We keep our ear to the ground, look and listen, and see what people are reading and what’s happening in the world around us. We listen to what kids have to say, or try to. But parents, teachers and librarians continue to be our greatest source of ideas.
And what about personal plans for yourself or other ideas to impact culture?
We want to tell stories that entertain and are worth telling, and if we can continue to do that, everything else is gravy!
What would you like to be remembered for?
Somebody who loved God with all his heart and all his might and adored every minute with his wife and children. My quixotic dream is to help play some kind of role in helping the United States achieve 100% literacy by the time children turn ten years old.
How has your faith helped you in your own journey over the years?
It would be difficult (if not vanity) to attempt to put this into words. It helps me every waking minute of my life, whether I know it or not. Most of all it has helped me understand the realm of the supernatural. I am particularly fond of the passage in Hebrews that talks about the substance of faith being a hope in the unseen. I cling to that one quite a bit when I am trying something new. My faith has also helped me understand that I can’t accomplish anything on my own strength, industry, or initiative.
We’re wanting to encourage Christians to play a shaping role in business, education, government, finance, media - every sphere of life. What advice would you give to Christians with a vision to shape culture?
Well, first the question would be why would this encouragement be limited to Christians? This is something everyone can work on, or are we singling ourselves out for the wrong reasons? The idea that stories offer us something without hitting us on the head, that one can see one’s self in a good story, that, in the words of one of the characters in the film and play Shadowlands, ‘We read books to know we’re not alone’. Well that’s a pretty good focus to stay attentive to! Good stories offer us what Tolstoy called ‘windows on divinity.’ In the beginning was the Word…
Where do you think the biggest needs are in terms of shaping culture?
In teaching people to be good readers, of life and culture and books. To understand what’s happening to them and to reflect on their own experiences. Art helps us do this. And in the telling and making of stories for children, understanding that children understand how stories work. They don’t need big people to explain them to them. It’s sort of like something Isadora Duncan once said, ‘If I could tell you what I meant I wouldn’t need to dance.’ The story IS the explanation, it’s the exploration, and doesn’t need some heavy handed adult to say THIS is what THIS means. Lewis would hate that. But we do it all the time. Lewis talks about this in a wonderful essay he wrote called ‘On Three Ways of Writing for Children’. It’s one of my favorites. Lewis trusted children - and he wrote for them as equals, in one sense.
Doing this (shaping culture) isn’t without its challenges or its critics - how have you handled this?
You don’t set out to shape culture, you set out to tell good stories onscreen or in print and the stories work their magic on us as a people, as a culture, or they do not.
What do you think are the biggest challenges coming up in the west in the next 10 years for people who want to positively impact culture?
Not bowing to commercialism at the expense of taste, or soundness or integrity. And learning to listen to those with whom we (think) have least in common.
Any plans to develop an office branch or an equivalent of Walden Media in London or the UK?
We would love to have an office in Europe. How about we compromise and we put one in Galway where my grandparents grew up?!
Hannah More: my hero
Andy Tilsley
Wednesday 20th January 2010
Hannah More as painted by H.W. Pickersgill
In her day she sold more books than her contemporary Jane Austen; she was described by the great Samuel Johnson as the most skilled female writer of her generation; she produced plays, wrote poetry and interacted with the society-influencers of her day all the while courageously challenging the ideas of those she met; she played a key role in the abolition of the slave trade, donated large sums of money to worthy causes and gave her life to reforming moral values in this nation.
Her name is Hannah More, and she’s one of my heroes. What William Wilberforce was among men, More was among women.
At just 29 years old she arrived in a London that had given itself over to decadence and indulgence. Annual gin consumption had risen as high as three gallons per person; addictive gambling was commonplace, sexual promiscuity the norm, and church attendance dwindling. She believed the numbing of moral values was a natural consequence of the visible decline of religion, and so she gave her life to bringing about a moral revolution. And she succeeded.
Those ‘stiff upper lip’ values of character, integrity and morality that are often characterised in re-enactments of Austen’s famous novels today are owed in part to Hannah More and her passion for transforming society. She won the fight for the minds and opinions of her generation, she made ‘goodness’ fashionable and Britain was forever different for the part she played in it.
Over the next 100 years, there will be a clean sweep of humanity, and none of us will be here to see what our nation looks like then. Given that we’ll spend the best part of 70,000 hours in our places of work over our life-times, if we’re at all motivated by More’s example, that’s the place we’ll most likely bring about change and leave our worlds better off for our involvement within it.
There’s bad news though. This isn’t exactly an easy task. There’s no silver bullet nor quick-fix solution. And our battles will look very different. The fight for justice in politics is different from the battle for cleaner streets in your community, and the challenge of changing the media’s obsession with sex will look very different from bringing about strong family values in education.
Nonetheless, this seminar aims to provide opportunities for networking with like-minded people, offer practical help on taking steps forward in the workplace, and bring broad brush-strokes that help paint the picture of what could be accomplished over a life-time.
“If there ever was a period in which the demand for elevating the tone of Christianity, principles and conduct was more imperative than another, that period is the present.”
Hannah More, ‘Thought on the Importance of Manners of the Great to General Society’ (T Cadell, 1799)
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