Christian PR Man Goes on 'The Road' With Movie About Post-Apocalyptic America

Larry Ross, a Christian PR man extraordinaire, has been working to take ‘The Road’ to a religious audience in search of buzz, box office and discussion

By Bill Berkowitz
 
Two movies with doomsday scenarios highlight this year’s pre-holiday Cineplex fare.  “2012,” a special effects spectacular starring John Cusack, is based on the Mayan calendar, whose end date -- not the end of the world most scholars agree -- is December 21, 2012. In its first weekend at the box office it took in $225 million -- $65 million domestically and $160 million internationally. The other film, “The Road,” is adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, and opened in theaters on Wednesday, November 25. (McCarthy is the author of “No Country for Old Men” and “All The Pretty Horses.”) “The Road” is a complicated tale about a father and son attempting to survive in post apocalyptic America.
 
Larry Ross, president of A. Larry Ross Communications -- a Christian media company -- was asked by the movie’s production company to take the film to the faith-based community. Ross believes that since “The Road” has already generated significant buzz as well as Oscar chatter, Christians should get in on the action: "The impact [of this film] will not be in the theater but over coffee when discussions happen," said Ross.
 
Ross recently wrote in The Huffington Post that while Barack Obama’s book, “The Audacity of Hope” was “a focal point of last year's presidential race …. ‘The Road’ … goes beyond audacity to authenticity, as its dark vision of chaos and calamity is infiltrated by a ray of hope. The world has ended, all potential and purpose seems to be destroyed and only the very faintest traces of life remain.”
 
“Yet the story that unfolds in this epic journey oozes with expectation and anticipation of two individuals with a will not to merely survive, but to live by the 'good guy' code in search of something better around the next bend. Their inter-generational dynamic and dialogue that leads to an eventual role/responsibility reversal highlights the importance of family, the desire for community and the bond of love that can overcome any obstacle.
 
“Hope, while intangible, is necessary for human existence. Without it, there is no reason to persevere or carry on. In The Road, the father has a mission -- to press on toward their destination. Eventually, he gives his son a commission -- to keep going. In a world void of morality, they choose hope over fear; but sadly, it is only a horizontal hope, based on the limitations of their "boot straps" approach.”
 
“Like a lot of great literature, ‘The Road’ is open to interpretation,” Rob Boston, Senior Policy Analyst with Americans United, recently told me via an e-mail. “In some ways, the book could even be read as a humanistic parable. The world depicted in ‘The Road’ is so nightmarish and unpleasant that one is tempted to ask, ‘Has God abandoned humankind?’
 
“The boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and his father (Vigo Mortensen) are left to rely on one another, and the bond between them speaks to the undying love parents have for their children – a message that resonates with atheist parents as much as Christian ones,” Boston pointed out.
 
“I suppose one could read the book as a metaphor for God’s love for his creation, but to me that message was in no way obvious in the book. Literal-minded fundamentalists are not likely to make that reach.” Even if the R-rated film contained “more overt religious messages,” Boston could not envision “conservative Christians flocking to the multiplexes to see a movie about an apocalyptic wasteland populated by shell-shocked cannibals and somehow seeing that as an affirmation of God’s awesome power.”
 
For Ross, the film provides an opening for church leaders to “participate in a robust spiritual discussion. 
 
To that end, Ross has been instrumental in organizing “advance screenings for church leaders nationwide.” A “website featuring free sermons and discussion guides” has been produced (http://www.alrcnewskitchen.com/theroad/), and “a special trailer with extra scenes underscoring the film’s moral message” was developed, Entertainment Weekly recently reported.  
 
“’The Road’ is not a religious film, let alone a Christian one,” The Christian Post recently pointed out. “But the deep questions raised and the spiritual themes embedded present ‘a unique entry point for those in the faith community to share the hope of the Gospel in a hopeless world,’ said Ross.
 
Why did the film’s producers call on Ross? “Over the past few years, I’ve noticed a greater emphasis on popular culture -- especially film -- at events like the ‘Values Voter Summit,’” said Boston, “At September’s event, a film called ‘To Save a Life’ was hyped, and some of the people involved with it spoke.
 
“Clearly the Religious Right wants to use the medium of film to spread its message of how society and culture should be ordered,” Boston added. “They want to go back to the days when movies were ‘wholesome’ and religion was never portrayed in a negative light – think 1950s with Spencer Tracy playing a friendly priest. The Religious Right used to rage against Hollywood; now they want to co-opt it.”
 
Over the past few years, A. Larry Ross Communications (ALRC) has been involved with pre-release publicity for a spate of movies. While some have not fared particularly well at the box office, others have far-exceeded expectations. “Left Behind,” a film based on one of the series of mega-best-selling apocalyptic novels of longtime Religious Right leader Tim LaHaye, and his co-author Jerry Jenkins, fell flat at the box office, although it did wind up selling more than 3 million videos.“Evan Almighty,” starring Steve Carrell, was a high-budget film ($175 million) that grossed $170 million worldwide.
 
However the success of actor/director Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" -- whose budget was $30 million and which took in more than $600 million worldwide – set the stage for Ross’ deeper engagement with Hollywood.  
 
In light of the success of “The Passion,” “some major studios saw there was money to be made here and began talking about reaching out to a religious audience by producing more films with religious themes,” Boston pointed out. “The problem is, many of the subsequent films did poorly at the box office. How many people really want to see a lecture on the importance of marriage featuring Kirk Cameron?"
 
'Trailblazing Christian P.R.'
 
For more than 25-years, Larry Ross, the head of the Dallas, Texas-based A. Larry Ross Communications, has been marketing conservative evangelical Christianity. A New York Times profile pointed out a few years back that Ross was a “trailblaz[er] in the new world of Christian P.R."
 
According to the company’s website, it "is a full-service media and public relations agency founded in 1994 to ‘restore faith in media,' provide ‘value-added P.R. that defines values' and give Christian messages relevance and meaning in mainstream media.
 
"ALRC assists Christian-focused organizations, associations, ministries and churches in telling their stories through the Christian and secular media in the context of traditional news values.”
 
"For more than a decade, ALRC has remained the nation's most-respected firm in Christian-focused communications. The Agency operates at the intersection of faith and culture, specializing in crossover communications projects and processes emanating from or targeted to the Christian market -- both Protestant and Catholic."
 
While Christian-based PR firms aren't particularly new phenomena, Ross's group is among the few that have risen to the top in a crowded field. Mark DeMoss, who worked with the Rev. Jerry Falwell for eight years before starting the DeMoss Group in Atlanta in 1991, also "enjoys comparable status," the New York Times noted.
 
And while the groups, campaigns and individuals represented by Ross' client list are prestigious, it is "the Kingdom of God itself [that] is a client of sorts," the New York Times pointed out. "Publicity, marketing and branding are his ministry. So the real question becomes, Why does God need someone to sell him?"
 
Ross’ firm was not alone in pushing "The Passion of the Christ" to its lofty box office heights. As many as 15 companies took on a series of marketing and public relations tasks. Ross differentiates public relations from marketing -- his company does both -- and he “works with many [other firms] act[ing] as a sort of Vernon Jordan of the Bible Belt, making introductions and forging strategic alliances," the Times noted.
 
During any given week ALRC could churn out numerous press releases – via Facebook, Twitter and more traditional venues – for myriad evangelical Christian clients: promoting “good, clean fun” in “The Cheesy Adventure of Captain Mac.A.Roni” – “an award-winning, original animated film” from Daystar Television network; questioning health care reform on behalf of the Joni and Friends (JAF) disability ministry and its public policy initiative, the Christian Institute on Disability (CID); flacking for the Kentucky-based Creation Museum; and touting a series of websites run by Global Media Outreach (GMO) “dedicated to share the good news of Christ with the branches of the U.S. armed forces.”   
 
It was while working with Walter Bennett Communications that Ross first started up with the Rev. Billy Graham. And in 1994, Ross, and his wife Autumn, took what she characterized as a "bungee jump for God," and opened up its Dallas-based firm.
 
Ross has consistently worked with Pastor Rick Warren, and successfully mainstreamed the image of Bishop T.D. Jakes, the pastor of the Potter's House in South Dallas, one of the fastest-growing churches in the country. Jakes created the Metroplex Economic Development Corporation, an entity that sponsors homeownership conferences and organizes training sessions for would-be entrepreneurs. Ross saw that Jakes’ story as not only a religious story, but also a “business story.” He grabbed onto the charismatic pastor’s “efforts to empower African-American youth,” the New York Times reported, and, thanks to Ross “Jakes landed a Page 1 profile in the Wall Street Journal. … the preacher's first major national exposure."
 
American United’s Rob Boston allowed that he was not surprised to hear about the production team’s plans “to promote” ‘The Road’ to a Christian audience. “They would pitch ‘Saw V’ to a Christian audience if they thought they could make money. The studios want as many people as possible to see any film.”
 
And while Boston admits to not being “a film critic,” he is “skeptical” that “The Road” “can be pitched successfully to a fundamentalist audience. Fundamentalist tend to be literal minded. They enjoyed ‘The Passion of the Christ’ because it was the straight-up passion narrative with all of the blood you could stand. I’ve read ‘The Road,’ and while there are biblical references in it, they are nuanced and cloaked in metaphor.”
 
According to Entertainment Weekly, after watching an early cut of the film, Cormac McCarthy had “no doubt about” the film’s “spiritual resonance.” The film’s director John Hillcoat said that McCarthy had only one comment: “He said, ‘It would be great to hear the word God one or two more times.”  

During the past few years, Ross has had an impressive run, although he has been forced to deal with the occasional bump in the road. The story of Ashley Smith -- the Atlanta woman who was supposedly freed after reading passages from Rick Warren's "The Purpose-Driven Life" to her captor, an escaped murder suspect named Brian Nichols -- began to go south when it was revealed that  Smith had also given Nichols crystal meth. "Ross helped Warren respond to this mainstream reaction by emphasizing their story, which in the words of Warren's chief of staff was that ‘God can use anybody. Here, God used a tweaked-out speed freak to get a guy to realize he'd done something wrong and turn himself in.’"
 
Not too long ago Ross rushed to the defense of Rev. Graham when a Nixon tape was released that had Graham not only assenting to anti-Semitic comments made by Nixon, but also making some of his own. And charges of anti-Semitism in “The Passion of the Christ,” raised a stir within the Jewish community.
 
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