Stan Williams works to inject Catholic themes in secular and religious films
Producer and filmmaker Stan Williams sits in his home office in Northville, surrounded by his recent projects and work. Williams, a convert to Catholicism, has made it his career's mission to showcase the beauty of the Christian faith through compelling film and storytelling.NORTHVILLE — A story must be compelling before it can teach the audience anything. This isn’t lost on local filmmaker Stan Williams.
Williams has been making Catholic-themed films along with other Hollywood projects for the past decade. For Williams, making films about faith is part of his personal mission statement: To discover and promote divine truth to those within his sphere of influence.
“All of Christianity tells the greatest story ever told,” Williams said. “But what captivated me were the reasons within the universe, the system of it all. Everything on Earth is God’s creation.”
For Williams, these motivations led him not only to making faith-based films, but making his stories compelling so people will want to watch them.
“I have a hard time watching some Christian movies,” Williams said, explaining his distaste for movies with too much “preaching” and not enough dialogue and storytelling. “There are films like God’s Not Dead and Heaven is for Real which are tyrannical and don’t engage the audience.”
Williams said it’s important for filmmakers to couple God’s message with a compelling story arch and relatable characters. To do this, Williams doesn’t quote Scripture, but instills natural law and moral truths to get the theme of the film across.
“A good story will pit an evil vice with a righteous virtue,” Williams said. “The character learns though trial and error, and the audience goes through a simulation. Look at the film Noah (2014); it’s a struggle between justice and mercy and trying to do the will of God, but he misunderstands God’s will until the end of the film.”
Williams thinks the best films about God’s love focus on truths found in nature. This logical and holistic approach to spreading the Good News through mass media reflects Williams’ own conversion to Catholicism.
Williams was born an evangelical Christian before experiencing a falling out with his childhood faith and Protestantism in general. He said he was not ready to give up on God, but felt there was something he was missing.
Filmmaker Stan Williams holds up a book written by his uncle, John Williams, on one of his ancestors; missionary work in the South Pacific. The book inspired Williams to pursue a career in Christian media.“I had problems with the evangelical church and its logical inconsistencies,” Williams said. “It was in 1997 that I stumbled onto St. James Catholic Church in Ferndale. I found a faith that is centered in the Bible and follows a logical pattern. It makes theological sense; it all adds up.
“My rejection of Protestantism came from me feeling it didn’t make sense in natural law,” Williams said. “I saw God in nature and science, and I stumbled into Catholicism and found it to be rational, logical and embraced natural law.”
Following his conversion, Williams, who has been making films since 1972, produced the Catholic Paradox, a documentary about local Deacon Alex Jones, a former evangelical minister who converted to Catholicism while researching and discovering the history of the early Church.
Catholic Paradox was the start of Nineveh’s Crossing Media Distribution and Marketing, a Catholic production company that has produced more than 40 programs about Catholic teachings, and Common Ground, a book and series of films on what Catholics and Protestants can learn from each other.
The company evolved into “Nineveh’s Crossing Presents,” a television series about the Christian faith with a Catholic perspective, which features on Faith TV Network, The Miracle Channel, Catholic TV-Boston (which is affiliated with the Catholic Television Network of Detroit) and some Protestant stations.
“Nineveh’s Crossing confirmed my calling,” Williams said. “It confirmed that God wanted me to be a producer and a writer, to proclaim the Word without using the Gospels.”
Williams’ biggest claim to fame in Hollywood is The Moral Premise: Harnessing Virtue and Vice for Box Office Success. The book, released in 2006, details the importance of movies having a moral premise in order to captivate the audience and tell a compelling story.
“I got a call from Tracey Nyberg, saying she was looking for me to do some work for her boss,” Williams said. “I asked who her boss was, and she said, ‘Will Smith.’ I was in Michigan at the time, so it didn’t connect for me for a while that it was that Will Smith.”
Williams has met Smith on several occasions to work on professional products, and Williams signed Smith’s copy of The Moral Premise, which had several highlighted sections and markings in the book.
When working with secular movie producers, Williams doesn’t directly incorporate the Gospels into his work, but instead works to spread Catholic morals in the script, teaching God’s message that way.
“When talking with Hollywood producers that are not religious or even anti-Christian, I don’t bring up the Bible, but I help create stories that are consistent with Catholic theology,” Williams said. “I explain the Catholic viewpoint, and how it relates to storytelling. Then, the moral values in the film come from Catholic values.”
Today, Williams is working on his memoir, Growing up Christian: Searching for a Reasonable Faith in the Heartland of America and editing the off-Broadway production, “The Cross and the Light,” a musical depicting Christ’s Crucifixion through his Ascension, which was performed this spring in several parishes of the Archdiocese of Detroit.
Through all of his work, Williams likes to think he is living out his personal mission, using his talents and position in the media to spread God’s truth.
“I want to produce stories that are embraced with truth and natural law,” Williams said. “To be, in general, embracing Catholicism, because that’s where truth is found. Catholic scholars came up with the scientific method. Theology comes from the Bible, science comes from nature. Both of them are true, because both of them come from God.”
Stan Williams
For more on Stan Williams and his work, visit www.stanwilliams.com.
