On Tuesday’s Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am – Gill and Leahy talked with Actor, Director, Producer, Kevin Sorbo about his new movie, crybaby leftists, and being a Christian in Hollywood.
Gill: Kevin Sorbo is a actor, an activist, a father, a husband and is one of those whose helped lead the resurgence of the quality of Christian films in this country that you’re seeing do better at the box office and as everything in Hollywood, if somebody does a movie about a you know, a particular topic and it does well then you’re going to get twenty movies on that same topic. You’re starting to see more of the Christian movies, you’re also seeing more of the quote “quasi Christian movies” as Hollywood not wanting to go all in with a true Christian message but wanting to get those Christian dollars at the box office. And Kevin Sorbo with a whole host of these great movies. They knocked him off in that first, in the series about the atheist professor challenging the student, “Let There Be Light” his new Christmas movie – a lot coming out – and Kevin, good to have you with us this morning!
Sorbo: You forgot to mention director and producer but that’s ok. (Chuckles)
Gill: Well and family man, I mean you’ve started to put the kids, you’re making this a whole family business. Your wife Sam, the kids are in the movies now like “Let There Be Light“, now your writing books, I mean, you’re doing it all, your multi-media.
Sorbo:Â I appreciate it and the movie you mentioned before that is “Gods Not Dead,” that did quite well and in the history of Hollywood movies that movie had a seventy times return on it’s investment, and puts it in the top five in every movie made in the history of Hollywood and yet we couldn’t get on like the Today Show or Good Morning America with it because it had God in the title.
Gill: Have you noticed after they killed you off the second and third didn’t do quite as well…(Leahy laughs)
Sorbo: It’s been an amusing six years so I must have done something wrong, I don’t know. (Laughter)
Gill: “Let There Be Light” was an interesting one as well and again you were featured as this top level atheist who was struggling with his own challenges, and again your wife Sam and your sons were in the film as well. What was it like working with family?
Sorbo reminisced about how he met his wife Sam, who speaks five languages fluenty and was at the time a bio chemical engineering major at Duke. The couple met in New Zealand and how every week they sent a beautiful girl down their and joked about how it was a great dating service. Leahy interjected by asking how things are in California right now with the fires.
Sorbo: So now we are. It was pretty nasty I gotta say. I left Tuesday, I had to go speak at an event in Indianapolis and the fire started that night and my wife got ahold of me at midnight and said we have to evacuate and I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night because I hated the fact that I had to stick around for this speaking event. She goes look, “There’s nothing you can do we have to get out of here.” And on TV at three o’clock in the morning they showed an aerial view of my area and I saw three houses burning in my neighborhood because they laid out the streets and it was pitch black but I knew what houses they were. So when I was able to get back here, the next door neighbors house was gone, up above him that house was gone, across the street gone, the fire came up on three sides of my house and on one side stopped just three feet away. And I don’t know why the fire stopped. It burned some the outside furniture of my house but the house was untouched. It’s a miracle the thing didn’t burn down it’s unbelievable.
Leahy: So your house is in Thousand Oaks. Where are you physically right now? Are you back in your house are you in a rental?
Sorbo: Back in the house. The evacuation was lifted yesterday but I’ve been staying here the last three nights…my neighbor across the street his house is still standing, he said he never left and he saw the fire come flying through up to fifty, sixty mile an hour winds. He says it was just like somebody dropped a massive bomb he says it was unbelievable. He didn’t want to leave, he spent hours hosing down his house. You know I’m just going to be here, you know I wanted to, I put up some small smoky fires around the house in the burnt areas just to make sure that the winds didn’t pick up anything and blow them into other places. You know, I guess I broke the law like a lot of people who didn’t evacuate.
Leahy: Has the danger passed now or could it possibly come back?
Sorbo: You know it’s been bad for the last two days again we’re back to fifty mile an hour winds it’s pretty nasty. Malibu is hitting the brunt of it right now, and unfortunately the winds have shifted again. They were, all day yesterday they were heading up towards the ocean which is great, because that’s the path that the fire was going up that way. Now they’ve shifted from a North to South wind so I know now down they are heading down toward Anaheim and Alfaries and other stuff like that they’ll certainly get the smoke but hopefully the fire’s not going to follow but it is very windy out right now.
Gill: And that’s what continues to spur the flames, the sparks carries them and then you’ve got another fire to deal with. Kevin Sorbo is with us this morning. We’re going to talk more about the whole Christian film industry and how again there were some great Christian films early, “Facing the Giants” still one of my all time favorites, but there are more and better one’s and Kevin Sorbo, a big person responsible for that increased quality and quantity of Christians films. He’s got a new one out, a Christmas movie and working on another one that’s getting some pushback from the Left, “Reliant.” Because they’ve given it an ‘R’ rating for no good reason. By the way, “Let There Be Light” now being turned into a book that he and his wife Sam have done. And despite the help of our friend Sean Hannity that thing has been amazingly successful both the movie and the book coming out as well Kevin.
Sorbo: Yeah, it’s been in theaters last November, December, January, please go check it out you can get it at Amazon streaming or go to Walmart right now because we have packages with the book. So “Let There Be Light”. It’s a wonderful movie, a wonderful family movie so I hope people go out and get that for a stocking stuffer for this Christmas.
Gill went on to talk about Sorbo’s past characters from “God’s Not Dead,” “Hercules,” and all sorts of characters he’s done and his new Christmas movie coming out called “Christmas Dreams.” Sorbo added that he’s currently working on another movie called “The Santa’s Suit” and another retelling about the Little Drummer Boy that’s family friendly filmed in half live action and half animation. He stressed the message in “Christmas Dreams” was “if you have much, give of your wealth, if you have little, give of your heart.”
Gill: We’re seeing not only an increase in the quantity of Christian oriented movies but, and again you’re a big part of so many of those, but it appears to me Kevin that the quality has improved dramatically. I mean, for a long time we would go see Christian movies to support that part of the industry, but the quality seems to like it has improved dramatically and again you’re in most of them.
Sorbo: Well if you look at the last ten years and I think if you look at anything like in technology how the definition, high def cameras and prices have come down so the independent film world has access to all the same equipment that Hollywood has access to for their big budget, three hundred million dollar movies. So and you’ve got a lot of crews that are amazing wonderful crews, people on both sides of the camera. People want to work and people want to be part of something that’s sending a positive message. So, yeah you know these are lower budget movies, they don’t look that way. I just finished one called Miracle in East Texas, another one I just directed based on a true store set in the 1930’s. It will be out in theaters next summer. My directors cut is done, I directed that one as well, Idid the lead acting in it along with John Ratzenberger and Lou Gosset, Jr. and I think people will love this movie. It’s a true story about set in 1930 about the oil Texas boom.
Gill went on to talk about how Sorbo is a visible and vocal Christian in the film industry and has served Sorbo with pushback. Sorbo commented that it is a clear one way street in Hollywood even though they say they are all about freedom of speech and tolerance. He commented on the anger, hatred and divisiveness that is being created is incredible and how he didn’t see any conservatives running around destroying public property and screaming at the sky after Republicans lost the House. Sorbo noted that he’s aware that George Soros is funding Antifa and the “little crybabies on the left” that want to promote all the disconnect and take away what made America great and stood for. The men went on to talk about Sorbo’s home town of Minnetonka, Minnesota and his sports background.
Leahy: So now that we’re talking about Minnesota, gotta ask you this question, it’s a political question, a little bit of a curve ball.
Sorbo: Alright.
Leahy: Ok. So it turns out that in Western Minnesota Seventh Congressional District has been represented it’s gone heavily for Donald Trump in 2016, of about like twenty points. It’s been represented for about twenty years by a Democrat, Carl Peterson, and this election cycle, he, a nice Republican guy ran against him, but he wasn’t the strongest candidate, lost by five points. Are you ready, do you feel the calling? Would you ever consider running for political office back in your home state of Minnesota in the Seventh Congressional District in 2020?
Sorbo: It would be a horrible job for anybody. I think we’ve made politics so bad and so horrendous to be part of now. It’s become, like, I don’t know if it’s a popularity contest now or this wacky woman who got elected, Cortez, is that her name?
Leahy: Yeah, Ocasio-Cortez.
Gill:Â Occasionally coherent Ocasio-Cortez.
Sorbo: How can you sit there and promise that we’re going to get free this free that. Nothing is free. People have to understand what’s going on here. I met a group of fans in New York City that walked up to me right before the last presidential election, they all had Bernie Sanders t-shirts on, and I talked to them about what socialism is. I still don’t think they got it, so I finally I said one of them I said, “How much money you got in your pocket? And he finally goes, “Well I’ve got forty bucks.” And I said, “Give me half of it.” And he looks at me and goes, “Well no”. And I said see that’s why socialism doesn’t work. “You won’t give me your money, but you want mine.”
Sorbo concluded the conversation by addressing the attacks on Christians in the United States and the attempts to silence Christian views on college campuses. He suggested that in order to push back on the bias was to understand why? He compared Christianity to Islam and asked why you can never attack them but people are able to attack Christians. He went on the talk about his new action movie called “The Reliant” and his other movie called “One Nation Under God” which is about putting that phrase back in schools in the pledge of allegiance. He mentioned his other moving, premiering December 2nd, “Bernie the Dolphin.” In closing, he discussed his issue with the R ratings he’s received and how the ratings board are (in his opinion) are actively trying to stop families from going to see these types of movies.
Listen to the full segment:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 am to the Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill and Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
