Jim Caviezel: This Is What’s Missing in Hollywood Today

[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW]In this episode, actor Jim Caviezel reflects on his 35 years in filmmaking and takes us behind the scenes of his latest film, “Ghost Soldier.”

Known for his roles in “The Passion of the Christ,” “Deja Vu,” and “Person of Interest,” Caviezel stars in “Ghost Soldier” as a Green Beret defending his neighbor’s land against a corrupt corporation.

“The narrative,” Caviezel says, is about “good versus evil. If you’re into that in a movie, bring your popcorn, an iced Coke, and you’re going to have yourself a great day.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:

Jim Caviezel, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

Jim Caviezel:

Thank you very much. Great to be here.

Mr. Jekielek:

So, I got to watch a preview of the film, and I have to say, it’s kind of one of my guilty pleasures watching these. I don’t even know the name of the genre, but it’s one-man army, apparently. Yes, what this film is, and it’s quite the film. I noticed that in the trailer, also, you really focus on Saint Michael. Tell me a little bit about why this film, why now? Presumably, you see a lot of scripts.

Mr. Caviezel:

I look at it, and there are kind of a mental, physical, and spiritual element to a good story. In my business, they focus mainly on the mental and physical, but there’s another component. It’s that nuclear reactor that pushes both the mental and the physical. I saw an older film years ago with Jimmy Stewart in it, It’s a Wonderful Life, and it’s a movie that I hang over my mantle. 

When he’s in the scene where the angel’s trying to get him to turn his life around and not take his life, he says, heavenly Father, if you’re out there, please. I’m not a praying man, but if you’re out there, please help me. That moved me, and I started researching him quite a bit as a young guy, and then eventually I went to meet him, and he told me to make good movies.

I just know that there is something there that’s lacking in our industry that has been removed, and once you see that in a film that long ago, I can’t unsee it, and I used that in the movie I did, The Thin Red Line, when he passed away. And I suppose when he meets our good Lord in heaven, you know, he probably would look at Jesus and probably tell him, look, this young man you helped out, you know, this guy’s going to play me in a film. 

A movie is like an annuity in some ways. For me, it’s like when I’m dead, that film lives on, and more and more people are going to find a good purpose. And I wanted that man’s search for meaning, that purpose-driven life to be in the work that I do. The math in Hollywood is like two and two is seven, or four and four is 16. And that’s incorrect. 

There has to be something fundamental that might connect the heart and the head. I believe there’s that in making films too. You’re really fighting over the narrative, good vs. evil. Those are the things that draw me, at least, to this character in Ghost Soldier, where he’s really probably happy where he’s living.

He’s very instrumental in making weapons, and he was a former special forces guy, but has a gift, and he doesn’t really want to get involved. He wants to be a lone wolf, stay out of the way. He has to protect his boy and then eventually protect the family. He asks, could he live with himself not protecting a group that can’t defend themselves? And so, like a good Samaritan, he gets involved. And I like that element. 

This movie, there’s a lot of action in it. But when I’m watching a movie and I see enough explosions and everything, I’ve kind of watched it here. But when I start to do this, that’s when I really get into it, and it’s connecting to my heart. Those are the kind of projects that bring me to what I’m supposed to do in this life.

Mr. Jekielek:

You know, one of the things I did notice in there is that you really don’t start, as the character, right, as Fitz, you really don’t start taking action until they, you know, they think they’ve killed you. And that’s when you realize these guys are serious. But I get the sense that you really tried to keep that sense of morality in here somehow, because a lot of these films really don’t, from my experience.

Mr. Caviezel:

Listen, I go to church, and a lot of the stuff that I hear some of these pastors giving, or you ever play patty-cake when you’re little? It’s kind of like that. I’m tired of it. I wanted something deeper, which is that when St. Paul says to live is Christ, to die is gain, what does that mean? People would say, now, Jesus died that way. Jesus was crucified. You don’t have to. You’re called. I’m not called to the easy life. 

Look, Paul was executed, had his head chopped off. You know, but Jesus died crucified. Why is Paul dying like this? He doesn’t need to do this. And then Peter gets crucified upside down. He doesn’t need to do that. You know, his Lord did that. But continually, one after the other, through the generations, saints have been martyred. 

And people need Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning. They’re looking for something deeper. An individual who’s struggling with addictions, alcohol, or anything, drugs. There’s something much, much more, and they have to do spiritual exercises, not just mental and physical. 

Well, those are important, but there’s a spiritual exercise that has to be met. Otherwise, one will continually regress and fall into those things that enslave us. Imagine, you know, this country when it was built, when you go to Concord Bridge, and they know that if the British capture the gunpowder, that it’s over, and they’re going to capture it. Those guys are going, they can’t. This is about my children, my children’s children, this is it. And they know that they’re probably going to die and perish.

But they knew the Bible back then, to live is Christ, to die is gain, and they’re willing to lay it down right there. Nobody’s going to lay it down for a lie. Jesus either is a real story or not. And I’m not afraid to talk about it. It’s part of history. I went to college when they were pushing communism, you know, leftism, all of that. And it doesn’t turn out well. It didn’t happen well with the Soviets, and then with the Chinese under Mao, it’s terrible. 

So what we have in this country, we have a moment here. Film is that narrative, it tells the story that what is the math going to be? Charlton Heston did it in great fashion in some fantastic movies. Gregory Peck, To Kill a Mockingbird, Ben-Hur, and then we went in a whole different direction in that film. They’re never going to give you the awards or anything, but I’m not doing it for awards. We’re in a fight. We’re in a fight over inalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Where did that come from? 

Well, some know that it came from Thomas Jefferson, but didn’t some people know it came from John Locke? But actually, he got it from a guy named Father Suarez out of Central America, which was something like life, liberty, maybe the right to own property. But why did it come in that order? 

Because Father Suarez knew it was because of slavery. People were being enslaved. What good is your liberty and your right to own property when you don’t have your own life? Life has to come first. And I love this character because he has to play the role of the Good Samaritan. 

But people don’t open their hands up anymore to shake. They say, hey, how are you? They think, I’m going to get COVID, so they fist bump. It’s hard to go over and rescue the poor dude on the ground with a fist bump. You’ve got to open your hand up and pull him up. 

He had to go out and help this poor little boy, and then eventually it was his family, and then the whole neighborhood. Americans still have those guys out there right now, and a lot of them are like me that want to see films the way, you know, like Sound of Freedom. This one has that .Not being afraid, you know, because we’re going to have to go up against a huge evil right now and not be afraid and do the right thing, come hell or high water.

Mr. Jekielek:

You know, you have this line in the film about, you know, God will judge our enemies; I’ll arrange the meeting. And it reminded me of something that Creasy says in Man on Fire—a very, very similar line. And I was curious if it was maybe an homage to Tony Scott.

Mr. Caviezel:

Maybe. Some of this is osmosis. I tell you, that man really believed in me. I remember him, and I don’t want to say it because it’s something personal for me, but he compared me to an actor that he worked with a lot. He said, the only other actor I’ve ever seen do what you do is this actor. I’ve been around a lot of tremendous actors and everything. 

When I got to do this Navy SEAL film, I experienced real hardcore hypothermia for the first time; I was with them going through it. And then, while I’m going through it, I’m asking, how do you deal with it? How do you get through it? But little did I know that I was going to be hypothermic for five-and-a-half months. But I learned from these guys. So when I go and do the work, I believe it immediately. 

A film that really affected me a lot when I was younger was Raiders of the Lost Ark. I loved that movie and probably saw it at least 25 times.And even though I knew what the next scene was going to be, I just marveled at how Harrison Ford pulled that off and was, I really believed him as this teacher and this really cool warrior that challenged a young man like me, that made me be a little better than I was in school. 

And I wanted to be a good man. I saw that in this role for young boys, a character to look up to in the story. I also thought about my own sons, that they could see their dad like this, because I’m just their dad, not an actor, just their dad. This is okay.

Mr. Jekielek:

So, you know, you worked with a number of, I mean, you were with these special forces operators as you were preparing for the role, as I understand it, I mean, Chris Papasadero, right, former Green Beret after 9/11. Did you collaborate with him around this? How did that play out in terms of your prep?

Mr. Caviezel:

I did not know Chris Papasadero. But David Zelon, the producer, said, hey, read this script. I read it and he goes, what do you think? And I said, this is a real operator, whoever wrote this. And he says, how can you tell? I said, because it’s not Hollywood. People that have had experiences in their life, they write what they know. So, I also act what I know. And successful people leave clues. Guys that really know what they’re doing, they write about it. I met with Chris and I said, okay, he’s a Green Beret, not a SEAL, but both special forces. 

When I did The Passion, I just wanted to be authentic. I wanted to do something like from the Bible. He said, well, you’re a real religious guy. I said, yes, but religious is not what I’m concerned about. It’s when it gets really hard in life, and are you going to leave in the foxhole? So you can talk about all your religion all you want. If when it really comes down, when the rubber hits the pavement, that is the kind of faith I’m interested in. And these guys have that kind of faith.

Mr. Jekielek:

So, was St. Michael in the script when you read it first, or did that come with you? Because, of course, you’re a very faithful person.

Mr. Caviezel:

It worked. I knew a lot about him, but I remember when I was making the movie with the SEALS, one of the most significant SEALS would be Harry Humphries, who was in Vietnam with Richard Marcinko, and he had a Michael the Archangel pennant. I said, are you religious? He goes, no. I said, why are you wearing that? He says, it’s better than my lucky rabbit’s foot. And I said, that’s cool. Then I’d see another one, another Delta Force operator, a Green Beret, another ranger, would have it. 

So there’s a commonality, and I started doing more research on him in Revelation 12, that he’s the one that threw evil out of heaven, that he was a lower-ranking angel that shot up and basically would have none of it. He fought over our Father in heaven and threw Lucifer and his legions out. So that kind of stuck with me. 

In this film, you have the good angels and the bad ones, but they’re good humans, both warriors, but then you have the wicked. I started asking, what makes one operator go to the bad dark side? He says, well, money, Jim, they offer you quite a bit if you have a lot of talent to use. And they need big money, they need good, really top operators to protect them. And the equalizer in this is this guy’s mind and his heart, which is he can develop weapons that can take out hundreds. 

So, you put that all together and mix in the corporations, the central banks, who’s really controlling this country of ours. Then you put the American dream in there, and taking away their right to have wells, water, and their own land. What good is land without water? You can’t grow anything.

Mr. Jekielek:

So, these two systems of law, I thought that was very interesting because I think there are a lot of people out there that are feeling that in general. And you definitely make a point of highlighting that.

Mr. Caviezel:

Well, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a great film. And this guy doesn’t go to Washington. He just, you know, goes to his cave that he builds and has his own way of having to deal with the law that has gone rogue, that absolutely has gone rogue, that has taken away our inalienable rights. There are corporations that are using, for example, we have the Sherman Antitrust Act that prevents us from monopolizing, but yet that really was a trick because it would be good to not have monopolization. 

However, they, through the central bank, are allowed to do that outside our perimeter, outside our country. They control us, and Americans are seeing that now. And so the film touches on those things: what good is our country? It’s supposed to be by the people, for the people, but it’s not any longer. We do not control our own destiny, and our country wasn’t set up that way. 

I actually talked to Trump about that, about taxes. We’re going to be in a short time under the 16th Amendment where eventually we’re not going to have income tax, and during McKinley they didn’t, and why he probably was assassinated, why Lincoln under the greenbacks was probably assassinated, why Kennedy under the silverback was probably assassinated. 

The IMF [International Monetary Fund], the ECB [European Central Bank], the BIS [Bank for International Settlements], and the Rothschild banks are really controlling a lot of where we want to go as a country. Slavery is one of those things that has been around for a long time. We just didn’t know we were slaves, but now people are waking up to it and they want their little simple life like these families did. They want their nine-to-five job or whatever it is and their American dream, and it’s been taken away from us. 

They say to you, you’re a conspiracy theorist. Okay, let’s say I am. Someone who knows the truth shouldn’t be afraid of being called a conspiracy theorist. You know why? He should do what is called cross-examination. 

Cross-examine him. He says two and two is seven. Well, I know it’s wrong. And so you can go to that conspiracy theorist and cross-examine him in front of the public, and people know the truth pretty quick. But they seem to be terrified of those conspiracy theorists. I’m not afraid of free thought, and I do that in the films. 

I wasn’t afraid of free thought when I did The Passion of the Christ. I just wanted to make a film about what was, what really happened. I looked at the Shroud of Turin, looked at the evidence of what it was, and really, I felt as if anything that was biblical was kind of laughed at, and in my industry, it was laughed at, which made me more so want to do that. And I learned that from a lot of these guys in the SEAL community. 

They’re free thinkers, they’re lone wolves, they’re the most intelligent guys that I’ve ever been around. I paid a high price; I wasn’t able to work on a film that made over a billion dollars. And it didn’t stop me from that. I kept moving in that direction, and I kind of bonded that way with this character. And it felt like he was kind of the same kind of guy. And he was from those communities that are warriors, real warriors that aren’t going to leave you in a foxhole, you know?

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, so what do you hope people will take home with them once they’ve watched Ghost Soldier?

Mr. Caviezel:

How do you say your last name?

Mr. Jekielek:

Jekielek.

Mr. Caviezel:

Are you Polish? I love Poland very much. One of the greatest warriors ever, Pope John Paul II, one of my boys. Then he understood what it was like to be under a Nazi tyranny. He knew what it was like under Soviet tyranny. And he probably could look back to the Hebrews, all the way to Moses under the tyranny of Pharaoh. And then we see Jesus under the tyranny of Herod and the Romans. 

Not much has changed in two thousand years. Jesus is more controversial now than he has ever been, but Pope John Paul said, now I’ll quote him, he says, your democracy, the United States, cannot be sustained without a shared commitment to certain moral truths about the human person and the human community. The basic question before a democratic society is this; How ought we to live together? In seeking an answer to this question, can society exclude moral truth and moral reasoning? 

And this is the narrative. This is good vs. evil. And if you’re into that in a movie, bring your popcorn, a nice Coke, and you’re going to have yourself a great day.

Mr. Jekielek:

You know, I’m thinking, just as you’re speaking, I’m thinking of another great Polish warrior, Jan Sobieski III, who stopped the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683.

Mr. Caviezel:

I have another one for you. Father Jerzy Popiełuszko.

Mr. Jekielek:

Oh, my goodness. Yes.

Mr. Caviezel:

What a holy saint that guy is. Fearless, but he paid. I’m just an actor, but I pick and I choose the right roles because I want to bring humanity back. To God, that ultimately I don’t care, I’ll tell the world that it doesn’t matter to me. You know why? 

Because I want the world to know that I love Him. I love God with all my heart, my mind, my soul. I love Him. And my sin that I commit, I get very, very angry with myself. As Paul says, I do the very thing I’m not supposed to do and I do it anyway. 

Well, I get angry because I should know better after going through what I did with Jesus. But nonetheless, that God loved me so much he came to me and he gave me my career. He came to me in a movie theater and he said, I’d like you to be an actor. I felt the most love I ever felt. And that love was like, I don’t deserve this, but he loved me, so I’m going to love him back. And not what I say as I’m speaking, but what I do. 

So, I’m only qualified to talk to you, Jan, because I’ve done the things that I’ve done. But in the next moment, I could be an absolute coward. And so I pray, and because at this moment, at this stake in the game, I can’t be a coward. I have to continue to try and try and try so that we can have. I’m looking for a time that is coming very soon. And I really believe that it’s going to be something very, incredible that’s going to be coming. And I believe that God has His hand on it. He needs great actors in the film community. He needs people to go to the movies and support it. 

For example, this movie, as good as it is, if people don’t stand up and go to the movie, then the movies you’re going to see are the woke movies because you didn’t want to support it. What did Reagan say? He said, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those of us that had the most to lose did the least to prevent it from happening. 

Well, I think it’s high time now we ask ourselves if we still even know the freedoms that were intended for us by our Founding Fathers. Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom exists not to do what you like, but having the right to do what you ought.

Mr. Jekielek:

Well, Jim Caviezel, it’s such a pleasure to have had you on.

Mr. Caviezel:

It’s a pleasure too, Jan. Thank you.

This interview was partially edited for clarity and brevity.