Risk & Resolve
The Risk & Resolve Podcast is your go-to resource for insightful conversations at the intersection of leadership, business ownership, and the insurance industry. Hosted by Ben Conner and Todd Hufford, this podcast dives deep into the challenges and opportunities that leaders face in an ever-changing world.
Each episode features candid discussions with business owners, industry experts, and thought leaders, exploring topics like innovation, risk management, and the strategies that drive success. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, executive, or insurance professional, you’ll gain actionable insights and inspiration to navigate today’s complex business landscape.
Tune in to Risk & Resolve—where leadership meets resilience.
Risk & Resolve
Lights, Camera, Faith! Brett Varvel's Creative Expedition
Brett Varvel shares his journey from creating backyard films to becoming an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker dedicated to faith-based storytelling. His creative foundations were shaped by growing up in an artistic household as the son of an internationally syndicated cartoonist, where exploration of various art forms was encouraged from an early age.
• Growing up in a creative household with his cartoonist father provided early exposure to visual storytelling
• Started with 2D art as a child before discovering his passion for filmmaking around age five
• Used action figures to create stories before gaining access to the family video camera
• Found that filmmaking combined all art forms he loved - visual design, writing, acting, and production
• Family garage became "Varvel Studio" where he and his brother created music videos and short films
• Negotiated with high school teachers to create films instead of written reports
• Won a statewide competition with a faith-based short film that changed his career direction
• Professor Jim Shasky at Ball State University provided tough but necessary criticism that shaped his development
• His film "Disciples in the Moonlight" took seven years to develop and explores what would happen if the Bible were outlawed in America
• Continues to embrace collaboration and dreams of creating a film about the crucifixion from both physical and spiritual perspectives
To experience Brett's work, watch "Disciples in the Moonlight" on Amazon, Apple TV, or Google Play.
You're listening to Risk and Resolve, and now for your hosts, ben Conner and Todd Hufford. All right, welcome to another episode of the Risk and Resolve podcast. Really pleased to have our special guest with us today, brett Varvel, from the creative family dynasty of the Varvel family. How are you doing, brett?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. It's good to be with you guys.
Speaker 1:Brett, it's always great to see you, glad to be here, and obviously my partner in crime, todd Hufford, is here with us as well. Todd, how are you?
Speaker 3:I'm doing great, especially great because we get to talk to Brett. Brett is always going about 15 different directions at a time in 3D, so we're going to dive into a little bit of that. You know I was going to say Brett, congratulations. You're so successful now that we cannot cover all of your successes in a podcast. So congratulations, thank you. I appreciate it. I'm going to rattle off a little bit about your background for those that don't know you, but then we're going to go back in history a little bit, so you already know this about yourself. You're an Emmy Award winning filmmaker, director, actor and writer. You're based here in our wonderful city, indianapolis, indiana. You serve as the executive director of House of Grace Studios, a production company you founded company you founded. You're also known for your dedication to creating high value, faith-based content and your passion for storytelling comes through in everything you do. Anything inaccurate in that statement? I think that's close. It's pretty close.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good representation.
Speaker 3:I guess I want to go back a little bit. I want to spend a little time today talking about the creative process, largely because I envy it so much in people who are bestowed with so much creativity and you clearly are somebody in my sphere that I would obviously say has a ton of talent. I kind of want to talk about this nature versus nurture. Take me back to grade school and let's go from first grade and why don't you take me up to grade school? And let's go from first grade and why don't you take me up to about high school. Tell me about some of the first things you got to create, some of the first opportunities you got to exercise some of that creativity, whether it was in various different mediums, whether it was print or film back in those days, or maybe audio tape recordings or something. So take us back to first grade. What were some of those first initial opportunities? You had to be creative.
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, while you may have a lot of respect for the creative side of the brain, I have so much envy for the logistical, business wisdom side of the brain that us creatives often lack and that we need a lot of help in to stay on track because our brain kind of goes a million miles an hour. But, ben, you mentioned the Marvel name. I mean it's creativity and art was not a stranger in our home. And so, growing up son of an internationally syndicated cartoonist, you're going to be pushed to explore creativity in all facets of the word. And so from a very young age yeah, because my dad draw cartoons for a living there was this immediate bent towards picking up a pencil and drawing and just seeing where that creativity would take me. And so a lot of my early you know, early years would take me, and so a lot of my early you know, early years, elementary school it's a lot of 2D art. So you're talking colored pencils, you're talking painting, you're talking all kinds of different books. My parents would give us these books of like how to draw Disney cartoons, and then my dad would show me some of the tricks of the trade with drawing caricatures and just how to study the human face and then bring that out visually, and so that was very much an early manifestation of the creative exploration in my life. But I have always had a fascination with movies from the time that I was like five years old is the earliest that I can remember being just completely enamored with the art form of film and so I expressed that I didn't have a lot of tools at my disposal at that time. Of course this is back in the early 90s, and so technology was not what it is today, and so instead what I would do is I would take all my toys, my action figures, and I would create these stories with them, and they would act out the story that I was creating in my own head. And that was kind of the next step, I would say, in the exploration of not just creativity but story specific, what is story and why does it matter?
Speaker 2:And as I got older I dabbled in music for a little bit and quickly discovered that I'm terrible at music. I have no ability to understand notes and how to convey emotions through music it's. I can tell you what I want, but I can't create it. I tried piano for a grand total of, I think five weeks, and my parents were not unhappy when I decided not to continue pursuing that. I even played trombone for a few years and I think the only reason I played trombone was because I was one of the only kids in the class that pushed my lips together and make the sound come out of the horn. I don't know why my teacher was so gung-ho about me being a trombone player. I figured out how to play the tune to Georgia the Jungle on my own and that was about it.
Speaker 2:That was the extent of my ability as a trombone player, and it was one of those things where my dad never pressured me into being a cartoonist or doing the traditional art sense of pencil and painting and or molding with clay or anything like that. I always had a fascination to it because he's always been so gifted at it. He's just this wealth of knowledge. But he quickly saw, especially in my junior high to early high school years, that I just loved the camera. I wanted to be in front of it, I wanted to be behind it, I wanted to understand how to tell a story with it and, to his credit, he and my mom let me take over the home video camera on more than one occasion and destroy it. There were scratches on the lens, there were a lot of tapes that were destroyed, things that I accidentally taped over, that they were, you know, protecting for a later date, whatever the case would be.
Speaker 2:But I couldn't get enough of it. It's just like this limitless creativity. I couldn't get enough of it. It's just like this limitless creativity Because I started discovering, in high school especially, that filmmaking encompasses every aspect of the entire art field.
Speaker 2:You take everything from music to 2D and 3D art, to writing, to production, design, to acting and lighting, and it's all molded into this one product called a movie or a video. And that's why I think I was so drawn to it, because I love all of those different facets of art. And it felt like the proverbial you're a kid in the sandbox and you have this limitless creativity right, you can do whatever you want. And so that was really what carried me into my later high school years was exploring what can I do, what are the limits, and let's see how we can push past those limits. Not just from a acting side of things, which was, I would say, my original first love with filmmaking, but then, the more I started making movies and editing movies on my own, I grew to just be equally as fascinated and in love with that side of the equation as well. And you know, the rest is history, so to speak, once I got bit by the bug, so to speak.
Speaker 3:Let's stay within that junior high to high school timeframe. You know, when you have certain interests, whether it's sports or robotics or something else, you find your people who were your people in junior high and high school. That it also enjoyed, either in front or behind the camera, with all these ideas you had.
Speaker 2:I'm blessed with an amazing creative family, so the Varvel household was a filmmaking family from the get-go. There was no like getting yourself out of it. My brother he's five years younger than me. He was my partner in crime, sometimes not because he wanted to, but because I told him he had to. And it's just like the older brother telling him you got to do this. My dad and my mom and my sister were always. They always had a hand in what I was doing.
Speaker 2:But I was also blessed with some great friends, both in junior high and high school, who I think they just liked that it was. They liked the fun aspect of making a movie. They didn't really care too much about the technical side of things. They let me worry about that but they were the one. If I called them up and said, hey, let's go make a movie. They were there and they were ready to do whatever I asked them to do. And this really took root, more so in high school because I discovered really quickly that my teachers you know I was academically less than stellar.
Speaker 1:Let's say it that way.
Speaker 2:I struggled academically and so when it came to writing a paper I had this mental block. And so I bartered with my teachers and I'd say I would say, instead of doing a report, what if I'd made a movie on the topic at hand? And they let me. And I was shocked that it works Great. And so, like, one of my favorites was, instead of doing a written report on the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II, I made a movie about Iwo Jima.
Speaker 2:Wow, and my friends and I had an absolute blast just putting on the camo, reenacting the battles and in that famous iconic image of the soldiers raising the flag. And it was just the whole class, you know, got a big kick out of it because instead of listening to an oral or a written report, they got to watch a movie. So they got a big kick out of it as well. And that just fanned the flame for me to see that not only was I doing what I love to do, but I was engaging with people and they were responding emotionally to what I was doing. And that was a very, very fulfilling kind of pouring gasoline on the fire type reality for me. But if it wasn't for my friends and my family especially. I would have been that loner just trying to figure out how to do it on my own. I think that would have really put a wet blanket on the whole thing from the beginning.
Speaker 1:What's a specific memory you have with your brother of like, hey, we did this, we shot this movie, and what specific memory comes to mind when you think about doing stuff with your family and your brothers?
Speaker 2:The garage. It was our studio. We'd have our parents pull the cars out of the garage and that was where we made music videos. That was where we drew. Especially my brother drew. He took it to a whole different level and ended up recreating famous Shakespeare plays, but in his own interpretation of the plays, and so we did a lot in the garage. That was the Barbell Studio, and those are some of my favorite moments, looking back. One in particular there was this music video.
Speaker 2:There's a ridiculous song back in the late 90s, early 2000s, called Scatman and it's a ridiculous like techno song. I don't even know what it means, but it's a really fast, lyrically driven song with a bunch of weird sounds. And he and I made up this ridiculously stupid story and shot it in the garage and put it together in iMovie. And that one, to this day, is one of my favorites, not because it's great, because it's really bad, and if I were to show it to you, all those accolades that Todd read at the beginning would come seriously in question. But that one sticks in my brain. I think it was because it was one of the earliest collaborations that he and I had.
Speaker 3:Brett, where would we find these old videos? In some secret Google YouTube page.
Speaker 2:They are under lock and key, friend maybe one day I'll release them on youtube or something like that, but they're so bad, they're so bad yeah, but any press is good press.
Speaker 3:But yeah, it's true yeah, maybe we'll.
Speaker 2:We'll start sprinkling those out into the world, yeah local boy done.
Speaker 3:Good, uh, yeah there you go let let's stay in that junior to high school timeframe. At any time before you graduated high school did you kind of have the thought that you know my friends enjoy doing this with me. But my talent, my ability, my ideas, I just have more of them. It just flows out of me. I have a gift. Did that ever cross your mind during those early years?
Speaker 2:It did and it wasn't fully fleshed out, I wouldn't say, until I got to college, but there was this reality that everybody looked to me as the movie guy. There wasn't anybody else in my friend sphere, my school or really even acquaintances, that I had had the drive to just grab the camera, write a story, do something. Nobody else called me up to make a movie. I was always calling everybody else to make a movie and it really came to fruition my senior year of high school. This was like the defining moment in what launched, I think, my career, if you want to use that big of a phrase. At the time there was a statewide arts competition in Indiana called Project Excel, and any student, any high school student from across the state could enter into. They had a bunch of different categories, from 2D and 3D art to music, to performance, dance movies and all kinds of different things, but every single student had to create their project based on a word that was given to schools and my senior year the word that was selected for students was the word change, and nobody else in my school made anything or entered anything, and very few of my friends even aspired to do a movie. But I was fixated on that word change and what it means to me as a follower of Jesus Christ, and so I was talking to my dad about it one day. He said, brett, I want you to just go for it, go do it.
Speaker 2:And I wrote this short film that was kind of a personification of being born again in Jesus becoming a new creation. That was kind of a personification of being born again in Jesus becoming a new creation. And it was this really intense story where it was me playing myself but I'm in this dirty rags, I look bad and I keep seeing this other, better version of myself and I'm following him and he's leading me somewhere and come to find out that I'm a stand at this crossroad, where I can either go this way or that way. And it's the picture of the choice that I think all of us have to make as human beings. Are you going to choose to deny Christ? Are you going to choose to follow him? And so you know, this is a secular competition, this is not a Christian competition, but that was what I was so passionate about.
Speaker 2:So I entered it into the competition and ended up, to my shock and I think everybody else is shocked I won first place in the state and that was crazy enough as it is. But at the award ceremony, the director of the whole competition told me that a janitor peeked his head in while my film was playing and ended up giving his life to Jesus. And it was the complete, defining moment in my life of the Lord saying okay, I know you're passionate about this, I know you love doing this, I've given you this talent, but imagine what I could do through you. And so, all of a sudden, the dreams and aspirations of I want to be that Steven Spielberg, I want to go off to Hollywood and make big blockbuster movies change to what if they had meaning and what if they had purpose beyond just entertainment. And that took me into a whole different direction.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean it was an itch. I couldn't scratch hard enough. You know I had to make something, had to do something, but I'm thankful that I had the community around me, like I said earlier, to fan the flame, to encourage me and support me, however they wanted to how did that community change for you, going from, like high school experience where you had your family as like the core encouragement and school folks around you?
Speaker 1:And then the reason why I ask is I kind of when I think about you know, thankfully we both grew up in families where, like our parents like fan the flame of our passion and really encouraged us to do things that we were passionate about. But there were those like people who weren't family, you know, and who didn't like intersect with us in like the daily, like a teacher or you know, even an aunt or an uncle, but like who are? Some of those like non-family, like key relationships, that maybe in high school or maybe after that, said like hey, I see something in you and continued that encouragement that was like oh, there are people that are outside of, the ones that really love me, that are telling me like walk into this and do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question opportunity in the youth group to make videos. Sermon illustrations, mission strip recap videos. Let me use the church equipment whenever I wanted to. I mean, short of having a key, I had access in full reign and he didn't care. He wanted me to do what the Lord had put in my heart. And then when I got into college, all of these people still were an encouragement to me in my college years. But you got to understand. I went to a small Christian school and I was in a bubble. And then all of a sudden, I go to Ball State University and it was fished out of water to the nth degree and I no longer have that Christian community that can surround me and pour into me. Now I'm and in addition to that I'm competing with students in my class that are way farther advanced than I am. And now all of a sudden, it's this shock and horror of I've made a terrible mistake. I don't have what it takes and I'll never forget.
Speaker 2:I was a freshman in college and there was a professor at the time at Ball State in our telecommunications department, seasoned veteran TV producer. He'd won more regional Emmy Awards than I think anybody has ever won in their entire life. He's done it all and seen it all. And he was brightening and intimidating. He would cuss students out in the middle of class. He would tell you if you had it or you didn't. He would give you real world industry standard experience right there in the classroom. And he took a liking to me, but in that tough love type way he would always tell me like you're way more talented than you realize, but this is terrible and you need to grow in this area. Because you call this the story, you call this lighting, you call this camera work what are you thinking? And he would rip me to shreds and then give me enough hope to not go home crying to build me back up and say keep trying, keep trying. And so it was one of those like challenges for me.
Speaker 2:Every project that I made I would send to him, whether it was for a school project or it was just something I wanted to do on my own. I would show him. I would let him criticize it and tell me what he thought of it. I would let him criticize it and tell me what he thought of it, and I was always seeking to like one up myself and see if he would finally give me the thumbs up on, you know, without any criticism, and that was a huge motivator for me and setting my sights, like here's the standard. But then let's go a little bit further. What if we push the boundaries a little bit?
Speaker 2:He was that guy for me, me a lot about, you know, being a cartoonist, and he gets hammered from every direction on the political spectrum of people who hate him because of his ideas and his politics and his biblical worldview. And he taught me you got to have a thick skin and be willing to take it and stay true to your convictions and your talent and all this stuff. And so so yeah, I mean it took shape in various people, but that professor, his name was Jim Shasky, he who he was ruthless but he was. It was a very, very needed encouragement. I like it.
Speaker 1:It's really interesting, I think, people who are recognized with significant talent and whatever their field, you know no-transcript.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I even listened to Coach K talk about providing accountability for the United States basketball team to Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, because great people want to be challenged. Yeah, good on that professor of pushing, pushing you and like, like you respond to that. You mentioned the industry being cutthroat and I love the context that you gave that your data actually came from. A similar thing of where public eye and it's not all roses all the time but in an industry that's so cutthroat, like what are some of the like those times where you were just like man this is something else, like am I sure I want to do this? Obviously, you mentioned a time like right out of the gate, just going to college, but like, talk about, like just your journey through your career, just how difficult it is in the movie industry and just in the creative industry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm very blessed I'll say this to preface it that I developed my skills in what we call cutting your teeth, and the time that I did because social media was barely just starting. When I was in college, I mean, I think my university was one of the first nine universities to get Facebook. University was one of the first nine universities to get Facebook in my sophomore year, and so that whole world hadn't really existed. Online opinion was minuscule at best, and so you really had the opportunity to try and fail a lot without dramatic repercussions. But one of the things that was so eye-opening to me and alarming, I should say, was when my feature films started to go out into the marketplace. You see the criticism, and I've learned to try to be very selective about paying attention to a lot of this stuff. But people come after you, they make it personal, and that's the thing that I didn't quite experience. It's one thing to say, ah, ah, the movie wasn't for me, didn't like it that much. It's another thing to say, and that's because I've seen stuff like this brett varble is the worst actor on the face of this planet. He should never open his mouth again. They come after you and all of a sudden, it's like I don't even know who you are. And again, having a dad who has experienced that on a whole different level. My dad has actually even received death threats before Like coming to him and being and asking him honestly, okay, how do you navigate this? Because this field personal this field I mean it hurts, I don't like it, and then other people in the industry is trying to wrap this around from a biblical worldview of how the Lord sees all of this is that, at the end of the day, all that is expected of me is to do my absolute best and to try and take risks and try things that no one else is trying. Because if I'm just gonna do things that's just gonna make people happy, am I really creating out of something that's a desire within, or am I just a machine that's trying going to make people happy? Am I really creating out of something that's a desire within or am I just a machine that's trying to regurgitate, to tickle people's ears? And that was something that I've learned that the things that I create may not be for everybody, most likely won't be for everybody, but how that affects them is not my responsibility. I'm responsible to be a steward of the talent that I have and to cultivate that talent and try things that no one else is trying.
Speaker 2:When you talk about the creative field, it's the exploration of the unknown, what hasn't been done yet, or how can we redo something that's already been done and make it new. And I have some friends of mine who are filmmakers the Kendrick brothers in Georgia. They give this great illustration and I've tried to take it to heart, where they say when you send your your movie out into the world and you got to be ready for criticism, but here's the way you take it, instead of holding your movie right over your heart and asking them to shoot arrows at it, you hold it off to the side and you say shoot the arrow, tell me what you didn't like about it. And because it's only by learning what didn't work that you can grow and that's part of the creative process. You're not always going to create gold and you have to learn what worked, what doesn't work.
Speaker 2:But you can't take it personally and, even though some people will attack you personally, it's not a personal thing. So it's a very strange thing that I'm continuing to try to learn and grow in as I get older, and I think part of this also is a really big lesson that I've learned over the last five years, especially to press into collaboration more than I ever had before. So much of the early part of my career was just grinning and bearing and doing it all by myself, and the last few movies that I've been a part of and TV shows that I've been a part of, really taking a step back and realizing that God had surrounded me with people who are way more creative than I can ever be and to press into that and invite them into the process with me to make better when there's strength in numbers, so to speak, and so that's something that's helped handle that criticism as well.
Speaker 3:There's a couple people in the nuclear family we haven't touched upon, but I know they are super important to the story. So let's go back to junior, senior year in high school. You're starting to think about what the next steps look like. Talked about your dad and his creative history, your brother with some of his crazy creativeness as your partner in crime. What role did your mom and your sister play in all of this throughout these years?
Speaker 2:So my mom not only has she been a pillar for me because she was I mean, she's my mom she nurtured me, she cared for me, she served so self-sacrificially for so many years for not just I mean, it's not even just me, but now it's reflected into my own children, her grandchildren. That's just like her way of expressing love is serving. So that was one of those foundational things that was always a big part of my life was knowing that she had my back. She was always cheering me on and willing to do whatever I needed. My mom was also exceptionally talented at making costumes, and this was demonstrated and I remember vividly when I was in elementary came home from school one day and we had a Thanksgiving party that was going to be coming the next day. So I came home from school I was like, hey, mom, tomorrow we have this Thanksgiving party. Forgot to tell you about this, but our teacher wanted us to dress up as either a Native American or as a pilgrim, and I picked Native American. But our teacher wanted us to dress up as either a Native American or as a pilgrim, and I picked Native American, but I don't have a costume. And then it was like hours before I was supposed to be at school and, to her credit, she whipped up some fabric from, I think, joanne Fabrics or something like that and made me a costume, just because she could. And that has taken shape in a lot of different movies that I've been a part of she's serving by.
Speaker 2:In my first feature film she was our wardrobe costumer. She made all of our costumes, but in other areas she served by feeding us, bringing meals, doing what we call craft services and going back to that foundational nurturing that she's always been so amazing at. I don't want to dismiss how big of a deal this was, but being that cheerleader, she wasn't always the one who was like hands-on with crafting what I was doing in a movie, but she always wanted to see what I was doing. She always wanted to watch it. But she always wanted to see what I was doing. She always wanted to watch it. She always wanted to brag to her friends about what I was doing. She wanted to be at the screenings and the award shows and different things like that. And I can't quite put into words what that meant to me growing up and knowing that I had not just the encouragement but the confidence that my mom gave me, and then my sister, who is also incredibly artistically gifted. She and I have a special relationship because before my brother came along, my sister and I were like attached, were two years removed and we did everything together. She got older and realized how immature I was and started hanging out with her girlfriends more. But then Drew came along and he and I got close.
Speaker 2:But Ashley was always quick to be a part of what I was doing. She's very artistically gifted with graphic design and painting and illustrating, and so she would design logos. She would design what we call the title treatment for my movies. She would help me design the posters. She would design what we call the title treatment for my movies. She would help me design the posters and she even wrote a short story for one of my movies back when I was late high school, early college. She always likes to make cameos in a lot of the movies that I make and to this day faithfully helps me in bringing the print side of what I do for a living to life and did my most recent movie, disciples in the Moonlight. She was pivotal in helping me discern what we call the key art or this poster right here, what that should look like and giving me notes on what works and what doesn't, and so she was also super foundational in those early days of me discovering what I wanted to do. Is there a Brett?
Speaker 3:Varvel if there's no Varvel family?
Speaker 2:Probably not. I know I wouldn't be alive without my parents, but you know what I'm asking. Yeah, I think it's a good question. I don't know if I've ever really thought of it that way, but a lot of people that I interact with on a day-to-day basis on a film set today, the person that they experience in large part is heavily impacted by my wife and my children, but the foundation was really laid by my parents and my siblings, and my parents being the one who brought me up in the training and admonition of the Lord, and then my siblings being the ones who were so different.
Speaker 2:So, like my sister is the perfect child rule follower, never did anything wrong, she's an angel. I was the perfect child rule follower. Never did anything wrong, she's an angel. I was the middle child, rebellious one, and then my brother is the baby of the family, but we, the three of us, complement each other so well and a lot of that shaped my likes, my dislikes and the person that I became really before I met my wife. And then my wife took my life to a whole different level and made me a way better person than I ever thought I could be.
Speaker 3:People who support creative types are unique in their own right because they understand that person, they understand the gift and they fan the flames in a real positive way. As you were talking about your mom, I know your mom a little bit and she's either one of two things she's either exactly as you've explained her, because that's how I know her, or she's the world's most perfect actor, because she faked so well, because she is a dream to be around and so supportive. Have you ever given thought the fact that she had practice in supporting you because she first supported your dad as a spouse?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right on the money my mom came from. She's one of six children. She's the baby of the family. I mean there was a big age gap too between her and her next closest sibling, and so her whole life was how can I help people and how can I be there? Because everybody was kind of off going and doing their own things my aunts and my uncles and when she met my dad, they instantly fell in love and they have. It's a whole different conversation about there's something in the water with the varbles, because we all married our high school sweethearts. It's crazy. It's like a really bizarre story.
Speaker 2:Um but, uh, they, they found each other in high school and I think from the beginning my mom just she loved being with my dad and she wasn't like a fan, it wasn't like the fan girl thing where she just wanted to be around him. But parents tell me this story that, like when they were first married, she would get up every morning and make him kind of gourmet breakfast so that he had, you know, the fuel to go do what he needed to do. You know, in any given day and I know my mom is a flawed human being, she's not, you know, this perfect person but the character that she displayed to my dad, with just kind of the overspill, came over onto me and my siblings and was a very sweet testimony. It takes support to not give up and I saw that demonstrated with how she served my dad and then how she served me and my wife has been that for me as well, yeah, having permission to speak into my life and call into question things that needed to change or whatever the case may be.
Speaker 3:You mentioned that the Varvels are notorious for marrying their high school sweetheart. So you're a senior in high school. I'm assuming Christina is either at that same high school or nearby.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we actually started.
Speaker 2:Well, we've known each other since we were 12. We went to started going to the same Christian school in junior high and when I was a freshman I was really attracted to her and I asked her out to be my girlfriend and she said no and good call, very good call, cause I was so oh, I had so much to learn and I'm so thankful for that, because she went off and dated some of my best friends. I went off and dated some of her best friends and we kind of got like all the mistakes out of the way real quick, good strategy. And then, junior year, my heart started being drawn to her, not just because of how beautiful she is, but because she made me want to be more like my savior. And I asked her out and I it was hilarious because I asked her to start dating me and she said well, I'm not looking to get into a serious relationship right now, let's just take it slow. That was the start of our entire relationship. We've never been apart ever since, and that's almost 22 years ago now.
Speaker 3:So you're still taking it slow. Yeah, we're still taking it slow. Yeah, we're taking it real slow. Yeah, so you're a senior. How did you decide where to go to college?
Speaker 2:That was a complete move of God. I wanted to go to Cedarville University because that's where all my friends were going and that's where, at the time, my wife was going to go. She actually ended up transferring to Purdue University, but it was the safe Christian bubble. It was the summer camp experience, but for four years you know type thing, yeah. And I worked hard to get accepted because, again, I'm not academically inclined and I ended up initially not getting accepted and had to retake my SATs.
Speaker 2:Got accepted finally, and senior night for my varsity basketball season, there was one of the referees who knew my dad went to Ball State University. He refereed on the side to make some money and it just so happened that that night that he was the referee of our game, the after party of the varsity game was at my house and it just so happened that I had just finished this movie that I talked to you about. That was going into that statewide arts competition. So my dad invited this guy his name was David over to our house to watch my video. And David watched the movie, turned to my dad and he said Brett has to go to Ball State University. He is way more talented than some of the juniors and seniors that I'm currently working with at school and it was one of those like how much stock do we put into this guy's opinion?
Speaker 2:You know he didn't really know much about it, but to amuse him we did a college visit me and myself and my parents and stepping onto that campus Ball State University I started to see God's plan, that this was a place that I could get a film school level education without having to go to a film school, something in state the caliber of the department. I mean, people were winning national and regional awards, people were getting job placements right out of college and it was a completely different program not to completely dismiss the program at Cedarville, but it was kind of night and day at the time and I knew that if I wanted to be serious about this industry I needed to get the best training possible. So I took that as a move of God and went to Ball State University.
Speaker 1:Brett, you mentioned earlier about that poster over your shoulder Disciples in the Moonlight and we had the joy of following along on that journey from afar and seeing your heart through that. You know, for everyone listening, it's an absolutely incredible film that you need to make sure you see. It's on Amazon, right.
Speaker 2:right, you can purchase it on amazon, apple tv, google, pretty much anywhere right now yeah, so I encourage all, all listeners to watch that film.
Speaker 1:Incredibly well done, a great plot line, fantastic acting. Tell us about the journey of the film. Maybe give a little insight into the story of Disciples in the Moonlight and tell us about that journey.
Speaker 2:Well, I appreciate both of you and just for being my prayer warriors and cheering me on, and it's been an amazing experience. I first heard about this project in 2013. A dear friend of mine, josh Strakowski, who was one of those guys several years older than me then when I was younger, that was a big part of that encouragement, friend force, so to speak, and he and I worked on a lot of different things together and anytime that Josh says he has an idea, I take interest because he's really creative, thinks outside the box. And he came to me one night and he said I got an idea. I had this flash in my head of people running through cornfields in Indiana. The cornfield is bathed in moonlight and these people are running for their life and they're carrying the Bible. And he just looked at me and he said, what if the Bible was illegal in America? And I had goosebumps all over my body. I could see the whole movie in my head. I could feel it, I could smell it. It was such a vivid I mean, sometimes ideas take a long time to discover and cultivate. This one was like lightning in a bottle. We could both feel it and so I said, josh, you've got to go explore this idea, write it out into a script. And Josh is old school in the sense that he writes that first draft of Eddie's story longhand. He doesn't type, he writes it all out longhand. So it took a while for him to write it all out and once he had done that and then transcribed it into the computer, he sent me the first draft of the script and asked me to direct the film.
Speaker 2:It wasn't just a captivating idea creatively for me, it wasn't just that, oh, this would be a fun and exciting story, because the story, even at the earliest day, has never changed. It was this journey with seven characters who live in a version of America where the Bible has been outlawed and repurposed with a government-approved ancient text and people have to make a choice Are they going to hand in their copy of God's Word and accept the government-approved Bible, or are they going to keep the Word of God and be labeled as rebels, as outlaws, and have to go underground to have church and serve the Lord? So that was the nugget that has never changed, and so that was also captivating to me. But the thing that kept me from the beginning and motivated me throughout the seven years that it took us to develop the project was the question. How would I respond? If this was my reality? What would I do? I saw myself in these characters and I was asking myself pretty challenging questions and thinking about the fact that, though this is science fiction in terms of America today, this is reality for many people all over the world and this is something that they face day in and day out. And you talk about a polarizing topic. This is about as polarizing as it can get.
Speaker 2:With a podcast called Risk and Resolve, we knew early on this was a risk, because this is not something that is a slam dunk to make a bunch of money and to tickle everybody's ears and make everybody happy. This will disrupt people and from the beginning, for me, I wanted to make a movie that would kind of shake the church and wake them up and ask them how much do you treasure the word of God? Is Jesus all, is he your life, and how far would you be willing to go for your faith? And so all of those things were just so heavy on my heart that, year after year, that we tried to raise the funds, that we had doors closed in our faces, that networks and studios said no, this is crazy bad idea. We kept pushing forward, we kept believing that God was in it, and it all kind of came to fruition in 2022. And the Lord not only brought the right people to bring the funding, but he also brought the right people, the right artists, to join me on the journey. It was a seven-year period where I was not only trying to develop a project, but I was meeting people that I believe God divinely appointed to be on our film set, to either act in it or work on the crew side of things, post-production side of things and the movie, though, we made it for a very small amount of money in terms of the normals in the industry. People think that this is a major motion millions of dollars production, and that's a testimony to my team, the people that bought into the vision and were willing to take the risk with us.
Speaker 2:And the thing that's been so overwhelming is maybe too easy of a word to use, but it has been overwhelming is to see the audience response. Sure, the people on the outside of the faith have ridiculed it. We even had a Satanist do a movie review and put it online, and it got hundreds of thousands of views and they just ripped it to shreds and that stuff has happened which, I guess, if the enemy isn't upset about what you're doing, are you really doing anything effective. But what's been so overwhelming is that this movie has inspired people to get serious about the Bible, to commit scripture, to memory, to reevaluate their own relationship with God, and it's also been very fulfilling that people enjoyed the movie.
Speaker 2:A lot of people say, yeah, christian movies are great, but they're not enjoyable. They have good messages but they're not enjoyable. Well, you know, they have good messages but they're not enjoyable. And the fact that people have said that it's a thrill ride and you're on the edge of your seat and you know those types of comments it's affirming that the risk was worth it and I believe that God has been honored in the process and it's been the most incredible experience. It's taken up a decade of my life and I'm so thankful that it's now out there for people to experience and pass on to their friends and watch multiple times. That's one of the other compliments we've received is that this is not a movie you can only watch once, so I'm just so thankful.
Speaker 3:I want to weave in a couple of things. You've already mentioned More collaboration and a professor at Ball State Was it Jim Shasky? Yeah, so I know for a fact that disciples, whether you wanted to or not, forced you into more collaboration, which was ultimately wonderful, turned out great. Have you, I guess, internalized the notion that the days of you becoming the Jim Shasky of your sphere is either here or approaching very quickly? And what I mean by that is you've racked up some hardware, you've had some successes and you'll have more, but the idea that through that collaboration, it's time for you to challenge, admonish, fan the flames. Where are you seeing those opportunities to work with, not just people younger, you know, because you can lead up and lead parallel? Are you seeing that door of opportunity open to where you're taking some of those lessons from your old professor and applying them to people that you see extreme talent in?
Speaker 2:Yes and no. I mean, I think, on a simple level. Yes, there have been very obvious opportunities here in the last few years, especially where guys younger than me, who are just starting out, they want to be on my film sets and they want to see why I do what I do. And they just want to absorb would be maybe a better word from my experience and that's been so flattering, rewarding, I don't even know the right word to use because I remember what it was like being in high school and college and just dreaming, wishing one day, man, I want to be on a film set, wishing one day man, I want to be on a film set. And if it wasn't for Shafsky and the other professors at my college like I would have had some of the opportunities that I had, but it still wasn't being on a feature film set.
Speaker 2:I remember getting cast in a subway commercial when I was sophomore in college and it was my first like really big film set that I'd ever been on.
Speaker 2:I remember so badly wanting the director just to pull me aside and teach me a couple things, you know, whisper a few tricks of the trade to me or something, and people in my industry are very often they keep everything close to the chest, everything's intellectual property. You don't want it to be stolen, and so they can be kind of cold. And it's been very, very fulfilling to put my arm around a few people and just say, hey, here's what I've learned, try this, connect people and try to give people opportunities. That's been really fulfilling. But I also realize that the more collaboration I've allowed into my sphere, the more I realize how little I still know and how much I still need to grow and learn. And so I'm still kind of seeking out and in some ways I guess I don't feel like I am ready to be into that mentor type role. I'll do it as often as the Lord allows into my life, but I'm still. I guess I'm still hungry and wanting to chase some things that are heavy on my heart.
Speaker 3:Well, you definitely have lots of more hardware to collect and story to tell and we're excited to be, whatever little part or piece of it is that we can be and follow along. We like to end these podcasts and, by the way, thank you. You've been super generous with your time and your comments and your stories and I know we kind of didn't cover a lot of the traditional what movies and things have you done? But it's been fascinating to hear your background because I truly do believe that there is nurture and nature in your creative and we talked about that. You definitely have some God-given gifts, but there've been a lot of fans on that flame to make sure that it didn't go out, from your parents, your siblings to your wife and now your kids, you know in their own unique way, as they encourage all of us.
Speaker 3:their children encourage all of us. We like to end with two questions. So, without any kind of preempting, here's the first question what is a risk that you have taken that has changed your life?
Speaker 2:Oh, man, I would say maybe at a fundamental level, anybody who gets married is taking a risk, I think. But marrying my wife, my high school sweetheart, has been the biggest change in my life and God has used that woman to change me in ways that I'll never quite get over and be grateful for. That I'll never quite get over and be grateful for. Also, I think a big risk was Discipled in the Moonlight. That was the one that we had every reason to abandon ship and people telling us to abandon ship multiple times in the process, and it was a risk. But I'm so thankful that I took that risk because it made me a better person, not just a better creative, and it has been something that has blessed so many people and continues to bless people, and I'm so thankful to see how God has worked, despite myself in the midst of all that.
Speaker 3:Last question what is unfinished that you have the resolve to complete either in the near future or the not so distant future?
Speaker 2:So with the way that my brain works. There's, at any given time, there could be 15 to 20 different ideas that I'm chasing and I'm trying to figure out and I'm trying to solve problems I'm trying to solve in my head and stories to cultivate. But there is one that I want to see happen before I die, and I don't know if it's going to be soon, I don't know if it's going to be later, but the Lord has given me a lot of visions. I've always been fascinated by the crucifixion of Jesus. It's something that I've studied a lot, just from a historical standpoint and then also a biblical standpoint, and I mean it is the climax of human history, that and the resurrection.
Speaker 2:But one moment that has been on my mind more than anything is when Jesus said my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And in that moment bearing upon himself the wrath of Almighty god for the sins of all humanity. And I want to explore telling that story from the spiritual realm and not just the physical realm. And so is essentially seeing the crucifixion from a whole different angle. And that is, I have the resolve that I want to see that come to life one day. I don't know when. It would be a very expensive movie, but if there's anything that could be like the crowning jewel of my career, I would want it to be that, because that's the most important story that I could ever tell. I think I have some pretty cool ideas for it.
Speaker 3:Well, thanks for sharing it, because now I know how to hold you accountable to that big jewel. Thank you again for your time, for sharing your talent with the world and for always pointing us, to remind us the source of that talent is your Lord and Savior. So thanks for just being you, brett, to enjoy the association and getting to know you and having this conversation. Thank you, thanks for tuning in to Risk and Resolve. See you next time.
