Interview with Richard H. Campbell

This month we're celebrating the publication of the first book on the subject of cinema and the Bible, Richard H. Campbell and Michael R. Pitts' "The Bible on Film: A Checklist 1897-1980, so to mark the occasion I managed to get an exclusive audience with Richard Campbell himself. So here goes...

What first got you interested in the Bible on Film?

I always liked movies and television, especially biblical films. I enjoyed watching movies like The Robe and The Ten Commandments on TV every year. When I was in tenth grade, my high school ran Jesus Christ Superstar, and I thought it was great. I knew then I wanted to write something about it someday.

How did you come to decide to write the book?

Being a fan of all types of movies, I would buy whatever books I could find about film. I found books about spy movies, westerns, horror films, science fiction movies, so on, but I couldn't find any book at all about biblical films. So I decided to write one! I began writing it on the day I graduated high school, which was 8 June 1977. The first thing I wrote was about Superstar. That's the version in the book.

Paint a picture for us about how you went about searching it, particularly those of us who have only ever done research in the internet era

I just kept writing more of it whenever I had the time right up until it was published in 1981. It was just a lot of hard work and research. I remember Leonard Maltin's book about "Movies on TV" being helpful, as well as Walt Lee's brilliant "Guide to Fantastic Films". There was no internet then, and no home video.

There are three sections in the book OT films, NT films and TV Programs which is your favourite film from each section?

I like the section about the New Testament movies the best, because that's where Superstar is listed. To this day, Superstar is the best movie I've ever seen (followed by Head and High Noon).

Which are the Bible films over the last 40 years which have really captured your attention (and why)?

I haven't seen many of the 'newer' movies. Noah was good. The Passion of the Christ was interesting. The last biblical film I really liked was Peter and Paul back in 1981. I wrote a massive write-up for Peter and Paul which ran several pages and was not used because Scarecrow (the publishers) didn't want to change the 'end date' from 1980 to 1981 (no idea why) so my Peter and Paul piece was reduced to a sentence or two in the afterwords section.

How has the landscape changed over the last 40 years in terms of the kind of biblical films which are being made?

The modern biblical films lack the 'epic' look of the ones made in the '50s and '60s. The wonderful costumes and  great dialogue are gone. The old ones are almost 'camp' , which  I like. Today's biblical films are more serious and rely on special effects too much.  I don't think they'll ever do a musical biblical film again. Nor should they. It's a different time.

Which story from the Bible would you love to see made or remade in a particular fashion?

This may sound strange, but I'd like to see them do a movie about the life of Christ with an all female cast. No nudity, no language, not done as a joke. Think The Greatest Story Ever Told with only females playing all the roles. 

A publisher offers you $30,000 dollars to write the book of your choice. What would it be?

When I was a kid -- starting in third grade and lasting until high school graduation -- my friend and I made our own 'pretend' comic books about a trio of superheroes  called THE GANG. We wrote and drew them ourselves as a hobby. We never tried to get them published. We'd also write and sing songs into a tape recorder. I'd like to write a book about the ten years we did this. We did some pretty good stuff considering how young we were. I'm sure many kids did things like this. Now that they are adults, they might identify with the nostalgia of it.