Filmmaker’s Camera Shadows Local Priest

By PRISCILLA GREEAR, Staff Writer

Published: October 16, 2003

ATLANTA—Emory University campus chaplain Father Tim Hepburn always wanted to be a rock star when he grew up. Nathan Flood planned for a career as a mechanical engineer. Both switched gears along the way, while still finding ways to use those innate gifts and a proclivity to perform and create.

It was in filming his first feature length film, the documentary “The Calling” about the vocation of Father Hepburn, that Flood, 33, got a clearer conviction about his own calling to film and television production. And the timing was fortuitously perfect, as the film was completed in 2002, the year the sex abuse scandal shook the church.

The film will air on EWTN on Saturday, Oct. 25 at 8 p.m. and Thursday, Oct. 30 at 1 p.m. It was awarded first place in the amateur division of the 17th annual Polish International Catholic Film Festival in Warsaw, and named a semi-finalist in the 2002 Angelus Awards given by Family Theatre Productions in Hollywood. Wearing khakis, a green polo shirt and a wooden cross necklace, Flood sat on the couch in the CTK youth ministry lounge, where he’s interim youth minister, and talked enthusiastically about his “labor of love.”

“I love this film,” he said. “I wanted to de-mystify the priesthood and in another sense I wanted to re-mystify the priesthood.”

For his part, Father Hepburn recalls being less than enthusiastic when first hearing Flood’s proposal.

“I was reluctant,” he said in a phone interview, half-affectionately recalling his director’s way with words. “He fooled me. He said it was going to be a few months’ filming and it turned into like two years—and you can put that in.”

Nevertheless the experience had its highlights.

“I got a lot of laughs and I guess something (satisfying) about being able to tell people the normal parts of a priest’s life that most people don’t see,” said Father Hepburn, who heard his calling while studying architecture at Auburn University.

One of those good times --which shows up during the closing credits --is when “sound guy” Robert Powers is going to get something out of a car where Father Hepburn, packing up for a new assignment, finds a disk-shooting toy and gets Flood to film Powers being ambushed.

Flood saw the priest’s human and silly side while serving as a core member for the Life Teen program at the Cathedral of Christ the King, where his film star was then a parochial vicar. Flood, who has an engineering degree from the University of Florida, was working at that time as a refrigeration engineer in Atlanta. He found it to be “just a job” and began exploring the possibility of business school. While checking out the program at Georgia State he came across a brochure that grabbed him on their film studies, a field he had wanted to work in since high school when he was a theatre projectionist. While keeping his engineering job, he enrolled part-time in the program, but then took a year off, becoming frustrated with their at-the-time antiquated equipment, and applied and was accepted to the Academy of American Film Institute in Los Angeles. In the meantime, as growing up he had always seen priests as “robots” at Sunday Mass, he became interested in making a film on Father Hepburn, whom he saw as both holy and ordinary, and able to relate well to all types of people. If he returned to Georgia State, which by then had built new facilities, he needed a subject for his master’s thesis project.

“It was a strong conviction that I wanted to make this film and I couldn’t do it in LA. I quit my (engineering) job at The Facility Group, finished up my degree and made the film. I’m very happy I did that.”

He was attracted to Father Hepburn’s authenticity. “He’s not going to come at you (in a way) that is putting on airs about his office. He speaks to you as a priest, also as a man. I also saw that when he does youth ministry. He treats everyone as though they are a holy child of God.”

Flood further recognized his own calling as he filmed Father Hepburn doing the work he loves and as he received advice from his Jesuit spiritual director that he should focus not on how much talent he has but on whether or not he was being called. When Flood feared failure, that advice “in a sense set me free.”

“I have to trust God has a plan. If other people like or don’t like it, God loves it — even if it’s done poorly — if you do it 100 percent by doing what God’s calling you to do,” he said. “I want whatever I do to incorporate my faith, and so once I realized I could make films that could incorporate my faith and have a Christian element I was like, this is what I need to be doing. I love making films, and I love Jesus.”

He found filming was very hard work, shooting all day for a five-minute shot. Fortunately, Father Hepburn, with his experience singing and playing guitar at Masses and at conferences around the archdiocese, was as natural as he could be answering questions spontaneously while being followed around with a camera “in his face.” Flood was inspired by his generosity in giving of himself.

When Flood decided to make the film, he was disheartened to learn that Father Hepburn would soon be transferred from St. Theresa’s Church, Douglasville, to Blessed Trinity High School in Roswell. “But I really think this was God telling me there’s something more to this story. It’s not just about him being a parish priest … but him as a man and the trials he goes through” as he is transferred.

Father Hepburn, who now serves as campus minister at Emory, Emory at Oxford and Agnes Scott College, is also an assistant vocations director for the archdiocese.

Starting with Mass, each day in the film diverges as Father Hepburn ministers to all ages, from graduating preschoolers to the hospitalized, where his ministry takes him into the intimate and vulnerable places in people’s lives. In one scene he shakes a percussion instrument while listening to music on his way to a nursing home and talks about the sadness there in that many never have visitors. Flood found one scene, where he visits a bedridden woman, “gut-wrenching.”

“Their faces just light up because nobody comes to see them. It’s sad,” he said.

The priest is also filmed baptizing newcomers to the faith, counseling a man whose wife had a miscarriage, and visiting at least one person a week who has no expectations of him. When singing before groups he talks about feeling both connected to others and drained, as he loves being with people but also craves solitude. There are shots of him packing his books, saying that moving is a sad, biyearly ritual, and that loneliness is part of the job.

“Usually we have this thing, ‘if I only had the right girlfriend, if I only had the right spouse, if I only had this, if I only had that, I wouldn’t be lonely anymore and my life would be perfect,’ and that’s not true. That’s an illusion because you can’t cure loneliness by anything except embracing it with faith and giving it to God,” Father Hepburn says in the film. “So that’s part of what I think priestly life is about and celibate life is about. That’s part of the whole reason for it.”

It’s then up to Blessed Trinity, where Flood films Father Hepburn getting to know teens, eating with and teaching them, and dealing with mischievous youth jumping in front of the camera but then freezing up when asked to speak.

In the EWTN version, as some parts were edited out, new scenes were shot a year later at the school. In one music scene, Father Hepburn sings “My Beloved,” a mellow song he wrote, and strokes his guitar.

The priest saw the producer grow in confidence and competency during the project and hopes he can sell his work. “He really learned how to set up shots and did a real professional job … He’s very determined to get the right shots but also very courteous.”

After a year of editing, Flood completed the project in 2002. He then returned to the engineering job to “refuel the bank account,” while marketing the film, which he hopes can also reach secular audiences. It was another GSU student who suggested to a reluctant Flood that he enter it in the Polish festival, saying, “You’ll be an international, award-winning director!” It’s been submitted to and rejected by many other film festivals. But for a first shot, he’s not complaining.

GSU film and video professor Kay Beck hopes it gets more airtime on TV, which is generally more open to documentaries. “At first the subject didn’t seem like to us it was going to work, but I think he executed it greatly, showing the priest as a regular person and also charismatic. He had his flaws and he admitted to them.”

Priests had always seemed like distant figures to Beck.

“I’m not Catholic and it was of great interest to me … He was just a real person, a very likeable person who believed in what he was doing,” she said. “It was just a nice portrayal to come out at a time when leaders of the Catholic Church were being demonized and the news led one to believe this is the way all priests were.”

Flood is also now working in television on a volunteer basis along with others as technical director for Inspire One Entertainment and its Café Central, a talk show to promote positive values and personal growth for women and featuring, as they put it, guests you’d like to have coffee with. It was started in 2001 in Atlanta, and was conceived by Harvard Business School grad and former Disney executive Conn Jackson and others, who after the terrorist attacks envisioned bringing a life-affirming show to television. Flood noted the more difficult “time management” and “live editing” of television and is inspired by the determination of the highly driven, fun-spirited Jackson. It’s currently seen in 1.9 million Atlanta households and shown on local networks including Atlanta Interfaith Broadcasters.

O’Lynn Allen, AIB vice president of network operations, spoke of its “very creative, innovative approach.”

“It tries to be affirming and uplifting, especially for women. It shows women in very positive situations wherever they’ve been able to succeed.”

Flood also hopes to reach others through writing to help counteract the subtle lies of the media. He has completed one screenplay and is working on another about a boy who is given a time-traveling teleportation device that he uses to try and reunite his divorced parents. “Maybe if I’m doing it well enough they won’t even know it’s Catholic and they’ll learn something about who Christ is and what the truth is.”

For now he hopes to reach Catholics through EWTN. As he clicked around on his Mac pulling up pictures of Father Hepburn during production, and searched for a CD the priest gave him with juiced-up, louder versions of his spiritual songs, he noted that his love of music serves as a film metaphor for how the priest, who loves classic rock, brings himself to his ministry.

Father Hepburn admits that performing his songs isn’t all that draining. “I still want to be a rock star. It’s not going to happen. That kind of gets translated into I just love music.”

The way Flood sees it, he still is a star to those whom he inspires through his music and his vocation. “He’s not only a rock star as a man but as a priest. He’s just a wonderful, excellent priest.”

For information on the film visit www.aboutthecalling.com or on Café Central visit www.cafecentraltv.com.