Paulists at Work at Thelma’s Cafe

Where do you go to find television and film production that is incisive, illuminating and affirming? If you said PBS, you’d be right, but a less controversial destination might be Paulist Productions. For curious Palisadians, Paulist Productions creates films and television programs in that enigmatic Mediterranean-style building on PCH known as the Thelma Todd Caf’. And as if to secure its place in the sun, the company, which moved into the building in 1964, decided to stay put and resuscitate the landmark three years ago. ‘There’s no point in moving,’ reasons Fr. Frank Desiderio, CSP, president of Paulist Productions. ‘It’s beautiful and I love it here.’ Paulist Productions was started in 1960 by the late Fr. Elwood (Bud) Kieser, who realized 40 years ago the power of television through his weekly ‘Insight’ series, which consisted of 30-minute comedies or dramas focusing on social or religious themes. The series aired for 23 years and won six Emmys. A Paulist priest of great faith, Kieser practiced his skills as a producer to promote social activism, nonviolence and the human spirit. He cultivated actors, who often became friends, to appear on his dramatic anthology series, including Carol Burnett, Ed Asner and Walter Matthau. He also produced films, such as ‘Romero’ (1989) starring Raul Julia, about the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador 25 years ago, and ‘Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story’ (1995) starring Moira Kelly, about the Roman Catholic activist. Kieser set the vision for Paulist Productions, believing that movies and television were ideal vehicles for conveying spiritual values. ‘Jesus was a storyteller,’ he once said. ‘He told stories in order to challenge people and illumine the meaning of their lives and motivate them to love.’ Although Kieser’s unexpected death at 71 in 2000 was a significant loss, Desiderio, who had joined Paulist Productions in 1998, and was to take over after Fr. Kieser’s planned retirement in 2001, became president and has continued the momentum. ‘When Bud died we were already in preproduction on ‘Judas,’ an ABC Movie of the Week, and ‘The Jesus Experience,’ an eight-part documentary series for The Hallmark Channel in 2003,’ Desiderio recalls. In preparing to take over the business, Desiderio was a likely candidate, having already directed his own ministry towards communications. ‘I was attracted to media and I knew I wanted to work with radio or in publishing after graduating from the University of Maryland,’ says Desiderio, 52, who grew up in Washington, D.C. He first worked as an editor at a children’s press, but after he was called to the priesthood, he was drawn to the Paulists for their involvement in communications. Theirs is the oldest Catholic press, established within the first decade after the order was founded in 1858. In 1988, Desiderio began his radio work in Los Angeles, producing two weekly religious and public affairs programs for Paulist Communications, another branch of the Paulist mission. At the same time he earned a master’s degree in communications management from the USC Annenberg School of Communications. He also holds a master’s degree in theology from Catholic University of America. Every year since 1998, Paulist Productions has produced documentaries, ranging in length from one to three hours, for the History Channel. Released around the holidays, Easter or Christmas, these include documentaries on the apostles Peter, Paul and Judas, as well as other studies, such as ‘Beyond the Da Vinci Code,’ which explored the truths behind Dan Brown’s controversial book, and this spring’s, ‘Visions of Mary,’ the history of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Responding to changing times, Desiderio has veered from the dramas of the ‘Insight’ model, and focuses instead on feature documentaries and TV movies. ‘The TV audience has changed in the last 40 years,’ Desiderio says. ‘Bud produced a different little play with different characters every week, sometimes a comedy, sometimes a drama. Nowadays, the networks are not buying anthology series; it’s harder to sustain an audience. People get attached to a character, like in ‘Desperate Housewives.’ There is a certain loyalty to this relationship. Most people can maintain only a limited number of TV relationships.’ The challenge for Desiderio is to produce thoughtful religious programming for audiences, whose appetite, for the most part, is for escapism. ‘We strive to make programs entertaining, and enlightening. Ideally, our stories should probe the human condition.’ Paulist Productions is alone in the kind of work it does. ‘We are the only ones who are explicit in our religious identity producing for mainstream television,’ Desiderio says. ‘Our ratings are consistent, around one million viewers on the History Channel programs.’ As a nonprofit corporation, all its money goes into an endowment, leaving five percent for new development and operations. While the History Channel demographic skews to an older audience’35 to 50-year-old men’Desiderio resists characterizing Paulist productions as philosophically one-sided. ‘We try to interview a range of people, scholars on any particular subject. For example, with the ‘Da Vinci Code’ piece, we talked to skeptics as well as people from the American Institute of Religion. ‘We try and reach a broad audience, so a person without much religious background can be entertained.’ But, having said that, Desiderio has not forgotten the need to entertain, and often combines the ‘talking heads’ format with biblical reenactments. ‘All we have are art masterpieces from the ages, and we need to use reenactments to have something visual.’ A writer and poet, Desiderio has come up with a number of the story ideas, including a documentary on St. Joseph (aired in March), which he had been thinking about long before he joined Paulist Productions. ‘It had always been a personal goal of mine to tell the story of Joseph, who, as the documentary says, ‘shaped the very foundation of Christianity and yet not one word of his is reported in the bible,” Another of his ideas, ‘Judas,’ was released in March 2004, at the same time as Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ,’ Desiderio says, and got notoriety on ABC. ‘It’s a well-done TV movie that follows a story fictionalization of who Judas might have been. There is a large body of literature on Judas; some say he was evil, and others say he betrayed Jesus because Jesus asked him to do it. He’s a very interesting character; why would somebody betray the Son of God? Especially because he was his follower and friend. We’ve all either been betrayed or betrayed someone.’ Betrayal plays a prominent role in Desiderio’s current project, ‘Forgiveness,’ which will be a feature documentary focusing on the dramatic physical and spiritual healing effects of forgiveness. ‘This one is going to be about how to resolve conflict and anger, both physically and mentally,’ Desiderio says. ‘We’re taking a scientific perspective and researching the topic of forgiveness. We will be interviewing real people with recognizable challenges: A spouse forgiving adultery, a murder victim’s parents, a National Guardsman who finds out his wife has left him. These themes are dramatic and universal. We’ll examine different approaches to forgiveness, and even consider that there may be cases when there cannot be forgiveness.’ The film begins shooting in October. The company often partners with Weller Grossman, a large production company in North Hollywood which offers post-production and editing suites, and hires the producer who goes out to do the field shooting. Paulist Productions uses its Palisades facility for office space and conference areas, and is home to the Humanitas Prize, founded by Fr. Kieser in 1974 to honor film and television writers for work that promotes human values. As president, Desiderio oversees all aspects of the company with the assistance of a 25-member board of directors and a small staff. ‘How I allot my time depends a lot of what we’re involved in at the time,’ he says. ‘Sometimes it’s raising money to produce a movie, sometimes it’s story development and consulting with other people who are working on shows that have a religious element and they want to run it by me.’ In addition to all of this, Desidero helps out at Corpus Christi Church by saying Mass and delivering the homily on weekends. Although he does not typically preach about his work from the pulpit, he finds his creative, lyrical side helpful in developing his homilies. ‘I write poetry every week,’ he says. ‘It’s part of my morning homily preparation. The priest is supposed to be a poet of the word of God. The language and imagery in my poetry help to leaven the homily.’