Andrew Erwin
17 min read ⭑
“Something magical happens in a movie theater. You can experience something on your own in isolation, but in a theater, you can connect with people.”
Andrew Erwin has been telling stories and making movies with his brother, Jon, since they were kids. After years of growing their skills making commercials, documentaries and music videos, the Erwin brothers took a leap of faith and started making films like October Baby, Mom’s Night Out, Woodlawn and the blockbuster success I Can Only Imagine. In our conversation below, Andrew gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the making of I Can Only Imagine, including a difficult moment of surrender with God, and a sneak peek at what to expect for I Can Only Imagine 2. You’ll also read about some of Andrew’s favorite ways to pursue spiritual growth, whether it’s sitting around a campfire with some guys smoking cigars or pursuing a new creative aspect of filmmaking.
The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
Food is always about more than food; it’s also about home and people and love. So how does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?
My favorite restaurant, unfortunately, closed down about a year ago in Nashville, but it was called the Honeysuckle. There was a corner booth that had a curtain to it. It was a circular booth that sat maybe 12 people, right on the other side of the bar. Every big life decision that I’ve made over the past seven years has been in or around that corner booth. I love their food. They had honey-glazed Brussels sprouts that were to die for, their salmon was awesome, and they had a charcuterie board that was just fantastic — kind of a gastropub-type thing.
I started going while making the first “I Can Only Imagine.” We chose that restaurant because I was meeting with Bart Millard of Mercy Me, and it was his favorite restaurant. He would always get the fried chicken, and I would always try to get something that appeared healthier to mask my unhealthy habits outside of that restaurant. We would sit there and talk about life, which would lead to conversations about movies.
Since then, because it was such a profound experience, I celebrated my 40th birthday party there years ago. I’ve done everything in that little place. I was sad to see it close; there was a lot of life lived in those walls.
Considerate Agency; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
What “nonspiritual” activity have you found to be quite spiritual, after all? What quirky proclivity, out-of-the-way interest or unexpected pursuit refreshes your soul?
For me, it’s cigars. When you get to Nashville, a few activities are a must. First, you have to have a truck, and second, everybody has to sit around and smoke a cigar. I’m connected with several groups of men who, at least once a month, strike up a campfire in a barrel. We’ll sit on somebody’s porch, we’ll invite all our friends, and we’ll sit around. Sometimes those groups are five people, sometimes 30, but we’ll sit around and talk about life. There’s just something about it. Some guys do pipes, some guys don’t. I don’t always smoke a cigar, but I love sitting around. I enjoy the discipline of slowing down and having to have a three-hour conversation. The amount of life lived around a fire in a barrel on somebody’s porch with a group of guys is incredible.
Often, people get so busy that they don’t connect. The opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety; it’s connection. We’re meant to connect with people, and in order to be sober-minded, I have to be connected to myself, God and others. I need that discipline of slowing down and seeing where somebody’s at and sharing life. I’ve connected more with people around a campfire than I sometimes have in a church. It’s communal, and I love that.
It usually starts with storytelling. Nashville is a story town, whether you’re a musician, a filmmaker or an actor. You sit around and swap war stories. You laugh a lot. Then your guard goes down, and somebody inevitably says, “Hey, this is where I’m at,” and they share a need. I’ve shared some of the hardest situations I’ve had to walk through around a campfire, and I’ve received so much life poured into me. Then there are times when I’m the person pouring into someone else. Usually, this happens around hour three, when we’re all way too cold, our teeth are chattering under the night sky, and it gets real.
Often, my wife knows if I need to go hang out at a campfire. I usually get back after midnight. If I have been around cigars, the rule is I have to take a shower right away before I get in bed.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness; every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you confront its power?
My kryptonite would be chocolate. I’m sure there’s something a lot deeper. I’ve done a lot of deep work, and I’m grateful to walk in recovery. There are some intense things that God has had to root out of my life over the years. I’m grateful to still walk in recovery with people that I can be open and vulnerable with, but my last gremlin to face is chocolate.
It seems so harmless. But when it comes to holidays in my industry, people send you these amazing gifts of chocolate, and I hate it. I’ll open this molten lava cake that has a solid fudge center. I’ll stare at it for days in my fridge, and then finally, late one night … it gets ugly.
I read that Tom Cruise’s wrap gift for everybody is a particular designer luxury cake. It’s really expensive, and he’ll send that to people. Then he’ll call you while you’re eating it and have you describe how it tastes because he can’t eat it — he has to stay in good shape. Not that Tom Cruise has ever sent me a cake, but I’m always the person on the other end of the line, eating the cake.
I’m a work in progress. In my industry, there’s a point where you have to take better care of yourself if you’re going to be able to last long term. I’m at that 47-year-old transition where I can’t disregard things as much as I did in my younger days.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
My obsession will be the same thing until the day I die, and that’s the idea of story. If I weren’t telling stories through movies, I would be on a street corner somewhere performing for a crowd. I would find some way to tell my stories.
I’ve doubled down on that communal experience. Something magical happens in a movie theater. You can experience something on your own in isolation, but in a theater, you can connect with people. When we’re in a community and experiencing something emotionally stimulating together, it’s profoundly spiritual.
The latest film we’ve been working on is “I Can Only Imagine 2.” The first movie was a special moment for us and for everyone else who embraced that story. It was such a special story that I was really nervous to go back. I didn’t want to do a sequel unless there was a reason to go back, so I held out for a reason. Then my co-director, Brent McCorkle, brought me the story of the song, “Even If.” It was a beautiful story, exploring, “What if the happily ever after we gave Bart in the last movie breaks? And what if the crowd stops applauding and goes home and life goes back to being hard? What do you do with it then?”
“I Can Only Imagine 2” tracks Bart’s story with his own son as he wonders, How do I give my kid what I never received from my father? I think this is something deeply relatable to people. This film introduces the idea of gratitude. Gratitude is the foundational, earth-shattering principle that even though life can be hard, you can be grateful in the middle of it. It’s that tension between grief and gratitude. This movie beautifully portrays that with a new character named Tim Timmons, played by Milo Ventimiglia, from “This Is Us.”
Of course, I’m really excited for the communal aspect, with it coming out Feb. 20. I think it’ll be special for the audiences to find those themes together as a group. I can’t wait.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Whether we’re cashiers or CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need God’s love flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
I think you know it’s God when it happens because you’re surrendered and receiving it. I think one of my favorite quotes from any movie is from the last faith-based film to be on the Oscar platform, “Chariots of Fire.” The film features a runner named Eric Liddell competing for his country in the Olympics. He is debating on whether to continue being a runner or to quit and become a missionary. He’s talking to someone who’s challenging him to quit, and he says, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.”
We make such a big deal over whether something is ministry, whether it’s sacred and whether it’s some sort of spiritual work. But when you’re a Christian, and you’re surrendered to God and have an open hand to him, then whether I’m preaching or washing dishes, it’s all the same. It all becomes sacred because it’s God empowering my footsteps.
Isaiah 30:21 comes right on the heels of a passage that tells us that we find our strength in repentance and rest. The verse says, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” We can simply surrender to God and say, “God, use me where you got me. I don’t know what to do. I don’t have some sort of special skill. All I have is, for me, a camera in my hands and the ability to tell a story. How do you want to use that?” And let God figure out what to do with what’s in your hand. Give it to him. When you have that surrendered posture, you don’t have to move forward in timidity or fear. You move forward with purpose because whether you turn to the right or to the left, it’s blessed. He’s going to let you know which way to go, and then whichever way you turn is the way you’re supposed to be going.
That’s how you know it’s God — it’s that surrendered posture that says, “God, use me, and do what you want.” That might be being kind to somebody in a coffee shop or it might be doing something revolutionary. It doesn’t matter. It’s all sacred.
The work you do is hard work. There are hard days. Are there days when you feel God’s pleasure like Eric Liddell did when he was running?
Yes. For me, it was the first go at “I Can Only Imagine.” We came at a critical point in our careers where we could have gone one of two ways. It very well could have gone down the drain. We were coming off a loss and were now doing a movie that nobody wanted to do. We had independently financed it, and the day we started filming it, there was a deadline article that came out that said the music biopic is dead. I thought, Well, we picked a winner. The first day on set is always a train wreck — it never goes the way you want it to go.
After the first day on set, I didn’t have Dennis Quaid cast in the film or any other name actors. We’d written the role for somebody else, but they had turned it down to take something else, and we didn’t have anybody for the father role. I went back to my apartment in Oklahoma City, and I had a panic attack. I said, “God, I’m either making the best movie ever or the worst, and I don’t know which one it is right now.” And God said, “Is that OK?” I replied, “No, I don’t want to be embarrassed.” He said, “Is it OK?” I finally said, “OK, God, it’s your problem. What do you want to do?”
We expend so much energy on self-preservation. What will people think of me if I fail? So much of our creative energy is dedicated to masking my insecurity. But there’s a powerful moment when you let go of the boat you’re clinging to and start swimming. If I drown, I drown. I’m going to swim. I forget what people think of me. I’m going to do the best I can. You just let go and let the consequences go, too.
That was my let-go-of-the-boat moment. So on opening weekend, two years later, I had really divorced myself from my identity being what I do. When it came out, it was only expected to do $2 million that first weekend, which would have been a disaster. But it hit and did $17 million on opening weekend, then went on to do almost $90 million for the run. It was shaking the industry for a moment in time. It only lasted for a moment, but it was a cool moment. But rather than that being a moment of validation, I sat in a food court in Plano, Texas, where the movie was playing next door. Everybody was excited about it, and nobody knew who the heck I was. They were walking by me in this food court in Plano, Texas, and I sat there with tears in my eyes and said, “God, how cool for you to give me a front-row seat to see you work.” So that’s the pleasure on my back. That’s got me saying, Well done. That’s a great story. You are a storyteller.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?
The posture of surrender I was talking about earlier is a daily thing for me. Surrender is one of the most beautiful concepts in the universe. To find strength in surrender doesn’t make sense at all. It’s contradictory. It goes back to the spiritual principle Paul touched on when he said, “When I am weak, then I am strong” (see 2 Cor. 12). In 12-step, they often talk about the idea of powerlessness, and one day, somebody challenged me on that topic. They said, “Do you know the difference between powerlessness and helplessness?” I replied, “They’re the same thing.” The other person said, “No, if you believe that you’re helpless, you realize that nobody else is coming for you, and you have to protect yourself. You have to try to make yourself appear as powerful as possible to control the universe. If you embrace your powerlessness, you realize there is nothing that you can do to make yourself powerful enough to control anything. So you have no choice but to depend on God and others.”
There’s a powerful thing that happens when you surrender and say, “God, I’m going to do the things that I have the ability to change, but the things that I can’t, I’m going to surrender to you.” There’s this beautiful release that comes when I get to see him at work. When I have that posture of surrender, I don’t have to walk in fear. I don’t have to walk apprehensively. It’s about having an open hand and being open to the experience of the present. I get that right probably 20% of the time right now. It’s still a daily struggle, but the Bible talks about striving to enter God’s rest (see Heb. 4). The striving that I do is to be at rest, saying, “God, what do you want to do? I want to do my best. I want to release the results.” I fired myself from the results committee. So surrender has been a daily discipline I’m still working on.
I always thought surrender and gratitude were passive and wimpy. I thought that if I surrendered, it meant I lay down and didn’t care. I deeply care, I absolutely deeply care. But it’s a choice and a posture of looking at God and asking, “Where are you going next? What do you want to do?” I often tell the actors I coach that the most powerful emotion on camera is not expressed emotion; it’s suppressed. It’s not trying to cry, it’s trying not to cry, letting life force the tears out of you. When I tell people to do less, sometimes the actor thinks I mean to feel less. No, you’re feeling all that emotion inside, but you’re choosing to contain it and let life force it out of you. It’s a very active thing. It’s a very disciplined thing. I think the idea of surrender and gratitude is the same way. It is a discipline in that you acknowledge your big feelings about life (e.g., I would love my film to be a huge hit in a few weeks), but you’re releasing the results (e.g., I can’t make that happen, but I can trust that God’s will is best). It’s a wrestling match, but it’s a beautiful wrestling match.
If we all had the chance to write our own stories, the first thing we would eliminate is the idea of struggle and hardship. But in order to tell a satisfying story, you need struggle. For example, if you look at Joseph Campbell’s book “Hero with a Thousand Faces,” every hero’s journey has to have a dark night of the soul. It has to be going into the cave and reemerging from the cave. That is the moment. If we wrote our own stories, we would eliminate that every time, but what we’d get is a cheap ending. By surrendering, we allow God to take us through those deep waters, and that’s really what this movie, “I Can Only Image 2,” is about. When we go through deep waters or through the fire, God can deliver us. But even if he doesn’t, we won’t bend our knee or give up. The song “Even If,” which this movie is built on, comes from the idea that God is writing a bigger and better story.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and changed your heart?
The first of my top three resources would be community. The church was designed to cultivate smaller communities. Even if we attend a big church, we need to find people who are safe and with whom we can have a two-way relationship. What makes a safe community is not somebody trying to fix you. It’s a two-way relationship where we’re both vulnerable as we share life together. Galatians 6:1 tells us that if a brother is overcome with sin, you who are spiritual should come alongside him and restore him with an attitude of humility, considering yourself. The “considering yourself” part is realizing, “Tomorrow, that might be me, and you might have to help me up.” That’s community.
Second is therapy. Therapy helps. My counselor, Jeff Schulte, has walked with me for a number of years. He has an amazing ministry of mentoring leaders. I’ve learned so much about life just by sitting with him as he helps me work through the practical, emotional side of how I see and approach life. Sometimes as Christians, we’re afraid of the word “therapy” because we feel it’s too secular. My therapist is a strong Christian, and he gives me principles of the practical side of God so I can be whole — physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. All those components are important. If I get physically sick, I need to go to a medical doctor. It’s the same with mental health and therapy.
Lastly, laughter. I tend to be a little more serious in how I approach life, and God gave me a wife who loves to laugh. My kids love the movie “Trolls.” In it, there’s a character named Branch whose color has faded away so that he’s all gray. Then, an effervescent troll named Poppy — who’s all pink — brings him back to life by helping him find joy again. I was very much a Branch-type guy, and my wife has been like Poppy to me. She’s breathed life into me and has taught me the joy of laughter.
Certain things can be godsends, helping us survive, even thrive, in our fast-paced world. Does technology ever help you this way? Has an app ever boosted your spiritual growth? If so, how?
Maybe this is self-serving, but I love the movie theater. There’s something sacred about enjoying a vicarious emotional journey in a theater, even if it’s by myself. In fact, several times a month, I will go to the movies and watch a matinee all on my own with my popcorn. For me, it’s healing. I love it.
I think the gospel threads are woven throughout stories, whether people know it or not. One day, I was talking about this topic backstage with one of my filmmaker buddies who is not a Christian. I told him every film either portrays the gospel in some way or rejects it. He said, “Try me. Where’s the gospel in the movies I’ve made?” I said, “You did that zombie comedy “Warm Bodies”.” It’s about people who are dead, but they don’t know they’re dead. One of these zombie characters meets a girl who shows him unconditional love, and his heart starts beating again, and he goes from being dead to alive. Then he starts sharing with all of his zombie friends what he’s just found, and they all start moving from death to life. So I said, “Dude, that’s called the gospel.” He looked at me like his mind was blown.
I enjoy experiencing other people’s stories and seeing that yearning of the human soul. When COVID happened and everybody said the movie theater was never coming back, I thought, Then I’ll be the last person in a movie theater, and I’ll go down with the ship, because I believe it’s coming back. To see the theater make a resurgence is why I do what I do.
QUESTION #8: dream
God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
I’ve wrestled a lot philosophically with this idea of healthy anger. The difference between rage and anger is that rage is fear of losing something, while anger is passion for wanting something. Anger helps you overcome fear. I’m taking on some things in my journey that I’ve always discounted as not me. One of those things is writing more. I was always part of a duo with my brother, who’s a fantastic writer. His show, “House of David,” is amazing. The writing in it is phenomenal. I’m a big fan. I’m a sideline producer for that one, but that’s his baby, and he does a great job.
That said, my brother was always the writer, so I always told myself that I’m not a writer. But in the past few films that I’ve done, including “I Can Only Imagine,” I’ve begun to delve into off-grid writing — some on-the-side, uncredited writing. I’ve told several of my co-creators that I don’t want credit. I don’t want anything but the experience. So I’ve started writing more, and I’ve found a lot of joy in the creation aspect. Normally, I’m always the one directing and creating the story from the words already on the page, but I’m loving the writing process, discovering the story on the front end. It’s a beautiful art.
There was a singer, Toby McKeehan, with a band called DC Talk back in the day. When the band broke up at the height of its popularity, Toby wanted to go out as a solo act even though he didn’t sing as much as he rapped. This guy had the humility to go back and take singing lessons to become TobyMac. He had a huge career as a solo artist after learning how to sing. That’s anger. I’m enjoying the writing process now. I’m learning.
Suffering is inevitable in this life. And yet, as Andrew Erwin pointed out above, we don’t have to go through it alone. Isaiah 43:1-2 tells us, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you” (ESV).
What hard things are you walking through right now? Where do you need God to show you he’s with you? Where do you need to surrender?
Andrew Erwin, half of the filmmaking duo The Erwin Brothers. He and his brother have directed videos and produced concerts and television programs for platinum recording artists such as Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Casting Crowns, Switchfoot, Skillet and others and received 11 GMA Dove Awards nominations and three wins for Music Video of the Year. Andrew and Jon’s films include October Baby, Mom’s Night Out, Woodlawn and the 2018 smash hit I Can Only Imagine. Andrew serves as chief creative officer at Kingdom Story Company, as well as produces and directs feature films with his brother, Jon, and Kevin Downes.