For Steve Taylor, 'Sketch' Movie Brings Imagination to Life
A scene from 'Sketch'. Image courtesy Angel Studios.
With more than 40 years in faith-based media and the arts, Steve Taylor has forged a diversified career as a musical recording artist, record producer, movie director, and screenwriter.
During the 1980s, the Colorado native was a prominent contemporary Christian recording artist releasing four albums including his 1985 hallmark On the Fritz.
In the 1990s, Taylor turned to record producing as he worked with several prominent artists including the Peter Furler-led Newsboys and the Grammy-nominated band Sixpence None the Richer.
As the 2000s unfolded, Taylor turned toward his first love of filmmaking, directing several projects including the critically-acclaimed Blue Like Jazz, a screen adaptation of Donald Miller’s best selling book of the same name.
In late years, Taylor has made his way into movie producing. His latest project, Sketch, opens in theaters nationwide this week. Starring Emmy Award-winning actor Tony Hale, the film is a family-friendly exploration into a child’s imagination and creativity as the hastily drawn characters in a 10 year old girl’s sketchbook come to life.
I recently sat down with Taylor to discuss his career in faith-based entertainment, why creativity is an essential God-given element for our personal well-being, and how good storytelling can make a positive difference in our lives.
You first came on the contemporary Christian music scene about 40 years ago. Since then, you have become a renaissance man of sorts weaving in and out of music and film, as well as producing bands like Sixpence None the Richer, and then on to directing movies like Blue Like Jazz. Now you are producing Sketch. You are either a restless spirit for jumping in and out of creative platforms or you just have such a balanced skill set that can find success in a bunch of areas. Your thoughts on having such a diverse sense of creativity?
Well, it might just come from having a short attention span, but I like the way you put it better. I studied music and film in college and I thought it would probably be better to be a recording artist in my twenties and a filmmaker in my fifties rather than the reverse. Other things come along and every time I see some shiny new object, I have to pick it up and check it out.
Let's move into the present. You're producing a new film called Sketch. If you were trying to get someone to watch Sketch, what would you say to encourage them to give it a look? What would your sales pitch be?
The quickest sales pitch would be to go watch the trailer because that does a lot of the heavy lifting. And then the second fast sales pitch would be, it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, which is a top five film festival in the world. That's where it got a lot of reviews. If you go to Rotten Tomatoes, it's actually got a 100 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The last time I think that happened for a family movie was Paddington 2. So I guess I would say if you don't like Paddington 2, either you've never seen it or you have no heart. The basic story of Sketch is about 10-year-old Amber. Her dad is played by Tony Hale from Arrested Development and Veep fame.
He is one of my favorite actors and a fellow Christian as well. So, we find out that Amber's mom has died six months earlier. And so, her dad is concerned for her. He takes her to a counselor who discovers she likes to draw. So, the counselor gives her a sketchbook and tells her to put all her feelings in this sketchbook. Amber goes to town and starts drawing, but she draws a lot of comically horrific monsters. And then of course, those monsters come to life and terrorize everybody in a really family friendly way. We've been calling it a cross between Inside Out and Jurassic Park.
I’m sure a lot of scripts come your way for consideration. What was it about Sketch that made you want to produce this movie?
This one was unique in that the filmmaker, the writer and director is Seth Worley. I've known him since he was a teenager, and he's a fantastic filmmaker. He was good even when he was 19 years old. He did second unit photography on, The Second Chance, which was the first movie I directed. And then on Blue Like Jazz, we collaborated on some music videos and some promos. And he had me act in some of his short films. So, I was very aware of what he's doing. He's a Nashville native. He had moved to Los Angeles about seven or eight years ago, and he'd started this script for Sketch. He had it halfway done. And he showed it to me really early, and I thought it was fantastic.
He met Tony Hale, the lead actor there as well, who also got really excited. Seth came really close to getting it made with a studio in Hollywood, but it just never quite came together. So, he moved his family back to Nashville about four years ago. We met up and I asked him what was going on with Sketch, and he just said, “Man, it's dead. Nobody wants it.” And I was like, no way. It's too good. And so I said, give me the script. Let me see the latest version. So I read it and I got back with him and said, we can make this movie, but we’ve just got to be scrappy about it. We can make it in Nashville. We could shoot it here and use all the people that we love working with.
There's a way to get this movie made. And he said, “If you can find money, go for it.” I ended up having a conversation with Jon Erwin (Jesus Revolution, House of David) because we were working together on a different project, producing The Dead Sea Squirrels as an animated show. That show was created by Mike Nawrocki, who is a great friend and the co-creator of Veggie Tales and the voice of Larry the Cucumber. So, we were talking about that. And then he said, “What else are you working on?” I said, well, I got this script that I'm trying to find money for. And he asked if he could read it, and I gave it to him. He got back to me in 48 hours and said, “You've got to let me find the money for this.” So he came up with the money and we were able to get to it just a few months later.
As we were sort of talking about at the top, creativity is such an essential element to our personal well-being. This movie celebrates creativity and how it should be used for good. Why is creativity such an important element to cultivate in our lives?
As a Christian, of course, we believe God is the creator and that He's put creativity in each one of us. And sometimes it comes out in a film, a piece of music, or a piece of art. It can also come out in an interesting way to do business, or an interesting way to teach. There's just all kinds of ways that creativity plays out. And this movie really celebrates Amber's creativity because she loves to draw, but she also has to get her feelings out with what she's drawing. In the movie, her dad tells her something that she repeats to the counselor. She says, “My dad says, you can't control your inbox, but you can't control your outbox.”
For me, this movie is a throwback of sorts as it is just a well-done summertime family adventure movie (like Jumanji) but with the benefit of these hand-drawn creatures coming to life via CGI. Was it the movie’s intention to sort of blend good old-time storytelling with modern movie making techniques?
That was the idea. Seth just turned 40 a year or two ago, and he's always been a real cutting edge filmmaker. He uses technology for everything that it can do. But he wanted the drawings themselves as they come to life. He wanted them to still feel like they were handmade as opposed to something that Pixar might do. I think he did a really good job of making those two worlds meet in a way that's really fun because each of the monsters is reflective of the medium that Amber is using. Some of them are made of chalk, some of them are made of Sharpies, and some of them are made with crayons. And so, each one of the monsters, as they're trying to hunt them down and take care of them, they end up having the properties of those physical ways of drawing them.
The key to this whole movie for me is Tony Hale. Most people know him for his work on Arrested Development and Veep. He is funny, endearing, and the glue that holds this entire movie together. Why was he the perfect choice to play Taylor Wyatt?
Oh man, I couldn't agree more. I believe Seth (Worley) met Tony at church in Los Angeles. Tony's just a guy who's a really giving person and someone who's always there to mentor people. And so as they got talking about the project. Seth was thinking that Tony would be so good to play this dad role. And so he would just discuss the role with Tony to get his opinion on it. And because Tony is also a father, he was able to add a lot of depth and nuance to the role that he brought. But he's also just a fantastic actor, and weirdly enough, this is his first time to be the lead in a movie. Of course he's won two Emmy awards for his role on Veep. He's been in a lot of series. He's been in a lot of other movies. But this is his first time to be the lead in a movie. And I just think he's great.
At the end of the day, I think Sketch delivers a unique blend of heartfelt storytelling and creative vision to the big screen. After audiences have had a chance to see this movie, what would you like for them to get out of the viewing experience? What is your greatest hope for the film?
As you know, the ending is really emotional. One of the things I love about this movie in particular is that in a lot of movies, the dads are always portrayed as just kind of bumbling doosies. And this is a dad who really cares and who's really trying to do the best he can with his kids. He's been dealing with a really bad situation with his wife dying six months earlier and he’s just trying to do the best he can. I know that people will enjoy the humor and the thrills of the movie. I just love the way that it ends with a family coming together and overcoming the grief that they've been experiencing and realizing that they need to grieve together.
Sketch opens is now playing in theaters nationwide.
WATCH A TRAILER FOR SKETCH:
