0:00
(upbeat music)
0:02
- This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:21
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
0:23
Let's get into it.
0:24
All right, guys, today we've got a special guest
0:26
on the podcast.
0:26
His name is Norman Stone.
0:28
So he is a film and television producer and director.
0:30
He is a two-time Emmy Award winner
0:32
and a BAFTA Award winner, if you're not familiar with BAFTA,
0:35
that is the British Academy of Film and Television and Arts.
0:37
And he's also the writer and director of a film,
0:39
a film that I just saw recently that's fantastic.
0:41
It's called The Most Reluctant Convert,
0:43
The Untold Story of C.S. Lewis.
0:45
And so obviously if you're listening to this,
0:48
I'm releasing this episode along with the episode
0:50
that is the star of that particular film.
0:53
It has an actor named Max McLean,
0:54
and so you can listen to these,
0:55
one or the other, it's not really gonna matter.
0:57
I'm asking both of them similar questions.
0:59
I'm kind of bouncing around a little bit,
1:01
but it's a very, very interesting time period
1:03
to be in the year 2022.
1:05
And yet there's so many people around the globe
1:08
that are becoming interested in a guy named C.S. Lewis
1:11
for the first time, right?
1:12
They're reading his writings from, you know,
1:14
darn near a hundred years ago.
1:16
And they're centering some of their ideologies
1:19
and theology and different things around his writings.
1:21
And again, guys, as I point out, you know,
1:24
fairly often we have a book list on our website,
1:26
the 100 books every modern Christian man should read list.
1:28
Now there's different categories, right?
1:30
There's apologetics, there's Christian, there's money,
1:33
there's, you know, marriage, there's philosophy,
1:35
all kinds of things.
1:36
But there is a particular author
1:38
that has his own entire section.
1:40
And that's C.S. Lewis.
1:41
He's the only author that has his own section in there.
1:44
And that's because I think so highly of his writings
1:47
and what they can do for most Christians.
1:49
And I'm not even, you know, the Chronicles of Narnia
1:51
aren't even on there.
1:52
But in this interview with Norman, you know,
1:53
we talked about how we got into kind of this entire world
1:57
of doing film and doing television and those different things.
2:00
'Cause at one point he was the youngest producer
2:02
and director for the BBC, which is just fantastic
2:05
and a unique feather that he could have in his cap.
2:07
But then we talked about why the public
2:09
is so interested in C.S. Lewis, you know,
2:11
why he's worked on so many other projects,
2:13
not just the most reluctant convert.
2:14
But he did a lot of projects before this
2:16
about C.S. Lewis and his life.
2:18
And he even told us, you know, something that a week ago
2:20
he wouldn't have been able to tell us.
2:21
And I'll kind of save that for the actual show.
2:23
It kind of talks about some things
2:25
that he's gonna be doing in the future
2:26
in terms of what he was doing with C.S. Lewis
2:28
or some things that have to do with C.S. Lewis.
2:30
But man, I really enjoyed my time with him.
2:31
I got to speak a little bit with him.
2:33
And, you know, I think, you know, his wife or somebody
2:35
was in there helping him beforehand with the video.
2:37
And it was, it was just fun.
2:38
I mean, I didn't have a whole long time with this guy,
2:39
but, you know, his family was gonna be coming by
2:41
and they were gonna be having a big dinner.
2:42
So I got to talk to him about that off air.
2:44
And we got to speak a little bit about scotch
2:46
and some different things.
2:47
And so a very, very unique interview.
2:49
But I couldn't be more pleased with how it turned out.
2:53
Let's get into it.
2:54
Norman Stone, welcome to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
2:59
- Very good to be here and just learning all about it.
3:01
Very good.
3:02
- Yeah, absolutely.
3:03
I will tell you, we had a lovely conversation off air.
3:05
I have to say lovely because, you know, you're, you know,
3:07
kind of English and you got to say things like that.
3:09
But let's kind of go in.
3:10
I want to make sure my audience has a good idea
3:12
of who you are before we dig into the meat
3:14
of what we're going to be talking about.
3:15
My understanding is, is that you began your professional
3:18
career in television as the youngest producer and director
3:22
to be working for the BBC.
3:24
So that, at least--
3:25
- That's all there's time.
3:26
They paid me little enough, so it must be true.
3:28
- Yeah, absolutely.
3:29
Well, I guess, you know, for most of us,
3:30
we're not in that world of directing film and television.
3:33
So what drew you to that world?
3:35
And I guess how'd you get into it?
3:37
- Um, my grandfather told me a story when I was three years old,
3:40
sat me on his knee and he used to blame.
3:42
I saw pictures.
3:44
And I've never understood still how that works.
3:46
If you tell, say, even just one sentence,
3:48
a very visual sentence, as we call it,
3:50
you see a picture.
3:52
Without a screen, without anything in between you
3:54
and the grandfather's mouth,
3:55
I can still remember that story.
3:57
He was a lovely Christian guy.
3:59
He'd made up his little parable.
4:00
He told me stories from then on in.
4:01
And I just looked at his mouth and saw pictures.
4:04
And it was fantastic.
4:06
I can now remember that many, many, many years later,
4:08
that whole story because I saw the pictures.
4:11
- I mean, that's just incredible.
4:12
And so for a lot of us, you were kind of captured
4:14
by the magic, it seems like, of all of those things.
4:17
But then they still don't say, hey, I want to do that.
4:19
Like, I want to get paid to do that type of thing.
4:21
So what steps did you take, I guess,
4:24
to kind of make that a reality?
4:25
- I dreamt a lot.
4:27
No, what basically happens is you think,
4:29
can I really get paid for something?
4:31
I'd really pay them to let me do.
4:33
- Thank you.
4:34
- Occasionally you come across things that say, yes, you can.
4:38
So I went to seven years of art college,
4:40
including four years of film and TV,
4:43
and got out of that with an MA and other stuff.
4:45
And it was fortunate enough to have,
4:49
to have met Eric Clapton to do with a story
4:52
on heroin addiction and treatment for it that really works.
4:56
And the BBC liked that.
4:58
So I pitched it, I'd met some people in the BBC,
5:01
and I said, how did my pitch go?
5:03
Let me see.
5:04
It said Eric Clapton, Eric Clapton, Eric Clapton.
5:07
And they said, yes.
5:08
And the weird thing was, he wasn't in the film when I made it.
5:11
It's something that still works and no one's noticing,
5:15
but it was a great film and a great idea.
5:17
And when they saw the film,
5:19
because I'd learned through seven hard years
5:21
how to make films a bit, they gave me a job,
5:23
and that went on from there.
5:25
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- Well, that is, that's incredible.
5:57
So I guess how'd you get connected with Eric Clapton?
5:59
Because it's funny enough, like he was a guy
6:01
that obviously my parents kind of listened to,
6:03
but I remember in college reading his autobiography,
6:05
and I didn't know anything about him, the man,
6:07
but the story about his son falling out of that window
6:11
and just the drug addiction
6:12
and kind of what it was like growing up for him.
6:13
Like, of course I had no idea, I was completely naive.
6:16
So how did y'all two get connected with his story?
6:19
- Which biography did you read?
6:20
If you read it, I suspect it wouldn't be this one,
6:22
but this was the one written by a very good friend.
6:24
I'm on a Christian guy called Steve Turner,
6:26
who writes for Rolling Stone and things as well.
6:28
And his was conversations with Eric Clapton.
6:31
I met him because I met a filmmaker, an older guy,
6:35
an older Scottish guy and argued with him for hours
6:39
at this conference, and we really enjoyed ourselves.
6:42
He said, "Come home and meet the wife."
6:44
And then I said, "Well, where?"
6:46
I was living in central London.
6:47
And he said, "Well, Harley Street."
6:49
And for those of you who don't know,
6:50
Harley Street is a very expensive medical expert street.
6:55
And I thought he was joking.
6:56
So I said, "Come on, where do you really live?"
6:58
And he said, "No, come on around."
6:59
And I went around and his wife was an award-winning MBE,
7:02
award-winning Scottish surgeon
7:05
for charity Christian hospitals.
7:07
And Eric was coming off in their front room,
7:10
just plugged into this little device,
7:12
and I didn't know it was Eric Clapton.
7:14
I said, "I had a nice chat with him."
7:16
And left, it was a Sunday, I was off the church after that.
7:18
And my girlfriend at the time said,
7:19
"That was Eric Clapton."
7:20
And I said, "No, it wasn't.
7:22
Call me or so."
7:22
I don't know what Eric Clapton looks like.
7:24
You know, you have the thin cheekbones and the other.
7:28
This guy was, it let himself go.
7:30
He was down to selling his last guitar.
7:32
Pete Townsend knew about Meg Patterson.
7:36
And he said, "Go and stay with this lady.
7:37
"She can get you off in five days, 10 days it was then,"
7:40
I think, without withdrawals.
7:41
And it worked, and it did.
7:43
And that kicked off my career.
7:45
- That's incredible.
7:46
Yeah, the book that I read was actually his autobiography.
7:49
That would have came out, you know,
7:50
in the early 2000s or whatever.
7:52
So it was kind of refreshing.
7:53
Like, I always like reading biographies
7:54
where people don't try to make themselves out to be the hero.
7:57
Because it's like, I can actually believe what you're saying,
7:59
because it's like, if you always come out looking squeaky clean
8:01
and how you always made the right call,
8:03
it's like, I don't know if I can really trust you.
8:04
Now, the funny thing about what you do and what you do
8:06
for a living, obviously, it's a very sexy kind of job.
8:08
It's a job that a lot of people think that they want.
8:11
But here's the thing.
8:12
Is they think that because they don't do it for a living.
8:15
Like, it seems fun.
8:16
It seems like a lot of fun.
8:17
So I'm sure that leads to a lot of big misconceptions.
8:20
So I guess if you could set the record straight
8:22
for a lot of us normal people, you know,
8:23
what are the biggest misconceptions about being a producer
8:26
or a director or even an actor in the film industry?
8:29
- I guess that if you wanna make the right sort of films,
8:31
they rarely pay you enough.
8:33
It can become a career to earn money.
8:36
It can be, I'm afraid I don't have much faith
8:39
in the Christian industry,
8:41
because they make it squeaky clean again as well.
8:43
But if you make the right truthful moving films,
8:47
you rarely get paid enough
8:49
but you're in front of small people.
8:51
- So let's talk about right films because, you know,
8:54
every actor, especially towards the end of their career,
8:56
they look back on their career.
8:57
And you as the consumer can very easily identify
9:00
their blockbusters, their big hits,
9:02
the things they're known for.
9:03
Maybe they got a big award for it or something like that.
9:05
But then when you ask them, what was your favorite thing?
9:07
If you could leave one thing for humanity,
9:09
what would it be and why?
9:11
It's usually something that's kind of off the wall
9:13
or something that maybe a lot of people didn't see.
9:15
Like I guess, help me understand why it is that way
9:17
'cause I understand we have to have the silly superhero movies
9:20
that are, you know, it's the same storyline,
9:23
Rinson repeated, but with a lot more computer graphics
9:26
this time, why is it that the right films, as you call it,
9:29
are so hard to make and thus don't really lead to,
9:32
you know, a lot of production on the financial side
9:35
for a lot of people.
9:36
- How can I put that in answer?
9:38
What is that word again?
9:39
- Oh yeah, money.
9:40
- Money, right, yeah, I could have guessed it.
9:42
- There you go.
9:43
And people want to make profits
9:44
and listen, there's nothing wrong with making profits
9:45
off various sorts of under some films
9:48
I wouldn't want to get involved with it all.
9:50
But there's nothing wrong with money to make money
9:53
obviously in industry.
9:54
But with the secret thing about filmmaking,
9:57
if you think about it, is that you get to talk to people.
10:01
You get to talk to their hearts or their minds
10:03
or their imaginations.
10:05
And if you can do it true and with craft
10:07
and with a skill of filmmaking
10:10
and invent stuff rather than just make it
10:13
a third version, fourth version, fifth version
10:15
of something we saw last week,
10:17
you can actually talk to people and they listen.
10:19
And you know what, cutting to the chase, this is my phrase.
10:23
I think with film and with television usually,
10:26
you can make people feel so much they can't help but think.
10:30
And that'll do me, that's fine for me.
10:33
Make people feel so much they can't help but think.
10:36
And that is a contribution.
10:38
It's not just taking the money and run,
10:41
it's a contribution to society, to them, to yourself,
10:44
your own heart often.
10:45
And it's great fun, I do enjoy.
10:48
When I do get paid, I get paid for doing something
10:52
that I just love, so hey.
10:54
- Well, I think you're adding authenticity
10:55
but you're also adding a heft to someone's life.
10:57
So you could read a children's book
10:59
or you could read a theology book
11:01
and it's gonna have some heft
11:02
and just because something's difficult to slog through
11:05
does not mean it's negative, it's the exact opposite,
11:07
it's usually positive.
11:08
One kind of random question about the film industry
11:10
before we move in to what we mainly wanna spend our time
11:13
talking about today.
11:14
Obviously you've worked in the UK film industry,
11:16
film and television industry
11:18
and then there's what we do in the US.
11:19
So it's usually centralized in Hollywood
11:22
but because of taxation and some of the craziness going on
11:24
in the state of California right now in our country,
11:27
we see some other places popping up
11:29
even in my home state of Oklahoma.
11:30
There are a lot of people making films there
11:32
but from your perspective, what are the biggest differences
11:34
between making films and television in the UK
11:37
versus the United States?
11:39
- I have made lots of films in the United States
11:44
for making them for Britain which is a different thing.
11:48
I couldn't believe there was a whole country out there
11:50
that spoke my own language and then Oscar Wilde goes
11:53
because it calls us two countries separated
11:56
by the same language.
11:58
And it's always it's true but I loved it
12:00
and I made documentaries, I've done other stuff there
12:03
over there as well, I've done films, I've drama and so on
12:06
and places like China I've been to and done things like that too.
12:10
The difference is, I think certainly in television,
12:13
British television has traditionally been more
12:17
by much deeper, the BBC does not take commercials.
12:21
And it concentrates and it always was really pushing
12:23
the audience of engaging with them.
12:25
That is going under the push of money
12:27
and light entertainment rather than heavy entertainment.
12:31
That's drifting away.
12:33
In America, television sells soap and other things
12:35
and really you turn to Netflix and the streamers, don't you?
12:39
That's what you do with your F shorting here.
12:41
As far as film itself goes, we're a very small country
12:45
but we have really interesting actors
12:47
and we have really interesting stories
12:49
that people don't come across.
12:51
I've just read a script they're interested in wanting
12:54
to know if I'm interested in about the Vikings
12:56
and the Dane law when they were taking over Britain.
13:00
A bit too Americanized, a script and I'm not surprised
13:03
at that but the stuff that's there,
13:06
if you do it in the right way, can go around the world.
13:09
So much of your big stories in American film
13:13
and I'm not talking about DC comics,
13:15
I'm saying are at the heart of things internationally.
13:20
Because they've got this extra age
13:22
and we're not just doing, hey, let's have another superhero.
13:25
We don't have superheroes, you may have noticed.
13:28
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13:59
- Well, we don't have to get into the politics
14:02
of what's going on in the UK right now,
14:04
although we should probably do that again,
14:06
but I would rather do that over there at a pub
14:08
where we can actually talk about it,
14:09
maybe yell and scream and have a good time.
14:11
But we need to talk about the most reluctant
14:13
and convert the untold story of CS Lewis.
14:15
So that is a film that you have out right now
14:17
that you were the director of.
14:18
And before we really get into the film,
14:21
I was interested to learn as I was researching
14:23
before this podcast that this is not the first time
14:25
that you've worked on a project
14:26
that was centered on the life and workings of CS Lewis, right?
14:29
So can you tell us about some of those other projects?
14:31
And I guess how did you become so generally interested
14:34
in the works of CS Lewis,
14:36
who I find to be one of the most, not only entertaining,
14:39
but thought provoking, you know, Christian writers
14:42
of all time, not just since the 20th century?
14:45
- Well, it was a long time ago when that actually happened.
14:49
And I'll tell you what happened.
14:50
I worked for the BBC as the youngest director
14:54
for about five years, and I left long before you were born.
14:57
And I'm still waiting to be 17, by the way.
15:00
I want to get that straight already.
15:01
- Okay.
15:02
- The idea was that you went freelance.
15:05
And freelance means you've got to have somebody
15:06
who wants to pay you money to make the films
15:08
that you want to make, which is an interesting possibility.
15:10
And I just had a film, okay, you asked, I'll tell you.
15:14
I just did a film about a blind and deaf Cornish poet.
15:17
It was a Christian.
15:18
And he was an amazing character.
15:20
And I dramatized his life.
15:22
And it was moving and it got an award.
15:25
And I realized why people like this so much
15:29
was that this guy had earned the right to be heard.
15:33
So he, when he spoke, you listen,
15:36
this guy had been blind and deaf for 25 years
15:38
when I met him, and he was still closer to God
15:40
than anyone I've ever met.
15:42
But he had earned the right to be heard.
15:44
And as I went freelance, I thought, whoa,
15:46
who else do I know that has earned the right to be heard?
15:50
And it took me about two seconds to think C.S. Lewis.
15:53
And the Shadowlands story,
15:55
which everyone knows, is his relationship with Joy
15:58
David Murney, he marries her, she gets cancer,
16:01
she gets better, she gets cancer he denies.
16:03
Doesn't sound a good pitch, but it was a good one.
16:04
I did the first one of those.
16:05
So I invented the original Shadowlands.
16:08
He had earned the right to be heard.
16:10
It got baffed as it got Emmys.
16:11
It got all these things launched in my career.
16:14
So I've always been interested in that.
16:17
Sorry, I'm in an office, and this is talking, hang on.
16:20
I'll just turn it off.
16:22
- Stories.
16:22
- So, I'll tell you that again.
16:25
So I've always been interested in C.S. Lewis
16:28
since then, obviously.
16:29
And basically, we have a huge growing interest
16:34
in C.S. Lewis in Britain,
16:36
but it's nothing like a growing interest in America.
16:39
And I did a film about the Michael Ward wrote a book
16:45
called Planet Narnia.
16:48
And it was all about Narnia being having a hidden layer
16:52
about the planets and this sort of thing.
16:54
And it's great.
16:55
It's good.
16:55
And I did that.
16:56
That was a documentary drama.
16:57
I also did something beyond Narnia,
17:00
which was a story of C.S. Lewis's life
17:02
from a different twist.
17:03
We did that one.
17:05
And whenever you do it, whatever the film was like,
17:07
and I hope they were good, people are really fascinated.
17:10
This is the guy that wrote Narnia.
17:12
This is the guy that was X, Y, and Z.
17:14
They know all about him.
17:15
So when we started doing the first one of these films,
17:18
because I'm hoping to do two more,
17:21
hoping it will be a trilogy,
17:23
we went to his house, his home, his college.
17:26
It's all there still.
17:27
And we did a drama.
17:29
And my crew, who'd just been working with Kenneth Brannard
17:32
as the Poirot feature films,
17:34
and Belfast came out recently.
17:36
He, one of his crews worked with me on it.
17:38
And the crews were really excited
17:41
by being actually where Lewis wrote Narnia,
17:43
actually where he lived.
17:44
Actually, it goes right across the board.
17:46
He's interesting to people.
17:48
He again earns the right to be heard.
17:51
And when we finished that, and it was during lockdown,
17:55
we were about the only film filming during lockdown,
17:58
everyone was safe at the end of it, and it came out,
18:00
and I expected it to make it a little impact.
18:04
I didn't expect it to become the second most viewed cinema
18:08
film in the whole of America, which it did.
18:11
And when I was told that I thought they were joking,
18:13
six days later, I still thought they were joking
18:16
and told the show to the figures.
18:17
And that is nothing necessarily to do with the film at all,
18:20
but I hope it's good.
18:21
I think it is.
18:22
It's to do with this hunger for C.S. Lewis.
18:24
And do you know what I think it's about?
18:26
When Lewis was during the war, C.S. Lewis was asked by the BBC
18:31
to talk about Christianity on radio.
18:35
And people were getting blown up by Hitler's bomb
18:37
as it was our own mortality was being called in a question
18:42
every day.
18:43
Mrs. McAfee down the road had got blown up.
18:45
Your uncle after he had been killed in the war by--
18:48
so everyone was looking suddenly at the reality of life
18:51
and death.
18:51
And he was hugely successful.
18:54
In London, we talk about a pub.
18:56
London pubs would apparently shout.
18:58
Quiet, everybody.
18:59
Mr. Lewis is on the radio, and the whole pub would be quiet,
19:02
some then beer to Mr. Lewis telling you about heaven,
19:06
which is incredible.
19:07
Since the Blitz, since that bombing time back in the '40s,
19:12
when has it happened since this sudden intimation of immortality,
19:16
since sudden realizing death is beyond--
19:19
and we aren't just meant to be consumers with two and a half
19:21
cars in the garage.
19:22
When did it happen since?
19:23
COVID is when it happened since.
19:26
Mrs. McAfee isn't getting blown up by Hitler.
19:28
She's dying of COVID.
19:30
We're really seeing an awful lot of people over here dying
19:34
unexpectedly.
19:35
And I think people have got that in their minds now.
19:38
And so, C.S. Lewis, his words from the 1940s Blitz
19:44
are so relevant to people today.
19:46
That's what I put it down to.
19:47
The man talks sense.
19:48
He talks it with reality.
19:51
You can understand what he means.
19:53
And he's talking about something that's
19:54
going to happen to all of us.
19:55
What happens next?
19:57
Right.
19:58
Well, in those radio broadcasts, we're
20:00
then kind of coalesced into mere Christianity, which I think
20:02
is one of the pillars in one of the cornerstones
20:05
of non-biblical Christian books that every man should read,
20:08
every person should read.
20:10
And he's able to put things in a way.
20:12
I can remember things from that book just in conversation
20:14
with people where it's like, a world full of automatons.
20:16
It's not a world worth creating.
20:18
And that's where you get this dichotomy between good
20:20
and evil and the capability of being
20:22
able to love and those different things.
20:24
But I guess the thing that I'm curious about, Norman--
20:26
and you've talked about it a little bit here
20:28
as you talked a little bit about the film.
20:29
And of course, it was hard making it during the pandemic.
20:31
But I remember whenever I was in--
20:34
was it Stratford on Avon, where William Shakespeare is from?
20:37
This was years ago when I was in college.
20:41
There was a weight just standing outside the man's home.
20:44
And I don't want it to seem like I was worshiping him
20:47
or any of those types of things.
20:48
But there was a reverence that I felt,
20:49
even after all these years, because of--
20:52
I'm using words that wouldn't exist if he didn't exist.
20:55
I'm talking about things, and I'm talking about narratives
20:58
and stories that wouldn't even be in my brain,
21:00
because we wouldn't even know the whole world was different.
21:03
Now, with C.S. Lewis, it's probably not nearly as big
21:05
of an impact as perhaps William Shakespeare.
21:08
But even after all these years, Norman,
21:10
C.S. Lewis is still so interesting to people.
21:12
It's almost like, I remember being in high school,
21:15
figuring out who Johnny Cash was, and going back
21:17
and listening to 40-year-old records with this voice
21:22
and this passion and the all-black and everything.
21:24
And I just remember that being an overwhelming thing for me.
21:27
That's what young Christians today
21:29
are getting from a guy that hasn't written anything down
21:31
for almost 100 years.
21:33
Help me explain why that is so enticing to people.
21:36
Well, it's-- the footprints are still there,
21:39
especially when you go to a location.
21:43
When you go to the kilns, which is his home,
21:45
there's a little cottage called the kilns,
21:47
and the people have done it up at the net
21:49
exactly as it was in the '40s.
21:51
And people live there and study there.
21:53
But you go in, it isn't like a museum.
21:56
There's a smell of baking coming from a kitchen.
21:58
There's the same place, the same seat, the same desk.
22:04
It just-- it knocks it home really--
22:07
you know, sensibly, it knocks it really home to you.
22:11
And when somebody has done something,
22:13
not just a horror writer or a comedian or--
22:16
when he's done something that means something
22:18
on the big scoreboard of life, and he has, and he does,
22:22
and he's relevant, it just becomes a big whammy.
22:25
You can-- we have a throwaway society, and I'm told
22:29
that kids these days only have their attention span
22:32
of about four minutes or something
22:34
before they go on to the next TikTok.
22:36
Fine.
22:37
He gets you in two seconds, and certainly in four minutes.
22:41
But you want to take it more.
22:43
I'm fascinated that you found that,
22:44
and you picked him up and went with him, and so on.
22:46
He pays back, because he's telling truth.
22:50
And you don't get that much these days either.
22:52
What a mess we're in.
22:53
And he tells truth that matters for eternity.
22:56
And he's not a preacher.
22:58
He is a thinker, a Christian, and a very good writer.
23:02
And I just want to make very good films about that guy.
23:04
I don't want to do them all.
23:05
I want to do other people, too.
23:06
But I've linked with him and connected with that.
23:12
His voice, his timbre is thinking his gift
23:16
that he left behind.
23:17
You know, right now, how many books you think he's sold?
23:21
Oh, gosh, a quarter of a billion, maybe?
23:23
Like, hundreds and tens of millions.
23:25
A quarter of a billion.
23:26
That's a be in there, folks.
23:27
A quarter of a billion.
23:28
And it's still selling more every year.
23:30
Why?
23:31
It's not an accident.
23:33
The guy has actually has got things to say right now.
23:38
And that's why I think this film, and hopefully growing
23:41
into a trilogy will go through all his life.
23:43
And you'll see that very much.
23:44
I'm not going to see us lose worship.
23:46
I don't think he should be in stained glass windows
23:49
in churches, he was a human being like all of us.
23:51
But my goodness, he touches the note.
23:53
But Norman, that's the point, though,
23:55
is he's a human being like all of us.
23:57
And yet he's also exceptional at the same time.
23:59
And the thing is, the film is fantastic.
24:01
Guys, it'll be in the show notes.
24:03
You can click on it.
24:03
You've got to watch this film.
24:04
And I really do hope it goes into a trilogy.
24:06
But that's the thing about CS Lewis,
24:08
is he's accessible, but he's a little bit beyond you.
24:11
And so I've read certain passages.
24:12
And I'm like, wow, I think I'm too dumb to understand
24:15
what CS is trying to tell me in this exact moment.
24:17
But then you read it again and you think about it
24:19
and you chew on it.
24:20
Because here's the thing.
24:21
There are things that are like a blip on the radar.
24:23
So you and I were talking about scotch off air.
24:25
One of the reasons why I like log of woolen so much,
24:27
why I like Ila scotch is so much,
24:29
is because they linger on the palate, right?
24:32
You can taste them again later on that day.
24:35
And I'm not talking about burping it up.
24:36
I'm saying you can still taste it on your tongue
24:37
and your gums.
24:38
But then there are whiskeys and there are scotches
24:40
certainly out there that as soon as you swallow them,
24:43
it disappears.
24:44
The palate disappears, it doesn't have a long finish.
24:46
And but that Pete will stay on your tongue.
24:49
The smoke will stay on your tongue.
24:50
It's the same thing with his writings.
24:52
Is it sticky?
24:53
They just kind of stays on you.
24:54
Right?
24:55
Does that make sense?
24:56
Yeah, you're very good.
24:57
I don't interview you.
24:59
What else have you got to say today?
25:01
No, like I do think that it's very, very important
25:05
to kind of look at that and understand that.
25:07
But one thing that I'm curious for you being an aficionado,
25:10
not a worshipper of CS Lewis,
25:12
is if you had to delete the entirety of CS Lewis
25:16
as catalog of writings, except for one, right?
25:20
So if you had to leave one book for humanity,
25:23
which book would it be and why?
25:24
Yes, I'm going to make you pick a favorite kid here.
25:26
But I think that that's a very important thing to reckon with.
25:29
Which one would it be?
25:30
Without a hesitation, a grief observed.
25:34
OK, tell me why.
25:35
That is, I'll set the context in a sentence.
25:38
When his wife died of cancer, his mother died of cancer
25:42
when he was nine, he fell in love with this other woman,
25:43
he married a late in life.
25:46
She got cancer, they prayed hard and did all this sort of stuff,
25:49
and she got better.
25:50
Hey, and then she got cancer and died painfully.
25:53
And he went into such a real dip,
25:56
talking about earning the right to be heard.
25:58
He went deep, and he eventually pulled out of that,
26:04
and he wrote a book which is so searingly honest,
26:08
and strangely, because it isn't particularly full of positivity
26:14
and stuff at all, really.
26:15
But he told the truth in those depths.
26:18
And in the end, you think, well, all the other books are great.
26:20
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
26:21
But this had never come across one the same.
26:24
He talks about the reality of grief
26:27
and the way that, ultimately, he doesn't push it.
26:31
You see, he gets his face back.
26:32
I met somebody many years ago, and I was doing Shadowlands dead now,
26:37
but this lady had known his wife, Joy Davidman, and him.
26:43
And I said, in the end, did he get over it?
26:46
He's so real about grief in that book.
26:49
And she said, oh, yes, in the end, you know, he was stronger than ever.
26:53
And then she went forward, and she said,
26:54
but do you know, you could always see the scars.
26:59
Always see the scars that gave me Shadowlands.
27:02
And it's one of those moments where he isn't cheap.
27:06
He tells the truth.
27:07
And I think that book has probably helped more people,
27:10
desperate people, in the bowels of hell, as it were, of grief.
27:15
I think he's probably--
27:17
that's the one that helps people most.
27:19
So it lead to the world, something from a man who was a Christian
27:22
who went through hell and back and earned that ride to be heard.
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And even Norman, it reminds me of David and the Psalms.
27:59
Like, you know, he's lamenting, but where does he end up, right?
28:02
He certainly had his scars, you know, physical, spiritual, mental scars, the whole nine.
28:06
So that's almost like, you know, CS Lewis's Psalm, if you want to kind of put it that way.
28:10
So you mentioned that this could potentially turn into a trilogy.
28:13
So I guess when will we know if that is the plan, if that's going to happen?
28:17
And then I am also curious, what are you working on now?
28:19
What's the world going to get from from Norman here in the near future?
28:22
Well, I want to do a film about child prostitution in Victoria in England,
28:27
which I've been working on for 37 years.
28:29
You've got to be patient in this business.
28:31
And I'm hoping to do that after the next two films.
28:33
You say what I'm working on now.
28:36
I'm about to sign the contract to do the next two films of the trilogy
28:39
and this afternoon I've been working on it for the first real time
28:43
with a co-writer I worked with in New York on Zoom.
28:47
It is going to happen.
28:48
I can tell you that now.
28:49
I couldn't have a week ago, but I can now tell you it is going to happen.
28:52
We're going to do his middle years, which take in those late stays in London,
28:57
which take in him on the BBC and take in everything between in becoming a Christian
29:02
in 1931 through to, I guess, 1950s, just as he's about to meet Joy Davidman.
29:10
And then the next and last one is much more of a different story.
29:14
It's a relational story between him and Joy.
29:18
I did the original Shadowlands, as I say.
29:20
This is slightly different from that, but deals with the same subject
29:23
and we follow through till he himself dies.
29:25
And we're using the same fun technique that I stole from Charles Dickens
29:31
to do the first one, where he's commenting on his own life actually in frame
29:35
and visiting the same memories, which are part of the scenery that we see.
29:39
All that fun stuff, which really worked.
29:42
And we're carrying that through the middle one and the last one.
29:45
So it's going to take up to two years to get right, but we'll do it.
29:50
And then hopefully I'll get on to this rather dark but successful one.
29:55
There were three Christians in 1885 that decided enough was enough.
30:00
And the Charles prostitution and the completely out-of-control system of evil
30:06
and, yeah, child trafficking was going out of hand.
30:11
And they brought the government down to stop it,
30:13
saved kids for at least 100 years.
30:16
And now it's always gone haywire again and we're now in worse than ever situations.
30:22
I want to blow a trumpet. That's what I want to do.
30:24
It's a great story. Never been told.
30:26
Well, I certainly hope you get that story told.
30:28
I know that at an undaunted life, we equipped men to push back darkness.
30:32
A lot of men don't know about that kind of darkness.
30:33
They don't know about the depravity that people have experienced in the past.
30:36
And certainly the depravity that is continuing to go on right now.
30:39
So I know that we're running short on time.
30:41
So I'll make this the last question of the day.
30:42
And it's a bit unfair to ask you such a big question at the very, very end.
30:46
But it's something that I wrote down from the very beginning
30:47
because you trip something in my brain, Christianity in the UK.
30:51
We love to lament in the United States how, oh, we're a post-Christian culture.
30:54
And look at all this craziness and look at the wokeness and look at the government
30:57
taking over.
30:58
Yeah.
30:59
The UK was, you know, years, if not decades ahead of the United States in terms of some
31:03
of those things.
31:04
And when you talk to people that are over there in the UK, it does seem to be a post-Christian
31:07
culture.
31:08
It becomes very odd to find someone.
31:10
I remember when I lived in New York City, when you found another Christian, it's like,
31:13
oh my gosh, I found the other one in a city of millions and millions of people, right?
31:17
It's just an odd thing.
31:18
Talk to me a little bit about that because you seem to be a devout Christian.
31:21
You're obviously working on things that have a Christian been and a Christian focus.
31:24
But how does that work in the UK when it seems like that's not really been a thing for a
31:28
while?
31:29
Yeah, I am a believing Christian.
31:30
It's central to my life.
31:33
I think, I mean, you know, every, you keep thinking everything's this or everything's
31:38
that.
31:39
And then another generation comes up and is different again.
31:41
I think, you know, early days when Roman Empire was around and when Jesus Christ himself
31:46
was around, and then after that, the early church, that was a pre-Christian culture.
31:50
You'd have thought that strange little story would take over the world.
31:55
And then you think, oh, that's going well.
31:57
And then you realize Constantine, the emperor wants to take on more politically than anything
32:02
else and becomes a, the church becomes the big thing.
32:04
And all the way through mess, it gets messed up, messed up, messed up.
32:09
What doesn't get messed up is Jesus.
32:11
What doesn't get messed up is God.
32:13
What doesn't get messed up is the truth.
32:15
I cannot emphasize that word any more than I can.
32:18
And that's massive.
32:20
If we aim for the truth and we look Christ in the eyes and say, I'll follow you, anything
32:25
is possible.
32:26
I frankly don't mind if it's a post-Christian, pre-Christian, whatever society.
32:32
If I've got a job to do here and enjoy it, it is enjoyable.
32:36
It's terrible, isn't it?
32:37
You know, we should all be perhaps singing happy, clappy songs and the whole world is
32:41
together.
32:42
Well, not yet it ain't, not yet it ain't.
32:44
So we've got to roll up our sleeves and get going.
32:46
And it's a fun, I discovered at college, at a very trendy art college film school,
32:51
at the Royal College of Art, I discovered that all these other people, everything from
32:54
Marxists through to wherever, well, I had their thing to say.
32:57
And I was a Christian.
32:58
So, and I, and I'm a cheery sort of chap, and I'd argue back.
33:02
And I remember seeing that faces, I mean, this is just a thing that happened to me,
33:07
cloud over and doubt come in on no one had challenged back to the antique Marxists that
33:14
was in our country, left this from me, left bank in Paris and all that stuff.
33:19
It dissolves, truth does not dissolve.
33:22
And I honestly say after my so far many years, and hopefully many more on this in this world,
33:28
that it does not dissolve, and that's the source of it.
33:32
So I'm hoping, always do, that we will be a pre-Christian age again.
33:38
Because what happens is, people, what was it Lenin said?
33:42
He said, we've dealt with the kings of the earth, now he must deal with the kings of
33:46
the skies, and try to get rid of everything.
33:50
And I feel like saying, so how is that going, by the way?
33:55
It isn't going that well, and we aren't big enough to sit on the throne of God.
33:59
And yet you'll tell you that, and your trip over, you get a bloody nose, your work out.
34:03
Look at the mess that we're at at the moment.
34:04
I'm not saying there are political solutions, but I do know there is truth.
34:08
And I do know there's more than this, and I do know that we're meant to be making this
34:12
place better, and help other people, and all the stuff that you know as a Christian yourself.
34:18
It isn't just turning up a church, and wearing white shoes, and a smile, and putting half
34:23
a dollar in the collection plate.
34:24
It isn't.
34:25
It's nothing to do with that.
34:27
It's a relationship with God through Christ.
34:29
And that works.
34:30
That absolutely works.
34:32
Even Eric Clapton would tell you that.
34:34
Yeah, absolutely he would.
34:36
That is a tremendous place to leave, and I really appreciate that word.
34:38
But that's all for me.
34:39
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
34:42
Probably how to cook next meal.
34:43
I've got family coming around for a big meal, so I'm going to go and throw a chicken in
34:47
the oven and do some other stuff.
34:48
But that sounds, I've enjoyed this immensely.
34:50
Thank you very, very much.
34:51
All right, Norman Stone, thank you for coming on Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
34:55
My pleasure.
34:56
Like a bullet.
34:57
That's right.
34:58
There you go, guys.
34:59
I hope you enjoyed my time with Norman Stone.
35:01
But before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
35:03
Add Undaunted Life, our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that
35:06
we're just spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
35:09
So the only link I've got for you today is the movie, the film, the most reluctant convert,
35:13
the untold story of C.S.
35:14
Lewis.
35:15
Go to the website, guys.
35:16
Check this movie out.
35:17
Watch it with your family.
35:18
It is a great, great film.
35:19
Well worth your time.
35:20
All right, guys.
35:21
Thanks so much for listening to the show.
35:22
We do appreciate it.
35:23
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive five
35:25
star review.
35:26
If you want to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email
35:29
to info@nondonton.life.
35:31
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35:33
Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else,
35:36
including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way.
35:38
Just go to www.nondonton.life.
35:41
And as always, we want to thank the band, August Burns Red, for allowing us to use their
35:44
music for our content.
35:46
The music on this podcast is our song, "Cutting the Tides," which is off their 10th anniversary
35:49
re-recording of their album, "Leveler."
35:51
The links are in the description.
35:53
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
35:55
Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.
36:01
Keep seeking the Lion of Judah.
36:06
I love the Lion of Judah.
36:10
I know you want, it's a side-based dance.
36:15
It's a virtue.
36:18
You will be revived.
36:36
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