509. Retelling the Greatest Story Ever Told | Dallas Jenkins
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What is the setting of the podcast?
Hello, everybody. I'm probably in the most unlikely stage setting today that, I don't know, I've ever been in, although I've been in some unlikely places. This is the house of Caiaphas, the high priest during the time of Christ. It's the setting for part of The Chosen, one of the most successful series, and I would say probably indisputably the most successful religiously-based series ever produced. I'm here today to talk with the creator, producer, director, and writer of that series, Dallas Jenkins, who's invited us down here to see the studio and to see the sets and to talk about how this most unlikely of all occurrences made its manifestation. So what did we talk about? Well, the emergence of The Chosen as a spectacular success occurred on the heels of a relatively cataclysmic failure. The precursor movie, so to speak, at least from a career perspective of Delis, was a failure. It launched as a Hollywood production and spiraled downward almost immediately. And we talked about the desperation
the despair and hopelessness that accompanied that failure, and then the surprising and remarkable consequences that unfolded across time. And I don't want to spoil the story. You have to hear it in its details to really understand what transpired. But out of the ashes of that defeat, let's say, rose the radical success of The Chosen, very unlikely enterprise. And I was extremely curious about how that happened. I wanted to know how it happened personally, What was Delis' response to his failure? And how did the idea of the Chosen make itself And what did that mean practically? And why did the audience respond? And how was it financed? And what was the marketing approach? And why did that work?
And what does it mean for the culture, more broadly speaking? And what has been the effect worldwide? And how are we to understand that? And we did what we could to... investigate all those questions and to provide some at least provisional answers to them in the 90 minutes that we were fortunate to talk today. And so if you're interested in that story, and it's an extremely interesting story about the attempt to film the most interesting story ever told, you might say, then join us for this podcast. Well, let's start by talking about where we are, because we're in this remarkable set. part of a remarkable series. And so let's talk about the set first and then the series.
What led to the creation of The Chosen?
We are in Caiaphas' house. Yeah. High priest Caiaphas. Now, it's in Texas, not Israel. We film in Texas. Texans believe Jesus lived here anyway. So that's why we film in Texas. This is where he would choose to live. Exactly. And when he comes back, he's coming to Texas first. But we built this set. This is a season five set. It has not been released to the world yet. So you're introducing Caiaphas' set to the world. Chosen fans have not seen it yet. But this is the room in which not only Caiaphas and Judas make a deal, but ultimately where we'll see Jesus come for his quasi-trial. His Sanhedrin trial took place at Caiaphas' house under cover of night, away from the traditional place because they were trying to do it quickly.
With that uplifting, lighthearted note, this is where we're filming this conversation.
Right, and this is part of a large macro set consisting of a number of large buildings, each of which have sets built inside it. They're all soundproofed. When did you set all this up?
Well, season one of The Chosen was... crowdfunded and at such a low budget. We were starting from scratch, so we were finding places to film and trying to make them look bigger. It was after season two that we realized we have to have our own place. We can't just keep chasing The kinds of places around the country that some of which don't exist. We need our own home and we need to stay in one spot. And so that's when we started to build some of these places on here in Texas on a property owned by the Salvation Army. There's no pun intended on that. It happens to just be the place that had... That's hilarious. Yeah, hundreds of acres of open land and some already interesting infrastructure. And so we built these sound stages.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the setting of the podcast?
0:14–3:28
2
What led to the creation of The Chosen?
3:28–7:26
3
How did failure influence Dallas Jenkins' career?
7:26–10:15
4
What was the significance of the feeding of the 5,000 story?
10:15–14:56
5
How does Dallas Jenkins define success?
14:56–18:16
6
What role does storytelling play in filmmaking?
18:16–22:50
7
How does the audience's perspective affect storytelling?
22:50–27:07
8
What is the importance of backstories in biblical narratives?
27:07–1:42:37