An Interview with God Read online

  An Interview with God Novelization by Robert Noland

  Based on the screenplay by Ken Aguado

  An Interview with God

  Copyright 2018 Ken Aguado. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.

  Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.

  Book cover images from the motion picture An Interview with God Copyright 2018 Peachtree Cinema 1, LLC. Used by permission.

  Published in association with the literary agency WTA Services LLC, Franklin, TN

  Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from The Message. Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

  Cover Design by Ken Aguado

  Interior Design by Amy Balamut

  Editing/Proofreading by Christy Distler

  Film Website: http://www.aninterviewwithgod.com/

  Smashwords Edition created 2018

  Published by ScreenMaster Books

  13535 Ventura Blvd. Suite C #221

  Shermon Oaks, CA 91423-3891

  http://www.screenmasterbooks.com/

  mailto:[email protected]

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Going Off-Script with Screenwriter Ken Aguado

  Chapter One: Surviving the Fire of Re-Entry

  Chapter Two: God—Session One Pawns, Rooks, Knights, and Kings

  Chapter Three: Front Lines to Front Page

  Chapter Four: God—Session Two Faith and Fear Amidst Bad Actors

  Chapter Five: Realizations & Revelations

  Chapter Six: God—Session Three All-Consuming Confrontation

  Chapter Seven: Evidence of the Intangible and Invaluable

  Life and Death are Non-Fiction

  Robert and Ken’s Bios

  Going Off-Script with Screenwriter Ken Aguado

  The strange and amazing journey of An Interview with God actually began decades ago. But I promise to make this brief.

  If you google my name, you will quickly learn that I’ve been around for a while, toiling in showbiz, as they say, for many years as an entertainment executive and producer. No overnight success am I. Over those decades, I’ve worked on countless film and television projects, finding time along the way to also teach the occasional film school class and write dozens of in-depth articles on a variety of entertainment-related topics. Moreover, I’ve tried to live my life with courage and compassion and let both flow into my work.

  The story of An Interview with God began when I was invited to attend the Haifa International Film Festival in northern Israel for the festival’s thirtieth-anniversary gala. Being asked to participate was a big deal for me. On the other hand, my invitation came on the heels of a prolonged and deadly series of rocket and mortar attacks that emanated from Gaza, and it’s just possible that these dire events caused previous invitees to back out. Hence my invitation. In any case, I’d never been to the Holy Land, so I jumped at the opportunity, despite the concerns of my family and friends.

  Israel doesn’t disappoint. To see the sights and walk in the footsteps of the people and events of history and the Bible was an indescribable experience. It’s a magical, mystical place. I returned to America inspired, and all that creative and spiritual energy had to be directed somewhere, right?

  As a filmgoer, I was already motivated by the recent success of what Hollywood (weirdly) refers to as “faith-based films”—or as I like to call them, “films.” From Tinsel Town’s perspective, there’s an amazing risk/reward equation to these movies, meaning they can cost very little to produce comparatively but can garner big box office numbers. Clearly there had been a largely ignored and underserved group of spiritual filmgoers around the world.

  From a professional perspective, the other interesting thing about this phenomenon is that faith films fit into a genre that Hollywood has all but abandoned — the venerable drama. I love them, but these films are mostly impossible to get made in Hollywood. If you like a good drama, try television. But now combine that with an inspirational message? All I can say is, “Count me in.”

  So I returned from Israel inspired to write my first screenplay. As it turned out, the timing couldn’t have been better—the start of the holiday season. The combination of the annual spirit and the fact that the film business shuts down from Thanksgiving through New Year’s would give me a quiet four to five weeks to write a first draft of a script. And that’s exactly what I did. An Interview with God happened fast. Most screenwriters will tell you the initial draft usually takes two to three months of work. But did I mention I was inspired?

  The story I chose was pretty simple and, in some ways, not all that original. I had always liked the basic concept of broadly appealing commercial films like Oh God! and Bruce Almighty and thought, Why not take a concept with proven appeal and write it as a drama, but amplify the Christian message? What if you could interview God? What would you ask? And what might God ask you?

  What I liked about this inspired approach was that the auspices of an interview would allow me to introduce the theological ideas in a way that might make them more accessible to people who are interested in spiritual matters but may also feel intimidated by the more orthodox approach that pervades many faith films — some of which are quite literally “preaching to the choir.” There are a lot of people on the outside who are looking for a way to come inside. I wanted to open the door. And I wanted to create a bigger tent.

  Just fourteen months after I finished my script for An Interview with God, we began filming in the New York City area with seasoned, accomplished actors—the fastest I’ve ever had a film produced. Was this just good fortune? Or something else? I’ll let you decide for yourself.

  I was then very pleased to be able to revisit this story once again when the opportunity came to create a novelization. Working with author Robert Noland on his adaptation allowed us to dig even deeper into the lives of these characters, exploring the daily battles and faith struggles we all deal with in our own way.

  We hope you will ask the tough questions and arrive at your own answers in this expanded story of An Interview with God.

  Chapter One

  Surviving the Fire of Re-Entry

  The massive bay of the C-130 military plane holds some very precious cargo heading back to the United States from Afghanistan. Six extremely exhausted, tragically empty, war-ravaged men sit securely strapped into their jump seats. They appear lifeless, spaced away from one another with two to three empty chairs between them. At thirty thousand feet somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of the night, the darkness feels strangely denser, deeper than
ever before.

  Between the jump seats and the rear of the plane stand two rows of three each—six solemn flag-draped coffins. Ornate wooden boxes representing young lives forever silenced, their hopes and dreams for the days beyond service to their country now as vanquished as the breath in their lungs. A peculiar presence is felt in the absence of a life one once knew so well.

  Death has always had a daunting supernatural effect on the living.

  Despite the droning roar of the turbines driving the four turboprops of the plane assaulting their ears, every one of the men in the seats is distracted by a much louder noise—the invasive thoughts of how easily it could have been for one of them to be lying in one of those six coffins. And how any one of those young soldiers could instead be sitting in their spot among the living, headed back home to family and a future.

  All silently ask the same questions . . .

  Why them?

  Why not me?

  Why did I survive?

  Why am I going home . . . alive?

  And they aren’t?

  The professional term is “survivor’s guilt.” The words are all too accurate, because these people feel guilty for surviving what others didn’t in the midst of the exact same circumstances. Was it luck? Random chance? Or part of some cosmic plan? Would I rather be dead instead? Would I really trade places with any of them? Therein lies the horribly vicious cycle of such a challenging conflict. And then the raging question . . .

  Will my life ever be the same again?

  So the whys just keep coming. Relentless. Repeating. Reliving the brutality of man as the soldiers walked through the Afghani people on an almost daily basis, constantly uncertain who was a friend and who was the enemy. Who was grateful for your presence and who wanted you not just dead, but suffering before your last breath? Far too many questions without answers, or answers that may have worked before but now they no longer want to hear.

  To these six men, war is not a sound bite on the evening news or a headline you can choose to ignore. War is a saturating presence of evil, a visible enemy that leaves behind an invisible hell in the heart. One war being left, with another brought home.

  And six battles are still raging in the belly of the plane.

  One of the men in the jump seats is not a soldier. He’s a journalist who accepted the assignment of being embedded with the military, firsthand, on the front lines. A job where the pay makes no sense compared to the incredible risk taken to do the work. Paul Asher, twenty-eight years old, is a seemingly typical middle-class American with a passion for telling the truth through his gift of writing.

  While the other men carried assault rifles, his weapon was a laptop, his pistol a pen, his survival kit a notepad. Protected only by a flak jacket and helmet, he had regularly placed his life in the hands of these soldiers and many others just like them. And protect him they did. He is going home safe and sound without a scratch on him. On the outside, at least.

  Paul is certainly above average in his looks, with a thick mass of dark hair that he constantly pushes out of his face and deep brown eyes that can look right through a person with an overabundance of intensity. His intellect is far above the crowd, and his curiosity off the charts.

  He is a young man of depth, driven by an old soul that searches beneath the surface of the skeptical and questionable cultural standards of the day. His passionate tenacity is the kind that will keep asking someone, “Why?” until all their words are gone and they have nothing left to say.

  In the cavernous cargo bay, Paul tries desperately to write out his thoughts. His mind flashes an idea, and he clicks his penlight on, pointing it at his pad. But what he scribbles down doesn’t accurately articulate his feelings. Like some indecipherable foreign language, the letters on the page do no justice to what he desires to express.

  Paul finally gives in to his frustration, clicks off the light, and surrenders the pen to his pocket. In the darkness, his eyes drift back and forth between the men seated to his left trying desperately to find sleep, and the young heroes lying to his right under the flag they valiantly defended to the final moment of their lives.

  Paul’s job back home is to effectively convey the truth that he experienced on the battlefields in Afghanistan to his busy, distracted readers. But with each hour that passes, the realization grows stronger that he’s returning with more questions about life, death, faith, and the future than he ever thought possible. His hope was to write an award-winning journalistic masterpiece of a series, a reward for the great risk he took following these men into battle, but this new chaos in his heart and mind are building an impassable roadblock between the life he left and the one he’s returning to live.

  His thoughts shift toward home in New York. How will he go about attempting to download all the thoughts, feelings, emotions, fears, and doubts to Sarah, his wife of three years? After all, she had graciously and courageously agreed to allow him to risk his life—and her future—to pursue his dream and passion.

  In the days ahead, she’ll deserve to hear the entire story, as well as the details of his own heart. But when you aren’t sure what the experience has done to you, created in you, and made you, then how do you—how can you—share what you can’t seem to understand yourself? The expectation creeps up on him and he isn’t even home yet. Writing the many difficult stories from the front lines is one battle, but navigating the emotional and spiritual confusion inside his own home will be quite another.

  With Paul strapped tightly into the seat of the plane, his imagination scans his memory for an analogy of the dilemma, just as he so often does for his readers, to understand the point of a story. In a synaptic flash, he recalls the vivid picture of astronauts secured in their capsule, plunging into Earth’s atmosphere, going through radio silence, as the G-force threatened their transition back to Earth.

  Taking a deep breath, he whispers a prayer: “Just help me to not burn up on re-entry . . . please.”

  A few months have passed since Paul returned, and while his and Sarah’s lives are back into a routine, an all-too-obvious and unspoken tension shares their apartment with them. Their emotional distance leaves them feeling like the floor is strewn with a maze of eggshells.

  Sarah knows her husband has come home a different man, but pushing him to talk is not working. Like trying to grab Jell-O, she comes up empty-handed but messy every time she tries to bring up Afghanistan. Paul has returned to all his familiar circles, but he feels like he left something back on the battlefield that he can’t seem to find again and reconcile inside himself.

  And then there’s the one thing Paul had to face that he thought he would never have to deal with. Trying to avoid the overwhelming issue in his marriage gets in his face every moment of every day, nagging him like a jagged rock in the bottom of his shoe on a long, difficult journey.

  Today is yet another new normal in the early morning hours in their stylish but quaint Brooklyn apartment. The décor is what you’d expect of two young professionals busy with their jobs, trying to make a name for themselves in their respective careers while also keeping the bills paid. But they clearly need to commit an entire weekend just to straightening and cleaning every single space in the tiny place.

  Since Paul’s return, life for this young couple has been messy in any and every direction you look.

  Dressed and ready for work, Paul stands in the kitchen, in tune and listening intently. Sarah walks in, wondering who’s already on the other end of the phone this early. Finally, she hears him say, “Okay, Matt, I get it. How can I help?”

  Paul’s new friend from the front lines—Matt—is in his own personal crisis and has called for help. As Sarah watches and listens to her husband’s obvious compassion for him, she wonders if she’ll ever get to experience that quality of his again, one of the many that caused her to fall in love with Paul.

  “Matt . . . Matt, listen . . . Slow down and take a deep breath. We’re going to figure this out . . . together. Okay?” Paul assures. “Have
you gone to the VA? You know they have people there that can help.”

  Sarah grabs a coffee mug from the cabinet and reaches for the carafe, but Paul steps in and beats her to it, then pours himself another cup. As she stares at him with an I-can’t-believe-you-just-did-that look on her face, he clearly hasn’t a clue about what just happened. And she wonders, really, even if he did, would he even care?

  “Matt, I’m just a writer,” Paul continues. “I’m really not qualified to speak into what you guys went through over there. You work for the NSA. Surely other vets are there who can relate to your struggle. Can you ask around?”

  He listens for a few moments, then reassures, “No, I get it. You have to be careful of appearances. Someone might question your judgment on the job.” After setting his coffee on the counter, he leans against the frig and slowly closes his eyes. He’s praying, Please help me help this guy. Finally, he says, “Hey, I’m here. I’ll do whatever I can for you, okay?”

  Sarah pours the last of the coffee into her mug, sits down at the kitchen table, opens her laptop, and begins to scan her photo album for evidence of their past life. While her eyes look at pictures, her heart searches for hope. Any sign of hope.

  There’s the picture of Paul at college just after they started dating. The next is of the two of them at their favorite restaurant on their second anniversary. Then there’s a shot from Afghanistan with several soldiers in front of a Humvee. Paul sticks out, the only one not in full military gear. Next are Matt and Paul in the mess tent. The connection they made during their days together out on patrol shows in their expressions.

  Sarah clicks the arrow, and her and Paul’s wedding photo pops up. She taps the track pad again to escape, only to land on a more recent photo of them together, just before Paul went overseas. Her husband’s usual smile lights up his face, but her countenance seems dark and sad. Emotions rise up and grab her by the throat as she slaps the laptop shut and stands so quickly the chair almost turns over.