CH: I grew up in south Texas in a small town called McAllen on the Mexican border. I went to architecture school at the University of Texas in Austin. I got a five year professional degree as an architect. Then I went back to my hometown and worked with my family developing an architecture project, twenty acres and building all these homes. Then I suddenly thought, “I bet I could have more creative possibilities if I went to Hollywood and tried to work on films.” I didn’t know anything or anybody in Hollywood. I was just completely naïve. But I got into UCLA grad school in film. Because I did all these…I had to send all these art projects and sculptures and things. So, I went to grad school and people said, “You’re an architect so you should be a production designer and design the sets for films.”

Which is exactly what I did. I worked with all these great directors, good and bad directors, designing the sets for films. I learned a whole lot about the film making process. I realized I wanted to write my own projects. So, in between I took a lot of acting classes, directing classes and writing workshops at night and on the weekends. I stared writing my own screenplays. You know it is kind of hard to break into directing, especially for a female. Every script I’d write they would say, “Oh, we will never let you direct your first movie for nine million dollars. “ So, I would write one that was less expensive. “You will never get to direct one for five million dollars.”

Even though I had worked for many male directors on their first-time projects which where much bigger budgets than those. It was kind of frustrating. So, then I had a friend. My friend’s daughter, Nicky Reed, when she turned 13 she started having all these problems. What had been a very loving relationship with her mother turned angry. She was so upset and she was so tortured by the peer pressure and the advertisements, the desire to be popular. That she just went way off on the wrong track. I was witnessing this. I’m not a therapist or anything but I was thinking, “How can I help this girl, mom and her friends?” All seemed to be lost and adrift. So, I started trying to take them places and do creative things. “Let’s learn how to go surfing.” “Let’s go to museums”. “Let’s look at art”, anything I could try an engage her in. Finally, she said that she wanted to act, which made me even more worried. But I thought lets take that seriously and read all kinds of serious books and see how that could be used as a good tool.

There was nothing to act in for a 13-year-old girl. I said, “Let’s write our own screenplay.” That turned into a therapy situation for her to talk about her issues with her mother and her problems. When I finished reading the screenplay, I said, ‘Let’s make this.” That movie was able to be made for a very low budget. One-point-five million dollars is what we made it for.

It is about ordinary people, current day, lower-income people, so you didn’t need fancy homes. I could use a lot of my own clothes and furniture from my house. The truck backed up to my house and loaded up with furniture. All my furniture went over there and my clothes. Every single actor wore something of mine. It’s funny. We made it for 1.5 million. Then it went on to win a big prize at the Sundance Film Festival and get distribution. Basically, it went all over the world. It turned out that it was a topic that a lot of mothers and teenagers were concerned about. We took it to churches, judges, and juvenile programs and discussed things. We used it as cinema therapy to teach kids how you could deal with your problems. Maybe, instead of the way the girl in the movie dealt with her problem.

CCM: Right

CH: So, that was a very interesting experience and that led to my next film and then to this film.

CCM: I noticed that you recently announced that your next film would be ‘The Monkey Wrench Gang’.

CH: In Hollywood, it is very tough to get a movie green lit. So, my fingers are crossed. Have you heard of that book?

CCM: Actually, no I haven’t. Tell me a little bit about it.

CH: It is about environmentalist in the 1970s that lived in the southwest, in the four-corner states right near the Grand Canyon. They just loved the land and loved the environment. They wanted to protect it. They are really funny; eccentric characters that where just trying to find the right way to take care of the land. They were kind of early pioneers in the environmental or eco movement.

So, it is a funny, rollicking adventure. When the book first came out, Robert Redford wanted to make it. He has actually been trying to make it for a long time. I have meet with him and other actors and people that are very interested in it. So, we hope that it gets made. Now that subject, of course, global warming and everything people are taking it more seriously now. Maybe, it has a chance. You never know.

CCM: It sounds like to me that you are a woman of faith. Going into The Nativity Story, do you consider yourself a Christian or just a woman of faith?

CH: Yes, well I grew up in the First Presbyterian Church of McAllen, Texas. My mom is still a Sunday school teacher. My dad still sings in the choir.

My cousin is a minister at St. Joseph, Missouri. But now he has just gone to seminary school in North Carolina to teach and get his PhD. So, my whole family is a family of faith. Our whole life has been very involved in the church.

Christmas was a very special time for my family because my father plays the piano. He loved to have everyone over doing all the Christmas carols. We had big Christmas carol singing parties at our house. He made our own songbook with a lot of typos in it which where kind of funny. All the kids would, of course, sing the typos out loud in the carols.

CCM: With the Nativity Story when did you start working on this? When did the idea for it come about?

CH: I got this script. It just said "Nativity" on the cover. I did not know, somehow, didn’t realize what it would be about. I started reading it. This was in the middle of January. I thought, “ Oh this is just the regular nativity story, the real nativity story.” I first thought that couldn’t be that interesting, because we know the story. We’ve heard it a thousand times and read it in Matthew and Luke at every Christmas.

Then the writer, Mike Rich, had somehow managed to make it seem alive and fresh by getting us right into Mary’s head, and what it would have been like. I got very inspired by that and started reading more accounts, more scholarly accounts, and recent works on the nativity story, the nativity narrative, infancy narratives and everything. I started to realize that by all scholars Mary was, probably, 13, 14, 15 years old, because of life expectancy rates at that time and everything. I thought, “ Aw this young girl going through all this.” It is quite incredible and other people didn’t believe her.

It was an unprecedented event to be visited by an angel and say that you are going to bear the Son of God. So, of course, in the Bible it says that Joseph wanted to divorce her. I mean there is maybe one line. But if you think of the whole story behind that one line and you start really getting into the words and deeply thinking about it. It was an intense dramatic situation to be in. It must have been extremely difficult for her and requiring a huge leap of faith to overcome that: on Mary’s part and Joseph’s part and her family and people that wanted to love her and support her but could not understand how she could be pregnant.

So, it started really fascinating me and I went to meet with Newline. They said, "Well, we want to make it this year to go out for Christmas 2006."

CCM: Wow.

CH: That is an almost unprecedented short amount of time. From the time that I read the script to the time that I have to deliver every single element is about nine months to have it all finished.

So, I said well, “ If we are doing that starting in two days I need to be in the Holy Land, in Jerusalem, in Nazareth, looking at what the landscape looks like.” Then I need to be casting and finding locations like tomorrow. They said, “Yes, you are right.” I was literally on a plane two days later to Jerusalem.

CCM: Wow.

CH: I had never been to the Holy Land. I really wanted to see it for myself and understand what the landscape looked like and the land. Even though it is drastically changed, obliviously, in thousand years it is very built up. But you get some sense of the feeling and the stones and the landscape. When we got to Nazareth: Have you ever been to Nazareth?

CCM: No, I haven’t. I would love to, but I haven’t.

CH: Well, when we got there, of course, I had my dream of biblical, rural village. Well, It is nothing like that. It is completely built up with modern apartments all over. I almost started crying. This, this can’t be. There is nothing here that makes me feel connected or anything to Jesus’ time. Then I had this, some little, funny guidebook, like a folders guidebook or a ‘Lonely Plant’ guidebook. That I had just bought the day before. It said that there was a place called Nazareth Village. Where somebody else, a doctor, had felt the same feeling that I had felt like. How do we feel connected to Jesus’ time? He had bought a piece of land. He has a foundation. Jimmy Carter is on the board. But he bought a piece of land that had a lot of archeological ruins from the first century on it. He was developing it. It had olive trees from many hundreds of years ago on it.

They were really studying it, excavating and trying to understand how people built in those days and how they collected water. There was actually a piece of ground that had a piece of stone that was carved into a wine press. Where it had little trenches carved on the side where the wine could dribble down to the next layer and the next layer. Then we read a passage there that seems like, from the bible, where it describes almost all of the geographical features of an observation tower, a vineyard, and this wine press. It really seems like it is the properly the exact same wine where Jesus stood when this passage happened. Finally, I felt kind of connected back to Biblical times in Nazareth. That was very inspiring.

We got three people from the Nazareth village to come over and teach us all the ways, everything they had learned, because, they have a living research project going on there. They taught us how to grind the grain, to bake the bread the same way, to milk the goats, to sow the seeds. They taught Oscar Isaacs, who plays Joseph, how to make all the tools and to do the carpentry and masonry the same way Joseph would have done. In fact, he built a whole wall of his house. The actor built a wall of his house. We all had a month long Nativity training camp.

I found a location in Italy that was remarkably similar to the feeling of the Nazareth village. It had the beautiful, wide, stony outcroppings. It had the ancient olive tress, also. It was a national, like state park called “The Olivid” or something, you know “The Olive Grove State Park.”

It was a very magical place. I said, “This is where we are going to build Nazareth.” Then we built the whole Nazareth village there with the Italian craftsman. We built it in a place called Matera, Italy. Which is, actually, where two other Biblical films have been filmed. Mel Gibson filmed part of “The Passion” there. Because the town itself, Matera, has a remarkable resemblance to Jerusalem. It is an ancient town built on a mountainside with the same color of stone, the same kind of fabulous stone and caves and everything. It is really kind of a great match.

CCM: Wow, that’s a really cool story. When you mentioned part of “The Passion” being filmed in one of the locations where you were, going back to that, do you feel that maybe “The Passion” has -- now a few years removed -- that it is still making waves in Hollywood? As far as, for instance, do you think Newline would have been so eager to get the ‘Nativity’ story out so quickly if it hadn’t been for the success of a film like “The Passion”?

CH: Well, I think that it certainly helped make them think that they might be able to make their money back. That it wouldn’t necessarily be a losing proposition. Though, every film is a risk. That was a particular time and phenomena and everything with Mel Gibson. You have a big star that went around to a lot of churches, personally, and talked to people and got people excited. He had a complete freedom to make the movie the way he wanted to make it -- make a strong bold statement.

So, it is a very dramatic part of Jesus’ life that is not the same as the birth. So, everyone knew that it is not the same and you really couldn’t compare it. You can’t think, “Oh this movie made this much money so will ours.” That is not the case. But, I think they loved the beauty of the story and the relationships. I think it certainly didn’t hurt them to think that is a chance that we could make our money back. There is a chance. You never know.

CCM: Going into a little bit more about the casting process, how did you come upon all the leads and the people in the film?

CH: That was a challenge. In a way, Mel Gibson also set the bar high. He made a movie that felt very authentic. You really felt like the people looked like they were from that time and that place, the Middle East. I think that was encouraging to me, because in the other movies I have made and in all my films as a production designer, I have always tired really hard to make it feel authentic and right.

So, I didn’t want to have big, dazzling movie stars like some of the Biblical epics or TV movies where you would see a big movie star playing a part. Because it kind of takes you out. It is hard to get lost in the story.

Like if whomever, I don’t know if Lindsey Lohan is playing the Virgin Mary, I think that would be a bit difficult. So, I think studying the faces and the skin color and the look of the people in the Middle Eastern region, that is what we really wanted to achieve, people that looked right and felt right for that area. Immediately, right after I was hired I thought, “Oh my goodness where am I going to find an actress that is 13 or 14 years old that is a great actress.” That has kind of a peace, beauty, serenity, and strength of character. All those things that you need for Mary and fits a beautiful Middle Eastern look.

Two days after I got the project I just woke up thinking of Keisha Castle Hughes. Because, I was very moved by Whale Rider and I though she was just almost wise beyond her years and a timeless quality and strength and vulnerability.

Even though she is half Maurian from New Zealand, she has that face and that skin tone that really works beautifully with a Middle Eastern look. And she is a very strong actress. So, I thought she would be great. That is the one I knew right away that might be the best person out there. Though we had a world wide search to be sure that there wasn’t somebody more perfect. Because, partly in the back of my head, “I thought it would be fantastic if I found a wonderful Christian girl who lives in Israel now.” That would be perfect. So, we went to Tel Aviv. We had casting sessions. I looked at tapes of girls from the Middle Eastern region.

I meet a lot of girls and audition them. Women from Italy, France, London, all over Europe, all over the United States, Canada, Australia, and everywhere, we show tapes of hundreds of girls if not thousands. Really, in the end, Keisha seemed to be, by far, the strongest person to play the part. After that when we did this casting session all around the world we had six casting directors in every major city. Then you have an Internet link-up where at night: whatever city I was or wherever I was location scouting: I would go on the Internet at look at people auditioning for all the other roles. Then if I thought somebody was good I would fly to London and meet all the best people in London for those parts or fly to Rome and meet all the best people in Rome. So, it was very fascinating meeting actors. We have actors from like 23 different countries in the film. Everyone has just an incredible interesting background and had a reason and a connection that they felt like they wanted to be part of this film.

CCM: What is your hope for the movie? Above and beyond just being a success for NewLine and that part, personally what do you think?

CH: I hope that people can go into the theater and just enjoy it: just go into a complete experience and be transported to another world and another time. That they can start to get inside and live inside a story that they might have heard their whole life, but that they could actually feel the meaning of the words and the thoughts and struggle that these people could have had. And how difficult it probably was for them to maintain their own faith. Even if no one else believed them and other people judged them. I think it can be a very inspiring story and uplifting. I hope that the beauty of the story washes over people and gives them inspiration in their lives.

Official site: TheNativityStory.com