Phil and his wife, Lisa
Home Life: When parents see your products, what connection do you want them to make?
Vischer: My company, Big Idea Productions, is committed to creating Christian media that parents don't have to force on their kids; we hope their kids will prefer our stuff to what Hollywood is creating.
Parents used to have a trust with certain media companies, particularily Disney, but those companies have becime so diversified and muddied in their mission that you can no longer be sure of their products. We want to earn that trust that someone like Disney used to have. Everything we make will have a reason for being; each video will always have a lesson relating to a Judeo-Christian value or a Bible lesson. Yet each lesson will be presented with the same level of creativity that usually comes from Hollywood.
Home Life: Why is competing with Hollywood so important?
Vischer: I believe Hollywood has more influence on morality than any other institution. Yet the people in Hollywood say,"You can't make money on programming that's good for kids; it will lose money every time." That's their justification for making GI Joe or the Power Rangers. They're saying, "We have to give kids what they want."
The analagy I use is this: if two guys go onto a playground, and one guy has a bucket full of apples, and one guy has a bucket full of Twinkies, which guy is going to be more popular? The guy with the Twinkies, of course! But which guy do the kids need? They need that guy with the apples, so what do you do about that? Do you shoot the gut with the Twinkies in the head and drag him off the playground, or do you create apples that taste like Twinkies? We're trying to make apples that taste like Twinkies. If we can do that - make a video and put it next to a Power Rangers video - and have a 5-year-old look at them both and pick VeggieTales, then we've succeeded.
I got a letter from a dad who wrote, "My son used to draw Ninja Turtles; now he draws Bob and Larry. I owe you one!" And that's the entirety of why I'm doing this. I want kids to go to the shelf and see "Toy Story", "Beauty and the Beast", and "VeggieTales" and pick VeggieTales.
Home Life: But why do you emphasize Hollywood production values?
Vischer: Because kids are going to be naturally drawn to the highest quality productions, regardless of content. Over the years, there have been a lot of Christian videos that featured well-intentioned guys with guitars and puppets, and although they really had a heart for God, they just couldn't compete with the slick stuff churning out of Hollywood.
Hollywood is so effective at storytelling and entertaining; their influence is much bigger than their size. No other industry can affect our culture and our morality as much. We Christians haven't been savvy or clever enough in using or responding to media influence.
Home Life: Christians have tended to stay with a more traditional- oten even boring approach - because we have such a serious message. With VeggieTales, you're saying, "The message may be important, but we're going to have fun sharing it, and veiwers are going to have fun watching it."
Vischer: I'm convinced if you can get people to watch, knowing they're going to have fun, then you can say whatever you want. When people in Hollywood watch VeggieTales, they can't believe it because it has such a good message; and they actually enjoy the experience. We've been conditioned to think if it's good for you, it must be boring.
Look at "The Little Princess". When that came out, the reveiwers talked about how important it was; and nobody went because it looked important. They thought, Oh no, it's Gandhi for children. But then "Toy Story" and "Beavis and Butthead" came out; people thought they looked fun, so they went to see them.
Another point Hollywood fails to understand is that fun doesn't necessarily mean Eddie Murphy swearing up a blue streak or James Bond jumping into bed with 12 different women in 90 minutes. Fun can have a positive message, and that's the essence of VeggieTales.
Home Life: Another myth you seem to be toppling is that programming meant for kids must automatically be boring for adults.
Vischer: We want Mom and Dad to stay in the room and enjoy watching our products along with the kids, so we've introduced elements adults can appreciate. That's why we use so much humor and occasionally poke fun at ourselves for being too serious. We've all been conditioned in our society to veiw sincerity with suspicion. If you're sincere, then you must be up to something, or you're dopey or there's something wrong with you. Whenever things get too serious, we introduce a silly song or show Larry the Cucumber getting snapped on the nose by his windup toy lobster.
Home Life: But ultimatly you're not just having fun for fun's sake.
Vischer: Since I'm a Christian, I believe there's more to happiness than a smile. You can make a kid laugh at a movie, but if his dad just walked out on him, the kid's not giong to be happy when he gets home from the movie. So you to deal with deeper issues. How do you get the kid to laugh at a movie and at the same time touch his dad deep enough so that he goes back to his family?
Home Life: That sounds like a big job for a video. Shouldn't that message be coming through counseling or Sunday School lessons?
Vischer: Nothing changes peoples lives like God's truth, and there's no better way to communicate God's truth than through stories. The problem is your average 5-year-old is in Sunday School for an hour a week, but he watches about five hours of television a day. There needs to be some alternative beyond the instruction in Sunday School. My desire is to fill that gap.
You have to keep in mind that we're such a media-saturated society that we often can't accept truth outside traditional media vehicles. We don't want to read a book about truth; we don't want a pamphlet about truth; and we especially don't want a sermon about truth- but a movie or a really good TV show about it, now that's what people understand.
The goal is not to have people standing up in theaters saying, "I've just committed my life to Jesus Christ because of the movie I saw here today." Someday, if that happens, that would be great, but for now I want everyone in the theater to say, "I think I should look a little more into God because of what I just saw."
Home Life: So you're an evangelist, but of a different sort.
Vischer: I think conversion experiences are best done on a one-on-one basis, and I don't think they're done very well through the media; but what media can do is affect our entire culture on a massive scale. My goal is to take our entire culture and push it toward God.
My long-term goal is to reintegrate the religious core of America with the media lifestyle of America, and it's hard to do because the media channels are controlled by people who have no clue about the religious core of America. They just look at the demographics; and they look at the Nielson ratings, and they say, "We did this religious show, and the ratings were really low. We tried, but it didn't work; and we don't want to go back there again."
That's why it shocks people more today when God's name is used in a religious context in a movie than in a blaspheming context. It's more acceptable in a family film to say "Oh my God" than it is to say "God loves you."
How did this happen, and how do we back up that point? We still have 40 percont of Americans in church every week, and 48 percent of teenagers in church every week, yet at the same time we're shocked of we hear an honest religious statement in a movie.
Home Life: And some of the media choices Christians make don't help the situation.
Vischer: With my generation, this really gets interesting. We go to church on Sunday morning, then we go see "Natural Born Killers" Sunday night, and we don't see any conflict in that. It's almost like a media arrogance: watching this will not affect me because I'm so smart. I can watch anything because I'm savvy; I'm the MTV generation!" we've been segmented into thinking, this is my media lifesyle, and this is my religious lifestyle. There's no crossover because there's no media with religion in it.
Home Life: Then we really need to be teaching discernment to our kids as they wade through the media malaise.
Vischer: Yes, it's a big, messy world of media; and I see it as the same thing as teaching kids to eat well. They're not always going to be at home eating the four basic food groups, so you teach them to choose what's best for them. We need to teach kids to note the good things that appear in media and to spot the other things that aren't so good.
That's one of the reasons we're trying to provide a full line of VeggieTales products such as storybooks and Bob the Tomato dolls. Otherwise, when your kid finishes watching VeggieTales and then turns around and plays with a Power Ranger action figure, He's right back into questionable media again. Our hope is to give parents an opportunity to create a media-safe environment for their kids.
Home Life: You veiw your business as a ministry, yet you're careful not to be labeled a Christian media company. Why is that?
Vischer: We're not trying to build a Christian media company, we're trying to build a media company with a Christian worldveiw.
Frankly, there are a lot of Christian videos out there already, and I wasn't called to provide one more. I was called to go head-to-head with Disney on the shelves of the Wal-Marts and Kmarts of the world.
This page is in no way affiliated with Big Idea Productions.