Jim Caviezel: This Is What’s Missing in Hollywood Today

There was kind of a mental, physical, and spiritual element to a good story, but there's another component. It's that nuclear reactor that pushes both the mental and the physical. Actor Jim Caviezel, known for his roles in The Passion of Christ, Déjà Vu, and Person of Interest, stars as a former Green Beret in the new movie Ghost Soldier. I love this character because he has to play the role of the Good Samaritan. In this episode, Caviezel unpacks what filmmaking means to him, and how he picks and prepares for his roles. I'm just an actor, but I pick and I choose the right roles because I want to bring humanity back to God. This is good versus evil. Get behind me, kid. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. We'll be right back. Jim Caviezel, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. Well, thank you very much. Great to be here. So I got to watch a preview of the film, and I have to say I have a, it's kind of one of my guilty pleasures watching these. I didn't even know the name of the genre, but it's One Man Army, apparently, what this film is. And it's quite the film, and I noticed that in the trailer also you really focus on St. Michael. What's that? This? St. Michael. It's a patron saint of soldiers. Soldiers like me believe he'll protect us in battle. Tell me a little bit about why this film, why now, presumably you see a lot of scripts. I look at kind of a mental, physical, and spiritual element to a good story. My business, they focus mainly on the mental and physical, but there's another component. It's that nuclear reactor that pushes both the mental and the physical. I saw an older film years ago with Jimmy Stewart, and it's A Wonderful Life, and it's a movie that I hang over my mantle. When he's in this scene where the angel's trying to get him to turn his life around and not take his life, and he says, Heavenly Father, if you're out there, I'm not a praying man, but if you're out there, please help me. That moved me, and I started researching him quite a bit as a young guy, and then eventually I would meet him. and he told me to make good movies. I just know that there is something there that's lacking in our industry that has been removed and once you see that in a film that long ago I can't unsee it and I used that in the movie I did The Thin Red Line when he passed away and I suppose when he He meets our good Lord in heaven. You know, he probably would have... And Jesus probably tell him, look, this young man you helped out, you know, this guy's going to play me in a film. A movie is like an annuity in some ways. For me, it's like when I'm dead, that film lives on and more and more people are going to find a good purpose. And I wanted that man's search for meaning, that purpose-driven life to be in the work that I do. Thank you. Thank you. Math in Hollywood is like 2 and 2 is 7, or 4 and 4 is 16, and that's incorrect. There has to be something fundamental that might, how the heart and the head need to connect. I believe there's that in making films, too, really fighting over the narrative, good versus evil. Those are the things that draw me, at least, to this character in Ghost Soldier, where Really probably happy where he's living, or at least he's very instrumental in making weapons, and he was a former Special Forces guy, but has a gift, and he doesn't really want to involve. He wants to be a lone wolf, stay out of the way of everything, and he has to protect his boy and then eventually protect the family. He realizes that could he live with himself? I'm not protecting a group that can't defend like he can and so like a good Samaritan he gets involved and I like that element and this movie there's a lot of action in it and you know when I'm watching a movie and I see the enough the you know explosions and everything I've kind of watched here but when I start to do this Um, that's when I really get into it and it's connecting to my heart. Those are the kind of projects that, uh, that bring me to what I'm supposed to do in this life, I guess. You know, uh, one of the things I did notice in there is that you really don't start as the character, right? As Fitz, uh, you really don't start taking action until they, you know, They think they've killed you, and that's when you realize these guys are serious. But I get the sense that you really tried to keep that sense of morality in here somehow, because a lot of these films really don't, from my experience. Listen, I go to church, and a lot of the stuff that I hear some of these pastors giving are, you ever play patty cake? It's kind of like that. I'm tired of it. I wanted more, something deeper, which is that when St. Paul says, to live is Christ, to die is gain, what does that mean? You know, people would say now, you know, Jesus died that way. Jesus was crucified. You don't have to. You're called. I'm not called to the easy life. Look, Paul was executed, had his head chopped off. But Jesus died, crucified. Why is Paul dying like this? He doesn't need to do this. And then Peter gets crucified upside down. He doesn't need to do that. You know, his Lord did that. But continually, one after the other, through the generations, saints have been martyred. And people need, for example, they need a man's search for meaning. Victor Frankl's book. They're looking for something deeper, you know, an individual who's struggling with addictions, alcohol or anything, drugs, you know, that there's something much, much more and have to do spiritual exercises, not just mental and physical. Those are important, but there's a spiritual exercise that has to be met. One will continually regress and fall into those things that enslave us. Imagine, you know, this country when it was built, when you go to Concord Bridge and they know that if the British capture the gunpowder, that it's over and they're going to capture it. And so those guys are going, they can't. My children, my children's children, this is it. And they know that they're going to. Probably perish, die, you know, but they knew the Bible back then, to live is Christ, to die is gain, and they're willing to lay it down right there. Nobody's going to lay it down for a lie. Jesus either is a real story or not, and I'm not afraid to talk about it. It's part of history. I went to college when they were pushing communism, you know, leftism, all of that, and it doesn't turn out good. It didn't happen well with the... The Soviets, or the Chinese under Mao, it's terrible. So what we have in this country, we have a moment here. Film is that narrative. It tells the story. What is the math going to be? Stewart and Charlton Heston did it in great fashion in some fantastic movies. Gregory Peck, you know, To Kill a Mockingbird. Ben-Hur, and then we went in a whole different direction in that film. And they're always, they're never going to give you the awards or anything, but I'm not doing it for awards. We're in a, but we're in a fight. We're in a fight over inalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Where did that come from? Some know that it came from Tom Jefferson, but didn't, some people know it came from John Locke. But actually, he got it from a guy named Father Suarez out of Central America, which it was something like life, liberty, maybe the right to own property. But why did it come in that order? Because with under Father Suarez knew it because of slavery. People were being enslaved. What good is your liberty and your right to own property when you don't have your own life? Life has to come first. And I love this character because he. Has to play the role of the Good Samaritan, but people don't open their hands up anymore to shake. Hey, how are you? You know, I'm going to get COVID. So, hi, fist bump. You know, it's hard to go over and rescue the poor dude on the ground with the fist bump. You know, you've got to open your hand up and pull him up. And he had to go out and help this poor little boy. And then eventually it was his family and then the whole neighborhood. Americans still have those guys out there right now and a lot of them are like me that want to see films the way, you know, like Sound of Freedom. This one has that not being afraid, you know, because we're going to have to go up against a huge evil right now and not be afraid. Do the right thing, come hell or high water. You know, you have this line in the film about, you know, God will judge our enemies, I'll arrange the meeting, and it reminded me of something that Creasy says in Man on Fire, a very, very similar line, and I was curious if it was maybe an homage to Tony Scott. Maybe. Sometimes, some of this is all osmosis. Yes. You know, it's... I'll tell you that man really believed in me and I remember him he had he said I worked with and I I don't want to say because it it's uh something personal for me but he compared me to an actor that he worked with for a lot and he said the only other actor I've ever seen do what you do is this actor. I've been around a lot of tremendous actors and everything when I got to do this Navy SEAL film I was in first time I ever experienced real hardcore But hypothermia was with them, going through it. And then while I'm going through it, I'm asking, how do you deal with it? How do you get through it? But little did I know that I was going to be hypothermic for five and a half months. But I learned from these guys. And so when I go and do the work, you believe it immediately. A film that really affected me a lot when I was younger was... Raiders of the Lost Ark. I loved that movie and probably saw it at least 25 times. And even though I knew what the next scene was going to be, I just marveled at how Harrison Ford pulled that off. And I really believed him as this teacher and this kind of really cool warrior that kind of challenged a young man like me that maybe would be a little better than I was in school. And I wanted to be a good man, I guess. And I saw that in this role for young boys that, you know, someone to a character to look up to in the story. And I also thought about my own sons that they could see their dad like this, you know, because I'm just their dad, you know, not an actor, just their dad. This is OK. So, you know, you worked with a number of, I mean, you were with these special forces operators as you were preparing for the role, as I understand it. I mean, Chris Papadero, right, he's former Green Beret after 9-11. Did you collaborate with him around this? Like, how did that play out in terms of your prep? I did not know Chris Papadero, but David Zelon, the producer, said, hey, read the script. I read it. He goes, what do you think? And I said, this is a real operator. Whoever wrote this. And he says, how can you tell? I said, because it's not Hollywood. People that have had experiences in their life, you know, you write what you know. And so I also act what I know. And and they successful people leave clues, guys that really know what they're doing. They write about it. And I met with Chris and I said, OK, he's he's a Green Beret, not a SEAL, but both special forces. And when I did the passion, I just wanted to be authentic. I wanted to do something like from the Bible. Well, you're a real religious guy. And I said, yeah, but religious is not what I'm concerned about. It's when it gets really hard in life, and are you going to leave in the foxhole? So you can talk about all your religion all you want. If when it really comes down, when the rubber hits the pavement, that is the kind of faith I'm interested in. And these guys have that kind of faith. So was St. Michael in the script when you read it first, or did that come with you? Because of course you're a very faithful person. It worked. I knew about him a lot, but I remember when I was doing the movie with the seals, one of the most pretty significant seals would be Harry Humphreys, who was in Vietnam with Richard Marcinko, and he had a Michael the Archangel pendant, and I said, you know, are you religious? He goes, no. I said, why are you wearing that? He said, it's better than my lucky rabbit's foot, and I said, that's cool, you know, and then I'd see another one, another Delta Force operator, another Green Beret, another Ranger would have it, and I said, so there's a commonality, and started doing more research on him in Revelations 12, that he's the one that threw evil. Out of heaven, that he was a lower-ranking angel that shot up and basically would have none of it. I fought over our father in heaven and threw Lucifer and his legions out. So that kind of stuck with me. And in this film, you have the good angels and the bad ones, but they're humans. You know, good humans, but both warriors. But then you have the wicked. Thank you. And I started asking, you know, like, what makes up one operator that, you know, go to the bad, dark side? He said, well, money, Jim, they offer you quite a bit. You have a lot of talent, talents to, you know, use and they need big money, needs good, really top operators to protect them. And the equalizer in this is this guy's mind and his heart, which is he can develop weapons that. can take out hundreds and so you put that all together and mix in the corporations the central banks the who's really controlling this country of ours and then it gets and and put the american dream in there and and and taking away their right to have wells you know water and they're on land and uh what good is land without uh water you can't grow anything So this two systems of law, I thought that was very interesting, because I think there's a lot of people out there that are feeling that in general, and you definitely make a point of highlighting that. Well, this Mr. Smith goes to Washington. Great film. And this guy doesn't go to Washington. He just, you know, goes to his cave that he builds and has his own way of having to deal with the law that has gone. Rogue. It absolutely has gone rogue. It has taken away our inalienable rights. There are corporations. That are using, for example, we have the Sherman Act that prevents us from monopolizing, but yet that really was a trick because it would be good to not have monopolization, however, but they, through the central bank, are allowed to do that outside our perimeter, outside our country, and they control us. Americans are seeing that now. So, the film touches on those things, that what good is our country? What good is our country? It's supposed to be by the people, for the people, but it's not any longer. We do not control our own destiny, and our country wasn't set up that way. I actually talked to Trump about that, about taxes, and we're going to be in a short time Under the 16th Amendment, we're eventually... Not going to have income tax and that during McKinley they didn't and and why he probably was assassinated. Why why Lincoln under the greenbacks was probably assassinated. Why Kennedy under the silverback was probably assassinated. And the IMF the ECB the private West Central Bank the biz the Rothschild banks are really controlling a lot of where we want to go as a country. Slavery is one of those things that has been around for a long time. We just didn't know we were slaves, but now people are waking up to it. And they want their little simple life like these families did. They want their 9-to-5 job or whatever it is and having their American dream. And it's been taken away from us. They say to you, you're a conspiracy theorist. Okay, let's say I am. Someone who knows the truth shouldn't be afraid of a conspiracy theorist. You know why? He should do what is called cross-examination. Cross-examine him. He says two and two is seven. I think that's wrong. Well, I know it's wrong. And so you can go to that conspiracy theorist and cross-examine him in front of the public, and people know the truth pretty quick. But they seem to be terrified of those conspiracy theorists. I'm not afraid of free thought. And I do that in the films. I wasn't afraid of free thought when I did The Passion of the Christ. I just wanted to make a film about what really happened. I looked at the Shroud of Turin, looked at the evidence of what it was, and I felt as if anything that was biblical was kind of... Laughed at. And in my industry, it was laughed at, which made me more so want to do that. And I learned that from a lot of these guys in the SEAL community. They're free thinkers. They're lone wolves. They're very most intelligent guys that I've ever been around. I paid a high, Bye-bye. I wasn't able to work and on a film that made over a billion dollars. And, um, it didn't stop me from that. I kept moving in that direction and I kind of bonded that way with this character and it felt like he was kind of same kind of guy. And he was from that kind of those communities that, that, um, are, um, warriors, real warriors that aren't going to leave you in a foxhole, you know? Well, so what do you hope people will take home with them once they've watched Ghost Soldier? How do you say your last name? Jekielek. Are you Slovak? Polish. Polish. Niek sztampi dufuj. Niek sztampi dufuj. Ignowi oblik się żywy, ty żywy. I love Poland very much. Poland, one of the greatest warriors ever, Pope John Paul II, one of my boys. And he understood. what it was like to be under a Nazi tyranny. He knew what it was like under the Soviet tyranny. And he probably could look back to the Hebrews all the way to Moses under the tyranny of Pharaoh. And then we see Jesus under the tyranny of Herod and the Romans. Not much has changed in 2000 years. Jesus is more controversial now than he's ever been. Pope John Paul said, now quote him, he says, Your democracy, United States, cannot be sustained without a shared commitment to certain moral truths about the human person and the human community. The basic question before a democratic society is this. How are we to live together? In seeking an answer to this question, can society exclude moral truth and moral reasoning? And this is the narrative. This is good versus evil. And if you're into that, in a movie, bring your popcorn, a nice Coke, and you're going to have yourself a great day. You know, I'm thinking, just as you're speaking, I'm thinking of another great Polish warrior, Jan Sobieski III, who stopped the Ottomans in Vienna in 1683. I have another one for you. Father Jerzy Popiełuszko. Oh my goodness, yes. What a holy saint that guy is. I mean, laid it lie, fearless, fearless, but he paid, you know. I'm just an actor, but I pick and I choose the right roles because I want to bring humanity back to God. Ultimately, I don't care. I'll tell the world that. It doesn't matter to me. You know why? Because I want the world to know that I love him. I love God with all my heart, my mind, my soul. I love him. And my sin that I commit, I get very, very angry with myself. As Paul says, I do the very thing I'm not supposed to do, and I do it anyway. Why get angry? Because I should know better after going through what I did with Jesus. But nonetheless. That God loved me so much. He came to me and he gave me my career. He came to me in a movie theater and he said, I'd like you to be an actor. I felt the most love I ever felt. And that love was like, I don't deserve this, but he loved me. So I'm going to love him back. And not what I say as I'm speaking, but what I do. I'm only qualified to talk to you, Jan, because I've done the things that I've done. But in the next moment, I could be an absolute coward. And so I pray. And because at this. At this stake in the game, I can't be a coward. I have to continue to try and try and try so that we can have, I'm looking for a time that is coming very soon. And I really believe that humanity is not going to, it's going to be something very incredible that it's going to be coming. And I believe that God has his hand on it. And he needs great actors in the film community. He needs people to go to the movies and support it. For example, this movie, as good as it is, if people don't stand up and go to the movie, then the movies you're going to see are the woke movies because you didn't want to support it. What did Reagan say? He said. History will record with the greatest astonishment that those of us that had the most to lose did the least to prevent it from happening. Well, I think it's high time now we ask ourselves if we still even know the freedoms that were intended for us by our founding fathers. Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom exists, not to do what you like, but having the right to do what you ought. Well, Jim Caviezel, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. It's a pleasure to, John. Thank you. Thank you all for joining Jim Caviezel and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Janja Kellek. What's that? This? St. Michael. It's the patron saint of soldiers. Soldiers like me believe he'll protect us in battle. I wish my dad was around. There's two systems of law now in this country. One for the wealthy who can't afford to break it. This is our final offer. This land goes to my grandson. And one for the poor who can't afford to. We're done messing around. Hit the Hernandez farm hard. Burn the place down. Get behind me, kid. He's an old school Green Beret with advanced military training. It won't be a fight. It'll be a massacre. Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. By the power of Almighty God, cast into hell Satan, the evil spirits, in the destruction of souls. He's going to keep you safe. We'll judge our enemies. I'll just arrange a meeting.