This is the Bama podcast with Marty Salman. I'm his co-host, Brent Billings. Today we are joined by special guest Dallas Jenkins, creator and director of the Chosen to discuss all of our burning questions from season one of this breakout series. So Dallas, welcome to the show.

I am so glad to be here. I have been listening to you guys now and geeking out a little bit on your geeking out. And so it'll be a little bit of a mutual fenderal session, hopefully.

Yeah, and I just wanted to give a shout out to Drew Schmitz. He's of Harvest Bible Church in Phoenix and apparently a good friend of yours. And when we started coming out with episodes, he made the connection between us. So he is responsible for you being on the show today.

So thank you to Drew for that. Yeah, good friend of mine goes back 10 years and he and his small group, I believe, listened to your podcast regularly. And he's the one who made this, made this happen. So I appreciate it as well. Very cool.

So I don't know if you want to give a broader introduction of yourself, maybe talk about your family, talk about ministry history or whatever you want to say about yourself that I did not mention in my intro.

I'm trying to filter how many avenues I could go and just I was born in 1975 and I was a small child growing up, but not I won't go that detail.

So, yeah, I am the creator of the show, the chosen as you guys have talked about a few times. And that I think was birthed out of a life of being raised in God's word.

I've gone to Christian schools my whole life went to a Bible school in college. My dad is the author of the left behind books. So depending on your on your perspective there, I can say you're welcome or I'm sorry.

Well, we probably will ask you more about that.

But he loves God and loves God's word and I was raised in that very deeply. And I think my whole life, I have always seen the Bible number one is God's word, but also as an opportunity for conversation about who Jesus was and what it must have been like.

When I think of the shows and I think back to those times growing up in Saniskul, I was always the one making jokes about what it would have been like to throw rocks on the lake with Jesus and what it would have been like to sit around the campfire with him. I was always intrigued by that.

I always wanted to know more and then when I would watch Bible movies, I was always disappointed.

I would say probably nine times out of 10, I was disappointed because I just thought, oh, Jesus seems so boring. It seems so like someone I wouldn't necessarily be excited to be around.

And so that was always burning in me. I when I was in high school, I saw the movie one fall over the kukus nest, Jack Nicholson and not movie from the mid to late 70s.

And that changed my life when I saw that movie when I saw this scene where Jack Nicholson has denied the opportunity to watch the world series.

So he goes over to a blank television and starts broadcasting a fake world series game just to kind of give himself something to do and it inspires all the other patients in the mental hospital.

I was so excited and so emotionally moved. I thought, that's what I want to do with my life. But if I could ever do that from a Christian perspective, you know, tell stories from a faith perspective, which I so rarely see.

But, you know, inspiring people to kind of reaction that this movie is inspiring in me, that's what I want to do in my life.

So that was like when I was in early high school. And back then, Christians didn't do that. Christians didn't, you know, I mean, there were very few examples of it. And they were usually not great.

And so I just that's that's when I the course of my life started to change. I got married right out of college.

And I've got four kids who are also being raised in God's word, of course. And my wife, you know, when we met was just loved that calling as well. So she has been a partner with me. She's she's a state home mother, but she is also responsible for a lot of our extra content, our devotional books, our Bible study.

And so we are passionate in this together. And the chosen is the first Bible project I've done. I've been doing movies for about 20 years now. I lived in LA for about 10 years before I moved back to Chicago to work for a church to make movies and short films and then yet's there.

...