Kieth Merrill, Oscar-winning filmmaker and creator of such Mormon classics as Legacy and Testaments, has a new credit to add to his list of accomplishments: successful novelist. His novel, The Evolution of Thomas Hall, debuted in May to rave reviews from critics and readers alike. Author Emily Freeman says,
“The Evolution of Thomas Hall is a visual journey that will lift your heart and invite you to view the miracles of the Savior in a way you haven’t before. The magic of this book comes in its ability to inspire you to become the person you were always meant to be.”
The story of an arrogant, faithless artist whose life is transformed by an artistic challenge, a faith-filled woman and a child in distress, The Evolution of Thomas Hall features Kieth’s natural flair for narrative as well as his remarkable talent as an artist. Readers comment on the power of his descriptive language. One enthusiastic reader from Arizona raves:
“In films the writer’s pen brings a story into existence, the actor’s words bring it to life and the director’s vision gives it wings. With his film background, Kieth Merrill has taken all these elements, rolled them into an incredibly visual piece and written an amazing story. Through the eyes of an artist, Thomas Hall, you see the growth of a person from depending only upon himself to a person who finds healing, forgiveness and finally freedom through Jesus Christ. One of the best LDS novels I’ve ever read!”
Recently I caught up with Kieth, and asked him to tell us more about his transition from filmmaker to novelist. I was interested in his unique perspective on both fields of endeavor:
Q – You’ve been successful in so many areas. Tell us how you came to write a novel?
Isn’t writing a novel everyone’s fantasy? You know, on that long list of ‘Things I’m going to do before I die?’
I love to tell stories. Make stuff up. Exaggerate the truth until there’s not much left but a lot of little white lies that are way more interesting than reality. I can’t help myself.
The bridge from telling stories to writing them down is short. Writing has always held a certain fascination for me. A sort of sense of destiny I confess. Even in grade school I was writing illustrated stories and creating characters. Only my fourth grade teacher knows Gregory the Ghost existed at Farmington Elementary long before anybody ever heard of Casper.
I wrote my first journal when our family took a road trip across the United States in a chartreuse and cream Studebaker. I was thirteen. Since then I have written thousands of pages of personal journals. Words excite me. Language is fascinating. I love to write. And in case you wonder, ‘thousands of pages’ is neither a white lie nor hyperbole.
But you ask ‘how I came to write a novel.” The first acknowledgement at the end of the book says, “Special thanks to Sheri Dew for asking me to write this book. Nay, for browbeating me ten years until I finally did it.” That may be the most honest answer; the raw truth of it. I’ve a head full of stories and a file stuffed with over forty scripts, treatments and tales that ought to be told. Only a few of them have made it to the big screen and most of them never will. I shared my twelve favorite movie ideas with Sheri. She picked Color of Miracles, based on a short film I wrote twenty years ago. By the time I turned it into a full length novel only fragments of the central dramatic question remained, and the book was published as The Evolution of Thomas Hall.
Q – Your main character, Thomas Hall, is a painter, and the descriptions of painting in the book are some of the finest passages. Tell us about your background as an artist and how it influenced the evolution of Thomas Hall (to coin a phrase!) as a character.
When I was in the second grade, I drew a picture of a frog. I knew a thing or two about frogs. We spent Saturdays in the marshes west of the old highway and caught dozens of them. The whole class was painting pictures of frogs I think. Mrs. Welling looked over my shoulder and gasped. She took my drawing to the front of the class, tacked it on the board and told everyone how wonderful it was. ‘Very good Kieth, what a fine artist you are.” I remember the room and where I was sitting and how I felt. It could have been last week instead of 65 years ago. That was the day I discovered that not everyone could draw. Who would have known? From that moment onward ‘artistic talent’ whatever it is, wherever it comes from and however it is measured began to define my life.
My father was a gifted artist. Our home was filled with my father’s paintings, sketches and sculptures. His mother, grandma Eliza whom I never knew very well, was sitting at her easel almost every time we visited. My passion for creating images, my life-long fascination with art is clearly DNA mixed with opportunity.
Q – Speaking of evolution… we used to talk about this issue quite a bit in the church. Where do you stand on the subject, and why did you choose to make it a major theme in the novel?
I’m smiling. Church discussions used to be a lot more interesting when the lesson manuals were written by intellectuals like B.H. Roberts, Hugh Nibley and Joseph Fielding Smith. But that wasn’t your question.
My stance on evolution is evolving. Yeah, OK, that’s a play on words but the answer of course is I DON’T KNOW where evolution—to the extent it exists at all— fits in the grand plans of God.
Man did not evolve! Man is the offspring of God. I sustain the men called to lead the church as prophets, seers and revelators and thus stand firm on the official statements of the church on that matter, that man did not evolve from a lower form. Some find comfort in a sort of agnostic ambiguity and allow God to ‘use’ evolution to populate the earth with all its incomprehensible diversity. I reject out of hand the hardcore theory that all things evolved from a single cell bacterium. Hey, read my book and you will get a clear sense of where I stand. And more than that, a fascinating new look at those issues. Since the book I’ve had to field this question many times and thus my views are evolving.
In a flash of insight I stopped using the words of science, “genus, family, and species,” and used instead the word from scripture, “kind.” Is ‘kind’ the genus, family, species or subspecies? I don’t know. Similarities in DNA and other factors argue in favor or ‘evolution’ within certain biological classifications but that does not negate the creation of KIND by God. Commonly used names—perhaps the painfully common names of the animals named in Genesis—refer to an entire species or (as in the case of deer to a family with myriad species or even to a genus to whom it is grouped by virtue of similarity) in DNA.
What was the question? Why did I choose to make evolution a major theme in the novel? My plunge into this explanation is the probable answer. It is obvious that I find the topic with its endless entrails into science and religion fascinating. With a grip on the iron rod no exploration is too daring in my view.
It comes down to a single, simple but overwhelming truth. If mankind’s most ancient ancestor slithered out of some primordial stew in a horrendous and inexplicable cosmic accident, THEN NOTHING MATTERS. If, on the other hand. our most ancient ancestor walked from the Garden of Eden in the light of Cherubim and the flaming swords, THEN EVERYTHING MATTERS.
Man’s origin is for me the defining explanation for all things. Good and Evil. Right and Wrong. Freedom and bondage. Happiness and sorrow. They all line up on one or the other side of the evolution question without realizing that is what they are doing. If we believe we are a creation of God then everything matters and we are intuitively drawn toward good. If we believe we are no more than a different form of fungus without a soul or destiny then nothing matters and we are intuitively drawn to the hedonism of a single moment.
Q – Though LDS readers will certainly recognize doctrinal themes in this novel, it is not an LDS book per se. You obviously made the choice to aim at a wider target audience with this story. Tell us about that decision, and the challenges it presented.
With the exception of films produced for the LDS church (Legacy, Testaments and Mr. Krueger’s Christmas) my creations have never targeted the LDS audience. Writing The Evolution of Thomas Hall for anyone other than the widest possible audience was never a consideration. Why? My professional life has been driven by the prophecy and plea of Spencer W. Kimball in the address given to BYU faculty and staff 1967-68.
“ Our moving picture specialists, with the inspiration of heaven, should tomorrow be able to produce a masterpiece — written by the great artists, purified by the best critics — that should run for months in every movie center, cover every part of the globe in the tongue of the people. A masterpiece that will live forever. It remains for inspired hearts and talented fingers yet to reveal themselves. They must be faithful, inspired, active church members to give life and feeling and true perspective to a subject so worthy.” (Spencer W. Kimball – BYU 67-68)
“Cover every part of the globe in the tongue of the people…” is the operative phrase. When I was ordained to the office of Seventy by Boyd K. Packard the special blessing required me to use the talents I had been given and opportunities that came to speak to the world.
Q – How is creating a novel different than creating a screenplay for film? Did you find it more, or less difficult?
Writing a novel and writing a screenplay are so very different they can hardly be compared. Both tell stories but do so in very different ways.
Films tell stories with moving pictures. Novels tell stories with words.
In films we see the images. In novels the writer must ‘paint’ a vivid image in your mind with nothing more than words.
A film works better if it is about a single character with a strong goal, a powerful antagonist and lots of conflict. Novels can follow several characters and subplots. Films must rely on action and reaction to understand what a character is thinking. Novels can live in people’s minds and read their thoughts.
A screenplay is a set of instructions intended for translation by the director, the actors and myriad creative people who find, dissect and translate each little part. The goal of translation is to visualize and realize the writer’s vision. A novel is the translation of the writer’s vision.
A film is written in a kind of shorthand. Terse. To the point. Only what is necessary. A screenplay is not about language, prose or literature (even though some come close.) A novel is all about language and ‘the prose’. The writer hopes to rise to some state of literary brilliance.
A screenplay is short; 120 pages is already too long . Written in novel form it would probably be less than 50 pages. A novel is long, 400 pages plus.
A screenplay must follow a standard format and use Courier font. Novels offer endless possibilities.
A screenplay sets the scene with what is called Scene Heading.
EXT. BOAT DOCK – SUNDOWN
Chastity finishes the name on the boat.
The novel uses a whole paragraph and takes a little longer. “By the time Chastity finished painting Da Vinci on the sailboat, the sun was an orange ball sinking behind the Marin Hills. The harbor was suspended in a warm twilight as the last full rays of the sun turned Tiberon to gold and reflected west.” (The Evolution of Thomas Hall, page 137.)
A screenplay is written to be read by a hundred people. A novel is written to be read by millions—or such is the hope of the writer.
A screenplay takes three months. A novel may take a year.
For all the differences—and the answer to this question is worthy of a college course and nice fat book—the nicest compliment I got from a reader of The Evolution of Thomas Hall brought my two expressions together, “The descriptions are word pictures and the story unreels like a movie in your mind.”
Q – One final question: Is there another novel in that very creative mind of yours?
I’m often asked, “Which of your movies is your favorite?” The answer has always been the same, “the next one.” I loved writing The Evolution of Thomas Hall and want to write another. I have as 70,000 word outline for the first of a series of Adventure Thriller novels with a character I’ve created called Jack Stone, called Treasure of a Thousand Slaves. It is based on personal experience, extensive research and finding myself where few people have ever been. I’ve also begun work on a second novel more in the genre of Thomas Hall called, Live Like You Were Dying.
That said, filmmakers never want to stop making films and time becomes an enormous challenge. I do not have the discipline of the housewife that gets up at 4:00 and writes for two hours before she has to take care of her family and go to work. I have a magical writer’s cottage in the woods surrounded by a garden with two hundred rose bushes. I can write for eight hours if I am not interrupted but need clarity of mind and no commitments for months ahead to make it a joyous experience.
With all those great stories in his head, let’s hope that Kieth finds the time, and the inspiration, to write more novels like The Evolution of Thomas Hall.
About the Author:
For ten years Marilyn Green Faulkner has been writing a column for Meridian titled “Back to the Best Books.” Now Marilyn has featured 36 of these great works in her new book, Back to the Best Books.
Each of the twelve chapters offers three book selections – great ideas for ward book groups or casual readers who are ready to take it up a notch! Available at amazon.com
