34-On a Mission from Gaad

We drove twelve hundred miles, endured one hundred degree temperatures, interminably long waits, and rude drivers. But it's okay to borrow a dan Ackroyd line from the Blues Brothers movie. We were on a mission from God. I'm Chimpaulin and this is my view from the middle. Mary of Magdalah, I didn't know my name. That says the Lord who created you, and you for you fear luck, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are Mine. Jonathan Rumy and Elizabeth Tavish as Jesus and Mary Magdalen in the series The Chosen, phenomenal show that's becoming increasingly popular around the world. There's the story of Jesus and his disciples. There are currently in their fifth season on Amazon Prime Video, where you can watch it free on the Chosen app. I understand season five is going to be on the Chosen app in late September of twenty twenty five. You are Mine when Jesus meets Mary for the very first time, that's at the end of the very first episode in season one, and he calls her by her given name Mary, where she had been going by Lilith up to that point. Anyway, we managed to finagle ourselves into being extras in season six, which is in production now and we'll be released in twenty twenty six. If you haven't seen the show, I highly recommend it. It's probably the best portrayal of Christ on TV ever, and it's all done in present day vernacular. Jesus actually has a sense of humor. Who knew? But be careful. The show gets under your skin and once you start watching it, you may not want to stop. The show has been translated into one hundred and seventy five languages so far. Their goal is six hundred. Who knew there were so many languages? But so anyway with me today is my special guest on my View from the Middle is my lovely and talented wife Melody, who was in the middle of all this with me. Hello, dear, Hello, So anyway, mel and I drove to mid Loathly in Texas, the wonderful metropolis of at Camp Hubblicell, which is a expansive area owned by the Salvation Army. That's where they shoot The Chosen At least there's a couple of sites where they choose to shoot the show Chosen. One was in the Texas at Camp Hublicell. Another is in Utah, and they actually shot the crucifixion scenes in Italy at the same place where they shot the Passion of the Christ. They did the whole planing out there. But anyway, it was a twelve hundred mile trip one way for us, and we participated in three days of filming in one hundred degree heat. It was great fun. But we got to be on the set for anywhere from two to five hours a day for three three days. And so, mel tell me what is your most positive takeaway from those three days shooting The Chosen in Texas. There's actually a couple of them. You know that you're in a Christian organization when somebody sneezes and one thousand people go bless you. I saw that a lot. And uh. The other thing that I thought was really cool. It had to be two hundred degrees outside. It felt like it anyway, one. Hundred percent humidity. It was just hot, and everybody was looking out for everybody else. I had a woman that was sitting on a stool and she did not look good, and I went over to her, how you doing? Can I get you anything, and she's like, no, but thank you. I mean that went on for those three whole days. Everybody was kind of like one great, big mass acting thing. It was really nice. Now this worked was there was about I would say about six hundred extras or background actors or background extras. They didn't want to call us extras really because they said, well, you're not really extra, you're you're an integral part of the show. So we're going to call you background actors. But they're about six hundred. And they split us up into four different groups, and we all had a color code on our lanyard to tell us what group we were in, and each group had one hundred and fifty two hundred people in and they would call us to the set at various times of the day. On the first day, we were one of the first to be called to the set. We were out there for like four and a half hours. Second day was a couple of hours, and then the third day we were out there for another four and a half hours. But we would go out there and I think we shot the same scene for three days. I mean, it was like it was like, you know, the worst thing you wanted to hear when you're standing in one hundred degree temperatures. Is okay, cut, let's reset and do it again. Oh my gosh, here we go. We must have done it four hundred times. But what they did was is every scene had different camera shot and and so you know, we had to shoot it, you know, once for each one of those camera shots at least, but actually there was multiple takes for each one of those cameras shot. So by the time you did all the math, you know, you're doing this thing a hundred times, it felt like, you know, and so, uh so that's that's what we were. That's what we were doing. And basically, without giving away any spoilers, which they didn't want us to do, we were in a crowd scene and they split us up into pro Jesus, Anti Jesus, and spectator. Yeah, and luckily we got. On the pro Jesus, Yes we did. Yeah, so we did our best, but it didn't I don't think it worked. But we we uh, you know, the anti Jesus where the you know, crucifying crowd and and the pro Jesus were like, no, no, he's innocent. You know, he's in Messiah, you know, that kind of thing. And then the spectators are like, what's going on. We have no idea what's going on? So uh so those were the Those were the three factions we had out there, and and the way it worked was is that they congregated all the background actors into this huge air conditioned tent. It was wonderful, had all the. Comforts of home, if home were out in the middle of the. Moondocks, and it was one hundred degrees outside, one. Hundred degrees outside, but it felt good inside the tent because they had these massive air conditioners anyway, anyway, but it was it was nice and cool in the tent. And they fed us. They fed us three meals a day. They you know, breakfast when we first got there, lunch, and then they even gave us a box dinner to take home with us, so you know. So and of course they had water and soda and snacks and all that stuff, and gave us electrolyte, yeah pills, you know, salt tablets just to combat the heat. So we were there were four groups there was They did color codes with navy, silver, purple, and tea. We were the purple group and they would call us to the set based on our color group and that's when we would go out and we would you know, wind up standing there not doing much of anything for a while. But then they would say, okay, walk this way, go this way, do this, shout that, you know, don't look at the cameras, you know, that sort of thing. We never really knew where the cameras were. No, they were everywhere. Yeah, they're everywhere, and so we had no idea. But then wants to look at him anyway, So it really didn't matter. So we just assume that you're on camera all the time and and we'll probably be lucky if we had five seconds of screen. Time and we don't care. Yeah, we don't care. Yeah, we had. We had a really good time. Uh. It was it was an experience that we will not soon forget. Yeah. Absolutely. Now. All these people that were there, they're ardent fans of the show. Like I said, about six hundred or so. And I met people from all around the United States, California, Michigan, Texas, of course, Maryland. There was I think a group from skyt if I'm not mistaken, I think I met a. Group Oh yeah, I remember them, yeah. Yeah, And so uh, these people and they all know every aspect of the show, and some of them had been extras before, and like they were all talking about the feeding of the five thousand. And there actually were five thousand people. They did it in two days, and there were five thousand people each day, and from what I understand, it was at least two hundred degrees on that particular day and four hundred percent humidity. And they probably didn't get much screen time at all. Now, just a little dot in the middle of this huge crowd as they're being you know, fed the loaves and the fishes. Five thousand people. But anyway, and we felt like, you know, we were we were in the middle of a crowd just being you know, with a couple of hundred. Yeah, but yeah, I can't even imagine. Yeah, so what now, what was the biggest negative for you? Heat? Yeah, it was heat. Everything else was just wonderful. And you have to take into account when we got our call times, and on the email that they sent with the call times, there were also symptoms of heat exhaustion. And you know you're in trouble when I tell you that that's true. But it was. There were people everywhere helping us. They had people that were going around giving you ice, cold water. They had people that were giving you the electrolytes, they had snacks, they had everything. Sun block, yeah, sunscreen. And it was just what a wonderful experience. And the. It was kind of funny because they had told us bring an umbrella so you can use it as a parasol, you know, to block yourself from the sun. So you know, everybody would have their umbrellas up and then okay, everybody, you've got you know, we're getting ready to shoot. Everybody had to put their umbrellas away, put everything away, and then they would shoot the scene and then cut and all of a sudden, all the umbrellas had come back out again. So there was a there were makeup people walking around and you you had you had an experience with a with a costume lady, Yeah, an experience. Tell us about that, Well, she. I thought I had on the right thing. I absolutely, you know, I was I was fine, I was happy, everything was great, And all of a sudden, I felt somebody messing with the back of my shirt and apparently I don't know what was going on, but I don't know if the tag was showing or what, but she just cut it out and she says, excuse me, and I'm like, what's going on back there? And she said, well, this is the first century, so you might not want to have this one there. So and she cut she cut the whole back off, and she hasn't recovered from that sense. She's just trying to find that blouse again because she cut off the cut off the tag. So yeah, and they were walking around and they were kind of checking everybody out to be sure that everybody was first century. There was there was one lady who had a She thought she was going to be very creative about it, and she was. She had a basket that had fruit and bread in it. But the problem is the bread she had was just standard loaves of bread, and of course they didn't have that, they didn't have any yeast in the first century. It was all unleaven bread. And so the proper lady come over and says, we have to take this away because it's not first century. This is this is not period, and. And she's like, okay, Well, the other thing was that she had a bottle of water laying on top of everything else, and that you could see it. Yeah, that didn't make any sense either, you know, so you know, they that's what these people people, that's what their job was. They were walking around trying to be sure that, you know, things that were not appropriate for first century you know, they were making sure that those didn't get in the scene somehow. So so anyway, that was that was a pretty challenging thing. Now, the other thing we got to do during our downtime is that we went over to five and two Studios. Now what the way this is delineated as I understand it, I'm not one hundred percent certain of this, but but the series that chosen is financed by the nonprofit Come and See Foundation. Okay, the actual production of the show is done by five and two Studios, and they're the ones responsible for all the equipment. They staffed the cameramen and all this other stuff. And uh not far from where our set was. We had that we were on the set of Jerusalem. We were in Jerusalem, I can say that much. They had the sound stages and they had the the sets for Caiaphas's house. If you're familiar with the show, you know what I'm talking about. Coepfice's house and the upper room where they had the last supper. Uh so we got to We got to tour all that and if you want to see some pictures of that, you can check out my Facebook page Jim Polling on Facebook, and all those pictures are there. The picture of us standing around the last supper table in the upper room and uh, and we're in I'm standing at the Caiaphas's desk. They wouldn't let me sit down. They had to stand down. They said, you can't sit down, you gotta stand, Okay, So I stood stood stood behind the desk. You know, you have to follow the rules around here. Uh and so so that was very very impressive when they when they did. That, it was just the best experience I think I've ever had, other than marrying you. Okay, all right, now we're really getting we're really getting thick now. So but you know, I think the most positive thing was is not only did we get a chance to see a television show of being made, but we were a part of it at the same time. How much of a part. We really won't know until the show comes out. And we don't really care, yeah, we really care. We don't know. Maybe one of these things where you have to freeze frame it and say, hey, there we are you can see my head, you know. So. But if it is, it is, you know. If it's not, it's not, you know, that's just the finest the way it is. Yeah, so it's going to be good no matter what. All right, So there we were in the middle, once in a lifetime opportunity to be involved in a television production. Who knows if we got ten seconds of screen time out of it, We won't know until the show comes out in twenty twenty six. But whether we're actually in the show or not, it was still an awesome experience we will never forget. After all, we were on a mission from God. Jim Ulling and I'm Melody, and that's our view from the middle.