God or the Girl:Interview with the producer

Got the National Catholic Register in the mail today. Had this interview with Tim Drake:

Tim Drake: How did you come up with the idea for this program?
Darryl Silver: Two years ago my co-creators Stephen David and David Eilenberg and I were sitting around coming up with ideas for shows, trying to think of the craziest thing we could come up with . As a joke we came up with the idea of a show based on someone who is making the decision to become a priest. Within a minute or two, we said, "What if we did it like this?" That was the genesis of the show.

TD: What is your own faith background?
DS: Jewish. We had a bunch of Jewish guys making this show.

TD: Do you think that your own faith background was an asset or a hindrance?
DS: I think that coming at it from a Jewish perspective was the best thing that could have happened to this show. We don't have an agenda toward the Catholic Church...

TD: What did you learn about the Catholic Church as a result of doing the show?
DS: Before we started, we purchased 20 copies of Catholicism for Dummies. ...We talked to a lot of priests to understand the process for becoming one. ... One of the things I learned is that the Catholic Church, to its credit, really wants to get the right guys in there. If a guy isn't sure, they say, "You need to go back and figure it out".
...

TD: How "real" is the show?
DS: All we told the men is that this was a very internal decision, so we encouraged them to find ways to externalize it. It's very easy to hide your internal feelings. We told them that they would need to work with family and friends to work that out... Anything that these guys were asked to do was from a suggestion from family, friends or their spiritual guide.

TD: The series seems more genuine than most "reality shows" Why is that?
DS: It's not a "reality show". It's a "docu-series". The prize here is an internal prize. I didn't tell Dan DeMatte to carry that cross or tell Joe Adair to go to World Youth Day in Germany or Steve Horvath to go to Guatemala for a foreign mission. These were things they were already doing.

I still well up when Steve Horvath cries as he prepares to leave Guatemala. It doesn't matter whether you're Catholic, Muslim, Jewish. This is a great story. You're getting a view into the lives of guys that you never normally get a view of.

I thought it was great. In my opinion, they should have taken the risk and made it longer. To read the rest of the interview pick up a copy of the National Catholic Register. Had the interview been online I would have linked it. But buy a copy. You'll be supporting a great paper anyway!