Hollywood appears to be looking increasingly toward Tennessee, and for conservatives who watched California's culture and politics change dramatically, that naturally raises a question: What happens when Hollywood comes here?
I sat down with filmmaker and screenwriter Howie Klausner, a Middle Tennessee native who spent more than two decades working in Los Angeles before returning home. Klausner wrote the screenplay that became Space Cowboys, directed by legendary Actor Director Clint Eastwood, wrote and produced the 2024 biopic REAGAN with Dennis Quaid and Jon Voight, as well as Soul Surfer, the Bethany Hamilton story, which are just three of the many wonderful films he has written and produced in his over 20 year career.
We talk about Paramount's interest in Tennessee, why Hollywood production has been migrating away from California, the growing film industry already operating across Tennessee and the South, and whether Tennesseans should really fear Hollywood changing their culture.
But our conversation goes much further.
Howie explains why he believes the ideological gatekeepers in Hollywood represent a relatively small portion of the people actually working in the industry, why audiences became exhausted with entertainment that felt more like a political lecture than a good story, and why he believes the culture inside entertainment itself is beginning to shift.
We also talk about something much bigger happening in Tennessee: the explosive growth of faith-based filmmaking and what Howie sees as a genuine Christian revival, particularly among young Americans. His own mission as a storyteller is wonderfully simple: make stories that leave people feeling good about being human again, stories about courage, sacrifice, faith and ordinary people doing something larger than themselves.
So perhaps the question isn't simply whether Hollywood will change Tennessee.What if Tennessee helps change Hollywood?
Join us for a conversation about Hollywood, faith, culture, storytelling, Ronald Reagan, the entertainment industry's future and why Christians shouldn't respond to cultural change with fear.
Show up. Stand firm. Fear not.
Howie's Website: https://www.howieklausner.com/
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