From INHERITANCE Issue #5 - March 2010

Who is Tyler Cashman?
(laughs) Tyler Cashman. The background we built for him was that he graduated top of his class as a lawyer, and became a very successful sports agent. But he also came from a Christian background, went to church, and saw all these problems in the church.

One day, he decides, “Hey, why don’t I represent pastors and create this new system where pastors get drafted out of seminary school and we set them up with contracts in different churches.” He’s essentially the buffer between the church and the pastor.

What was the inspiration behind The Agent?
I think it was just growing up in the Korean-American Church and seeing all the ugly sides, like the political nature of church, churches splitting, the congregations dissatisfied with the head pastor, etc.

Jesus our God isn’t a physical entity in front of you, so the church relies heavily on the head pastor. But people often forget that pastors are humans — they make mistakes. We thought it would be kind of funny to present it in a way where it’s so ridiculous and ludicrous, that it would get laughs but also provoke some thought.

It really points out some problems and truths in the church. For example, like our episode with the church consultant. It was very in-your-face, where we feel the church is losing focus on what a church is actually supposed to do and you see the church actively trying to attract more members and to be more appealing.

In the show, sometimes it feels like Tyler’s drawing the line between shady/personal gain and what’s really for God — are his intentions genuine?

I think he sees himself as a messenger to carry out God’s works by any means necessary; the only way he knows how to conduct business is as a sports agent, which is very cutthroat. Sometimes it is shady.

But I think in all his actions, you see the good behind what he’s trying to do, by any means necessary. He is motivated by something and has that passion ... but maybe some people don’t agree with it (laughs) because he’s kind of a jerk.

We thought it would be funny if he is that character, borderline shady, pushing the envelope, but with good intentions. In some of the episodes we tried to show him as more of a compassionate character.

What was the process of planning the episodes?
The first episode of The Agent was just a collection of scenes, like a day in the life of. There’s no narrative to anything. That was the point of the webisodes: to create a narrative. 

And we thought it’d be hilarious to get Pastor Ray Causley as the role of this black pastor who raps. That episode introduced Tyler Cashman’s role of scouting talent, finding the money, and getting the pastor into a church.

So funny story: We wanted to get someone big in the Christian world like Rick Warren or John Piper. So we called this big pastor (nameless), his secretary answered, and we told her what we were doing. And she responded with, “Oh, he’s really busy. On a scale of 1-10, how big are you guys in Hollywood?” I started laughing ... I mean I have to be honest, we’re like a ... 4? a 3? She said something like, “Yeah, I don’t think he’s going to have time.” Fail.

Our original vision was to get really good cameos, like Steven Curtis Chapman. We would love to get all the big Christian names involved though. It would almost be like Entourage in the Christian world — that’s where we would want to go with it. Like fake commercials — Gatorade for pastors (laughs). We’re even trying to get in touch with Tia Carrera to do a short bit as a secretary applying for his assistant’s position.

How did the idea even start?
The idea started when I was at the University of California, Los Angeles, ditching class, playing basketball. I would carry around a notebook and write down film ideas that popped in my head or funny skits.

So I started thinking, wouldn’t it be funny if pastors had agents like sports superstars or movie stars and then they could broker all these deals — and pastors would have to be contractually obligated to stay at this one church for a certain amount of time. So it’d be very black and white in terms of their commitment to the church.

I grew up with a lot of drama in the church and because the church is a man-run entity (with God as the head of the church, of course), it leaves room for human error — because it’s still run by man. I envisioned this short film to be on a huge budget, where we could shoot in a cool draft room with a bunch of extras. But it kind of worked the other way, where we worked with no budget (laughs).

What about the shooting process?
We shot the first episode in two days (laughs). Actually there was a third day for the green screen, the other two days for locations, and we got a Panasonic P2 Camcorder for $300 a weekend. My friend had all the lighting and sound equipment. After that it was just editing and making sure we had bodies to fill the scene.

There’s this one scene where the pastor gets out and he’s mobbed by all these people. We wanted that scene to be crazy with 50-100 people as extras but we couldn’t get them.

We were shooting at this church, and right next to it was this senior citizen workshop. It was called “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” and it was about preventing how to fall and how to get up (laughs — You can’t make this stuff up).

Crazy right? So we thought, “Wouldn’t it be funny if he got mobbed by all these old people?” And it actually worked out pretty well. So a lot of the scenes were adlibbed and we just filmed ridiculous scenes. Just random stuff.

Have you tried bringing this specifically to the Asian American churches?
They’ve been screened here and there — people have asked us for the DVD. It would be nice to film like ten episodes, and sell the box set as a small fundraiser. If we had a budget, then we wouldn’t really have to worry about people sacrificing their time. We could hire people to edit the films. Because we do everything ourselves, it’s just too crazy with our normal work schedules.

If we could expand production, maybe we could reach out to the bigger Christian personas like Greg Laurie or David Crowder. That’d be like the long-term vision, and we really think it would do a lot for the Christian community and entertainment because it’s not blatantly Christian, throwing it in people’s faces.

It’s more like a peek into another world. Take for example, home remodeling shows or Iron Chef. It’s very niche and not everyone’s a cook but it’s still entertaining to everyone, to let them see what it’s like in their world. So we feel like it can be appealing to non-believers, to give them a peek into the Christian world.

So do you see it almost like a ministry?
Yeah almost — but just to create awareness. Because I feel like we’ve reached that point where it’s not about screaming at people and threatening them with hell. But I think it can be a good jump point for people to start questioning and wanting to know more.

So is The Agent going to keep on running?
We have no idea right now. We want to make more — we have some ideas and scripts we have floating around but it’s all a question of time.

Do you think it’ll ever get endorsed, or receive financial backing?
It’s a possibility. There are things in the works and we have a couple episode ideas planned out. Originally we wanted to make this as a huge feature-length film. It ended up costing about $500 to make. Even for the rest of the episodes, it was about $300-500 each, and that was mostly camera rental.

What would you need to keep it going?
Some kind of solid funding. Even the guy who gave us the money for our first webisodes, didn’t really have sufficient money to spare. We would like to get a professional crew together to shoot more efficiently. My friend, David, has a fulltime job, so it’s tough to get everyone together. We have all these ideas, but we want to keep it fresh so we try to switch it up. It’s about bring up different ideas and issues in the church.

It’s very hard to find something that really puts Christianity out there in mainstream media. Do you see Christians entering the media?
You slowly notice that there are a lot of Christians in entertainment. I think they’re just not noticed because these people aren’t going to hold press conferences announcing that they’re Christian. The best way to convey that message is to show other people how you live your life, how you conduct yourself, or how you do business within the entertainment industry.

Take actors like Kirk Cameron, doing The Left Behind series — that stuff is just straight ‘in-your-face’ Christian. It’s sad but people are kind of turned off by that. But I feel like that if you do it in a way where it’s not too in-your-face, or too ‘I’m-on-a-soapbox-telling-you-what-to-do’, then people are more inclined to view it as entertainment and through that, they can become more aware of what’s out there. With The Agent, it can shed light on some subjects — like, “We’re not perfect, but we do have a purpose in the way we live.”

I think the future is going to be exciting. I know some people think Christianity and entertainment don’t go hand in hand. But we are reaching that point where people are realizing that it should be a way for us to reach young people out there. Take YouTube for example — there’s just some of the stupidest stuff you’ve ever seen — and those things have like 4-5 million views.

Well, here’s hoping that The Agent stands out among all that junk.
Yeah, we hope so too.