Thou Shalt Laugh

Hunt Lowry's career in motion pictures has spanned more than 25 years. With producing credits as diverse as Airplane!, The Last of the Mohicans, Donnie Darko, The Kid and A Walk to Remember, it seems there's nothing Lowry hasn't tackled—including stand-up comedy. He produced 2003's Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie, and his latest venture is the just-released Thou Shalt Laugh, a straight-to-DVD collection of Christian comedians reeling off their best stuff. (The line-up includes Thor Ramsey, Michael Jr., Jeff Allen, Teresa Roberts Logan, Joby Saad, Gilbert Esquivel and Taylor Mason.)

Lowry sat down with Plugged In Online's Bob Smithouser to discuss what it was like bringing Church-based stand-up to the small screen.

Plugged In: Could you begin by explaining the role of a Hollywood producer?

Lowry: Sure. A Hollywood producer is a guy who wears a lot of hats. What I love about producing is that you get to start on projects at the idea phase, so you see them before they're born, so to speak. You fall in love with an idea and slowly produce this wonderful offspring. That includes story meetings, writing meetings, casting the characters, picking the director, scouting locations, finding the money for it, finding the right studio home for it and so on. That process is wonderfully exciting and frustrating at the same time.

Plugged In: The Blue Collar Comedy Tour movie you produced is a far cry, content wise, from Thou Shalt Laugh. What led you from the one project to the other?

Lowry: That film was a great success, and I think the guys are on their third video now, so they've got a real franchise going. But I really wasn't looking for another comedy concert to do. The credit for Thou Shalt Laugh goes to [Grace Hill Media's] Jonathan Bock. He called me up and said, "I've got an idea. What if we pulled together some of the best Christian comedians and filmed them in concert?" I loved it.

Plugged In: How did you go about choosing the comics who finally ended up appearing?

Lowry: We just looked at a lot of very funny people. It's none of the old-fashioned jokes that you think of in terms of religious humor: "A nun, a rabbi and a priest walk into a bar..." They're comics who happen to be Christians, and their humor is clean. You can miss church occasionally and still like these guys. It's all very accessible because, in addition to playing a lot of churches, they also do county fairs, clubs, cruise ships and other places comedians play. Some have even been on The Tonight Show. So they've got DVDs, tapes and clips from their own comedy shows that we were able to look at. I'd bring the tapes home to my family and we'd give them thumbs-up or thumbs-down, so it was like a casting call in my living room.

Plugged In: Your children helped you decide who made the cut?

Lowry: I think good comedy works for all ages. It's great that we could watch it as a family. I can't watch guys like Chris Rock with my kids, with all of the sexual innuendo and bad language that has run amok. Comics rely on it too much. It's like, "Enough is enough!" I don't know if it's laziness or lack of material, but it reminds me of when movies run out of story and decide to start blowing things up. Our film offers an alternative to that mentality. The names aren't as big as Jeff Foxworthy or some of the bigger comedians out there, but guys like Thor Ramsey, Michael Junior and Taylor Mason are so funny. And all the laughter is real; [this film] does not have a sweetened laugh track.

Plugged In: Will the featured comedians tour the material from the DVD?

Lowry: Yes. And we're already talking with their managers about a sequel. We know we have something special here, so we're getting that going. And Word Music is releasing a CD of the show.

Plugged In: Too often, the world sees religious people as stuffy, dogmatic types who lack a sense of humor. The truth is, we'll laugh with the best of them when we have something we can feel comfortable laughing at.

Lowry: Absolutely. And I think this is it, I really do. I haven't talked to anybody yet who didn't think this wasn't very, very funny.