more fire

In part 2, the Bishop and I discuss the movies and his recent trip to the West Indies.

Storbakken: You have a music label, a production company and many businesses, correct Bishop?

Bishop: Yes, I have a music label called Dexterity Sounds.

Storbakken: I recently watched your film “Woman, Thou Art Loosed.”

Bishop: Let’s touch on that just a little bit. We did Woman, Thou Art Loosed, a Reuben Cannon production, and we had various investors like Cedric the Entertainer, myself, Johnny Cochrane, Oprah and others. We put our resources together. And to be a low budget film that was originally meant to go direct-to-video we won the film festival in Santa Barbara and started getting offers to go on screen. So it came out on limited screens, but it did well for the amount of screens it came to. It was in the top ten for a week. It sold a million DVDs through Fox distribution. And we pitched it to Sony and Michael Lynton, who is the president of Sony Pictures, called me and we’ve now engaged into a deal to do nine more movies and we begin filming in June. One of those movies, which is called “Not Easily Broken,” is based on a novel that I wrote with Warner Books and we’re pretty close to signing Jada Pinkett to playing a role in that movie. It’s just an exciting time on the entrepreneurial side of my life to be able to have these opportunities.

Storbakken: For some, Hollywood is a den of sin. What’s it like to deal with Hollywood?

Bishop: I have found the Sony family to be receptive to dealing with faith films. So far it has not been difficult to get them to be open to our tutelage about faith and how that message can best be translated to the big screen. It is true that Hollywood, by and large, has been one of the ways that sordid messages have been conveyed through some of its properties. Still, we must be careful not to think that the medium is bad just because the previous messages have sometimes been perverse. Theaters, like many things, are nebulous and could be used for good or evil depending on the message that is conveyed through it. It is my hope that we can utilize it for a positive message that is practical and yet spiritually relevant.

Storbakken: Recently you took a trip to the West Indies?

Bishop: Last week I was in the British Virgin Islands and it was just fascinating to me. I was invited down there to speak to an entity called the Investment Club. These people are called Belongers and that means that they are descendants of slaves who landed in the Virgin Islands and originally had no power at all. They got together fifteen years ago. They had no power as slaves and their descendants also had very little economic power. They got together and started investing their resources and set up an investment club and now they own at least 50% of the technology, like cell phone technology, in the area. They have also taken over the ports where the yachts come in. They control a major part of tourism and have bought up a lot of beachfront property and it’s just a sign, most of them are people of faith, of what people of faith can do when they are exposed to business principles. And often people who have been oppressed economically when they know better they can do better and they have made such incredible strides. I was there just last week and was able to be there celebrating there 15th anniversary. And I think that they’ve modeled something that can be repeated in some of the urban areas and in Africa where I’m passionate about seeing economic as well as spiritual empowerment for people in third world countries and some of the ghetto areas in our own country.