Ben Shapiro’s Confession: Faith, Courage, And Resistance To Tyranny

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Daily Wire's newest film, Confession, is out now. It's written by The Daily Wire's own Ben Shapiro, and it's a tense, character-driven drama, and it's beautifully made. It's the kind of film that stays with you long after it ends. Confession is now streaming only on The Daily Wire.

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Russ Kronikoff.

I never understood him. What was the purpose of his confession, Professor?

SPEAKER_1 (1:48)

It cleansed his soul.

That was a clip from the new film Confession, written by Daily Wire's own Ben Shapiro. It stars Rob Lowe, James Franco, and Nick Nolte and was directed by the acclaimed filmmaker Vaclav Marhule.

John Bickley (2:06)

In this episode, I sit down in studio with Shapiro to talk about why he set out to make a Christian movie, the experience of working with its Oscar-nominated cast, and why its anti-communist and pro-Christian themes are especially crucial now. I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. This is a weekend edition of Morning Wire.

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Joining us now in studio is Ben Shapiro, Daily Wire editor Emeritus, best selling author and screenwriter, which is the most relevant part of this conversation. So thanks for coming in and it's good to talk to you first of all.

Ben Shapiro (3:23)

Thanks so much. I appreciate it.

John Bickley (3:24)

So Confession, I have seen Confession. I'm going to try not to give too many spoilers, but it's going to be hard. I'm thrilled to talk to you about this. I'm genuinely very proud that we have this film on our platform.

It is an incredible film on so many levels. I think it's going to surprise a lot of people.

And I wanted to ask you a bunch of questions about this. But first, maybe let's start from, you know, with the writing process. Why, where did this idea originate? When did you first start working on this, and what was your goal?

Ben Shapiro (3:57)

Sure. So I think it originated creatively in the fact that I was looking for a story that I could tell in which the characters were able to encapsulate certain ideas in their character. The best characters are people who can promote a particular perspective, but they're not just didactically telling you what they think. It's actually coming from who they are.

How can you juxtapose a bunch of really important ideas, particularly about 20th century and 21st century history, and put them in confined space with serious pressure? I happen to be a student of Russian literature and a student of Russian history and Soviet history.

This was a fantastic setting for that. That also joined hands with the business necessity for us here at The Daily Wire, and that is when we make films, our budgets are not high. And so that means that if you are going to try to write something for distribution or production at Daily Wire, it's gonna have to be below a certain budget. Well, where budget starts to happen in a film is when you start moving locations. If you're moving a lot of locations around, if you have to shoot in 10 different places, the budget really starts to increase quite quickly. And so the challenge I sort of set for myself is how do I minimize a setting all the way down to its barest essentials? I said, okay, let's start with an inherently dramatic situation that you can carry for two hours that is in a confined setting. And this movie is unbelievably confined. I mean, the entire movie essentially takes place in two rooms. And so, Ken, can you write something that is compelling, interesting, intellectually stimulating, dramatic movie? Can you do all of that in just two rooms? And so, yeah, that's a great writer's challenge. I find that it's actually a lot more fun to write that way. When you're kind of giving just the blank canvas of, if you had $200 million, just go do what you want. You end up with a bunch of CGI slop. If you start with, okay, here's the deal. You have a very low budget, and all the budget's going to be spent on the actors, right? You don't want to spend it on the sets. The entire budget is going to be on the actors and the director, that's it.