How The Man Behind Blockbuster Movies “Elf” and “Bonhoeffer” Found God After Saying "NO!”
Inside This Episode
How does one of Hollywood’s most esteemed screenwriters and producers come to find faith in Christ? And what is it like being a committed follower of Jesus in Hollywood?
Todd Komarnicki is best known for his work on the blockbuster hits “Elf” starring Will Ferrell and “Sully” starring Tom Hanks, and he’s the writer and director of the brand new film on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in theaters November 22, 2024.
Head to YouTube to watch Maybe God’s full-length interviews!
Transcript
Eric Huffman: How does one of Hollywood's most esteemed screenwriters and producers come to find faith in Jesus Christ?
Todd Komarnicki: My real faith journey began when I said no to God.
Eric Huffman: Todd Komarnicki is best known for his work on the Blockbuster hit Elf, starring Will Ferrell, as well as Sully, starring Tom Hanks, and he's the writer and director of the brand new film on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Todd Komarnicki: I multiple times try to take my life, get it together, Todd, get it together, you're gonna get it together, get it together, get it together. But I said, "Hilariously, I don't believe in you. But if I open this book, you better be in here." I did, and He was. And I stood up in the balcony, and I said out loud, for the first time in my life, "That is true."
Eric Huffman: Todd, welcome to Maybe God.
Todd Komarnicki: Can we call it Maybe Todd?
Eric Huffman: Just for today.
Todd Komarnicki: Yeah, Maybe Todd, God. Because I could imagine someone recommending me when I was young, you know, going to God and say, "You know, should we give this guy a shot? Maybe Todd, God." Because God gave me a shot, and I'm still here.
Eric Huffman: I love it. Just for you, we'll name it Maybe Todd today.
Todd Komarnicki: Thank you. It's a Toddcast.
Eric Huffman: I like it. All right. So you clearly have a sense of humor. You wrote the most quotable movie, or you co-produced one of the most quotable movie maybe in American history, Elf, at least in my household. And so I got a couple questions, Elf-related questions, before we get into it.
Todd Komarnicki: Lay it on me.
Eric Huffman: First of all, I want to know, do you still get royalties for Elf? And if so, would you like to contribute to our capital? I'm just kidding. Because that's got to be.
Todd Komarnicki: Interesting.
Eric Huffman: That's got to be-
Todd Komarnicki: Interesting question. If you heard what he said before we started rolling, you'd know how surprising the request for cash is.
Eric Huffman: Now you have to tell him.
Todd Komarnicki: No, no, no, keep going. Yes, I'm eternally grateful, and I'm happy to look at your specs.
Eric Huffman: Oh, my gosh. Every year that movie is playing constantly. I mean, it's done so incredibly well. Did you have any idea that it would do anything close to what it's done?
Todd Komarnicki: No. You work just as hard on the stuff that nobody ever sees. You pour yourself into it in the same way. And results is a fool's game. I've found in my career that the way God has sustained me is not through me planting corn in the front field and harvesting corn. That's never happened, actually. But planting corn, having no corn, having terrible weather, going to the kitchen window to look out at the backyard and cry, and seeing that wheat had grown.
That's His promise. His promise is always, I'm going to provide, not in your timing and not in your desire, but in a much better way. The nice thing about getting older is that it's a lot easier to enjoy the fact that that's how He does it. When you're young, everything feels like it's got to speed up, it's got to happen now. We all have these conversations with God and we lay it out and say, listen, clearly, I've thought this through, Lord. If you do this great thing, which is going to glorify you, and it goes this way, I mean, yeah, I get some side benefit, but really this is a big win for the kingdom. And thank God He's not easily persuaded.
Eric Huffman: Amen to that. Gosh, if I got everything I ever asked Him for, I'm not sure I'd be in a much better place than I am today. Thank God.
Todd Komarnicki: But maybe we'd still be talking in some other version. The thing I was talking with my friend Christina today about how every day I have the appointments I have on my calendar, and I might think they're of varying importance, but I'm prepared to go do those appointments. But I also started the day by saying, None of these appointments matter, Lord, except the appointments you have for me. And so every day I get to talk about Jesus with a stranger, with a dear friend, with a family member. It's nonstop.
I remember when I was growing up before I really understood what faith was and I had Christian parents and we were doing Young Life.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, for sure.
Todd Komarnicki: And I felt this terrible fear of having to invite someone to Young Life. They made it like, you know, if you don't want to invite your friend into the kingdom of God and all its goodness, good on you. I remember the feeling... Nothing against Young Life, but I remember the feeling of agitation around that. And the thought that I would have to talk about Jesus out loud... paralyzing.
But what I found out later is that I didn't have faith at all. So it was more like being asked to tell the roster of the Minnesota Twins when I'd never been to a game. So that's what I was nervous about. I didn't know what to say or how to talk about it. It was only later when I came to meet Jesus that I found out, my goodness, I don't really want to talk about anything else.
Eric Huffman: Wow. So if you didn't have faith back then in the early days, what did you have? Just religion or what?
Todd Komarnicki: I guess whatever is inherited. I know a child has to find their own faith. I had incredibly loving parents. I had all the things that you'd want if you were a parent. And I seemed like I was going down, as my mom would say, a pastor's path. She really wanted me to be a pastor.
Eric Huffman: Did she?
Todd Komarnicki: She's in heaven now, but she chuckles because she knows I talk about Jesus way more than a pastor. Now it's not possible to talk about him more. But the first raindrop on the windscreen of me becoming aware that I wasn't connected to all this was I was a senior in high school and we were coming home from church and I had the bulletin and it said "11 o'clock worship service". And I asked my parents in all honesty, "Why is it called a worship service?" That's how much I didn't get it.
And it's not the church's fault. That was a wonderful church filled with great people, many of whom I'm still friends with. But it had not sunk in. And therefore, when I went to college, the gossamer faith that I had when challenged by the smallest disappointments, because really it was a rah, rah, everything's going my way faith, which my young life had gone. As soon as there was any threat to it, it was gone. So my faith journey, my real faith journey began when I said no to God.
Eric Huffman: Really? Mine too. Mine too. The guy who almost single-handedly deconstructed my faith in college, one of my professors described my faith as it stood then as a pie crust faith — easily crumbled. And he saw that as his job, which there was a time in my life, I felt like it was really mean and awful of him to do that. And now I'm grateful that he did, because that was the beginning of what my faith eventually became.
Todd Komarnicki: Was it also mean and awful?
Eric Huffman: It was also a little mean and awful. Yeah. Pretty dark actually. And I know I'm one of many, many other students who sort of went down a similar path under his influence.
Todd Komarnicki: Where was that school?
Eric Huffman: In Louisiana, in Centenary. A Methodist school in Centenary in Shreveport, Louisiana. But now I'm grateful. I'm grateful for every part of that journey, like you are too, because it shapes you and it probably gives you even more of a heart for people that don't know the Lord and gives you more of a comfort level talking to them because you've been there.
Todd Komarnicki: You can't have compassion unless you've suffered. The worst things that ever happened to me in my life are the best things that ever happened to me in my life. So I only have a story because I was rescued.
Eric Huffman: Amen. You've talked about being spectacularly saved by Christ. You don't often hear about Hollywood writers being so open about Jesus. Talk about your salvation, how you were rescued.
Todd Komarnicki: Well, it happened before I became a Hollywood writer. So I get this question like, what's it like to be a Christian in Hollywood? And I'm like, I don't know what it's like to not be a Christian in Hollywood. When I moved there, my faith had begun really at 22. So they sort of went hand in hand, really. I've always felt that my writing was a calling and that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. So yeah.
Listen, God has the math. I look at my daughter's math now — she's 15 — and as she weeps over it, because it's inexplicable and also impossible to tie to actual real life, she feels defeated by it. Then she shows it to me and it's hieroglyphics. And she's been in a classroom where a teacher is walking her through it and she's sharp. But I think it's reminiscent of the fact that so much of our life feels inscrutable. And it's like, why these people? Why this disappointment?
Even in the last couple of days, I've been wrestling with a situation that on the surface makes no sense and the doorway through which truth and goodness and light could just waltz right in is sealed with mortar and guards.
My wife asked me if I was stressed about it, if I was anxious about it, and I can honestly say, no, I'm disappointed. I'm frustrated, I'm angry, but I'm not stressed and I'm not anxious because I know the living God is bigger than all of it and He's going to work it out in His own way. And it doesn't mean it's going to go my way. He's going to work it out. I trust Him. I trust Him a lot more than I trust myself.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. That's for sure. It's not about getting Him to go your way when you really know Him. You just want to go His. When you were in that space between your childhood, religion, and the faith that you were rescued into, what were some of the deepest, darkest questions or challenges that sort of held you up?
Todd Komarnicki: I was just enraged because when it came to me that there was no meaning... you know, talk about faith. Talk about instant faith. I didn't read Nietzsche. But it's sort of like playing tag with Nietzsche. And he gets you. He's like, "All right. Yep. Meaningless. Nihilism. Pronounce it correctly."
Eric Huffman: Like a smart person. Yeah.
Todd Komarnicki: And also it's a terrible time to be certain of anything. An 18-year-old boy. We know nothing about life. Nothing. We're so far behind our female cohorts. We should not be in college. We should have an enforced gap year.
Eric Huffman: Or three or four gap years.
Todd Komarnicki: Oh, my goodness. It's just a disaster. But then you take someone who is cocky as an 18-year-old kid and certain of this new thing because my eyes are opened. You know, faith is a lie and the whole thing is a lie. That's why I love the name of your... Maybe God.
Eric Huffman: Todd.
Todd Komarnicki: Maybe Todd. But maybe God. There was no maybe to it. It was like, Well, the one thing I know is it's not Jesus and it's not God, and that was a bunch of hullabaloo. I had to deal with being really angry at my parents, who I adored. And I never really took it out on them because that didn't seem like a gateway towards any understanding. Maybe there was enough goodness in me still to not hurt them. And they were instrumental in me surviving, for sure.
Eric Huffman: They were patient with you?
Todd Komarnicki: Yeah. My parents were extraordinary people, George and Mary Grace. Miss them both. But the thing that I think did the most damage is that I ran so quickly and aggressively into the dark. Like, this is it. This is so I'm going to get to know it. And when you go into the dark, unfettered, and God will let you go, there's no light.
Eric Huffman: Certainty, as dangerous as it is, it's a heck of a drug when you're 18. And to be able to sound more sophisticated than all your religious friends back home or than even your parents and peers, I mean, it's...
Todd Komarnicki: Well, I was at Wheaton College. So I was telling all my teammates on the baseball team while they were reading their Bibles, I was like, "You guys know that's all lies, right?" I was a devangelist.
Eric Huffman: That became your identity. It did mine too, actually. I will never say what I said out loud anymore. It was so crass and so awful. Things I used to say to Christians just to rattle their cage. I adopted that as my identity for a time. And now I see people who are doing that and now I have a way of talking to them that I wouldn't have if I hadn't gone through that.
Todd Komarnicki: But I also think, in a weird way, because we're so disappointed and we want to pass on that disappointment, it's like when you hear bad news, you got to tell people bad news. If you could see it on a map, our souls are so much closer to God than the people mumbling hymns in Ohio this Sunday. I mean, feeling all that intensely, being so angry that there's no meaning. That's why I love listening to Bill Maher, because I think Bill Maher's kicking against the pricks is essentially a public prayer.
Eric Huffman: There's so much that he gets. I watch him too, all the time.
Todd Komarnicki: He's fantastic.
Eric Huffman: He's so close.
Todd Komarnicki: He also delivers a lot of wonderful things. Now, even as he's in pain or angry or frustrated, he brings light to a lot of tough situations. So I have a lot of respect for him.
Eric Huffman: A lot of that going on.
Todd Komarnicki: Don't agree with everything.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, there's a lot of that going on in the world of comedy right now, I find. But I want to get back to your story. And just before we get into the movie that is coming out, what was the moment or was there a moment or series of moments when that rescue happened and you were spectacularly saved?
Todd Komarnicki: There were three moments. The last one was when the penny dropped. I'd say four moments. The first two were when I was on my way out and people stood in the way to keep me from... without crying through this entire podcast. But, you know, I multiple times try to take my life. And there were just a couple of times where specifically I got like actually saved.
Then there was the moment when I came back to my apartment and I looked over to my bookshelf in my bedroom and my childhood living Bible was there. And I hadn't noticed it. It was just there. You know, it came with me and it was there. And it had been years. And I saw it and I was so angry. I was burning. And so I took it off the shelf and I walked over to a trash can that I had. And I can see it so clearly, the army green industrial trash can. And I stood over the trash can with the Bible. And I guess this was the beginning of faith in some way, but I was unable to throw the Bible away. I was like, "Something's going to happen... if I let go of this Bible and it goes in that trash can, something's going to happen. There's going to be a tear in the space-time continuum and I'm going to disappear." So I mean, I just was scarified. Let's invent a term.
So I took it and I hid it behind the other books in the bookshelf. Because I don't want to throw it in the street. I don't know. It's just fun. And for about six or eight weeks, I would come home and I would know it was there and I wouldn't even look over at the bookshelf.
Finally, I added up the level of misery that I was in and how my certainty that there was nothing had brought only death. That's the only thing that invited into my life. One night I came home and I took it out of the back of the bookshelf and I sat down on the edge of the bed and I said... This is a maybe God kind of moment. But I said, "Hilariously, I don't believe in you, but if I open this book, you better be in here. I did and He was.
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Todd Komarnicki: He still is.
Eric Huffman: Do you remember what you read that day?
Todd Komarnicki: No, I don't. I don't. But I do know that what started to happen and it was not immediate, but what started to happen is I had been in such a panic for so long, when you're that sad and you feel like you want to die and are going to die that night, when you feel that all the time. Like if you and I were having a conversation at that time, you would be telling me about, you know, the women's volleyball tournament or, you know, what you had for lunch and all I would be... my face would be towards you, but all that would be going on in my head was, "Get it together, Todd. Get it together. You're going to get it together, get it together, get it together, get it together." Like, I just felt like I was going to tear apart. So that level of agitation all the time.
One day after I started reading the Bible, I felt the physical sensation of a line across my torso, like sort of just below my chest as if a line had been put there. Not a metaphor, an actual thing. I understood that it was there for me to put my panic into. And so I would just try it. Sometimes I pray about it. Sometimes I would just visualize the panic going into this line. And I did that for months. One day I knew I didn't need the line anymore-
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Todd Komarnicki: That night there was a church service on campus and it was at the end of my college life and I was there by myself. I was in the balcony and the hymn was It Is Well with My Soul. I still can't get through it.
Eric Huffman: Really? To this day?
Todd Komarnicki: I can't. I can't sing it. We sing it and I still remember the swell, the feeling of the experience. And then the song finished and they started to do some other business announcements or whatever it was in church. And I stood up in the balcony and I said out loud, for the first time in my life, "That is true." That was the day.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. Wow. Praise God, man. That's the day the floodgates opened, the grace came in.
Todd Komarnicki: Yeah.
Eric Huffman: Wow.
Todd Komarnicki: It feels as real as it did 36 years ago.
Eric Huffman: You ever look into the origins of the song It Is Well with My Soul?
Todd Komarnicki: Yeah.
Eric Huffman: Isn't that something? Got a great story behind it. We won't get into it for time purposes, but thank you for sharing that story with us.
Todd Komarnicki: You're welcome.
Eric Huffman: Probably didn't expect us to get into that.
Todd Komarnicki: Well, I left out the two of the whoppers and I still cried.
Eric Huffman: Oh, wow. God is good.
Todd Komarnicki: Amen.
Eric Huffman: Glad He rescued you because you've spent your life since then shining the light of God in some dark places with some pretty creative, wonderful films and things you've written. My family, as I mentioned, is enamored with Elf as many families are, but so many of your works have been so impactful, Sully and others.
I'm curious when you went to Hollywood as a Christian already, as you mentioned, in the early days, did you feel like you had to hide your faith that you'd found in Christ?
Todd Komarnicki: Are you kidding me? I mean, after the story I just told you, hide my faith?
Eric Huffman: You hear these stories, you know?
Todd Komarnicki: Yeah.
Eric Huffman: Like from the outside in Texas, everybody thinks Hollywood's just full of Diddy parties and demons.
Todd Komarnicki: That's incorrect.
Eric Huffman: I'd love to hear more. That's why I'm asking.
Todd Komarnicki: No, I mean, there's good and bad people everywhere. My goodness. If the carpet was lifted to show how awful people that we adore are, artists we love, executives at companies we love. I mean, we're corrupt. Human beings are broken and corrupt. Even the best of us. Not the best. I don't like measuring. But even the people that you have the most respect for are capable of terrible, terrible things. So it shouldn't be a surprise.
I would say that's similar to the general othering that is the human problem. Pastor years ago said something I just loved. Ryan Holiday did a sermon about blame being the central human problem. Blame. And he went back to the story in the garden. And he said, "When God comes in and says, 'What's going on? Why are you clothed? What's going on?'" Adam says, "That woman that you gave me..."
Eric Huffman: Yes. Two blames in one sentence.
Todd Komarnicki: Maybe that's the original sin too. That links up with this othering of people. If there's something not going your way, it must be somebody else's fault. They must be doing something wrong. It must be taking something from you. It's a black hole. It doesn't end. You just other people, you other, other, other.
Bonhoeffer to bring it back to my hero, what he loved about Jesus was he called Jesus a man for others and that that's the call upon all of us is that the first thing we should be thinking about is the others. My mother was spectacular at doing this and at her funeral, she was described in this way. I don't know if other people have heard this before, but my mom's name was Mary Grace. She was born on Christmas day. Someone said about my mom that she never entered a room and said, "Here I am. She always entered a room and said, There you are.
Eric Huffman: So sweet.
Todd Komarnicki: That's what we're supposed to be doing. Even if we're frustrated, "Hey, how did this person get in the room? This isn't their room," whatever we think about, you know-
Eric Huffman: Wonder what they want from me.
Todd Komarnicki: ...the sanctity of this or that, that's still the call is still "there you are". I talk a lot about this, you know, talk about the Christianity and Hollywood thing. I think the only way it ever comes up is if someone is new to a friendship with me and finds out somehow by proxy or on the ye olde internet now that I'm a Christian. And they're thrown like, "Well, I don't get it, man. You're like a cool dude. How can you be a Christian?" I always say, "Well, I'm not that cool. And let me tell you something about Jesus," because even Christians are pretty Bible illiterate.
So I said, "I'm going to give you a verse that I want you to fill in like mad lib. You do the end, I'll do the beginning." And so I say to them, Having known both where he had come from and where he was going and having been clothed with all power from on high, Jesus dot, dot, dot. He called a legion of angels, they'll say, or He threw the Romans out of Jerusalem or He emptied the temple. They love that one because they remember that one.
Eric Huffman: Turned over tables.
Todd Komarnicki: And of course, you know, the answer is He wrapped the towel around His waist and He washed His disciples' feet. And then He said, "Go and do likewise." What are we doing? Why are we doing anything but that? I just don't get it. It's okay if you want to do other stuff, but to be a follower of Jesus Christ, we should be following Jesus Christ.
Eric Huffman: That sounds right. That checks out. When you got into Hollywood and started working, did it all take off immediately? Did it? I mean, I'm assuming there were some challenges.
Todd Komarnicki: Yeah. I mean, I worked very quickly. I was hugely blessed. I had $258.36 left in my security Pacific Bank account, which is not even a bank anymore, the day I got my first screenwriting job. God always took care of me. There were ups and downs. There were fun surprises and crushing disappointments. It's normal.
For me, the thing that matters the most over time is that the cultural understanding of what screenwriting is. It's place in the world from a Hollywood perspective. A lot of people think it's a scratcher ticket and you're going to sell a million-dollar spec and you're going to be off to the races. The fact is, even if you sell a million-dollar spec, you have to have work behind it. You have to be able to prove yourself again and again and again.
Screenwriting, I think more than any other type of writing is first and foremost a craft because it's so architectural.
Eric Huffman: Sure.
Todd Komarnicki: It's poetic and it's propulsive and sad and you have to do the whole thing, but it's really architectural. It's like making a chair. And when you're 22, 23, as soon as you finish two drafts of your chair, you invite everybody over. It's like, "Everybody get over here, sit in my chair. This chair is going to blow you away. It's going to relax you, but it's also going to be firm. It's going to be good for your back. You're going to want to buy this chair."
And what you find over time is I was such a terrible chairmaker. It was all balsa wood and imbalanced and awful. And it takes a long time to get good. I was lucky enough to learn while getting paid. But now at 59, I feel like I'm finally on the letter C of understanding writing and small c. I didn't get the big C.
Eric Huffman: I mean, I can imagine that would be discouraging in some ways, but it's pretty exciting to be starting out.
Todd Komarnicki: Oh, so exciting. And to feel this alive, if I were a professional athlete, my career would have been over 40 years ago. Now I'm in the prime of what I'm capable of. And that's super exciting.
Eric Huffman: I know how important it is to you just knowing your work to always shine the light of God and even in secular works. You ever turn down an opportunity because they're not looking for that?
Todd Komarnicki: Yeah.
Eric Huffman: Are you able to be picky?
Todd Komarnicki: On the regular.
Eric Huffman: Really?
Todd Komarnicki: Yeah, of course. Of course. Even when I couldn't afford to be picky. I've never done something that I felt was compromising at all. No.
Eric Huffman: That's awesome. It's one of the reasons I think God has blessed you so much.
Todd Komarnicki: Well, I mean, listen, He's doing all the work. It's all by His grace and for His glory. It ain't me. I'm just a guy sitting in this leather jacket. That's one thing I got going for me.
Eric Huffman: Pretty cool jacket bro.
Todd Komarnicki: I know. You know what? In the end, when they speak of me, may they mention the jacket?
Eric Huffman: You can't take it with you, though, man.
Todd Komarnicki: I know. Leave it here. We'll put it in the Screenwriters Hall of Fame, which we don't have, of course.
Eric Huffman: Yes. All right. I do want to talk about the most recent film you've been working on. It's probably, I think, your most important for Kingdom of God purposes and the most potential for really getting after the gospel on the big screen. But it makes me sad how little people are familiar with the subject of your film, Bonhoeffer, coming out Thanksgiving Day.
Todd Komarnicki: Actually, November 22nd.
Eric Huffman: Yeah.
Todd Komarnicki: Oh, six days before Thanksgiving.
Eric Huffman: Six days before. Sorry for the misquote.
Todd Komarnicki: No, it's okay. It's very confusing. Angel loved how Thanksgiving looked on the poster. And it does look really cool. But it says, Thanksgiving, November 22nd.
Eric Huffman: Oh, the season of Thanksgiving.
Todd Komarnicki: Yes, exactly. So all these comments on Facebook are like, "You know, I checked and Thanksgiving is the 28th. This one's wrong."
Eric Huffman: That's great.
Todd Komarnicki: Oh, Karen.
Eric Huffman: Oh, Karen. Talk to us about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and why you were inspired to do this film.
Todd Komarnicki: Well, again, how do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans. I didn't have any desire, thought. He wasn't in my universe. I'd read Cost of Discipleship in my early 20s.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, as one does.
Todd Komarnicki: And I remember my paperback copy on the nightstand. But he was not at all on my radar. And then it was brought to me, it dropped in my lap, I said no. Then I wrote it anyway. Then I was asked to direct it. And I said no. I said no for 15 months.
Eric Huffman: Why?
Todd Komarnicki: It just hadn't felt like what I was supposed to do. Like, in all honesty. After Sully, I got a lot of opportunities to direct just because people thought Clint Eastwood was contagious. You know, just standing next to Clint on the set. They're like, well, now Komarnicki must know how to direct. Close to Clint. And I did learn so much from him. He gets a thank you at the end of Bonhoeffer.
Eric Huffman: Really?
Todd Komarnicki: Oh, yeah. I just love Clint.
Eric Huffman: Just because of the impact.
Todd Komarnicki: Yeah, artistic impact. Absolutely. And also generous and patient and dear. Big, big, big fan.
Eric Huffman: What's your favorite Eastwood movie?
Todd Komarnicki: Unforgiven.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, that's hard to go wrong. Unforgiven. Gran Torino was awesome though.
Todd Komarnicki: If we have time, I'll tell you a funny story about Unforgiven. So these other projects were sort of teed up and they seemed like, yeah, I'm really interested in this and that'll happen. A couple of them had cast. A couple of them had pre-sales. Just things were happening. But Bonhoeffer wouldn't go away.
Finally on a Friday, all the money had been raised, everything was set, and the movie was green-lit. The producer financiers called me and they said, "Okay, now on Monday, we're making an offer to another director, unless you finally recognize what you're supposed to do and say yes." So I said, "In exactly the way I'd been treating this the whole time," I said, "give me the weekend. I'm going to pray about it with my wife."
And then on Monday morning, we dropped off our son at school and my wife was walking the dog and I was next to her. This is true of all women being way ahead of men. My wife is hilariously ahead of me. She's so far ahead of me. It's like, I'm not even on the same spinning globe. You know the thing about the race car driver, he was so far behind. He thought he was ahead?
Eric Huffman: Yeah.
Todd Komarnicki: That's what it's like with me and Jane. She's amazing. So she's-
Eric Huffman: Jane Bradbury.
Todd Komarnicki: Jane Bradbury. My beloved. Oh, I miss you, baby. She said, "I've done research and there's two English language schools and we can live in the country and we can get a horse for Remy, our daughter." And I said, "What are you talking about?" I had no idea. And she said, "Oh, we're relocating to Europe. You're directing the Bonhoeffer movie."
Eric Huffman: What? No questions asked.
Todd Komarnicki: So Jane greenlit it. It was her. It's her fault.
Eric Huffman: Jane sounds like my wife. That's how things happen in my house.
Todd Komarnicki: Probably nothing would happen otherwise. I mean, she's just so on top of it.
Eric Huffman: Some people just seem to have a direct line to heaven. I swear. Like it's too clear.
Todd Komarnicki: And then when I ever really feel self-righteous and just feel like, you know, this I'm just going to complain and I'm going to be right, and it's going to feel good, I always get that sucker punch of, she's like, "Well, actually you're wrong and we're going to pray about it." So I've been yanked into more rooms by my wife getting prayed up.
Eric Huffman: I love it.
Todd Komarnicki: It's amazing.
Eric Huffman: You're blessed. That's great.
Todd Komarnicki: I know.
Eric Huffman: So give us, especially for people that aren't as familiar with Bonhoeffer, just a Cliff Notes version of his biography.
Todd Komarnicki: He was a man, I've been saying, not just for all time, but a man for our time. Because what he showed was in the midst of life, not after, not pulled over, not in retrospect, but right in the middle of it at 27, when Hitler was rising and Hitler took the German church down and Mein Kampf was replacing the Bible on the altar and the crucifixes were removed and swastikas were hung, right in real-time when all his leadership of the church that he worked for was acquiescing, he stood up and said no. And he was alone, alone, alone. And his bravery gathered people to him ultimately.
But he was resolute. And he never stopped throwing punches at Hitler ever. And he did it in every possible way. In the beginning, it was very overt and public. And then as things got worse, he went undercover and actually became a spy in the Abwehr to help take Hitler down and got involved in an assassination plot. He was just a badass. He was just the best version of your best friend. So who you'd want to be? Because you don't want to be him because you think, wow, that's awfully hard. That's so much to be asked.
Eric Huffman: Didn't end well.
Todd Komarnicki: And then what you realize is he was free, totally free because he knew he was doing God's work. And then you want to be him. And then you want to be Bonhoeffer brave and figure out how to do that today. And when faced with... especially there's a kind of fear that circulates in the world all the time that is sold to us as wisdom. You should be afraid of this because, oh, you need to save your money. You should be afraid of this because we don't know what it could be. You should be afraid of this because... and usually money is at the root of it.
Eric Huffman: Or security, yeah.
Todd Komarnicki: And you'll find large groups of people telling you the same thing. Really just, you know, go along, get along. It's going to be okay. It's the best thing. You know, ends justify the means. And that's a profanity lie.
Eric Huffman: That's the wide road.
Todd Komarnicki: Yes. And when you watch people that you love do it or people that you respect or people that should know better, you realize, wow, this is a moment. This is a moment. It may not be life and death like Bonhoeffer was facing. But I'm regularly encouraged by remembering I got to tell the story. It's not an accident that I got to tell the story. So I have to be brave. I have to be brave.
Eric Huffman: It's hard to fathom what life was like for people in Germany, for people like Bonhoeffer in his late 20s, you know, trying to build a future or whatever you do in your late 20s. I had the chance to visit his home in the peaceful suburbs of Berlin.
Todd Komarnicki: Yeah. Been there.
Eric Huffman: It was so serene and tranquil. And you just try to imagine just chaos swirling around, you know, all of Berlin and Germany at the time. But it made it even more amazing that he lived a pretty privileged life relative to, I guess, the average person then, and that he gave all that up too and chose to stand out in the most dangerous way, obviously, given how it all ended, at least his earthly life. What surprised you about your research into Bonhoeffer?
Todd Komarnicki: I would say that he is a Garden of Gethsemane Christian. For me, early scripture that had impact on me was reading as if for the first time, even though I'd heard it growing up, the story of Jesus in the garden. If you were going to make up a hero, the last thing you would do is write the Garden of Gethsemane scene the way it's written. I'm a writer. I know.
Here's our hero who came to do one thing and now He's supposed to do it. He came to die. Told everybody, here to die, coming back. And on the eve, right before His arrest, three times He prays, "If this cup could pass, not My will, Your will. Oh my goodness. That was very much the beginning of me saying, wow, that's a savior that I could lean into.
So the notion of Bonhoeffer as endlessly pure, righteous hero is not the truth, and the movie shows that. But he despaired, he did maybe God, but he never gave up. And he always leaned closer and he wanted to know who he was. Was he the identity he projected as the charming? You know, kind of a rakish guy. I know the photographs are not always complimentary. But he was a handsome man. He was an athlete. He was funny. And he was a leader. He was, you know, plucked at 16 to be kind of a star of the church.
His capacity to almost walk away, his capacity to go right up against quitting and not quit. So finding that I found deeply encouraging because I know as a human, I'm all the time, I mean, it could be anything. You could make a deal with yourself not to eat cereal for a month. And on day three, you're like, Oh, those Cheerios are amazing. I need not.
Eric Huffman: You ever had the chocolate Cheerios?
Todd Komarnicki: I couldn't go there. That's too decadent.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. It's good stuff.
Todd Komarnicki: That explains so much.
Eric Huffman: What really shocked me in looking into your other interviews and some of the press release stuff was the impact that coming to America had on Bonhoeffer.
Todd Komarnicki: Oh, yeah.
Eric Huffman: Because I always had this image of him showing up to New York and looking around and just, you know, hightailing it back to Germany. For some reason, the story I'd heard about his time in America, but there's much more to say about it.
Todd Komarnicki: Well, it's not for some reason. I think the people that were writing from a German point of view never gave it the credit it deserved because they weren't here and they didn't see it. It was really completely fundamental to the person he became. It's where he met Jesus. I always say his two favorite things, Jesus and jazz. Music had a huge part in his life. And then most fundamentally seeing racism in America and seeing that is his best friend, Frank Fisher, who is a Black man outside of Harlem. He was wildly mistreated and it was violent. It was a dangerous thing to be a Black man in America. And he had been naive to that. He's like, well, you know, it's America. Also, the homogenous nature of the German society.
Eric Huffman: Right. He had never seen it.
Todd Komarnicki: So he says in our movie, after being in a Donnybrook surrounding racism, he says, "We're so fortunate not to have anything like this in our country." And his buddy says, Oh, hate comes in every color. Your eyes just haven't been opened yet. And when he went home and Hitler rose and the Jews were carved out of society, Dietrich had a exceptional ability to notice because of what had happened in Harlem.
Eric Huffman: Because he'd seen it up close.
Todd Komarnicki: He'd seen it.
Eric Huffman: I mean, another element of the movie that really stands out that I think is underappreciated in the common telling of the Nazi rise in Germany was the takeover of the churches. There's a clip from the movie, if it's okay.
Todd Komarnicki: Clip away.
Eric Huffman: Let's watch this clip and we can talk about how exactly that went down, the takeover of both Catholic and Lutheran churches. Let's watch.
[00:40:08 clip from Bonhoeffer plays]
Eric Huffman: All right. That's pretty impactful... and pretty scary, I'll be honest.
Todd Komarnicki: I mean, it's how fast it happened. He was coming to work with his youth group that he'd worked with for years at his church job. And overnight they'd been co-opted by the Nazis and they were in the brown shirts and they were marching to a march that was no longer one of freedom and faith, but one of darkness and dictatorship.
Eric Huffman: But how does this happen, like, functionally, you know? And how fast did it all change?
Todd Komarnicki: It happened fast. It happened immediately in 33, as soon as he came in. What Hitler understood is that he had limited power because he only had 33% of the vote. But the big power in town was the church. His nationalist message, hey, we're going to make Germany-
Eric Huffman: Okay, don't say it.
Todd Komarnicki: ...rock and roll.
Eric Huffman: Okay. I thought you were going to say "great again".
Todd Komarnicki: I didn't say that.
Eric Huffman: Okay.
Todd Komarnicki: No, no, no, no. But he did say. I mean, he connected the church's enthusiasm to the nation getting back off its knees from World War I. So he said, "I'm going to fill your churches and you support me." It seemed kind of innocuous. It's hard to remember. Hitler wasn't always the screaming guy at the barricades. The camps weren't open yet. It was early days.
The characters talk about that the Nazi party had been systematically sort of taking the country bit by bit. At that time before Hitler, there wasn't a lot of attention being paid to politics outside the big cities. So suddenly he had a regional power. And then in Berlin and in Munich, he had a church power. It sped things up. And then once he had the power, he started to institute his plan, which was to put himself at the head of the church.
Eric Huffman: But initially it wasn't at all by fiat or force like these youth groups becoming, you know, Hitler youth. It was an integration, a willful integration in the local churches.
Todd Komarnicki: Yes. But then you'll see in the movie also some churches that didn't agree they were essentially riotously burgled by the Gestapo.
Eric Huffman: Were they shut down?
Todd Komarnicki: No. The clergy was removed and all the crucifixes and the images of the saints were removed. They Nazified the churches.
Eric Huffman: Really?
Todd Komarnicki: Yeah. I've held the Nazi Bible in my hand. The thing about feeling like someone's going to burn through your skin.
Eric Huffman: That's the one you should throw in the trash.
Todd Komarnicki: Yeah, exactly. It was worth too much money. We weren't allowed to shoot with it. But in it, the Ten Commandments are 12. The two additional commandments are to honor your Führer and Master and to keep the blood pure and holy.
Eric Huffman: Really?
Todd Komarnicki: Yeah.
Eric Huffman: I've never heard that before. Wow. A little chill down my spine.
Todd Komarnicki: People shouldn't mess with the Bible. I think we should learn that lesson. Why do you think it's such an important story to tell today?
Todd Komarnicki: Well, courage is something that never runs out of vogue. It's good to be brave and to be surrounded by brave people. So it's always going to be timely. But I think what matters most now is that we seem to have forgotten something. I'm just going to go way Christian here for a minute.
Eric Huffman: Go.
Todd Komarnicki: We seem to have forgotten about the body of Christ. We hear a lot of talk about the American church, a lot of talk about the church, the church, the church. Jesus didn't talk about the church. He talked about relationship. In the epistles, it's so beautiful. I love this section. It's so endlessly perfect. "Can the eye say to the ear, I don't need you? Can the arm say to the leg, go away?" Marry that to Jesus' talk about not judging. Never to judge someone that's outside the faith and only to judge a brother after getting the cord of wood out of our own eye.
Eric Huffman: Right.
Todd Komarnicki: In other words, never. Judge not, lest you be judged. In the same measure that you use will be used against you. Everybody should be quaking in their boots, man. Most disobeyed thing Jesus ever said. Imagine if that really came. There's a knock on the door and said, Here, we have a graph of how you've judged everybody from your neighbor to your best friend to those of you think are your enemies. It should shadow our souls how much we've disobeyed Jesus.
So if we look at what he said about not judging and about the body of Christ, what should happen is that the body of Christ, those who proclaim Jesus should not be pointing any fingers, should be seeking humbly to come together and say, "Okay, I'm a nose. You're an ear. I don't get it. I don't see why you're doing this thing. I don't understand. We got to talk. Well, when I get cold, my nose fills up and then I can't breathe, and so I'm blaming the cold. And doesn't the cold bother your ear? And he goes, no, what I hate is loud noise."
We have to ask each other, what is it that's breaking your heart? Why are you so upset? Why are you blaming all these people? Because yelling at each other hasn't worked and telling other members of the body of Christ that they're wrong is useless. So what's left?
I felt nudged about six months ago with this line in my mind, which was "I believe in you no matter what you believe in". If I could meet a stranger and go in with that attitude, "Tell me your story. I'm here. I want to hear." And then I learn, okay, when the factory was shut down, terrible things happened for your uncle or, oh, it was an awful accident and you lost your sister. Like people feel things not in a vacuum. They feel it because they experienced some version of it.
If I'm listening to someone's story, then I can understand why they go in a direction that I don't understand. And then in listening, I can show them that I'm a safe person to talk to. We don't need to persuade each other of anything except "I see you. I love you. Let's walk in relationship." It's not a checked box and then unchecked.
I had an amazing conversation with a guy who drove me to the airport today. I won't get into who was choosing who, but he had a beautifully articulated reason for why he was going to vote the way he was going to. And it was 100% based on falsity. He had been lied to. What I understood is, oh, my goodness, if that's what you believe is true, 100% vote that way. And so we just talked. And I was like, "Check it out. Tuesday is a few days away. Just see if maybe what you're feeling so certain about is really what's happening." We left. We shook hands. We said, God bless you. We weren't on the same side. We were still on other ends. But we listened to each other. And I understood why he was doing what he was doing. So I'm begging, especially because Tuesday is going to create a new tear.
Eric Huffman: Election day.
Todd Komarnicki: Election day. I'm begging that people start getting their sewing kits out, their gauze, their bandages, and start looking to repair what is torn in our relationships among Christians and among the whole world. And to start being the hands and feet of the Jesus who we say rescued us. Having been saved by grace, how can we offer none?
Eric Huffman: Just for our viewers' sake, we're recording this a few days before Election Day. Maybe by the time this airs, we'll have President-elect. Maybe not. I don't know how it's going to go down. But as a pastor, it's a very tense time in most congregations, I would say, for different reasons. What I see happening more often than not is just the old thing about our enemies not of flesh and blood, but people politically being drawn into these flesh and blood battles.
I don't always know what's right. I don't know what the right way to vote is all the time or anything like that, or the more biblical way. But I know what I'm hearing from most politically-minded people is that if the other side wins, they will destroy America. It will be the end of America, maybe the last election. Both sides are saying the same things for different reasons.
Todd Komarnicki: And I would say not everybody on both sides.
Eric Huffman: Hey, I'm just talking about the most vocal on both sides. And it's just interesting how the narratives line up. But biblically speaking, one party or the other, one president or the other, they don't really have the power to unilaterally destroy much of anything. But the tongue, the Bible says that nothing's more destructive than the tongue. And what James, the brother of Jesus, meant when he wrote that is if you fail to see the worth and humanity of the people around you, all is lost.
That's what I'm most afraid of. Because on the one hand, you've got... you know, you hear all the things in the news like such and such supporters, they're garbage or deplorables. The other side is just baby killers and a death cult. All these words scare me because I know the power of the tongue and our hearts follow our tongues a lot of the time. And if we start to see whole groups of other people as something beneath us, subhuman. I mean, it's not exactly a direct line to Bonhoeffer in his days, but-
Todd Komarnicki: It's a direct line to Lincoln. The Lincoln memorials is... what's written on that wall should be read by everybody because it's deeply humble and after the fact of the Civil War. I'm going to paraphrase, but what Lincoln essentially says is, how did it come to pass the two groups of people who both said they believed in the same God could see the world so differently? And how could one of those groups enslave another group unto death? And instead of damning them, he goes on to say it's a mystery. But we know going forward, we're going to go forward as one.
Eric Huffman: What a vision! How close did you get to the actors and the crew in the shooting of this film?
Todd Komarnicki: Intensely close and built beautiful friendships. Jonas who plays Bonhoeffer and August Diel plays Niemöller and so many friendships. I'll tell you this about the crew. You'll love this. This is one of my favorite stories of the whole experience. So we're shooting in a cathedral in Belgium and it's doubling for a cathedral in Germany. And it's one of the churches that's being denuded of the crucifixes and the saints and being ransacked by the Nazis. And our prop master, Hélène, Hélène Jouet, came over and she was going to ask me what I wanted to have in the shot.
So under her left arm, she had the head of Christ with the crown of thorns. And in her right hand, she had a giant crucifix because we were working. But she stands in front of me and she says, "I'm an atheist but I want to tell you a story. When I was six years old in a small town in Belgium, the Archbishop of Canterbury came through. At one point he left his procession and he walked over to the group of people standing and watching. And he came up to me and he said a blessing over me. And I never had that feeling any other time in my entire life until today. What is that?" She asked me.
Eric Huffman: What did you tell her?
Todd Komarnicki: I said, "Mystery. That's mystery." I said, "For me, because I believe in Jesus, I would say it's the Holy Spirit and the presence of God. But for you, when it's so new like this, it's mystery." And so we built this great friendship and we write about mystery and we like to check in. God touched her when she was six and then again when she was 45. And he's never left her side, even though she didn't experience a life with him.
That's what's happening all the time, even with the people and probably mostly most with the people that we disagree with so, so much and we think, Oh, you know, wouldn't that person just shut up? Really? We should shut up? And try to do the personal inventory of all the splinters in our eye.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. The hard work.
Todd Komarnicki: Yeah. That's just the hard work. The only work. Not supposed to be doing anything else.
Eric Huffman: It's interesting what you said, though, about judgment, because I'm not sure how to square that with a man like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was in a lot of ways a very nonjudgmental and gracious person, but also went full bore against Hitler and in wrath and judgment against what he was about.
Todd Komarnicki: Well, it wasn't wrath and judgment in the beginning. It was the truth. You can't put a man at the head of the church. What was being said by Bishop Muller is that the new head of the church is the Führer. And Dietrich said, "You can't do that."
Eric Huffman: But he judged it wrong. I'm just saying we can judge right from wrong, in other words.
Todd Komarnicki: I don't think he was judging the individual. What he was saying is a man can't stand in God's place. And then ultimately, when he saw what was happening in the camps, that's when he decided to join the assassination attempt. So that was as far afield from his pacifist soul as he could ever imagine. It doesn't mean you don't take action.
Eric Huffman: I think that's important.
Todd Komarnicki: And understanding. See, this is the problem and the reason that you got your back up about it is because we've been trained to think that it's okay that we have a pocket area where we can judge and we can be self-righteous. But it's very clear that that's God's job and that our job is to love and love our neighbor as ourselves, love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, and soul. Nowhere in there it says, make sure that you judge.
And Jesus says, just to go back to that, judge not lest you be judged, and in the measure you use, it'll be used against you. It's a fearful thing to be judged. And it doesn't mean you don't have an opinion or you don't stand for anything.
Eric Huffman: Right.
Todd Komarnicki: That's having no spine. In fact, that's a lack of courage just to think, you know, everything is okay. You have to have an opinion of what you think is right and wrong. That's different. Having the notion of right and wrong is very different than judging. Because love, if you think someone is doing wrong, what does love do? Love doesn't point a finger and say, you're doing this terrible thing. Love seeks to understand. Love seeks to have a conversation. And maybe that person who was going to make a bad choice or has been for a long time, comes around and says, "Oh, my goodness, I never looked at it that way. I was looking at it from this way." So the loving creates the change.
It says in scripture, how do you draw people to the kingdom? Through love. That's also in the movie.
Eric Huffman: Is it?
Todd Komarnicki: Yeah, because Bonhoeffer said that. You draw the enemy by loving them. His buddy, Bethge, quoted that to him when he was about to go become part of the assassination attempt.
Eric Huffman: Really?
Todd Komarnicki: And he was like, hey.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. Because that's the tricky part, is that in the most extreme examples, I mean, sometimes love looks like understanding the humanity of somebody that's voting opposite you, like your driver today and sometimes it looks like killing the Fuhrer. It's like that was love, too, in a way.
Todd Komarnicki: Well, that's the conversation in the movie. So the pacifist friend says, "Will God forgive us if we do this?" And Dietrich says, "Will He forgive us if we don't?" So in the midst of it, we're having that conversation. And that's a great conversation to have. But looking at a bad guy killing everybody and trying to stop him is very different than the judgment I'm talking about.
Eric Huffman: For sure. And I'm not even arguing with your point. I'm just saying there's just an important distinction between judging people and then discerning or judging right from wrong. Right.
Todd Komarnicki: I think they're totally separate things.
Eric Huffman: And I think they can work in concert.
Todd Komarnicki: Yes.
Eric Huffman: Not judging people-
Todd Komarnicki: They can work in concert. But the focus... we don't even talk about loving people that we disagree with. I mean, it's very rare. And it should reside within the body of Christ. That's where we should get it the most.
Eric Huffman: Absolutely. All right. You've got a big screening tonight. I've kept you longer than I said I would. But I got to hear this Clint Eastwood story.
Todd Komarnicki: Okay. This is great. So a couple of things. First of all, Clint's going to call. He's signed on to direct my Sully script and everyone says, "Listen, he's just calling to congratulate you. He's thrilled to do it. We'll have other talks down the road. It's going to be a short call. It's going to happen between one and two. He'll call you from his car. Just don't fanboy. He hates that. Don't fanboy."
So he calls and I'm pretty good. Like inside my heart tudu tudu tudu tudu.
Eric Huffman: Clint Eastwood.
Todd Komarnicki: But I'm doing okay. And he's talking to me. I get to hear something I don't think any of us have heard in any of his movies. I got to hear Clint Eastwood laugh. That happened when he started talking to me about casting. And we were bandying different actor names around. And then he said, "What do you think about that Tom Hanks?" And I said, "From Bosom Buddies." And Clint guffawed.
Eric Huffman: You made Clint Eastwood laugh.
Todd Komarnicki: One of my favorite things ever. That and the jacket. There should be just a recording of this story and the jacket. But at the end of that conversation, after doing so well, I stepped right in the pothole of fanboy. And I did... you know, it was probably 45 seconds. It felt like an hour and a half on Unforgiven. How I went with my dad and how it tied up all the Westerns. And I could hear myself and I couldn't stop.
Fortunately, Clint was very gracious and he stopped me. And he stopped me with this story. He said, "I have a letter that I have framed in my office. It's the only thing I have framed in my entire office. I don't have any posters. I just have this letter. The letter is from the woman that was my script reader for many years at Warner Brothers. And was always the first person to read something that the studio wanted me to do. And it's her response to the script for Unforgiven." And she said, "Dear Clint, not only should you not direct this movie, but no one should direct this movie ever. It's awful. It's venal. It's everything bad. It should be taken in the back and shot in the head. It should be buried in the lawn. No one should ever see the script or the film."
Eric Huffman: Oh my gosh.
Todd Komarnicki: And he said, "I keep this letter framed in front of me in my office to remind myself never to listen to anyone."
Eric Huffman: Even you.
Todd Komarnicki: So Clint is about the only one who could get away with like, Never listen to anyone.
Eric Huffman: Dude, what a conversation. Like you could have just packed it in and retired right then. You made Clint Eastwood laugh and you heard a quippy line.
Todd Komarnicki: And I'm not even doing the Tom Hanks stories. So we'll have to save that for the next time.
Eric Huffman: Another time. All right. Congratulations on all your success. I'm praying for this movie to just take off and make an impact for the kingdom and shine a light like you like to do in all your films.
Todd Komarnicki: I want to thank you. These were very insightful questions. It's also really hard to listen to someone who is kind of suffering when they're talking. And you were an incredible listener. I know I'm being recorded and it's going to live out there in the world. But really what it comes down to is a conversation between you and I. And you made it a safe space to do that. So thank you for that.
Eric Huffman: Bro, thank you. We try to do that. So I really appreciate that. It's encouraging. Tell our viewers how they can find the movie. It's going to be everywhere. Wide release.
Todd Komarnicki: Yeah. It's a big wide release. A couple thousand screens. Even some places it's opening on the 20th now. But the 22nd for sure. And tickets are on sale. Angel.com. And also all the AMC and Regal and Fandango. Everybody's got tickets waiting to-
Eric Huffman: It's a great way to send the...you know, Weekend after Thanksgiving everybody's looking for something to do with their family. So Bonhoeffer. Check it out. Todd, thanks again for being here on Maybe God.
Todd Komarnicki: Thanks, brother.
Eric Huffman: Maybe Todd.
Todd Komarnicki: Definitely Todd.
Eric Huffman: Definitely Todd. Thank you.