OKLAHOMA CITY (ABP) — A son of Southern Baptist missionaries who survived the home-invasion murder of his parents in 1979 and later went on to advocate for victims' rights as Oklahoma's youngest-ever state senator brings his story to the big screen in a newly released independent film titled "Heaven's Rain."
The movie, which premiered Sept. 9 in Hollywood, tells the true story of Brooks Douglass, who produced, co-wrote and appears as an actor in his first film.
"Heaven's Rain" centers around one of Oklahoma's most heinous crimes. On the evening of Oct. 15, 1979, two drifters burst into the home of Richard Douglass, who was then pastor of the 3,000-member Putnam City Baptist Church in Oklahoma City. They bound the pastor and his wife, Marilyn, along with 16-year-old Brooks, and forced the family to listen helplessly while they took turns raping the couple's 12-year-old daughter, Leslie. After tying the girl, the two ate the family's dinner while leisurely discussing what to do next.
Brooks Douglass plays his father as a foreign missionary in Brazil sharing wise counsel with a child Brooks played by Nicholas Braico.
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Finally, 24-year-old Glenn Burton Ake told his accomplice, Steven Keith Hatch, 26, to go start the car. Ake then shot all four of the family members, leaving them for dead as the duo made off with a little more than $40. Richard, 43, and Marilyn, 36, died at the scene, but Brooks and Leslie managed to untie each other and drive the family car for medical help.
After his election to the Oklahoma State Senate in 1990, Brooks Douglass got landmark legislation passed allowing family members of a murder victim to witness the execution of the killer. He and his sister became the first crime victims to exercise the right when they watched Hatch's execution by lethal injection on Aug. 9, 1996.
Except for the murder of his parents, however, Douglass says the most dramatic moment of his life was his 1994 meeting with Ake at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, where he forgave the triggerman who forever altered his life.
"I have to admit that on some level I thought of myself as a happy person," Douglass said in an interview. "I didn't realize until I was sitting in that room how angry I was and how much I was carrying around."
Douglass said he and director/co-writer Paul Brown didn't set out to make a "message" film. "We kind of let it tell itself, based on what events did I feel like were pivotal in getting me where I am today," Douglass said.
On the other hand, "I certainly felt like the message of forgiveness was one that couldn't help but come through," he added.
As the father of children ages 5 and 3, Douglass said for him the film is also about the importance of parenting. Several of the scenes were filmed in Brazil, where Brooks portrays his father as a Foreign Mission Board missionary. The family was stationed there before being furloughed to the United States. "The older I get, the smarter he gets," Douglass said.
Douglass said Christians talk about forgiveness, but he doesn't think most people really understand what it means.
"You hear it in church a lot, but when you really get down to the nitty-gritty, I don't think we see that much of it in practice," he said. "Although we talk about it, I think forgiveness seems hard, painful. It's something that we don't want to do. I think it's contrary to most of our nature. I think it's certainly contrary to mine."
The title "Heaven's Rain" alludes to Matthew 5:45, where Jesus says that God causes rain to fall on both the just and the unjust.
Douglass said people approached him in the past about making his story into a book or movie, but he turned them down because they wanted to tell it as a crime story. He said he never dreamed that he would do it himself, but after 12 years in politics he decided he wanted to become a screenwriter.
Six years ago he moved to California and enrolled in a class taught by Brown, a screenwriter with past credits including the television shows "The X Files" and "Quantum Leap." After reading a couple of Douglass' scripts, Brown asked him if he once worked for a senator. As Douglass told him the story over coffee, Brown's jaw dropped and he said, "That's what you need to write."
Douglass answered that he didn't think he could do it because it would be too painful, and Brown replied, "Where I come from, that is exactly why you should write this, and probably no one else should."
As the writing began to wrap up, Douglass balked at the idea of shopping the script around to studios and production companies, because if they bought it they would have the right to rewrite it.
"I wasn't particularly fond of the idea of having gone through all this, writing all this, and having somebody come in and take their own approach and own values and rewrite it the way they want it," he said.
The only other option was for Douglass to produce it himself. That meant hiring people and raising a budget. Douglass started spending his own money and raised some funds from people around the Oklahoma area who knew his story and wanted to help him make the film.
Thanks to local support in Oklahoma, the crew was able to use the State Capitol, governor's mansion and the state prison free of charge. Panavision donated the use of four expensive movie cameras and Fuji gave them a price break on film. Most of the actors worked for the minimum scale. Several of the scenes are filmed inside the First Baptist Church of Oklahoma City.
"People have been extraordinarily giving and supportive, and that is how we were able to get it done," Douglass said.
The movie stars Mike Vogel, who currently stars in the CBS primetime show "Miami Medical," playing the young Brooks Douglass. Taryn Manning, who co-starred in the 2005 movie "Hustle and Flow," plays Leslie Douglass.
A small budget also ruled out a huge marketing campaign. Instead Douglass is renting theaters a week at a time — beginning in Oklahoma and Texas and with a goal of getting into every major market by the end of the year. "We want as many people to see it as we can," he said.
While not an intentionally "Christian" movie, the settings of a mission field in Brazil and a pastor's home and church mean that faith messages play a central role. Douglass said some churches might want to sponsor a showing, and he is willing to do that depending on how close it is to other screenings scheduled around the same time.
Douglass said everyone was "astonished" when the film received an R rating — mainly because some of the dialogue includes a character describing memories of being raped as a 12-year-old girl — but he doesn't believe that will hinder Christians from seeing it.
Douglass said "99 percent" of the dialogue was written from conversations that he actually had, but he could have written much more. His scene with Glenn Ake, for example, was lifted from an hour-and-a-half conversation but lasts a little over eight minutes on film.
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
The official "Heaven's Rain" website is here.