Douglas Gresham on Narnia Movies, Books, C.S. Lewis

Don King and Douglas Gresham

In November 2019, Douglas Gresham (stepson of C.S. Lewis) attended a conference held at the Presbyterian Heritage Center in Montreat, NC. Most of the panels at the conference were about Lewis and other Inklings, but two of the panels featured Gresham where he discussed many things, including his childhood, various interesting tidbits about Lewis, and his experiences bringing the Narnia books to the screen.

Read about Gresham’s comments about the future Netflix adaptations here.

One of the interviews was moderated by William O’Flaherty, the host of All About Jack, and the other was moderated by Dr. Don King, C.S. Lewis scholar and professor at Montreat College. While they covered some of the same topics, they are both worth a listen.

When asked about his experience making the Walden Narnia movies, Gresham said they had a lot of fun making them. He thought The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was a fine film and a good representation of the book other than a few glitches. He thought the experience of making Prince Caspian was different because of the success of the previous film, and he lost more battles while working on it.

I think probably my friend who directed it and the producers along side me thought that we’d made a terrific success with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, therefore we could do no wrong with the next one.

He said he fought a lot of battles on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but it had his best cameo.

Part of the discussion about the Walden films involved Gresham’s role as an executive producer, a title he said is basically meaningless.

You can’t make things happen. You can only do your best to advise in the best way you know how . . . a lot of the credits one gets, like executive producer, are mostly just to make you feel good. They don’t necessarily mean they have to listen to you.

Gresham had a lot to say about the actors. He said James McAvoy had a “beautiful, semi-Narnian accent” while playing Tumnus. He also talked about William Moseley as King Peter. While Moseley was filming Silent Mountain, he and other crew members were struck by lightning.

They were knocked unconscious, and when he woke up he found the whole crew had fled to safety, leaving them lying there . . . So he gets up and staggers over and reaches down, picks up his co-star and walked with her into safety. Now that’s the kind of lad we had playing King Peter, and he can play King Peter for me any day anywhere in the world anytime.

Earlier Narnia productions, such as the 1979 animated film, were not what Gresham wanted to make. Seeing the first Star Wars movie was the first time he thought it would work because they could potentially put a lion on the screen and no one would know it wasn’t real. He also said he was not very involved in the BBC productions, but he thought they didn’t do “too bad a job” considering the limited budget. He then added “but I think we did it better”.

While talking about the books, Gresham was asked if the character Digory was inspired by him. He said no, but Shasta and Corin might have been.

I think that Jack had this weird, strange, foreboding kind of skill about him. He was quite able and often did, whether meaning to or not, write a character whose characteristics and behavioral patterns belonged to someone he hadn’t met yet but was about to.

Lewis’ novel Till We Have Faces, which was a collaboration with his wife, Joy Davidman, came up more than once. Davidman’s name was left off the cover because she thought it would detract from the sales. Gresham said he thinks it is an underrated book. One of the audience questions was if Gresham had ever considered adapting Till We Have Faces or Lewis’ Space Trilogy for screen and he said those were two of his great ambitions.

I think Till We Have Faces is probably the best book [of fiction] my step-father ever wrote . . . It was a collaboration between him and my mother and they did it very, very well. It would make a fantastic film.

The main focus of the conference was the continued relevance of Lewis in the 21st century. When Gresham was asked for his thoughts on the topic, he said that one of the reasons is that Lewis tells the truth.

He doesn’t mess around . . . Jack’s works are truthful. I don’t think he ever told a lie, certainly in all the years I knew him he never told a lie, or caught him out in one anyway. But the first thing I think about his works is that you can’t refute them.

Gresham also talked about the friendship of Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. When an audience member asked him if Lewis and Tolkien had a serious disagreement and went separate ways Gresham insisted that it was not true.

13 Responses

  1. GUILHERME says:

    I agree with Gresham, “Till we have faces”, it would be a great movie. Besides him, I think Lewis ’Space Trilogy’s third book would be a good movie too, I don’t know about the first two, what do you think?

  2. Cleander says:

    Nice to hear that Will Moseley has the makings of a real King! “I doubt not he comes of noble blood….”

  3. Twinimage says:

    I’ve never read the space trilogy, nor till we have faces, but I ordered the space trilogy recently and plan to read them. I’m interested in seeing if the space trilogy would make for a good movie or audio drama.

  4. GUILHERME says:

    This year, I’m reading all of Lewis’s fictions, with only “The Pilgrim’s Regress” and “Dark Tower” remaining, it has been an incredible experience. In my reading of the trilogy, I think the third book would be great for a film or series, I don’t know the first two, but these I think would make a good radio program!

  5. Courtenay says:

    I haven’t had time to listen to these yet, but thanks so much for posting the links, NarniaWeb team! I look forward to getting to them soon.

  6. Col Klink says:

    I adore Till We Have Faces but I don’t see how it a movie adaptation could work. It’s such a psychologically driven work. Books, in which you can describe what’s going on in characters’ heads, or stage plays, in which characters can soliloquize about their inner lives, are better for that sort of thing. Of course, even if a good movie were made of it, I probably wouldn’t watch since the main character is naked during the climax and I’m against nudity on film. (They could change that part but the nudity is thematically important.)

  7. Keeper of Lantern Waste says:

    Wait, Douglas Gresham had cameos in the Walden movies?? Looks like I’ll have to rewatch them, oh well 🙂

  8. Keeper of Lantern Waste says:

    Agreed! That sort of thing happens in books or movies about heroes and knights!

  9. Glenwit says:

    Yeah he does!
    LWW – Announcer on the radio at the Professor’s house on the first night.
    PC – The man at the castle announcing the birth of Miraz’s son as Caspian rides away.
    VDT – He was Uncle Harold behind the newspaper or something, I can’t remember.

  10. Just Queen, not High Queen says:

    He was one of the bidders for Lucy in Narrowhaven in VDT. It’s definitely his best cameo because he actually gets a close-up.
    https://movie-screencaps.com/chronicles-narnia-voyage-dawn-treader-2010/14#foobox-1/89/narnia3-disneyscreencaps.com-2430.jpg?strip=all

  11. Just Queen, not High Queen says:

    I keep hearing about Till We Have Faces, but I don’t know anything about it. This is the first time I’ve heard that it was a collaboration with Joy Davidman.

    I didn’t know about William Moseley getting struck by lightning. Good for him for looking out for his co-star!

  12. Peter says:

    The first two are very uncinematic. The third one has enough different characters, moving parts, and little enough reliance on the first two books that it could be a movie. However, I don’t think the books are well known enough (at least compared to Narnia) for it to be as worthwhile of an investment.

  13. GUILHERME says:

    Yes, that’s what I think. However, I believe that making a good publicity as “a work of C.S.Lewis, the creator of The Chronicles of Narnia”, would give a good audience and also lead people to read the trilogy.