My friend Terry Tramel posted a picture of him and his son Clayton on Facebook yesterday. The post mentioned that Clayton was an “acclaimed film producer.” It may have just been a dad bragging about his kid, but it did pique my interest. Turns out Clayton Tramel really is an Emmy Award-winning director. Go Clayton! Kudos, dad!
Clayton made his first feature film, Tell Me A Story: The Life of JL Tramel, about nine years ago. A feature film, if you don’t know (I didn’t), is a full-length movie—it’s a big deal. It runs an hour and 49 minutes long. I watched it last night. I didn’t intend to give an hour and 49 minutes to a friend’s son’s movie, but I couldn’t find a place where I was willing to stop. A good story will do that.
Tell Me A Story is a hybrid documentary/drama with acting scenes blended among the interviews. Clayton is the grandson of the subject, JL Tramel. The film does a wonderful job of bringing the viewer through JL’s life, from his childhood as one son in an Oklahoma sharecropper’s family through his adult life as a Pentecostal Holiness evangelist/singer/pastor.
I’d do you and the film an injustice by trying to tell you more of JL’s story here. Invest an hour and 49 minutes in living it for yourself through this delightful movie. The dividend I received from my investment was surprisingly rich.
JL’s story was important to me on two fronts:
First, it is the story of rural American Pentecostal life in the 20th century. It is a snapshot of that world in that time. It invites viewers not just into JL’s life, but into the lives and experiences of a segment of our population that would be too easy to pass over or forget in the spiritual roots of the American story.
JL’s story elevates its characters, not by painting them as more than they were in real life, but by shining light on who they were and what their lives represented to us as a nation.
Society has an ugly habit of discounting its common people. But it is to our peril that we forget that the “salt of the earth” is also its sinew, bone, and strength.
If we look closely at the bricks and mortar that make up this culture’s foundation, we will see JL Tramel, his wife, his children, his grandchildren, his church, and the millions of other JLs and their people whose simple and profound faith in the God who saved and sustains them built the foundation of what we call America. The idea that is America is found in these people.
Second, for the last several years, I have struggled personally with sorting out the role and relevance of the traditional American church. My father being a pastor and Christian leader, I was born into the church. From the time I could comprehend it, I’ve witnessed the good and the bad of the organism we call “the American church.” I’ve struggled with the dichotomy of my love for its people and my frustration with our widespread ineptitude in managing the swarm of large and small bureaucracies that infest it. Yet I hold a bedrock conviction that the world would not survive without it.