The Day with Amy
The first scene of this epic tale begins at a Christian bookstore in Nashville, fifty years ago. But first, let me make sure I set the global stage appropriately…
The world was exhausted in 1974… Vietnam still going, and going badly. Nixon resigning before they would surely impeach him. The Civil Rights movement had turned violent after MLK was assassinated. That of course, coming off of JFK, RFK. Kent State. The Generation Gap. Acid rock. Liberals hating conservatives and vice-versa. In all honesty, it was the dawn of the truly divisive times in which we still live right now.
But something wonderful was happening under the radar all along.
Jesus was seriously coming back into the hearts and minds out there.
My Little League baseball friend Dann Huff and I watched with awe as EXPLO ’72 launched that year on his Magnavox Color TV. Jesus Rock with 100,000 attendees. Hippies. Cool People. Young People. Playing Rock Music!— of all things!
The twelve year olds in West Nashville picked up their guitars and played along. Dann became one of the finest players in the history of guitar. Yours Truly… well, I strummed along here and there.
I was singing in a junior high school chorus at an all-boys school visiting an all girls-school one spring night, when one of the baritones pointed her out. “That girl…” he declared solemnly. “That chick can sing.” I can be forgiven my skepticism, she was as awkward as my 13 year old self, standing by watching this alpha male boys choir curiously.
Now go ahead and Fast Forward a couple years later to that night at that Christian bookstore. There she was. The awkward 7th grade bystander I’d seen two years back. Probably had braces, I don’t recall. Everybody had braces in my age group in 1976.
And Amy Grant let it fly. That voice. Those words. Acoustic guitar. All the hippies and Nashville Jesus People gathered there knew by the second verse… this girl’s got some Holy Spirit Power going.
Now Fast Forward another forty years or so. Amy has lived the wild ups and incredible downs of global pop star, her entire life lived in the public eye— go ahead and amplify that difficulty by a thousand by being a Christian icon. A spotlight and a microscope precisely NOBODY would wish on ANYONE. A wonderful— gloriously vulnerable and human woman, who just happened to have become a megastar, while never denying her love of the Savior.
And me… I’d hacked out a respectable career as a writer and filmmaker. Not famous, but not unknown. And here I was in 2014, after two decades in Hollywood now back in my hometown of Nashville. With a script I’d written, and a ridiculously small budget with which to make that film. And one small, pivotal character written, that could really only be played by one person…
Amy Grant.
With trembling fingers I dialed her phone number, provided me by another musician friend who warned me with dark eyes, “If you screw this up, you’re a dead man”…
“Hello, Amy? You probably don’t remember me, but…”
She did remember me. Or at least my name. Nashville was a way smaller town in the 70s. I pitched her the movie I was making, The Secret Handshake, the small but crucial role she would play, and how she was the only person I ever thought of when I wrote it. It was a great call, she was genuinely excited to hear about it, so supportive of the whole thing. And then she….
Passed.
Perfectly gracious, gentle and professional. Her reasons very understandable. But I was devastated when I hung up. Of course I could find another actress who would be just fine, maybe even perfect! But she wouldn’t be Amy.
The next day, she calls me back. “I feel awful not even reading your script, Howie. Send it. Maybe I can help you find the right actress.”
And so I sent it to her. That night, I get a one-line email reply: “Okay, I cried. I’ve got 6 hours March 14. If that works, I’ll do it.”
Let’s just say, I adjusted the shooting schedule appropriately.
The crew lovingly named March 14 2014 “Amy Day”. We had a difficult production morning, lots of things went wrong as they usually do on film sets. But I couldn’t stop smiling, thinking about the afternoon ahead of me.
“This woman’s a pro,” I remember thinking, when she greeted me to walk over to the set. She was already in character, and I’m enough of a filmmaker to never get in the way of that. We never said a word.
Still. My inner self was raging with questions. Did she really remember me from back in the day in our neighborhood? Our similar friends? Her massive success and my not quite as massive success? Was this any more than just another gig, or worse, a favor she was doing?
Didn’t matter. She was a pro on set as well. Knew her lines. Knew her character. Didn’t need a thing from her Director except “Action” and “Cut.” My words were hers now, only they sounded way better than what I wrote, coming from her.
She crushed it. Six hours felt like five minutes. Even my crew, a seasoned bunch of jaded, ‘seen it all’ filmmakers were open-mouthed and teary-eyed at her 5 minutes on screen, and we all wished for another six hours at least.
She stole the movie in one scene. As I knew she would.
At the end of that day, still professional and appropriately distant as I walked her to her car to leave, still full of those questions… she turned to me. And smiled.
We were fifteen again. And I knew she remembered an even more awkward teenage boy, hanging on every word as she sang about life and love and Jesus.
“That was fun, Howie. Let’s do it again sometime.” She hugged me, and she was gone.
I watched her scene that night in the editing room, and I too teared up. Oh Lord that heart. That perfect humanity and emotion she brought to that character. Yeah. Holy Spirit stuff for sure.
My little movie was next-level better now, just because of her. Her heart. Her grace. And yes, her skill as an artist.
And her gift to a friend.
Amy Day indeed.
The Secret Handshake can be seen on Amazon Prime, Peacock, Tubi and YouTube.
