Heart of a Champion (CD)

What happens to Carmen when he retreats from the public spotlight for four years?

Well, he signed up for boxing lessons, took some screenwriting classes, moved to California and decided to make a movie! His upcoming movie release Heart of a Champion will hit theatres in the spring of 2001.

Carman based the movie on Orlando Leone’ s life: a boxer who gave up his career to run a youth ministry until a fateful street-fight threw him back in the ring. Creators of the successful independent Christian film “The Omega Code” produced Heart of a Champion and found vision from multi-Emmy Award winner director Lee Stanley.

The initial vision to create Heart of a Champion was Carman’s. He comments on his disgust with so many mainstream movies. “I’d sit in a movie theatre and think to myself…If they would have eliminated these words and these scenes or if they had this guy do this instead of that, it would have been a great movie!…‘Why doesn’t somebody do something about this?’ And whenever I hear that voice that says ‘Why doesn’t somebody?’ it usually means me.”

As Carman pondered the great void in the entertainment world when it comes to Christian content, he began to recognize a new vision being birthed within his own heart. Selling his home in Nashville, he moved to Southern California. A newcomer to the West Coast, Carman took the first step toward his goal. He signed up for screenwriting class. Carman looked to the new challenge in light of the songwriting he’s done for so many years. “I’ve been writing stories all along anyway,” Carman mused. “I just had to figure out how to change them from six minutes to two hours. I needed God’s help with that.”

Carman took some inspiration from one of the masters of filmmaking, the legendary Alfred Hitchcock. “What Hitchcock would do, is take a normal man and put him in extraordinary circumstances, and then watch how he tried to maintain his normalcy through these unexpected situations,” recalls Carman. “Like Cary Grant in 'North by Northwest,' all of the sudden, this normal guy is involved in a big spy plot. Or consider Jimmy Stewart in 'Rear Window.' He just happens to be looking out a window and he sees a murder. He’s just this normal guy and all the sudden all this incredible stuff is happening around him.”

Carman explains how those ideas translated into his concept for Heart of a Champion. “Instead of taking a normal man and putting him in an abnormal circumstance, I thought we should take a godly man, and put him in an ungodly environment. Then we watch him struggle to maintain his godliness through the entirety of the movie. In fact, that is the picture of us all. We go to church on a Sunday morning, learn something, and then we try to figure out the rest of the week how to apply it to our lives.”

To prepare for his first role in a major motion picture Carman had his work cut out for him. “Back in February I started training as a fighter and had to lose about thirty four pounds in order to become the character Orlando Leone,” explains Carman. “I worked with Terry Claybon who trained Denzel Washington for the movie "Hurricane." He’s a professional fighter. The training was exhausting, doing four to four hundred sit-ups every day and going through a grueling beating to prepare myself for this movie. But it will look real.”

As wrapped up as he has been in movie production and all that goes along with this kind of huge undertaking, Carman is still committed first and foremost to touching lives with the Gospel through music. “The bottom line is we’re taking the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the movie screens of America.”

Concerts begin at 7:00pm, with doors opening at 6:00pm (Houston and Atlanta will begin at 8:00 p.m., with doors opening at 6:30pm). All concert facilities are handicap accessible and hearing impaired interpretation will be provided.

Concert venues marked with (*) require a $5 crowd-control ticket; all other concerts are free.

Note: All dates and locations are subject to change. For updated information, look on the web at Carman.org.

How did your music career start?
Carman: I started doing drama when I was six and I learned to play guitar at 16. I then played drums and guitar professionally from when I was 17 until I was about 20.

What kind of styles did you play?
Carman: "Anything I could get worked. Oldies, big band, club, Top 40, country."

You became a Christian at an Andre Crouch concert. What was it about that concert that touched you?
Carman: "I could feel the spirit of God through what he was doing. I really felt an anointing. He took what was sacred in the church and put it into music I could relate to."

What do you enjoy most about your career?
Carman: "It's all fun. Ultimately performing live is probably my favorite. That's where you know that what you do is really working."

Why do you offer most of your concerts for free?
Carman: "So people can have access to the Gospel, to get to the people. It is the same reason Billy Graham offers his crusades free."

Why did you choose "Mission 3:16" as the title of your new album?
Carman: "It is a combination of the Great Commission and John 3:16, which is the primary Scripture for salvation. This is our mission, to win the lost. I try to do it in a creative way."

What other artists have inspired you?
Carman: "Anybody to me that does what they do from a sincere heart inspires me. [I like] anybody who is effective. That could be anyone from Bill Gaither to dcTalk. I can get into anything.

What do you have planned for your career in the next several years?
Carman: "I really feel the Lord calling me to get much more into TV and movies, that's what is on the horizon."

What do you do in your spare time?
Carman: "I like to relax with friends and I love to see movies. If I find a movie I like I'll watch it five or ten times until I understand the dialogue and how they deliver it. Hopefully it will show up in my movies. I'm also a great history buff and I love to watch documentaries.

Carman Ministries has its own web site. Do you think there are ministry opportunities on the Internet?
Carman: "I think that anywhere you can communicate, you can minister."

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