Brock Heasley

Brock Heasley has worn a lot of hats over the years — Mormon missionary, graphic designer, artist, writer and (more recently) filmmaker. After producing several feature films and directing a few short films, he released his first feature film as both writer and director in 2023: "The Shift," a modern and mind-bending take on the book of Job. Join us as we chat with Brock about his favorite hometown meals, his greatest fears, and his love for biblical stories.

QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT

There’s much more to food than palate and preference. How does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?

There was once a plan to turn California into 6 separate states. If it had gone through, the Central Valley, where I live, would have become the most economically depressed state in the entire country. The Central Valley is also the agricultural capital of the U.S. with acres and acres of farmland and more fresh fruit on street corners than we know what to do with. Somehow, in a world that increasingly values food as an experience and for all its traditional sustaining and social aspects, the place where all that food comes from is always fighting for its existence.

All that to say, we have great food here. Maybe we’re struggling everywhere else, but you can throw a rock and hit a great meal.

My go-to? House of Juju in Old Town Clovis. Best burgers on the planet, and yet despite that, I always go for the sliders. I grew up thinking there were no real opportunities for me — Fresno doesn’t tend to breed big dreamers. So here I am now. I’m a filmmaker, and that’s absolutely wild and should not be. It’s not a choice or a career I ever thought I could have when I was growing up. I never dared to dream that big.

The first time I ever ate at Juju was right after my wife and I both lost our jobs. Months went by, and we couldn’t get new jobs for trying. With our savings dwindling and every opportunity drying up, a friend had pity on us and took us out to lunch at Juju. We couldn’t believe how generous he was — the meal was not cheap — but we were even more blown away by how good the food was.

So give me variety. Give me choices. I know, I know. House of Juju, your full burgers are amazing, but those sliders are pretty dang good, too, and I want all those different tastes and options.

sunset through grasses — Guillaume Bleyer; Unsplash

QUESTION #2: REVEAL

We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activity (or activities) do you love engaging in, which also help you find essential spiritual renewal?

Whatever the opposite of claustrophobia is, I have that. The tighter the space, the more secure I feel. I don’t know if I’m secretly a vampire (coffins) or if I wasn’t hugged enough as a kid (I was, plenty), but close quarters feel warm and safe to me. One of the most peaceful experiences I’ve ever had was when I got an MRI. Lying flat in that tube with nothing to do but close my eyes and relax? Even with the noise of the machinery, I nodded off I was so settled. And I’m an insomniac.

My theory is this all stems from my childhood migraines. They were so intense they sometimes induced vomiting. Bright lights would intensify the pain, so since before I can even remember, I’ve associated darkness with peace. Darkness, during the daytime (migraines are no respecter of clocks), is usually found under a table or in a closet. It’s quiet there and private.

Whereas light is noisy. And loud.

I have my fears, but the dark has never really been one of them. And while light may be noisy and loud, it’s essential because it illuminates. One compliments and defines — and evokes appreciation of — the other.

QUESTION #3: CONFESS

Every superhero has a weakness. Every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you hide it?

The first church dance I ever attended was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. I just didn’t know what to do. A free-for-all where everyone moves like a weirdo and just ... hangs out? I was 15 and not completely sure how to talk to a girl — what if someone asked me to dance? What if my friends were dancing and I wasn’t? Who would I talk to? What if I talked to no one and then became the guy with no one everyone stared at? What if someone tried to talk to me and I didn’t know what to say? Three hours of this, of a resetting of the agenda on a minute-to-minute basis? Hell. Pure torture.

I didn’t make it past the hallway. I completely froze up. My friends did everything they could to coax me in, but I wouldn’t budge. Looking back, I can see that a lot of this was some unrecognized social anxiety.

A year later, I entered youth leadership. A common complaint was how terrible the DJ was at the dances and I wondered aloud why we were paying an old guy to man the tables when one of us knew better which songs would play the best. Before I knew it, I was the DJ. I was in charge of the thing that freaked me out, and my mind … my mind was at ease.

I hate not having a clear purpose and plan. Worse, I’m really bad at not being in charge. Being a film director has been a good fit for me. When I’m on set, I’m fully in charge, but also part of a team. I can’t do it all, but there’s no room or situation I walk into where I don’t belong. I don’t know if it’s vanity or a need for control, but as long as no one is questioning what I’m doing in the room, I feel just fine.

QUESTION #4: FIRE UP

Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?

I like movies that make me think. I also like movies that make me feel. The two often do not go together, which is a shame because I think you get closer to the substance of things when you engage both. A dispassionate examination yields cold, compromised conclusions and a purely emotional discourse defies reason. In the combination of the two, we find something closer to truth.

And I love the truth that emerges through fiction. It can often provide a fresh path into principles and ideas that have become overly familiar.

“The Shift,” my first feature film as a writer and director, was released in theaters in December 2023 to a diversity of response that’s still evolving. It’s a different kind of movie, a sci-fi thriller romance with an undercurrent of faith about a man banished to a dark, parallel world and trying to get back to his own. It’s inspired by the book of Job even though it doesn’t sound like it.

“The Shift” has done just about everything I hoped it would: screw with peoples’ brains, turn them into puddles and demand a rewatch. By the end of it, people are a bit spent and their eyes red, but they can’t not talk about it. It sticks with them and they want a second go at it. I’ve obsessed over this film for the past eight years — it was the only way I could power through to get it to the screen — so it’s really satisfying to see other people finally understanding why.

QUESTION #5: BOOST

Cashiers, CEOs, contractors, or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?

When I have a good idea and I get the clear impression to back off of it, I know God is in the mix. I think it’s easy to point to God when things are flowing and the ideas are coming fast and brilliant, but every artist experiences that at some point.

I believe we’ve all been divinely created so that spark is within all of us. And I think the communication that comes from the Holy Ghost specifically within creativity can be something a little different from that.

When inspiration goes contrary to instinct, that’s a wake-up moment for me. That’s when I know I’ve got to go off a creative cliff — something I may not be comfortable with — to see what’s at the bottom of the proverbial ravine. Might be a clear, blue river, might be thorns and briars. Either way, I know it’s a plunge worth taking and it will bring me to the place where I should actually be.

QUESTION #6: inspire

Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you right now?

Reading from the Scriptures is a daily affair for me. I love stories, so those are the passages I connect with the most and take the most from. The scriptures contain so many wonderful stories, but they are barely sketched for the most part. Key details I would include if I were writing them are left out because their purpose doesn’t have the need for them.

It can be a temptation, sometimes, to imagine the people of the Scriptures with their robes and their different customs and the lack of detail and information about them as too unlike us. Seeing them that way brings me further away from God. The more I can see myself in their comings and goings, the more I understand and connect with God. So I try to place myself in their shoes, try to imagine their lives as not unlike mine, and try to find comparisons in our modern day to what they went through.

Job’s story is extraordinary, an example of human suffering with only one comparison, but I have also suffered. I have wondered where God is. I have experiences that have made me feel as Job did. And now, Job is more real to me. And so is God.

QUESTION #7: FOCUS

Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top-three resources stand out to you? What changed the game and changed your heart?

Like a lot of people, I’ve been profoundly affected by “The Chosen.” As a filmmaker, of course, I think what Dallas Jenkins and his team did was extraordinary in that they reset the table for how anyone else is ever going to approach a biblical story. (That’s why I asked Dallas to be an executive producer on “The Shift” — and happily, he said yes.) The series brings Christ and his apostles into our world, not by modernizing the story, but by modernizing the approach. Christ comes alive in a way the written page just can’t depict and that no other production ever had.

But the first time I ever really encountered Christ outside the Bible in a way that opened up the story for me was James E. Talmage’s “Jesus the Christ.” Written over 100 years ago but still in print, thankfully, it’s a well-researched, dense, and detailed breakdown of Christ’s life that makes clear just how extraordinary he truly was and is. I read it three times back-to-back before I turned 21.

The music of Jars of Clay has always meant so much to me, but their examination of faith in troubled times in the song “Oh My God” hits hardest. It’s a cut off their album “Good Monsters,” and although it’s almost 20 years old, I still listen to it at least once a month. It’s deep, profound, shocking and hopeful in a way that’s not obvious at first glance, and its layers are still revealing themselves to me. I wrote it into the script for “The Shift,” not knowing that Dan Haseltine, the lead singer and songwriter for Jars of Clay, would become one of the composers of the score. Dan was cool with the song’s inclusion, and it’s one of the film’s most powerful moments.

We all have things we cling to to survive (or even thrive) in tough times — times like these! Name one resource you’re savoring and/or finding indispensable in this current season, and tell us what it’s doing for you.

“The Chosen” isn’t finished yet, so I’m going to have to go with that. The biggest parts of the story are still to come, and I’m eager to see how the show sticks the landing. I have no doubt it’s going to continue to have a profound effect on me and a whole lot of other people.

QUESTION #8: dream

God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?

With one feature film under my belt, I’m looking toward the next one already. I have a couple scripts ready to go.

One of them is based on a memoir I wrote (and that you can purchase on Amazon) called “The Other Side of Fear: A True Story of Murder, Forgiveness, and the Peace Only Faith Can Bring.” It begins three days shy of my 12th birthday when my father was shot thirteen times in an armed robbery, and then tracks the fallout from that leading into a later, worse tragedy that occurred seven years later, right as I was becoming an adult. It’s a bit of a dramatic coming-of-age story, but it’s all true. It would make for a terrific movie. And — despite the subject matter — it’s funny!

The second is another sci-fi original story about our need to forgive others so we can be forgiven. It’s not trying to break your brain like “The Shift” and was purposely written to approach the genre in a more accessible way. It’s a super exciting movie and probably my next one up. I’m excited to keep tackling faith in new ways on screen.

Earlier in our interview, Brock opened up about his desire to be in charge, to control the outcome. But this battle isn’t something new. It’s one that traces back all the way to the Garden of Eden.

Think about it: Why did Eve disobey God and eat the forbidden fruit? She wanted to know good from evil. She desperately wanted to be in control of her own destiny.

And isn’t that what we truly want when we try to control life, our relationships, or anything else (often to our own detriment)? We want to “be in charge” of what will happen to us and around us. We want to feel safe.

Yet the Bible tells us we’re not in control — God is. And he’s good. What could happen in our hearts and lives if we truly believed that?