What do The Door Magazine and LEGO® blocks have in common? Well, the publisher of The Door is Ole Anthony, and the founder of LEGO Company was (no kidding) Ole Kirk Christiansen, who in 1932 began making wooden toys in Billund, Denmark. But no one associates LEGO with wood. They associate it with a particular type of interlocking plastic block introduced in 1949. More than 203 billion blocks (but who’s counting?) and accessories have been produced since that time. There are general sets of blocks, as well as blocks and accessories that have been tailor-made to build specific projects, such as people, vehicles and buildings.

Brendan Smith grew up playing with those blocks, as did many children of the latter half of the 20th century. But Brendan has done something with LEGO blocks that, well, must be seen to be appreciated. The Brick Testament (www.thebricktestament.com) is an attempt to depict Bible passages in the medium of LEGO blocks. That sounds innocent enough, but some of the content is not quite like your Sunday school curriculum.

For example, a passage from I Corinthians about married couples offering themselves unreservedly to each other is illustrated with adorable little LEGO figures, how do we put this, offering themselves unreservedly to each other. Other times, it’s the source material itself that’s uncomfortable — passages urging slaves to be loyal to their masters, for example.

Smith, who bills himself as “The Reverend Brendan Powell Smith” — but who isn’t really a member of the clergy — lives near San Jose, Calif., where he works as a freelance web designer and illustrator. The Door’s John Carney, who lives about an hour south of the Grand Ole Opry (there’s Ole again) took the chance to talk to Smith about his unique form of exegesis.

THE DOOR MAGAZINE: Why “The Reverend” Brendan Powell Smith?
BRENDAN POWELL SMITH: “The Reverend” is a long-time nickname that I acquired back in junior high school. It came from someone mispronouncing my first name with a mouth full of food at the lunch table, trying to call my attention. It sounded more like Reverend than Brendan, so I replied, “Did you just say, hey Reverend?” and he said, “Yeah!” I decided that was kind of a neat title to have, so I started signing my homework assignments as The Reverend Brendan Powell Smith. I guess it was sort of an egotistical addition to my name that sounded good to me at the time and it kind of stuck as a nickname.
DOOR: How would you describe The Brick Testament to someone?
SMITH: It’s the Bible as illustrated in LEGO. I guess I’d leave it at that, and let them form the rest of their opinions on it just by seeing it.
DOOR: What made you decide to do this?
SMITH: Well, I’d always been into LEGO. I had a good size collection as a kid, but then I had a sort of LEGO dark ages where I put the LEGO away, grew up, and didn’t play with them. Then a few years ago I was in the computer industry, and things were going really well out here in Silicon Valley, and I had some extra money. I decided to try and get back that LEGO collection I had as a kid and see what’s been going on with LEGO in the ten years or so since I last checked. I just got really into LEGO, and thought the sets that had come out in the intervening time were really neat, and so my girlfriend and I both kind of amassed this stockpile of LEGO that we were getting through yard sales and eBay. Once I had this giant collection, I felt, “I’ve got to put this to good use, I’ve got to think of some project that’s worthy of such a collection.” I originally had the idea to just do a few famous scenes from the Bible, maybe like the Last Supper or the Garden of Eden or the Crucifixion. I just thought it would be an interesting challenge and also sort of amusing to try to recreate these very serious and respected scenes in LEGO.
DOOR: Do you think that’s what people find so fascinating? The tension between the seriousness of what’s being portrayed and the fact that they are little plastic toy faces?
SMITH: I think that is the big draw. A lot of the viewers aren’t necessarily regular readers of the Bible, and a lot of these stories are ones they haven’t really heard since their days in Sunday School. So, it’s both a toy they haven’t seen since their childhood — one that’s always associated with playing, creativity and fun — and these very serious stories that they were taught should never be made fun of.
DOOR: You mentioned Sunday School. Was that your first exposure to the Bible?
SMITH: Yeah, I was raised Episcopalian. I went to Sunday School for three or four years. My mother was even a Sunday School teacher for a year or two. I would say that was my first exposure to a lot of these Bible stories.
DOOR: How long does it take you to set up and photograph one of these?
SMITH: To give you a rough idea, I’d say about a week per story for an average, say like a 12- or 13-illustration story. First I have the script, which I tend to write out in advance. Now all the stories are based directly on Bible passages so it’s not like I’m really writing the stories in the scripts, but I am deciding which Bible passages to illustrate, and how many illustrations should make up a story. I don’t like to do too much editing of the story because I don’t want to change the meanings of anything, but I will cut out a little bit of the extraneous details, or things that just wouldn’t work as a LEGO illustration. If the Bible gets a little too repetitive in what it’s saying, I don’t want to have the same illustration three times in a row.
DOOR: We know a lot of preachers who don’t seem to have any problem using the same illustration three times in a row.
SMITH: When I actually go to illustrate the story, I’ll take the script for that story, and I’ll picture in my mind what I’m going for in each passage, and get preliminary thoughts about what angle it would look best photographed from. The next step would be to consider the character that’s involved in the story. If it’s a continuing character like Abraham or Moses, I’ll probably already have them planned out, but there will still be new minor characters that I’ll be working on first to decide which LEGO people pieces would best portray that character. Next would be to build the background sets to the stories, and when that’s all done, it’s a matter of positioning everybody, and actually photographing them.
I generally take a lot of photographs; I use a digital camera, so I have that liberty. For every photo that actually ends up on the web site there are probably at least ten others that didn’t make it. When the photographs are all done, I take a look at them, make sure they came out, and then it’s just a matter of putting the web site together, and that’s probably the most tedious aspect of it, but it’s also nice to see the story come together. There are certain stories where I shoot them out of sequence so it’s not until I actually make the web site that it all comes together as a fully illustrated story, and that’s always good to see.
DOOR: So all the characters, and all the props, are made entirely out of LEGO blocks.
SMITH: Yes, I’ve tried to be as strict as possible about that; everything you see is LEGO except for the sky. The sky is just a piece of cardboard with some clouds printed on it, or in a very few nighttime scenes I’ll have a black piece of poster board with some computer-drawn stars that actually aren’t in LEGO, but [other than that] everything you see is LEGO.
DOOR: How hard is it to find the right people and props for each scene?
SMITH: I guess I consider that the fun part, so I don’t really consider that too hard. I do have a very large LEGO collection, not the largest I’ve ever seen, but it’s big, and it’s pretty well organized, so when I go about deciding on a new character’s face, I have kind of laid out in front of me two hundred different LEGO heads I can choose from. There is a lot of trial and error; I’ll try this head with this hairpiece, and these ancient-looking clothes until I get something I like. It’s very rare that I decide I don’t have enough or the right pieces for a particular story. There have only been a couple of instances where I’ve made a special purchase or order to have the right pieces to do a story I’m trying to do. Generally, I like to work with what I already have.
DOOR: Are there any stories you’ve thought about doing and then decided they weren’t feasible?
SMITH: I don’t think that’s happened yet. I had a lot of reservations when I was going into Exodus, after the parting of the Red Sea, and we just have 600,000 or a million Israelites who are now wandering the desert. I thought to myself, “Even with my collection, I only have a few hundred figures that could pass as Israelites. How am I going to show that many people and have a lot of very large scale battle scenes?” I really wondered how I could portray that in LEGO. But, so far, it hasn’t stopped me; I’ve figured out ways to be able to pull that off where, in a battle scene, you’ll have a certain amount of close up shots to give you a real idea of what the close up battle was like. Then there may be an overview shot, like the story of the war with the Amalekites. Moses is up on a hill holding up his staff, and he’s looking down on them from there. For a perspective shot like that I have Moses very close to the camera and close up, and then I’ll have the camera set so the distance is very blurry, and so it kind of throws off the viewer’s perspective. They’ll believe that they are looking at this massive battle scene that’s very far away when in actuality I’ll just have one little piece of LEGO standing for each soldier that’s on either side.
I’ve found ways around those problems so far, but I do always wonder about stories like Revelation, which I would eventually like to illustrate. There is just so much imagery, and it’s so rich and fantastical that it seems almost hard to keep up. Every sentence would have a wild description of a beast that’s part man, part lion, part bear, with the tail of a snake. Certainly there are challenges to come, but I’m hoping that I’ll never back off a story because of that.
DOOR: What sort of people do you think are visiting the site, and what sort of feedback have you gotten?
SMITH: The feedback I get is about 50/50 of religious believers and non-believers. They will have different reactions to it. I tend to point out some of the more gruesome and heinous Bible stories, things you wouldn’t find in your typical Sunday school class, and I think that’s appreciated by some of the non-believers who kind of take that as evidence against Judaism or Christianity, and then on the other side you have Jews and Christians who think that the site is great because it portrays the Bible, and is very tasteful.
DOOR: Unlike some religious satire magazines we could mention.
SMITH: Also you have believers with a good sense of humor who appreciate that I am telling these sacred stories but with a sense of humor, and sort of playing out the parts that make some people scratch their heads.
DOOR: You’ve illustrated passages that are a little hard to deal with in contemporary terms, like the one about the treatment of slaves. Is there a value to looking at those passages in a different way?
SMITH: Oh I think so; that’s one of my intentions in making the site, to look at the Bible from the perspective of someone who doesn’t have all of this theology that they’re bringing to it from outside sources. Here’s the Bible as it is, and there are some very troubling parts of it, and I’m not going to hide those or use non-biblical sources to explain them away, I’m just going to put them on display.
DOOR: You don’t seem to have a particular agenda with the site; you seem to be open to people getting different things from it.
SMITH: Yeah, I do have my reasons for making the site but I don’t really think there is a hidden agenda. I don’t consider it a propaganda tool, and I’m not really trying to change people’s beliefs with it. The reaction I appreciate most is just people who think it’s great LEGO construction, and a great topic to go with just because a lot of these stories are so interesting.
DOOR: Have you heard from the LEGO Company?
SMITH: I have never heard directly from LEGO. I’ve spoken to a couple of people who worked for LEGO, former LEGO employees who still have a connection with them. I understand that the site is popular among the official workers, but I’m thinking that LEGO as a company is purposely keeping its distance just because it’s a little too controversial for them to give an official opinion one way or the other.
DOOR: You actually have some of the stories rated for content, don’t you?
SMITH: Yes, I decided to use a rating system. Partially it’s just funny to think of the Bible as needing a parental warning, but then if you go ahead and look at the content you’ll see why.
DOOR: Would you like to do something else with all these photographs one day, put out a book or something like that?
SMITH: It’s interesting you should mention that. I’m actually in negotiations with a publisher to put out a book based on the Brick Testament. I imagine that if it is successful, it could turn into a series of books. I can’t give too many details at this point, but you may see something in the next year or so. I very much like that idea of it being available in a book form because not everybody is online. I don’t know if I would want to take it to other genres. People have suggested I try to do a sort of stop-motion animation, but I don’t know if that is something that would really interest me. I really like working with still photos, partially because it means I only have to create these things from one angle.
DOOR: You do have a short movie on your site that’s not related to the Brick Testament.
SMITH: Yes, that is another pet project of mine. I wrote and starred in a Christmas movie called Vendetta: A Christmas Story. The idea behind that was it was supposed to be a Christmas episode from an action-filled buddy cop show from the early eighties. It’s a Christmas episode, so it does feature appearances by Santa and Jesus. There is a lot of gratuitous violence and explosions; just a lot of fun.
DOOR: What do you do when you’re not playing with LEGO blocks?
SMITH: Recently that’s all I’ve been doing. I had been working as a web designer for a few years, and then the dark times came to Silicon Valley, and everybody was thrown out of work. I kind of lost a steady job there, but I’ve had different short-term projects I’ve been doing, the same sort of thing — working on web sites for companies — and I’ve had a few different commissions where I’ve done LEGO illustrations for magazines. That’s been a lot of fun; to get paid for something I like to do. Recently I’ve had a lot of free time to work on the Bible. It’s been really great. I’m fortunately in a position where I’m not too worried about finances for the moment at least, and so it’s been great to devote a lot of time to something I really enjoy.

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