I Want to Go to the Church in ‘Roofman’

In a climactic moment of the crime-comedy Roofman, Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum) enters a Presbyterian church. It’s a moment of respite, both for him and the audience. Until then, the Army veteran had been a man on the run: After robbing more than 40 McDonald’s to support his family, police unceremoniously arrested Jeffrey at his daughter’s birthday party. Though sentenced to 45 years in prison, he escapes and camps out in a hollow wall behind a bicycle display in a Toys R Us (Here is where I’ll mention that the film is based on a true story).

Pretty quickly, Jeffrey’s refuge becomes isolating. What good is a store full of toys if you have nobody to play with? While it would be risky to enter a public space, the desperation for connection drives Jeffrey to the pews.

While there, he meets the pastor, Ron (Ben Mendelsohn), his wife, Eileen (Uzo Aduba), as well as congregant Leigh Wainscott (Kirsten Dunst), who is also a worker at the Toys R Us. Jeffrey and Leigh strike up a relationship, and he soon gets acquainted with her two daughters. The film explores his struggle to embrace a fresh start with Leigh and her family while still carrying the weight of his criminal past.

The church community is one of the first times that Jeffrey feels accepted, an irony that cuts deeper given that he’s hiding his true identity from Ron, Eileen, and Leigh. Director Derek Cianfrance told Sojourners that he wanted to depict the church in a way that embodied Jesus’ teachings of radical inclusion.

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“Society had judged Jeff pretty harshly, and maybe this movie could follow the lead of pastor Ron and see him with a little more grace,” Cianfrance said. For the real-life Leigh, Roofman was a way to make peace with her complicated connection to Jeffrey. “I’ve had a lot of hurt in my life, and believe me, Jeffrey was not the main source. I just had to learn to let [my anger] go,” she shared.

Last week, I interviewed Leigh Moore (formerly Leigh Wainscott) on Zoom and Cianfrance via phone. This piece combines their interviews into one fluid conversation. They spoke about the film’s peculiar inclusion of Christmas songs, the ways our capitalist society instills harmful expectations around provision, and the power of a church that lives out Jesus’ call to love the least of these. 

Roofman is now playing in theaters.

This interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, contains spoilers for Roofman.

Zachary Lee, Sojourners: Leigh, when you heard that Derek wanted to make a movie about this chapter of your life, what were your initial reactions? Was there any resistance on your end? 

Leigh Moore: Derek reached out to me during COVID—probably four or five years ago—and we had a nice Zoom call where we went over the basic story. He told me then that he had full intentions of creating the film, and I said, “Yeah, sure.” Everything went dark for a while, and I forgot all about it. But then he reached out to me last summer and shared that he and his crew were going to start shooting. I was excited and did not have any resistance. I’m a very trusting person and didn’t doubt Derek’s talent, abilities, or teamwork. I didn’t know what to expect or his direction, and I was a little surprised when I realized it was going to have some comedy to it.

It’s a touching and humorous moment in the film when Kirsten’s Leigh is the one who makes the first move and asks out Jeffrey. Is that how it happened?

LM: It’s funny you ask that because the last time Jeffrey called me, which was within the last two weeks, I asked him, “Was I that forward?” and he replied, “Well, yeah!” He told me that he intended to come to church, sit in the back, and not be noticed. That didn’t happen, obviously. He wasn’t there to meet a woman. He was there to lie low and just enjoy the sermon. That’s what he told me.

Derek, I didn’t go into this expecting a holiday movie. I tried to take note of where you and composer Christopher Bear would employ Christmas songs, and I noted they always came at moments I wouldn’t expect.

Derek Cianfrance: You saw that it was a holiday movie! That’s good, I’m glad. I love Christmas movies and Christmas music. I love listening to Christmas music all year round. When I married my wife, though, she made a rule that I could only listen to Christmas music from Thanksgiving to Christmas Day. So this movie was an opportunity for me to listen to that Christmas music all through editing [laughs]. All the songs I used in the film are personal favorites.

Christmas movies are always inherently nostalgic. Usually, Christmas movies are about returning home, and they often take place in small towns where a big event happens to bring everyone together. The “event” in this movie would be Jeff Manchester. To your point, I wanted to deploy them in areas to bring a sense of counterpoint. There’s that scene where I have The Ronettes’ rendition of “Sleigh Ride” playing over another robbery scene. This is a song you’re supposed to feel good about, but in this case, you’re screaming at Jeffrey, saying, “You don’t want to do this! You don’t want to rob this store.” You know it’s bad for him, and sitting with those conflicted feelings was something I wanted to convey to the audience.

Derek, I know as viewers we’re supposed to feel conflicted about Jeffrey, but that’s what made your depiction of the church community, one that embraced Jeffrey despite not knowing anything about him, so beautiful. Can you speak more about your choice to depict the church in this way?

DC: I’m glad you’re bringing this up because showing a different view of the church than what we may usually see on screen was very important to me. I grew up Catholic, and if you do see a church in a movie, it’s often presented in a way that invites the audience to poke fun at it. What I loved about Leigh’s church is that it’s based on a real church. The real pastor, Ron, actually has a cameo as the pawn shop owner.

If you do see a church in a movie, it’s often presented in a way that invites the audience to poke fun at it.

I shot the movie at the real church where the events of the story took place, where Jeff and Leigh met each other. Ron’s church was all about acceptance. It was very diverse, and in many ways, Ron created a bit of an idealized society. There were people from all walks of life and various socio-economic backgrounds. On a given Sunday, they’d sing Beatles songs like “Can’t Buy Me Love” and they’d talk about capitalism and the dangers of greed—it sounded like a place I wanted to be.

It was also this place that welcomed the stranger, this lost dog off the street in Jeffrey Manchester. I remember talking to Ron at one time, and I was asking him to tell me about the Bible, and he said, “Well, the Old Testament is about judgment and the New Testament’s about grace.” I thought to myself, “Well, society had judged Jeff pretty harshly, and maybe this movie could follow the lead of pastor Ron and see him with a little more grace and maybe follow the true teachings of Jesus in that way.”

I think what ended up happening after the events of this movie was that Ron and Leigh both forgave Jeff. They met his mistakes and how much he hurt people with even greater forgiveness, empathy, and grace. Once I met both Leigh and Ron, the humanity and empathy they embodied became kind of my guiding principle for the film.

LM: One of the things that Pastor Ron felt strongly about in reflection on that time is that we did exactly what we were supposed to do. We embraced a stranger.

It’s a powerful witness, especially when our country now seems more concerned about building walls and keeping people out rather than welcoming people in. Your trust in Jeffrey back then feels disarming in so many ways.

LM: Thank you. Everybody has trust issues. Being trusting, that’s just who I am. I’m that way with everybody. 

We’re all going to be hurt; we’re all going to have our paths crossed in the wrong way. Friends are going to do you wrong, your children are going to do wrong, and the people that you're closest to will hurt you. When you carry around that anger and that grudge, you’re only hurting yourself. I’ve had a lot of hurt in my life, and believe me, Jeffrey was not the main source. I just had to learn to let [my anger] go.

I look for the good in people and not the bad. I don’t focus on the trauma of the past with Jeffrey being taken away. I don’t focus on that. Jeffrey and I don’t talk about it. We talk about the fun things we did, not the horrible day of his arrest.

I read the Charlotte Observer story, and what struck me, Leigh, was your experience leading up to the scene where you phoned Jeffrey and aided the police in capturing him. [Writer’s note: In the film, we don’t witness Leigh’s process of aiding the police in capturing Jeffrey. In the Charlotte Observer story, Leigh fleshes out step-by-step the way she worked with the authorities to help coordinate his capture.] 

LM: A lot of things were cut from the film. I wanted to share this piece: When I was invited on set at Toys R Us, I saw Kirsten doing a scene on a monitor. She was doing a scene that ultimately didn’t end up in the movie, where she was in the break room at Toys R Us, and they were interrogating her; that’s where she made the call.

That must have been particularly difficult to see that moment in your life be reenacted.

LM: That was a long day. The police came to my office early in the morning, and it was late. It was dark at night when everybody went away, and I was left to pick up the pieces. It was a long day, so it seemed really short and brief in the film, but it was a long, horrible day.

It’s one thing to see yourself depicted on-screen, but what was it like to then see at least two of your kids, Lindsay (Lily Collias) and Dee (Kennedy Moyer), also on-screen? 

LM: It was emotional because my relationship with my children is a bit strained right now. When I saw Kirsten loving them on the screen, or them embracing Jeffrey on the screen, that really touched me emotionally. The first time I cried was when the daughters were in the apartment, and they started high-fiving him and hugging him and accepting him for who he was, and I realized that he was important to me. 

What do you remember most about the kind of community Pastor Ron and his congregation cultivated? 

LM: I was there for the community. I didn’t have a strong faith, and I was going through a divorce. My son had a friend who went to that church, and they played in the band together. That’s one of the key differences: It’s a choir in the film, when in reality, it was actually an amazing Christian rock band. It’s because my son wanted to go that we went there. It was like a family, and that was the best part: the friendships, the community, the support, the activities, and the music.

Derek, you don’t sermonize or address this explicitly, but in watching Jeffrey’s story unfold, your film conjured other themes, namely how there’s a paucity of infrastructure to support veterans when they come home, the societal pressures fathers feel to “provide for their families,” and the lie that “rampant consumerism” is the key to a happy family.

DC: Those ideas are absolutely there. One of my favorite quotes from the great filmmaker Robert Bresson is, “Hide the ideas, but so that the people will find them. The most important will be the most hidden.”

I realized halfway through making Roofman that my father used to tell me, “He put a roof over my head.” I realized then that with Roofman, I was exploring what it means to be a father. But what does that mean? Does it mean you’re a provider? If so, are you providing just [material] things or are you providing something else?

It’s hard to make it in the world. Jeffrey went to the military and was valuable while in service for nine years, but when he came out of it, he was no longer of value. He didn’t know how to use his skill sets and didn’t want to be a loser dad, at least in his mind. That’s why he committed these crimes to get a home for his family and a bike for his daughter, but then at the end, he had nothing to give them because he was imprisoned.

LM: We can’t help but feel like we have to give our kids something that we didn’t have or give them the best. As adults, we’re still caught up in the game where we’re trying to impress our neighbors and family. We continue to do that and think we have to buy the latest and the greatest and the biggest and the most expensive of everything to be liked. But it’s not the right thing to do. You want your kids to be happy, but material things don’t make them happy.