Brian Dannelly is courting controversy with his debut feature. Saved!, a high school comedy set in an evangelical school and directed with a satirical tilt, has been polarizing viewers and critics in the Christian community. While many, young and old alike, have embraced the film's loving approach to acceptance and diversity, it has been condemned by Ted Baehr, founder of the Christian Film & Television Commission, as "a sad, bigoted, anti-Christian movie that mocks the Christian faith."
That's not Dannelly's intention and it only takes a viewing of the film to know it's not his message. "As a kid I went to Catholic elementary school, Christian high school, and a Jewish summer camp," he told the audience at a sold-out screening at the Seattle International Film Festival. "The biggest lesson I learned from my experiences became a line in the script: 'They can't all be wrong and they can't all be right.' I wanted to write a movie based on that."
His script found fans at Michael Stipe's Single Cell Pictures, which produced the picture and gave Dannelly a chance to direct based on the strength of his short film He-Bop. With his cast secured (including Jena Malone - as a passionately Christian girl who gets pregnant after trying to "cure" her gay boyfriend - Macaulay Culkin, Patrick Fugit and Heather Matarazzo) and sets ready in Florida, the production hit few snags. "Checks bounced, money that was supposed to come from Spain disappeared, and we had to shut down," he remembers. A year later, with money from Canada, the production went to Vancouver - and then one of his stars dropped out and they had to shut down again. "We waited for seven days," says Dannelly, "and in seven days Mandy [Moore] came aboard." The film won acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival and was picked up by MGM for distribution.
What was the inspiration for making this film?
The idea was a little bit like Todd Haynes's Far From Heaven, only on a much more modest level. The essential idea was to take the teen movie, the John Hughes-style movie, and fill it with things that you've never seen in a John Hughes movie. We started writing around the time that Bush was elected and Columbine was going on. I had been to a Christian high school and I was interested in the Christian Youth Movement and thinking about fundamentalism. The movement has become a $60 billion-a-year business and is very mainstream. 40 percent of Americans consider themselves fundamentalists. The president of our country is a born-again Christian. I'm not saying that it's affecting everything but I think it's reflective of where we are. Putting all of that into the microcosm of a high school seemed like a way to address those issues with a lot of latitude.
What specifically did you bring from your experience at a Christian high school?
In the Baptist school, there was a Jewish girl, the one Jewish girl that everyone was trying to save. There was a girl who got pregnant, there was a gay kid, but there was no kid in a wheelchair. And there were things that were different. We weren't allowed to dance. Everybody had to be at least six inches away from the opposite sex at all times. We had record burnings, and the entertainment at my senior prom was a puppet show.
For the sake of satire, how much of this has been exaggerated for comic purposes?
I don't think any of it. It's a teen movie, so of course it's slightly exaggerated. It's all a little bit hyperreal, but it could have been so much worse. I did so much research. Personally, I went on tours of Christian youth groups and Christian rock concerts. I watched hours of CBN. I went undercover in Christian chat rooms, pretending to be a Christian teenager. For us, the interesting thing was to try to find a balance, trying to play right down the middle so it would be open to a lot of different audiences.
Pastor Skip (played by Martin Donovan) runs his high school assemblies like pep rallies for Jesus.
The assembly was really like a smaller scale version of Christian rock concerts. At my high school we had an assembly every week and there was always music, there was always a sermon, there was always some sort of weird presentation. I know that some people think that it's too over the top, but it's not.
Are you hoping to get members of the Christian Youth community to see your film?
I don't know what to hope for. I just did an interview with a fundamentalist preacher and a girl that goes to a Christian high school and her teacher, and they loved the movie. A writer for a hip youth magazine for Christian kids loved the movie. I've provided a study guide to use this as a tool to bring up these issues with teens. But then Jerry Falwell condemned the movie, saying it was the most hateful film about Christians to come out of Hollywood in years. Ted Baehr, the head of Ministry Media, said that people should boycott it. I think it's very reflective of the movement itself. You go to Christian rock concerts and you see Christians picketing Christians. In a weird way, it's all about interpretation, which is what we were trying to do with the film. One of the things that drives me crazy is when people say that this film is bad because Jesus tells Mary to have sex with her gay boyfriend. I say, "No he doesn't; he says, 'He needs you now, you must do everything you can to help him.'" Which is a lot different than saying, "Have sex with your gay boyfriend." They say that Mary is ostracized by her friends because she's pregnant. I say, "No, they don't know she's pregnant." Mary actually pulls away and tries to be more independent. She's the one who removes herself from the group because she's afraid and she's trying to better understand what she's going through, but she's on a journey of her own.
Mary says, "I've been born again my whole life." I find it fascinating that these kids take faith for granted; they've never actually put it to a test or questioned it. They simply accept it as a given in their lives.
Absolutely. I think most of us are like that. We just take things at face value. I think the complications come in when we start to get educated and we go out into the world, outside of the circle that we grew up in, and then have the opportunity to start questioning things. Or run back to the familiar.
The messages of this film - go out, question it, keep your faith and keep yourself open to others who are different - run counter to many of the more fundamentalist Christian teachings.
The thing about the evangelical conservatives is that they've hijacked the term "Christian." But there are a lot of other Christians in the world. My writing partner and I were always talking about the Christian Left. My mother took a nun to see the film at a festival and they both loved it. Some people have said that this film sets out to turn kids away from their beliefs. If they're turned away from their beliefs because of a movie, then they're in trouble already. It doesn't even make sense.
On a different level, you could take the evangelical aspect out of it and the kids still behave like high school teenagers.
Absolutely. I think it [religion] just adds one more layer of difficulty.
Were these the kinds of social dynamics that you saw in your high school?
Yes. I saw it particularly with my Jewish friend. The more spiritual you are, the more you know how to quote Bible verses, the more popular you are. So there were definitely those kinds of dynamics going on in the school that I went to. We had a Christian student consultant on the set, who was very fundamentalist, and she talks about her friends. When they speak in tongues, she and her other friends feel left out so they have two phrases that they use. One is "untie my bowtie" and the other one is "I bought a Hundai." So they can say stuff to feel like they're fitting in, but it's also their little code. It's kind of genius and it brings me to another point. Everything in the movie, we tried to ground in truth. Anything you can point to in the movie, I can tell you where it came from and why it's there. No matter how weird it is, I tried very hard to ensure that it all came from an honest place.
How did you get Mandy Moore?
The actress who was going to play that part dropped out. Heather Matarazzo, who had worked with Mandy on The Princess Diaries, had already given her the script. I had already hired John LeShay, who is her manager, to do the music supervision, because he had done the music supervision for A Walk To Remember, which is all Christian music and which I wanted to incorporate into my movie. So it was the right time at the right place.
It's an interesting choice since the movie has so much potential for controversy.
Especially for her. She's such a cheerleader for Christian girls. We just found out that we got two thumbs up from Ebert and Roeper. They just faxed over the transcript and the first person they mentioned is how great she was. It's so good for her. She's a great person, she's funny, she's great at improv, she's smart, she's focused, she's a dream actor, she's someone you want to see go on to do great things
How about Macaulay Culkin? That was unusual casting.
That was kind of easy, too. Macaulay knew Michael (Stipe) and Sandy (Stern). They've done projects together over the years. They said to me, "What do you think about Macauley Culkin for Roland?" I mean, yeah! So I contacted Macaulay and he said yes. It was the same for Patrick Fugit. We were brainstorming. "Who do we see in that part?" Patrick was a little uncomfortable playing a guy who was the "cute" one. He said, "Please, let me play Roland." That line where he says, "I'm totally adorable," it was like I'd asked him to stick a pencil up his penis. I told him, "This is the moment that everyone is going to remember you by."
Can you sum up, in a nutshell, what you're trying to say about teenagers and faith and what you hope people will take away from this film?
It's so simple. For me, it was just about saying: "Just think about it. Think about these issues." I tried to have moments in the movie where everyone was going in every direction, including some directions which you might not think of as Christian values. The best thing that I can hope from the movie is that it promotes discussion. It's happening on Christian talk shows. Right now we're getting ten to twenty minutes a day, where people go back and forth. There's mean stuff and there's hateful stuff and Christians are trying to put it together. It's crazy. I've never seen anything like it. That's good, especially because I don't think anybody else is really talking about it. It's them and this film that pushes things a bit. Maybe it doesn't mean shit, but then, I remember when I was a kid just how important films were, how much of an impact they made on my own life.
|
Your cart
© 2006 All Media Guide, LLC. Portions of content provided by All Movie Guide®,
a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.