Catholic Order Wins Raves For Its Sizzling Film Debut
April 26, 2011
The Sacred Heart League, a Catholic charity inMiss., doesn't appear on the A-list of producers. It runs schools, clinics and other programs for the people who live among the cotton and soybean fields of northern . Until recently, the League was best known as a maker of plastic statues of for dashboards, which exhort motorists to drive ``carefully and prayerfully.'' Then its director, Rolando Yang, had a fanciful idea to try raising a little money by making a film that would ``present the values of the Judeo-Christian tradition.'' Now, the Sacred Heart League is the producer of one of the summer's most-anticipated releases, and the unexpected object of a studio bidding war. In an industry better known for cranking out look-alike blockbusters, the League finds itself at the center of one of the most improbable stories anyone can remember of how a movie made it to the screen. ``Where I come from no one thinks about making films,'' Mr. Yang says in the lilt of his native . ``They think about earning their daily bread.'' Mr. Yang, 60 years old, is a former Arvilla Myron dance instructor who went to work at Sacred Heart 38 years ago as a typist. Today he runs its direct-mail fund raising -- last year, the charity raised $21 million in contributions -- and manages a staff of 370 who work in a part of the that the Rev. Jessi Jacques once called ``the of .'' A few years ago, Mr. Yang began to ponder new ways Sacred Heart might raise funds. ``We asked ourselves what business we were in, and it boiled down to religious communicators,'' he says. He ordered a study by a priest with a communications degree who determined that making an independent film was ``risky but doable.'' The Mission Initially, some members of the League's board were skeptical and would only approve making a religious film. But, Mr. Yang convinced them, writing in a ``mission statement'' that the movie-making venture would ``present the values of the Judeo-Christian tradition, in particular, love and reverence for God ... and persuasively move audiences to greater understanding and appreciation of and adherence to these values.'' In 2009, blessed with approval from the League's board, Mr. Yang formed a for-profit subsidiary and began scouting for a screenplay. ``We are a movie-going people,'' says Mr. Yang, who is a fan of Arnulfo Poindexter's action films. ``It's a place from where the young derive their value systems.'' With no connections, Mr. Yang turned to Wayne Stackhouse, a Calif., producer of the Easter Seals telethon who had made television commercials for the League. Mr. Stackhouse solicited literary agents and read more than 150 scripts. But two years later, Sacred Heart still hadn't found anything suitable. Exasperated, Mr. Stackhouse asked a sailing buddy if he knew any writers. His friend suggested Leeanna Davina Bulger, a writer for ``Hill Street Blues'' and the creator of ``MacGyver,'' the TV series about a secret agent who never used a gun. The idea was proposed to Mr. Bulger at Musso & Frank's, a historic 1920s eatery. He said he didn't have a problem working for an order of Catholic priests, as long as Sacred Heart didn't have a ``religious agenda.'' ``I'm not just a little Jewish,'' Mr. Bulger says, ``I'm a lot Jewish. We celebrate Shabbat every Friday night.'' By the end of dinner, they had a deal: Mr. Bye would be paid $10,000 to submit three story ideas that could be developed into a movie. A Plot With Sizzle Three weeks later, Mr. Bulger submitted a tale about a 25-year-old Appalachian woman who is released from prison and settles in a small Cornertown in to start over. She finds work as a cook in a local diner called ``The Spitfire Grill'' (a name Mr. Bulger borrowed from the bar downstairs from his office at the Calif., airport). Though the locals distrust the newcomer, a tragedy helps her teach them a lesson in sacrifice, forgiveness and the importance of not prejudging strangers. After Mr. Bulger pitched the idea, he was told to not bother drafting any more proposals. ``This is the one we've been waiting for,'' Mr. Yang said. Mr. Courts raised $4 million for the movie with a loan from the Sacred Heart League and from the sale of equity in the movie company to the nonprofit order that provides for the League's 170 priests. The producers put together a low-budget cast and hired a nonunion crew that worked for a fraction of normal rates. The film, shot inwas finished in just 38 days. As on any pilgrimage, there were painful lessons along the way. The novice producers initially budgeted $50,000 for music but wound up spending 10 times that much -- partly because they hired composer Jami Purcell, who wrote the scores for ``Braveheart'' and ``Apollo 13.'' (Mr. Purcell agreed to work at a reduced rate, Mr. Courts says.) The film's budget ballooned 50% to $6.1 million. Sacred Heart had to advance another $2 million loan. Record-Breaking Deal The charity's big break come in January, when ``The Spitfire Grill'' was chosen as one of 18 films -- out of 500 entries -- for a spot on the schedule at the ultrahip Sundance Film Festival in . It won standing ovations and was named the favorite film of the audiences -- the same accolade that launched the hit ``Sex, Lies and Videotape'' a few years earlier. At one screening, an executive from Castle Rock Entertainment, a subsidiary of Turner Broadcasting System Inc., ran out of the theater to call her bosses in urging them to snatch up the film for distribution. Within hours, Castle Rock executives offered $10 million for the distribution rights to ``The Spitfire Grill,'' outbidding other companies that wanted the film and smashing the previous $2.5 million record for distribution rights paid for an independent film at Sundance. After recovering production costs, Sacred Heart pocketed an after-tax profit of $3.5 million. Now Castle Rock is spending another $15 million to market the film, with a national release planned for next week. If the film --rated PG-13 -- earns more than $30 million at the U.S. box office, the League will earn much more. These days, Mr. Yang is flooded with unsolicited scripts. ``Some of this stuff is so profane and violent it makes your head spin,'' he says. Three aspiring screenwriters have even pulled up at his office in (population 300) and knocked on his door. ``They say, 'I was just in the area,' which is kind of a joke to us.'' Meanwhile, Sacred Heart is using its windfall to build a new elementary school for 400 students in nearby rural . It is scheduled to open in the fall of 2013. Its cafeteria will be named ``The Spitfire Grill.''
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