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 Saved! Production NotesHeaven Help Us.
"Good girl" Mary (Jena Malone) and her domineering best friend, Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore), are starting their senior year at the top of the social food chain at American Eagle Christian High School – that is until Mary’s boyfriend tells her he thinks he might be gay.
When Jesus appears to her in a vision, she heeds his message to "do everything she can to help him," and, to her horror, she ends up pregnant. Suddenly, Mary begins to question everything she’s believed in, and Hilary Faye and her devoted "disciples" (including Heather Matarazzo) turn against her.
As an outcast, Mary finds herself alone until she’s befriended by the school’s other pariahs: Hilary Faye’s cynical, wheelchair-bound brother, Roland (Macaulay Culkin); the principal’s skater heartthrob son, Patrick (Patrick Fugit); and the high school’s lone Jew, an exuberant rebel named Cassandra (Eva Amurri).
In this sweetly subversive comedy, a group of outsiders band together to navigate the treacherous halls of high school and make it to graduation, ultimately learning more about themselves, finding faith in unexpected places, and realizing what it truly means to be Saved!
Getting Saved!
Producers Sandy Stern and Michael Stipe were sent the script for Saved! in 1999 after the success of Being John Malkovich prompted a flood of scripts to their company, Single Cell Pictures. "You might think it would be easy to choose a project," says Stern, "but obviously, it's really hard to find a good script, something you believe in so much you're willing to spend a few years of your life on it and shed blood, sweat, and tears to get it made.
"When I read a script," he continues, "I look for something original, something that stands apart from the crowd, a story that is told in an exciting new way. When I read Saved!, it was so of the moment, so topical, had something to say, and it was funny. It reminded me of one of those classic John Hughes movies, but spun in an entirely unique way."
Producer Stipe agrees with Stern. "I thought it was one of the funnier and more absolutely audacious, subversive scripts I had seen in some time," he says. "I just fell in love with the characters and the story immediately."
Stern admits that the Saved! storyline also held a particular personal appeal. "There has always been a part of me that's an arrested adolescent," he says. "High school is a time we all look back on ` every single one of us ` and for so many of us, those were some of the worst years of our lives. Part of Saved! is about being the outsider in high school, and unfortunately, I was able to relate to that. I think many people can."
Writer/director Brian Dannelly (who co-wrote the script with Michael Urban while they were enrolled at the American Film Institute) says Saved! came about as a result of his own diverse background. "As a kid I went to Catholic elementary school, Christian high school, and a Jewish summer camp," he says. "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. I wanted to write a movie that was grounded with the iconography of a mainstream teen movie yet incorporated concepts and ideas you would never see in those kinds of movies ` an accessible film with an independent spirit."
Recalling the strict rules of his school years, Dannelly says, "In my high school, we weren't allowed to dance," he says. "Everybody had to be at least 6 inches away from the opposite sex at all times. We had record burnings, and the entertainment at my senior prom was a puppet show` it wasn't very exciting."
Secular World Is Mirrored in the Christian World
Co- writer Urban had similar experiences with his fundamentalist upbringing. "I grew up in a traditional Baptist home in the South," he says. "Where I went to college in Tallahassee, Florida, I regularly saw people who lived in this metaphysical world with punishments and demons and things I had a hard time understanding. Sometimes things are twisted and exploited in the name of religion or God. I wanted to explore that."
Because the characters in Saved! are teenagers, the contemporary Christian youth movement provides the vivid, multifaceted background against which the story is set. With enormous youth retreats, Christian rock bands (and their rabid fans), all-teen prayer groups, and devout young disciples who often believe even more purely and unquestioningly than their adult counterparts, observing the youth movement was an important aspect of research done by the filmmakers and cast.
"Belonging to these groups when they're teenagers can really motivate and unify today's young people," says Dannelly. "It brings such a sense of excitement and acceptance into their world and gives them a sense of community and security, which is very powerful. Our kids are growing up in a time of terrorism, AIDS, and classmates shooting up their schools. Teens are scared, and the Christian movement is something young people can be a part of and feel safe. It's a fantastic reflection of pop culture: everything cool in the secular world is mirrored in the Christian world. There's very little difference between the two now, and I think that's part of its appeal."
On the other hand, the strict rules associated with that lifestyle can also make it a tricky road to follow. "The danger can be that the road is really narrow. Not everyone can walk it, and if you don't live up to certain biblical standards, you risk being left behind, alone and alienated," Dannelly says. "It's hard enough being a teenager without having to make the path so difficult with no room for mistakes ` God knows I made plenty."
To get into their characters, prior to the beginning of principal photography, Dannelly and a number of the principal cast members were taken to a "Salvation Rally" in Anaheim Stadium, California. In British Columbia the whole cast also attended another teen Christian rally as part of their research. "I wanted to make sure the cast understood the dynamics of what the Christian community fondly calls `Jesus freaks.'"
And A Director Shall Lead Them
Ultimately, even though Dannelly was a first-time writer/director, it was the force of his conviction and personality that convinced Stern and Snipe to give him the reins. "Brian spent months convincing me he was the guy to direct this movie," Stern says. "The more time I spent with him and the more I understood his vision of the movie, the more entrenched I became in supporting him as director. As a producer, what I wanted most from this movie was something really funny, really smart, and really emotional ` and those are the qualities I would use to describe Brian."
For his part, Stipe felt Dannelly would make the film believable. "From the beginning, I knew I didn't want one of those films where 24-year-olds are playing teenagers," he says, "and it was my feeling with Brian that we would wind up with characters that were very real."
It was a challenge to find financing for such a potentially risky project. "Not only did we have a first-time director," Stern says, "but we had a high school movie with edgy subject matter. It took unwavering faith in Brian and Michael's script and an incredibly talented group of actors to finally get people to fund the film."
There were still a few bumps in the road to production: in spring 2001, only two weeks away from the start of filming in Florida, funding fell through and the project went into temporary limbo. Luckily, Infinity Media (a Vancouver/L.A.-based company headed by William Vince and Michael Ohoven) stepped up to the plate. "We had just hit an iceberg, I was in a lifeboat, and the voice of Bill Vince was our salvation," says Stern. "He has an entire Vancouver-based operation that seamlessly pulled together the production in record time. We're incredibly grateful to Infinity Media." In addition, Single Cell has a first look deal with United Artists. "The Infinity and United Artists combination helped us get out of the quicksand," says Stern.
It also didn't hurt that the production attracted what Stern refers to as "the perfect ensemble cast." Eschewing the services of a Los Angeles casting director, Stern and Stipe handled the principal casting themselves.
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Eva Amurri, Heather Matarazzo and Many Moore in Saved!