What's ironic about the outrage ''Saved!'' has engendered is how strenuously Dannelly has worked to minimize its potential to offend. Optioned by ''Being John Malkovich'' producers Sandy Stern and R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe in 2000, ''Saved!'' was set to roll in early 2002. But one week before shooting, all hell broke loose. A Christian rock band that was to have played during the prom climax and a church that was to have provided a location backed out. Spooking them, says Dannelly, was a Stipe quote from 2001 that resurfaced characterizing ''Saved!'' as one of ''those monster vampire high school kinds of movies, only here the monsters are Jesus-freak teenagers.'' Says Dannelly: ''That is SO not our film.''
Worse still, that same week the financing fell apart. ''Saved!'' was put on hold. Enter United Artists, where Stern and Stipe have a first-look deal. According to McGurk, the studio agreed to help finance it, but wanted the script massaged ''to get the right balance of heart, comedy, and biting social commentary.'' Dannelly doesn't recall such a contingency: ''I think what happened was Mandy Moore came aboard and they said, 'Okay! We'll do it!' That was the main revision.'' (Moore was hired to replace Anne Hathaway, who had moved on to ''Ella Enchanted'' when ''Saved!'' finally restarted four months later.) In fact, Stern says the script went through approximately 200 rewrites. ''The film originally began with [Moore's character] shooting up the school,'' says Stern. ''It is such a different movie from Michael's 'monster movie' quote.''
The fine-tuning continued into editing. Dannelly worked to keep the comedy brisk, PG-13, and focused on the believers, not the beliefs. He ditched his original opening sequence, a double-entendre-laced scene in which Moore and Malone comment on the size of that 30-foot Jesus. Also deleted: a sequence in which the main characters debate Christianity's claim of being the one true faith.
Meanwhile, the studio was struggling with a marketing campaign. Should it sell the film as a mainstream teen comedy or as review-driven art-house fare? A summer 2003 release was scuttled because the studio couldn't settle on the answer. Then, in February, ''The Passion of the Christ'' hit. UA considered promoting ''Saved!'' to the same constituency. But when it consulted some of the grassroots groups that helped Mel Gibson reach out to Christians, the message was clear: Don't even try.
The campaign began coming into focus after a buzz-generating premiere at Sundance. To keep the word of mouth going, UA sent screeners to religious leaders and showed the film for gay and Christian groups, knowing the tactic might spark reactions both positive and negative. The response was deeply polarizing -- which the studio didn't mind one bit. ''I don't think controversy hurts any film,'' says Dannelly. ''It's a very timely movie -- timely in that it came out after ''The Passion,'' with the election coming up, and the issue of gay marriage in the culture.'' UA tried to fan the flames by pelting the ''Passion''-fixated press with e-mails like ''Got 'Passion'? Get 'Saved!''' And with TV ads that didn't hide the film's more irreverent imagery -- a hunky Christ in a swimming pool, a figure skater in a leotard embroidered with the word ''Jesus'' -- the studio found a campaign that captured its mix of whimsy and edge.
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