RECIPE FOR STU

Actor, producer and devout Catholic Mark Wahlberg...

...was in the Valley recently to promote Father Stu, which he executive produced, and in which he plays the title role. The movie is based on the life of Stuart Long, a failed boxer turned failed actor turned Catholic convert turned seminarian. Here’s some of what Wahlberg said about the getting the tale on film (answers have been edited for length and clarity):

Where did you first hear Father Stu’s story?

From Father Ed Benioff, who was a fellow seminarian of Stu’s, and one of Stu’s buddies…Whatever was going on at the time, I got a wife, four kids, tons of things going on, but for whatever reason, [the story] registered and I said start from the top. And that was when I realized oh my gosh, this is something that I’ve been looking for. The movie chose and found me. That was the beginning of the journey.

How did Rosalind Ross come to be the screenwriter and director?

I started with David O. Russell. Because we talked about what movie we would compare it to tonally, and we all kind of thought it was The Fighter, because there was just a similar journey of Stu, the dysfunction within the family unit, the complexities there, all that. So we had settled on a writer that we thought could deliver, and she handed in a screenplay that I wasn’t interested in making. It didn’t have the bones, it wasn’t even a good first pass. I felt like I needed to step away from that situation and figure out a different way to get the movie going. And I had been talking to Mel [Gibson], just to kind of pick his brain about Passion of the Christ and why he decided to finance it himself, and what that looked like and all the pros and cons of doing that. And Rosie [Rosalind Ross; Gibson’s girlfriend] had written something else that I really liked. So we started talking about it, and she felt she had an entry point into the story as a writer, about this guy, just really in search of his calling and his purpose. So I told her the story, I connected her with Bill [Stu’s father] and Father Ed and everybody else, all the people I knew would be helpful in giving her all the colors and all the information about Stu. And three months later she handed me a screenplay that I wanted to make. I really thought that in itself was a miracle. It was good enough to make right now, I mean tonally, the balance of humor, the heart, the edge, all that stuff. And I was like, well, if she can put on the page, she can put it on the screen. I thought it would be so much more interesting to have the story told from her point of view. And she just did a phenomenal job.

What is the movie’s relationship to the true story? For instance, what was Stu’s real acting career like?

He only had like one or two extra credits. Then when he fell in love with Theresa’s character, that kind of changed everything. He was willing to get baptized on the spot. We had to figure out how to take a story that spanned a couple decades and condense it into two hours.

Have you shown the film to Father Stu’s family and friends? Were any of them advisers on the film?

They all were very helpful throughout the process, but at the same time, with COVID and everything, they weren’t able to be there on the set, and kind of give us input and notes during shooting. They kind of just told us a story, and trusted that we would go off and make it. And then, of course, the most important thing was showing it to those people, and for them to really appreciate the job we did and love the movie meant the world to us.

COLLAR ID

Opening in theaters today:

Father Stu--Stuart Long was a failed boxer in Montana who became a failed actor in L.A. who became a Catholic convert and then a seminarian and ultimately a priest. Mark Wahlberg has turned Long's odd career trajectory into a Hollywood tale, and a juicy star vehicle, with this biopic.

After hearing the story from a priest who was friends with Long, Wahlberg developed it as a film project, but the writer-director is Rosalind Ross, better known as Mel Gibson's longtime girlfriend and the father of one of his children. Early on, Ross endows the film almost with the flavor of a '70s-era friends-in-low-places comedy; it wouldn't seem out of character if Stu had Clyde the Orangutan as a sidekick.

While working the meat counter in a supermarket, like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, Stu beholds Carmen (Teresa Ruiz), a soulful local beauty, falls hard for her at first sight, and traces her to her church, where he learns she's a devout Catholic. A nonbeliever himself, he nonetheless hangs around and even converts to be near her, much to the shock of his fretful mother Kathleen (Jacki Weaver) and bitter, distant father Bill (Mel Gibson). Gradually, Stu wears Carmen down; she responds to the intensity and seriousness of his passion for her.

She's prepared to marry him when, after recovering from a hideous accident, he announces that he's decided to become a priest instead. But his sufferings don't end when he gets to the seminary; quite the opposite. The Church leadership resists his priestly ambitions, first because of his rowdy background and later, disgustingly, because they fear that the muscular illness with which he's been afflicted makes him unworthy to perform the sacraments.

Although I'm not Catholic, like the real Stu Long I went to a Catholic college. Perhaps because I didn't grow up in the church, but received the benefit of an excellent Catholic liberal education, it's possible I'm in a position to be more appreciative of the institution than my many pissed-off lapsed Catholic friends. Besides, I've read too much Flannery O'Connor and Graham Greene not to respond to this story.

But Stu winning the glorious Carmen's heart seemed like miracle enough to me; it seemed outrageous that he would then break it off with her to go to seminary. Still, my annoyance with his choice didn't make the sanctimony and hypocrisy he faced from the Church any less infuriating. In the end, I invested emotionally in his struggle; it's enough that it's what Stu wants.

There's reason, however, to suspect that the movie commits its own sins of omission. Ross's script pares down the real Stu's life to its most turbulent aspects, seemingly to make him look less accomplished, more of a desperate screw-up. It leaves out, among other things, the fact that he was a college grad before he went to seminary and spent years as the manager of the Norton Simon Art Museum before his calling. Wahlberg's portrait of him as a slovenly, drawly, dangling-cigarette barfly doesn't suggest this background.

All the same, it's an endearing characterization. Wahlberg blurts out his newfound spiritual insights with the cocksure authority of an eternally passionate novice; he's like an acquaintance that makes you roll your eyes and smile at the same time when you see him coming. Ruiz is lovely as Carmen, and Malcolm McDowell embraces his straight man role as a stuffy monsignor unable to discourage Stu. Taken on its own terms, as a peculiar, sweet yarn spun from truth, the movie is absorbing and engaging.

As for Gibson, he's rarely seemed happier; this movie puts him back in the world of masochistic hardcore fringe-Catholic body horror he so loves. His performance as Bill is potently baleful, and there's a startling moment in which he quips that Stu wanting to become a priest is like "Hitler wanting to join the ADL." That's a nervy and heavy-handed "meta" joke to put in that guy's mouth. After all, it works almost as well to say that it's like Mel Gibson wanting to join the ADL.