“The religious types were all very nervous, and so they all wanted me to make a faith-based movie that was very secure, very middle of the road, and really type of, you already know, bland,” says Mark Wahlberg. “And we’ve seen those movies, and so they don’t really move the needle much.”
Wahlberg—who is asking in from somewhere out on the road—is wondering if he could be heard clearly as he’s using an ancient hotel phone that “looks prefer it’s a prop from ‘Get Smart.’” The ’60s spy sitcom reference is apropos because the Hollywood A-lister is on a mission of his own.
It’s early March, and Wahlberg is deep into an intense promotional campaign for his latest film, “Father Stu,” which can take him through its April 13 opening, in the course of Holy Week. Wahlberg spent the previous night screening the film at Loyola University Chicago for an audience that included a gaggle of young Jesuits. He’s holding screenings all across the US beating the drum for “Father Stu,” a real story a few rough-and-tumble failed boxer who became a priest.
Wahlberg recently called the film the “most vital movie I’ve ever done, and…the very best movie I’ve ever been an element of.”
Wahlberg recently called the film the “most vital movie I’ve ever done, and…the very best movie I’ve ever been an element of.” Considering he has been nominated for 2 Academy Awards (“The Fighter” and “The Departed”) and has served as executive producer of iconic shows like HBO’s “Entourage” and “Boardwalk Empire,” that is kind of an announcement.
The film is clearly vital to Wahlberg, a really public and committed Catholic with his own violent past, on personal, skilled and spiritual levels. “I’ve at all times talked about my faith, which is nice and high quality and dandy and other people know that,” he says. “But then at the identical time, you’ve got to type of put your money where your mouth is.”
For Wahlberg, who has built an infinite profession as one in every of Hollywood’s biggest power players, “Father Stu” represented a level of engagement around his faith and his work life that he had been considering for years.
“I’ve at all times been like, O.K., as soon as I get to a certain place, and I actually have a certain voice and reach and platform, then I’ll start doing more things that can move the needle when it comes to my faith, and things that I feel might be productive, helpful and in service. So when this project got here to me, I used to be like, ‘You understand what? I want to go make this.’”
For Wahlberg, “Father Stu” represents a level of engagement around his faith and his work life that he had been considering for years.
Wahlberg first got here across the story in 2016 and had been developing the film with David O. Russell, who directed “The Fighter.” But he felt the script that they had wasn’t stepping into the precise direction. “I just had a way of urgency that I didn’t really feel like [Russell] had or anybody else had,” he says. Wahlberg wanted complete creative control, so he decided to finance the film largely along with his own money, much as his friend and “Father Stu” co-star Mel Gibson did with “The Passion of the Christ.” The screenwriter Rosalind Ross, who can be Gibson’s longtime girlfriend, eventually wrote a screenplay that Wahlberg loved a lot that he asked her to direct as well—her first time helming a movie.
In “Father Stu,” Gibson plays the troubled, alcoholic father to the film’s title character, Stuart Long (Wahlberg), a Golden Gloves-winning boxer who leaves his native Montana after his prizefighting dreams fizzle. Chasing stardom, Long moves west to turn into an actor in Hollywood. While on the lookout for his big break in Los Angeles, he works as a bouncer and gets into his own share of trouble, getting arrested for fighting and drunk driving.
A near-death experience on his motorcycle leads him to explore religion, and he agrees to turn into a Catholic with the intention to marry his Mexican-American girlfriend. At his baptism, Long feels a strong call to ordination. After significant resistance and various roadblocks put up by the seminary rector—played by Malcolm McDowell—he’s finally admitted to check for the priesthood.
Ultimately ordained in his hometown diocese of Helena, Mont., in 2007, the real-life Father Stu had only a temporary profession in ministry.
While in seminary, Long is diagnosed with inclusion body myositis, an especially rare, incurable autoimmune disease that mimics the symptoms of A.L.S. (Lou Gehrig’s disease). The disease causes his once powerful body to weaken significantly, creating latest roadblocks to his ordination.
Ultimately ordained in his hometown diocese of Helena, Mont., in 2007, the real-life Father Stu had only a temporary profession in ministry. Within the seven years before his death in 2014, his physical condition deteriorated rapidly, though the spiritual impact of his ministry grew exponentially. When he was confined to a motorized wheelchair, people lined up to satisfy with him outside the Big Sky Care Center, a rehabilitation center and nursing home where he lived and worked as a priest, confessor and spiritual advisor. Father Stu got here to see his illness as the very best thing that had ever happened to him, since it enabled him to let go of an unhealthy sense of pride he’d had for many of his life.
Wahlberg was convinced that Long’s story of redemption could have an actual impact on a big selection of audiences, not simply on Catholics and Christians. “Tough grace and difficult mercy is what Stu earned through his suffering, and thru his work and giving back,” he says. Wahlberg hopes the film amplifies “the importance of redemption and rooting for people to vary and grow versus turning our backs on them.” In very troubled and unsure times, Wahlberg says, his intention is to “give people hope, and encourage people to pursue their faith, whatever that’s.”
Wahlberg was convinced that Long’s story of redemption could have an actual impact on a big selection of audiences.
To be able to show the fact of what tough mercy truly is, Wahlberg needed the liberty to inform Father Stu’s story as unapologetically and realistically as possible. The film’s R rating might scare off more pious religious audiences, but he believes strongly that the roughness of the film can be the source of its power.
“We desired to make a movie that was edgy, and real and relatable to everybody,” he says. “And Stu was one in every of those guys that when he did his prison ministries, it was where he was only, because he could speak with [prisoners] on their level and he understood that he was one in every of them and that he had been in those seats. And now he was on the opposite side, and he was reminding them that God’s not going to present up on you and neither is he.”
Wahlberg himself was once in that seat as well. Having dropped out of highschool within the ninth grade, he became involved with drugs and gangs and was arrested several times for racially motivated violent crimes in his native Boston. At 16 he was tried as an adult and charged with attempted murder of a Vietnamese shopkeeper; he later said he was high on PCP on the time. He served only 45 days for felony assault and a long time later met with the victim to make amends and received forgiveness. He credits his own faith for saving him. “When all was said and done, and I used to be alone, and my friends weren’t there for me anymore, I had my faith, and I had people of religion attempting to point me in the precise direction. I had real success and experience in focusing my faith, and attempting to do the precise thing, after which getting good results.”
Wahlberg is famously regimented in his life, waking up before dawn to work out after which spend time in prayer.
Wahlberg is famously regimented in his life, waking up before dawn to work out after which spend time in prayer. (He has a chapel in his home.) He’s a creature of habit and discipline and yet doesn’t appear to suffer from the rigidity and judgmentalism often related to deeply devout people. Reporters have asked him to elucidate his Catholic faith and his support of same-sex marriage, to which he has responded: “I just think we’ve got lots more vital issues to be worrying about.”
Perhaps it has something to do with the true stories he is usually drawn to, nevertheless it could be hard to miss the sense of mercy and give up in the films Wahlberg is selecting to make. Given his own experiences, it isn’t surprising that there’s something deeply lived—and flawed—within the characters he has played of late. In 2020, there was “Joe Bell,” the story of a disapproving father who sets off on an ill-fated pilgrimage across the country after his gay teenage son, Jadin, commits suicide after repeated bullying.
“I feel there’s an enormous, big issue about what it takes to make a person and what people placed on the term or the emphasis of being a person…. All this macho stuff and the way it’s defined, to me it just doesn’t matter,” says Wahlberg. “I feel Jadin was the epitome of what a person needs to be. He was loving and sort and caring, and he had a lot to supply. He didn’t have anybody to actually accept all of the wonderful gifts that he had to supply, which I discovered to be really heartbreaking.”
Now, he brings to the screen the story of the hell-raising Stuart Long, who’s moved to vary his life only to search out his life transformed in ways he couldn’t have foreseen. These selections of film roles suggest that Wahlberg is compelled to maneuver beyond rhetoric and piety. “Father Stu” will likely appeal to church audiences, nevertheless it isn’t a story of holiness or triumph; it’s a story of struggle and accompaniment. It’s as if Wahlberg desires to shed mere ideas and abstractions and move toward embodiment.
“Stu really wasn’t a lot about church,” he says, “as he was in regards to the guy who died to construct it.”
