Movie a Hot Property for Charity

For the Sacred Heart League, the plastic Jesus may be history, but Hollywood is hot.

That’s why the Catholic charity that once brought us those little Jesus statues for automobile dashboards hopes to follow up on its first successful movie with more films.

The first one, “The Spitfire Grill,” isn’t some preachy religious work designed for fellowship night. It’s a feature-length movie for general distribution, though it carries a strong message of compassion and redemption.

The film focuses on a young woman, fresh from prison, struggling for a new start in a small town.

The movie won the “audience award” at the Sundance Film Festival and so far has earned the Sacred Heart League about $3 million--money that will be spent on a new school.

“I hope as a result of the example we have set that other churches or responsible groups of people will step forward and get into the media and produce their own feature films,” said Roger Courts, the league’s executive director.

The league already is working on a second script, though Courts said it is too early to discuss the project in detail.

“If we can make truly beautiful, value-based films for $5 million to $6 million, we believe we can sell them and make a profit,” he said, “and whoever we sell them to will make a profit as well.”

The league, a fund-raising arm of the Priest of the Sacred Heart, is headquartered in Walls, just south of Memphis.

The Sacred Heart’s Southern mission supports two grammar schools and a host of social service programs in a deprived region of northern Mississippi. It currently is building a low-income housing development in Walls.

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‘The Spitfire Grill” was filmed in just 38 days in rural Vermont, but the seeds of its creation were planted about 20 years ago when the league began looking for ways to expand its fund-raising and its ability to spread Christian ideals through the media.

The nonprofit charity traces its beginnings to 1955, when the Rev. Gregory Bezy came to northern Mississippi and formed the Sacred Heart Auto League, urging his followers to “drive prayerfully and carefully.”

The plastic statues that contributors got, until 1967, have been replaced by smaller, less ostentatious dashboard stickers, and the league has expanded its presence as a distributor of religious and inspirational publications.

The league decided in 1975, in a 20-year mission statement, that one of its primary reasons for being was “religious communication.” Ten years later, it decided to expand into television or perhaps feature films.

“By 1991, we were actively soliciting screenplays, reading books and trying to find just the right property for our first venture,” Courts said.

Until “The Spitfire Grill” was made, the league had drawn its income solely from its 1.2 million members nationwide. They donated $21 million last year.

The league formed a for-profit company, Gregory Productions, and accepted a script from writer Lee David Zlotoff, who also directed “The Spitfire Grill.”

In the movie, Percy Talbott (played by Alison Elliott) finds work as a waitress at the Spitfire Grill, a small restaurant in a Maine hamlet called Gilead. She is befriended by the grill’s owner, Hannah Ferguson (Ellen Burstyn), and Shelby Goddard (Marcia Gay Harden), the timid wife of Hannah’s nephew, Nahum (Will Patton).

With no car crashes, shootouts or nudity, “The Spitfire Grill” was picked up by Castle Rock Entertainment, which paid a Sundance record of $10 million for distribution rights. If Castle Rock makes money, the Sacred Heart League will get a piece of that as well.

The movie’s success at Sundance led to some talk, however, about the place of general-distribution films financed by religious organizations. One reviewer found “biblical imagery” in the movie “slightly sinister” in light of the film’s financing.

Courts said, however, that the film seeks only to present a story of human struggle and the value of life.