It was really interesting to see these 14 and 15 year-olds being passionate about something, not like Britney Spears and all that stuff, but actually passionate about their faith, about God. It kind of made you want to stay true to them. You don’t want make fun of them. You can poke fun of their world, you can poke fun at the stereotypes that go along with - and the crusades that go along with - the zealot-ness of Christianity. It was just amazing. There was the U2 sound-alike band. There was the Radiohead sound alike Christian band. All very uplifting messages. The pastor went up and spoke for 45 minutes and was quoting Pink and Madonna more than the Bible. It was amazing. I remember we were walking out of this thing and there were all these people picketing and passing out pamphlets, and they were Christians. They were Fundamentalists saying that Christian rock music is wrong. It was so funny to me that Christians are picketing each other, so what makes us think we can get away with this movie, without someone being offended at least by the outside of it? Remember the movie, “Dogma?” It hadn’t even come out yet and they had hundreds of people picketing and no one had seen it. No one knew what it was about. Actually, after I saw that movie I was like, “Gosh, I want to pick up a Bible and read this again,” because it was cool. And the same thing with this, from the outside for people who haven’t seen it, we’re dealing with issues like unwed teenage mothers and homosexuality and things like that. From the outside, it could be semi-taboo, you know?
I think that at the heart of this movie is a really good Christian message. It’s a really faith-based movie with a good Christian message, a good message over all. The basis of any religion, let alone anything Christ-related, is be a good person, be good to the people around you and accept them for who they are. And that’s it, whether you’re a Buddhist or anything like that, that’s the message. I think that’s the underlying message of this movie, which is be good, accept people for their faiths or what they believe in or don’t believe in, and you can make a family whatever you want to make it as long as you accept people for what they are, no matter what their faith is. I think overall it’s a good Christian message. I hope Christians get it, I hope they really dig it. Most of them did. We had a lot of Christians working on the set with us, actually. I think we made an effort to do that. And we had a Christian consultant. She was a 17 year-old girl who was totally one of these girls, making sure that we were doing it right. We tried to really stay true to this world and to these people.
Did you do much research into how to behave in a wheelchair for this role?
Yes I did. Actually, I did a lot of research. I had them send me a wheelchair a couple of months in advance. I have no furniture in my house – no carpets, no rugs, no nothing - so I’m zipping around that place. It actually became a popular piece of furniture in that house. Every time I got out of it, someone was in it. I showed up in Vancouver and right off the plane, I didn’t even stop to drop my bags off at the hotel. I went straight to a place, got a wheelchair fitted and threw it in the back of the car. I went to a rehab facility out in Vancouver with this quadriplegic named Brad who showed me around and introduced me to this other kid who was 20 years-old. He was only in a chair for six months and he was doing his classes. He was learning and he was showing me what he was learning. I was watching him take his classes. He showed me how to get out of bed and into the chair, how to get off the floor and into the chair, and just all these different scenarios. It kind of gives you a deeper appreciation for the smaller things in life.
If you do a movie and you have to play the piano in it, you think, “Cool. Bonus.” You get to walk away and you just learned the piano. Or you get to ice skate in a movie and so you get ice skating lessons. Cool, right? That’s bonus stuff that you get to take with you. You wouldn’t realize how hard it is to open a refrigerator door in a wheelchair. It’s one of those things that the first time I did it it took me 15 minutes. You have to open the door and leverage, prop it open, and then all those things. It’s just one of those things where it gives you an appreciation of all the smaller things. Everything that they have to go through… They have to remember to shift in their chair every 10 minutes for the rest of their lives. It’s just one of those things like breathing and eating, shifting in your chair. It’s another one of these things that adds on to who they are and how they have to keep on going in life.
PAGE 3: Macaulay Culkin on Offbeat Roles, Rebellion, and Onscreen Chemistry
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Mandy Moore, Jena Malone, and Heather Matazzaro/Patrick Fugit
"Saved" Trailer, Credits, and Movie News
