Even as a famously devout Catholic, Mark Wahlberg had never been pitched a faith-based feature until “Father Stu,” a study of a wild and crazy guy who found his calling late in life as a Roman Catholic priest.
It was a priest in Wahlberg’s Beverly Hills parish who over dinner suggested this real-life story as a movie.
“I haven’t really been pitched anything religious that I can remember,” Wahlberg, 50, said last week in Boston before the film’s benefit premiere for his Youth Foundation. “But this really resonated with me.”
Enough that the actor-producer spent six years and his own money to tell Stuart Long’s remarkable story.
Estranged from his absent father (Mel Gibson), Long, a mostly battered boxer, left Montana for L.A. to become a movie star. The reality was work at a supermarket, where he met a young Mexican woman, a Sunday school teacher.
After a near-fatal motorcycle crash, Long recovered to believe his vocation was to be a priest. In seminary, he was diagnosed with a rare ALS-style disease that destroys muscle function and eventually killed him. In his illness, he inspired others.
“I really feel like the movie chose me,” Wahlberg said. “The only way to get this made without outside interference in the creative decisions was just to cut the check and finance it.
“It took a long time to get the script right. You’ve got a story that spans decades. It’s pretty ambitious in its size and scope, and we only had 30 days to shoot it and two hours to tell this story of a man finding his purpose.
“And when he does, despite being diagnosed with an incurable disease, he just continues to get stronger and stronger spiritually and did some very remarkable things in a short amount of time in the priesthood.”
To accurately convey Stu’s transformation from in-shape boxer to swollen handicapped priest, Wahlberg embarked on a punishing physical change.
He felt he had no choice.
“It was such an important part of the story because obviously in Stu’s younger life, everything revolved around his physical prowess. He loses that but gained strength through his spirituality. We wanted to have the audience see what happened to him.
“That just meant trying to put on as much weight as possible. The night we finished the boxing stuff, which was Day One, we started 7,000 calorie consumption for the first two weeks and then went up to 11,000 for the last four weeks.”
Despite a doctor’s supervision, “Even the healthiest version of that weight gain was still very, very unpleasant.”
“Father Stu” opens Wednesday.
