The collective noun for a group of saints, is actually – a communion of saints. But that was not our experience when we produced our play, God’s Gypsy, about the life of Saint Teresa of Avila, in 2013. It turned out to be more like a gang of saints, with Saint Teresa, the ultimate gun slinger!
I think I would rather not spill the beans on what happened there, just yet. At least not now. ;) The story is too juicy, so I will save it for my memoirs, or for when we make the award-wining kick-ass, farcical, blood and guts documentary of what went down.
It has been 11 years since that play, and the outrageous things that happened. All I can say, is that as I look back, I have to laugh at some of it. The devil sure has a sense of humor. And she is a woman.
Out of the mire of that play, came the desire to make the film, SAINT. Over the past 11 years we have gone through many people in Hollywood. We have gotten advice, compliments, encouragement, we have been fucked over twice, we have gone through fundraising hell, we have been dropped, but mostly, we have been ignored, and we have learned who our real friends are. The rest I dropped like flies.
SAINT still has no funds, and no producer. But we are building one hell of a team. This is going to be good movie, in fact, it is going to be a great movie, a classic. Because anything that takes this long to make, has to be bloody unforgettable.
It is going to be a wild ride, no holds barred. Saint Teresa was a fearless woman, and had a passionate heart for the unseen, for the sublime, for the Good. She was also a dangerous woman, as she was changing the Church from the inside out.
She was empowering women at a time when women were not seen or heard. She did it barefoot, because she was badass. She was also pragmatic, tough and very, very brave. You had to be when The Grand Inquisition of Spain was breathing down your neck.
Now, here’s the thing: we want to shoot our film in a very different way. No conventional period piece, no historical drama, no traditional approach. In short, nothing that is going to cost a lot of money.
We see SAINT as an intimate character-driven film shot in black and white, maybe on a sound stage with minimal (theatre) props and distractions, using theatrical light and shadow, and gypsy violin!
It can also be shot as a renegade film, guerilla-style with a hand-held camera.
We are open to ideas from highly creative people ….
Our team:
1. Emmy-winning composer and violinist, Lili Haydn:
2. Oscar-nominated cinematographer, Thad Wadleigh, interested in filming SAINT:
https://pro.imdb.com/name/nm0905581/?ref_=instant_nm_1&q=THADDEUS%20WADL
3. Actors Studio actors who know how to light up the screen, like Marlon Brando and James Dean did. Bold and bad.
We aim to have our film have notes of this:
The COOL thing about making SAINT, is that it is possible to do it at a nice low budget – $500 000, if we do it in an innovative way. The other COOL thing is, that this film has a large potential profit. Saint Teresa of Avila is highly revered and followed by 1.3 billion Catholics globally (and no film has been made of her ever). Never mind Catholics, how many more soul-seekers and mystics all over the world would delight in this film! Especially us lowly women.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT A RELIGIOUS FILM, BUT AN INDIE ART HOUSE FILM. It is not trying to sell any religious viewpoint. It is a film for the outsiders, the unseen and the unusual ones; the ones who do not fit the status quo.
The story of SAINT:
We follow Saint Teresa’s (well-researched) life, starting when she is already an established Madre Fundadora of the Barefoot Carmelite movement.
As we have said already, Saint Teresa is a nun like no other; bold, fierce and daring.
She has nose bleeds and epilepsy, faints often and every now and again, she levitates.
Her erotic rapture-episodes terrify everyone, mostly herself.
An angel pierces her in the heart, leaving her with a debilitating heart condition for the rest of her life. Hmmm …
Nothing stops her, though. Underneath the nose of the Church, she opens up convents that she runs more like universities, to empower women.
She writes a book that is banned. But in secret, the nuns read her book and study other banned books.
All hell breaks loose when she meets the one-eyed Princess of Eboli (true historical character) …
… in the meantime, the Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, a charismatic scholar and puritan perfectionist, a man who loves his rose garden and botany more than anything, is silently pursuing our nun, studying her banned book, so that he can burn her at the stake. Does he?
Here is a beautiful clip as background information on the Italian statue – THE ECSTACY – capturing Saint Teresa of Avila in all her heavenly glory.
Now, dear reader, if you know of anyone (or maybe it is you) who has a spare $500 thousand lying around and wants to make a piece of art that will sit on a shelf next to Fellini or Tarantino – a Criterion Collection piece for the ages – point them our way. We have the screenplay, we have the team, let’s hit the silver screen!