'Dorothy Day' movie set for fall release

National Catholic Reporter, May 12, 1995 by David Finnigan

It has, come full circle. In 1933, Paulist Press in New York was paid $25 to print the first edition of an obscure newspaper - The Catholic Worker. Its cofounder, Dorothy Day, would go on to lead one of the most agitated yet faith-filled, pacifist yet activist lives witnessed by American Catholicism.

In 1995, on a Malibu beach and a Hollywood movie set, and elsewhere, too, Dorothy Day's words and the work of Paulist priests have met again for a feature film about her life. Produced by Paulist Pictures on a $4.3 million budget, "Dorothy Day" is scheduled to be released in the fall, though the Paulists have yet to find a distributor.

In 1933, Dorothy Day got out her Catholic Worker message by peddling her penny-a-copy paper at a New York May Day parade. In 1995, the task is much more daunting for Fr. Ellwood "Bud" Kieser, 66, the film's executive producer and Catholic Hollywood's patron saint.

"The biggest thing I learned from this whole experience is that God protected me from my own mistakes," said Kieser recently from near the film's Malibu location, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Those mistakes, he said, included going to major actresses to fill the title role. Several were interested but turned him down because of the union-scale salaries or the shooting schedule. Others shied away from a movie produced by Catholic priests about a saintly Catholic woman.

"This movie is about the holy, and some people are scared as hell of the holy," Kieser said.

The Paulists founded their reincarnated Dorothy Day in Moira Kelly. Born in Ireland and raised on Long Island, New York, Kelly, 27, is a devout Catholic who once considered being a nun. Kelly has been a voice in "The Lion King" and appeared in "With Honors" and "Chaplin." But her breakthrough role was as a vain ice skater in the 1992 film "The Cutting Edge."

I must declare a special interest here: I volunteered to be an extra in the "Dorothy Day" crowd scenes at Paramount studios. It was five unpaid days of work in March, so I made it my Lenten offering. Wardrobe dressed me as a chestnut vendor, a picketer, a returning World War I soldier (a la Sgt,. York) and, often, a homeless man.

On the set, Kieser stayed close to his director, Michael Rhodes, who has directed many episodes of the CBS series "Christy" and who directed the 1988 Paulist film "Romero," about slain Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Kelly's acting seemed calm and powerful, centered and almost serene. "I think in Moira Kelly, the heroic archetype of Dorothy Day is close to the surface," Kieser said.

The crowd scenes focused on Day's life in 1917 and the 1930s, when the Catholic Worker soup kitchens began and the newspaper was launched. Volunteers were recruited from parishes throughout Los Angeles. Several hundred Catholics wound up being nameless and often silent: as bankers, merchants, cops, laborers, communists, suffragists and the poor.

One extra, Luigi, was an Italian fashion executive working temporarily in Los Angeles. In English - one of seven languages he speaks - he talked of how his father-in-law was a senior officer in the Norwegian resistance in World War II. My father fought the Japanese in the Pacific. Dorothy Day was a pacifist in the war. That swimming against the tide seems to be how her life still creates debate among Americans. Kieser talked of the "live nerves in American society that Dorothy's life touches: motherhood, feminism, women's rights and poverty."

He spoke in the present tense of a woman who died in 1980. While Kieser has been living and remaking Day's life on movie sets for about seven weeks this spring, Day's ideals were being lived by the 12 members and two children at the Los Angeles Catholic Worker community. Three of them read the "Day" script, written by John Wells, cocreator of the NBC show "ER."

Catholic worker Donald Nollar said, "I thought it was a poorly written script. .. It was melodramatic. It was an over-sentimentalized view of her life. It misses a lot of the power of Dorothy Day's life."

Robert Ellsberg lived with Day for five years at the Catholic Worker community in New York and is now editor in chief at Maryknoll's Orbis Books.

He grants Hollywood its traditional poetic license: "I'm not inclined to quibble."

To Ellsberg, the Los Angeles Catholic Workers, Kieser and others swirling around the living ghost of Dorothy Day, the greater issue is this woman's road to grace.

For Kieser, the question now is how many people will see it? The Paulists are looking for a general-release distributor and are aiming for an October premiere.

The tension of raising more than $4 million is over. So, too, is the tension of production. Kieser is happy this spring day on the beach. "I got the picture I wanted," said the creator of TV's long-running "Insight" series. "I didn't have a superstar cast. I didn't use a superstar director. I have a very good movie." THen he quoted Mother Teresa: "God doesn't call us to be successful. God calls us to be faithful."

A somewhat similar statement occurs in the movie, when one of Dorothy Day's Catholic critics tells her pointedly: "You've set a tough path for yourself: Loving people who are hardly lovable. Putting out when you get very little back. Telling us things we don't want to hear. I couldn't do it. I wonder how long you'll be able to."