Different tokes: Saved! director Brian Dannelly goes from Jesus to joints with Weeds, Showtime's hilarious new series about a dope-dealing suburban mom

A note to aspiring filmmakers: If you are going to make a rollicking comedy about faith and tolerance that's set in a fundamentalist Christian high school--as out director Brian Dannelly wrote with 2004's Saved!--don't be surprised if you end up on CNN debating the Reverend Jerry Falwell, who most likely will not have seen your film. The upside is: You might also become one of the most in-demand writer-directors in town.

Thanks to Saved! Dannelly's Hollywood dance card is so full, he's having to add projects by Post-It. The German-born, Maryland-raised auteur has a slew of projects in various stages of development. Among them is an HBO series about the God-meets-the-Galleria world of megachurches; a stage musical called Runner Up, about a beauty pageant in a women's prison; and Army Geek, a film comedy about a Napoleon Dynamite--type character who joins the military. "I just spent some time on a base in Texas," reports Dannelly, who is penning the script with his longtime writing partner, fellow American Film Institute film school grad Michael Urban. "The kids there are all going to Iraq. Meeting them was amazing and heartbreaking."

First, though, comes Weeds, Showtime's sly new comedy about a scrappy suburban mom named Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), who turns to selling pot after her breadwinner husband un expectedly dies. "It's a series that shows that we're all human and we're all struggling to figure it out," says Dannelly, who as consulting producer directed the first two episodes and helped series creator Jenji Kohan (an Emmy winner for Tracey Takes On ...) establish the look and feel of the show. "I love that Brian doesn't take his crap out on other people, which so many directors in this town do," raves Kohan. "He's merely self-destructive, which is so much more pleasant to be around, except for the stinky cigarette smell."

When it comes to the smokers on the show, Dannelly takes a balanced approach, noting, "On Weeds, everybody has a good side, everybody has a bad side. It's just not black-and-white." So has Dannelly done much, shall we say, firsthand research on the subject of weed? "I'm not a pothead," he says with a laugh, "but what was really surprising to me as I was working on it is how many people are. It's like everybody smokes pot."

As for gay content, Nancy does tangle with a competing dealer (War of the Worlds' Justin Chatwin) who's gay, but alas, he disappears after the first episode. "He got famous between the pilot and the second episode," laments Dannelly. "But there is a full-blown lesbian story line later in the show involving the daughter of Elizabeth Perkins's character." Perkins sizzles as Nancy's hilariously shallow friend, Celia--but wait, isn't Celia's daughter 10 years old? "It's so shocking," Dannelly concurs. "I was like, 'Oh, my God. How in the world are you going to do this?' It's definitely something I've never seen on TV before."

Actually, it's no surprise that Dannelly's up to being provocative, given that his filmmaking hero is John Waters. "The first short film I ever made, called Big Busted Gals, was a total homage to John Waters," says Dannelly, who toiled as a housepainter and a telemarketer before finding success in Hollywood. "It compared big busts and homophobia and featured a Divine-esque character jumping up and down on a trampoline." Clearly, it seems Dannelly has been a man with a mission from the start. "I hope that everything that I do somehow challenges the mainstream," he says, "not push them away, but just nudge them a little bit."

Hensley is the cowriter of Testosterone (Strand Releasing Home Video).

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