Answered Prayer: “Prayers For Bobby” is a Groundbreaking Gay TV Movie
It’s an admittedly gripping story: a conservative Christian woman refuses to accept her gay teenage son, hounding him to “change” to the point where he commits suicide. But then, overcome by the realization of what she has done, the woman educates herself, renounces her previous anti-gay beliefs, and becomes a crusader for GLBT youth and gay rights.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that the real-life story of Mary Griffith of Walnut Creek, California, has now become Prayers for Bobby, a TV movie starring Sigourney Weaver airing on Lifetime later this month.
And yet, as extraordinary as the story is, it was anything but an easy sell.
“Making movies is hard enough,” says Daniel Sladek, one of the film’s executive producers. “But when you have a movie about teen suicide, a woman questioning her faith, and gay rights, that’s a hot potato.”
The finished film is not your typical TV movie. Unlike most previous gay TV movies, the filmmakers don’t dance around the issues; they tackle religion head-on, making the explicit connection between anti-gay religious beliefs and the oppression of gay people. As the recent controversy over California’s Proposition 8 showed, religious beliefs are still the primary - maybe the only remaining - argument against same-sex equality. In the aftermath of that fight, the movie feels eerily contemporary despite being set in the 1970s.
“I know a very religious family, and they do think that homosexuality is an abomination,” says star Sigourney Weaver. “I’m hoping that this film will begin to open their eyes - if not the older generation, then perhaps the younger one.”
It all began when Mary refused to accept that her teenage son, Bobby, was gay.
“It was just ignorance,” says Mary Griffith now. “I believed what my church said about gay people. I can forgive myself for that, but I had a hard time forgiving the church.” Griffith still lives in Walnut Creek, but no longer attends the same church.
(the real Bobby and his mother)
Griffith’s heartbreaking story eventually attracted the interest of a gay journalist, Leroy Aarons, who worked with the family on a book, Prayers for Bobby, published in 1995. It turned out that Bobby had kept a diary of his thoughts and feelings during the struggle with his mother.
In 1997, Sladek was given the book by his producing partner, Chris Taaffe, who had found it on the shelves of A Different Light bookstore in LA.
“It just floored me, took my breath away,” Sladek said. “I’m 43-years-old. If he [were] alive today, Bobby would be 45. Ninety percent of the book resonated on a personal level: Rocky Horror, Anita Bryant. I saw myself in the book.”
Sladek and Taaffe optioned the project, originally intending it to be a feature film. But the resulting screenplay attracted the attention of Susan Sarandon, who had been approached by NBC to do a TV movie.
“They wanted something controversial, Emmy caliber,” Sladek says. “This is what made us first think of TV. [The medium] has evolved over the years. Cable networks are stepping up, taking on more feature film-like properties. Talent, A-list actors and directors are responding.”
The NBC deal didn’t work out, and Sarandon moved on, but Sladek and Taaffe kept pitching the project. In 2000, they managed to sell it to Lifetime with Sela Ward attached to play Mary Griffith. But that deal didn’t pan out either.
A few years later, they sold it yet again, to Showtime, as a vehicle for Christine Lahti.
Incredibly, that deal also fell through, and at the end of 2007, Sladek had almost given up on TV for good. He and Taaffe were all set to finally produce it as the feature film they had originally envisioned.
Just before they were about to start production, Lifetime expressed interest again, this time with Sigourney Weaver in the lead.
“I thought how wonderful we could put this [classic book] in another form, for families to experience,” Weaver says. “It was driven by a commitment to Bobby. Hopefully it’ll start a dialogue for the people who think this issue [of homosexuality] is black and white.”
Soon the producers had assembled the rest of an impressive cast that includes LA Law’s Susan Ruttan and Frasier’s Dan Butler, who is openly gay and who plays a minister that Mary reached out to at the Metropolitan Community Church.
Scott Bailey, the star of the MTV series Saints and Sinners, plays Bobby’s boyfriend, David. And the film is directed by Russell Mulcahy, who has directed everything from Highlander to the music videos of Duran Duran, Elton John, and George Michael.
“I was really quite thrilled,” Mary Griffith said when she learned that her story would finally be told on screen. “How could I object to this terrific actress and all these people?”
One great irony is that many more people will probably see Prayers for Bobby as a heavily-promoted Lifetime TV movie than might have seen it as a smaller feature. And yet, the filmmakers claim they didn’t have to make major compromises on either their vision or their message.
“Predominantly, it’s the original script, the original vision and original work we started with by [writer] Katie Ford, who has been with us from day one,” Sladek says. “There were a lot of people along the way who wanted us to change it, temper it, add melodrama. But the three of us, [Ford, Taaffe, and myself], we stuck to our guns.”
Indeed, the story is told with subtlety and sophistication, and the performances - especially Ryan Kelley as Bobby and Weaver, who will almost certainly be in the running for an Emmy - are excellent. It may be the best TV movie on gay issues ever, precisely because there is absolutely nothing cautious or watered down in its execution.
“This is a film that is about realization and reaching out and making amends and doing everything you can to love the people you love,” Weaver says simply.
Sladek makes it clear that this project is a labor of love for everyone involved.
“It’s a television film,” he says. “It’s not the case that anyone’s getting rich. But hopefully we’ll leave something behind that will make a difference. Hopefully it might save some lives.”
For more information on the film, or to send feedback to filmmakers, visit the movie’s website.
Prayers for Bobby will play three times on Lifetime: Saturday, January 24, 9-11 PM; Sunday, January 25, 8-10 PM; and Tuesday, January 27, 9-11 PM.
I mock Lifetime quite a lot, but this actually looks kinda good. And sad.
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