Brian Dannelly is an American film director and screenwriter best
known for his work on the 2004 film Saved!Dannelly was born in
Würzburg, Germany before moving with his family to Baltimore,
Maryland aged eleven. He was raised Catholic; he attended a Catholic
elementary school, Arlington Baptist High School in Baltimore, and a
Jewish summer camp. He was expelled from first grade for hitting a
nun, and later expelled from high schoolâ€"which he describes as "one
of the strictest schools in the nation"â€"for excessive demerits. He
started questioning his sexuality in high school, claiming, "I
remember I'd pray every night that I wasn't gay, and please God,
please God, anything I could doâ€"just don't make this happen." He
came out at the age of seventeen and was thrown out of his house by
his parents, who eventually came to accept his sexuality.Dannelly
graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County with a
degree in visual arts in 1997.Dannelly wrote and directed short film
"He Bop" in 2000 before his debut with 2004's religious satire film
Saved!, which he directed and co-wrote with Michael Urban. He had
begun to write the Saved! script after the Columbine High School
massacre in 1999, which he claims took him "back to [his] roots" in a
Christian high school. He and Urban began writing the script while
attending the American Film Institute Conservatory. Much of the story
was drawn from his own experiences with "conservative Christian
subculture", including Christian rock concerts, being "this gay kid in
a Christian school" and having visions of Jesus. He says, "In the
Baptist school there was the one Jewish girl that everyone was trying
to save, there was a girl who got pregnant, there was a gay kid"â€"all
principal characters in Saved! He claims that nothing in the film came
from his imagination: "Everything in the movie comes from either
something I experienced, or something I witnessed, or something I
researched."
known for his work on the 2004 film Saved!Dannelly was born in
Würzburg, Germany before moving with his family to Baltimore,
Maryland aged eleven. He was raised Catholic; he attended a Catholic
elementary school, Arlington Baptist High School in Baltimore, and a
Jewish summer camp. He was expelled from first grade for hitting a
nun, and later expelled from high schoolâ€"which he describes as "one
of the strictest schools in the nation"â€"for excessive demerits. He
started questioning his sexuality in high school, claiming, "I
remember I'd pray every night that I wasn't gay, and please God,
please God, anything I could doâ€"just don't make this happen." He
came out at the age of seventeen and was thrown out of his house by
his parents, who eventually came to accept his sexuality.Dannelly
graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County with a
degree in visual arts in 1997.Dannelly wrote and directed short film
"He Bop" in 2000 before his debut with 2004's religious satire film
Saved!, which he directed and co-wrote with Michael Urban. He had
begun to write the Saved! script after the Columbine High School
massacre in 1999, which he claims took him "back to [his] roots" in a
Christian high school. He and Urban began writing the script while
attending the American Film Institute Conservatory. Much of the story
was drawn from his own experiences with "conservative Christian
subculture", including Christian rock concerts, being "this gay kid in
a Christian school" and having visions of Jesus. He says, "In the
Baptist school there was the one Jewish girl that everyone was trying
to save, there was a girl who got pregnant, there was a gay kid"â€"all
principal characters in Saved! He claims that nothing in the film came
from his imagination: "Everything in the movie comes from either
something I experienced, or something I witnessed, or something I
researched."
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