Faith-based ‘Grace Card’ stars Gary native

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

There is little doubt that “The Grace Card” isn’t your typical faith-based movie.

Buoyed by a national release Friday, the film boasts Academy Award winner Louis Gossett Jr., who got a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for 1982’s “An Officer and a Gentleman,” which starred the bankable Richard Gere.

Additionally, “The Grace Card” stars a middle-aged comic.

His name is Michael Joiner, a Gary native.

Those who see the first movie from Memphis-based Graceworks Pictures shouldn’t expect fire and brimstone. “It’s not a Bible-thumper movie,” assured Joiner, who graduated from Gary’s Wirt High School. “I don’t believe in preaching to the choir. We don’t want to hit people over the head.

“This is just a movie about forgiveness — no matter what religion, it applies.”

Joiner is a Christian and a self-proclaimed “clean” stand-up comedian.

“I don’t call myself a Christian comedian ’cause I’m just a comedian who happens to be a Christian,” said the resident of Independence, Mo. “I do comedy clubs. I’ve done the Hollywood Improv, and so on.”

Speaking of Hollywood, Howard Klausner brings a glint of Tinsel Town to “The Grace Card” as its writer and producer.

Klausner co-wrote the screenplay for “Space Cowboys,” a 2000 astronaut yarn which starred Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones. A resident of Nashville, Tenn., Klausner thought “The Grace Card” was an independent offering with an intriguing mix.

“What attracted me to the project was it had a faith element — a spirit element — but it had some good street smack to it,” said Klausner, noting the plot line revolves around “a black cop (played by Michael Higgenbottom) and a white cop (Joiner) in the city of Memphis.”

Joiner’s character (Mac McDonald) loses his son in an accident, leaving him angry with God “and just about everyone else.”

McDonald is partnered with a rising star on the police force who is a part-time pastor and a solid family man. “My sort of mission as a writer and a producer is to make faith-based films a little bit more relevant to the mainstream,” Klausner, 50, said this month. “I’m not a fan of real vanilla movies.”

He admits to being rather apprehensive at the outset about hiring Joiner for a lead role in “The Grace Card.”

Laughing as he recalled his initial hesitancy, Klausner said “Michael’s old picture off the Internet was just not a very good picture.”

More pointedly, Joiner’s career as a funnyman was a little unsettling for the screenwriter. “All I knew was he was a clean comedian, and I just rolled my eyes,” said Klausner.

However, Klausner learned early during the making of “The Grace Card” that Joiner was a comic who could go “dark,” meaning he can handle serious drama.

“He just lit it up,” said Klausner, who has a reputation as a script doctor. “He blew everybody away the first day. He’s amazing (in the film).”

Joiner may be a sleeper who gives “The Grace Card” — rated PG-13 — a jolt at the box office this opening weekend. “We’re gonna open up in 300 theaters,” Klausner said. Another estimate puts the number of theaters at about 350 nationwide.

Joiner said word of mouth on the “The Grace Card” has been spread through numerous prescreenings across the nation over the past several months, including a January presentation at Portage 16 IMAX.

Joiner describes “The Grace Card” as a low-budget effort that needs the creative marketing provided by the prescreenings that backers of the film arranged.

“They get a lot of church folks, of course — anyone who they think would really spread the word,” said Joiner, who attended the Jefferson and John H. Vohr elementary schools in Gary. The series of prerelease screenings has brought out the emotions in audiences.

“I was teasing some of my friends from Gary when they went to the Portage screening,” Joiner said. “These are big ol’ tough guys I used to hang out with, and they were in tears.”

A road map to rebuilding relationships, “The Grace Card’” follows police officer Mac McDonald, who harbors racist feelings and is filled with rage that hampers his career.

A combustible atmosphere is created when he is paired with fellow police officer Sam Wright, who is black. According to a plot summary, Wright has a calling to be a minister like his Grandpa George (played by Gossett).

A focal point of the movie is whether Mac and Sam can join forces to help each other.

Snaring Gossett for the motion picture lends some commercial muscle to “The Grace Card,” which does have the backing of two formidable entertainment entities — Samuel Goldwyn Films and Sony Music Entertainment.

“That was just a miracle,” Joiner said of Gossett’s inclusion in the cast. “You really need a name actor in any film if it has any hope of selling, especially to theaters.”

Contact Bob Kostanczuk at 648-3144.