Cody Clark

After a long line of movies about elders, or male proselytizing missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, even the most white-shirt-and-tie-craving moviegoer would have to admit that the men have certainly had their turn. In the last eight years we've seen "God's Army," "States of Grace," "The Other Side of Heaven," "The Best Two Years," "Return with Honor" and "Suits on the Loose"

Apparently it is. The release in local theaters on Friday of the new film "The Errand of Angels" will let missionary movie fans have a taste of something slightly different. The new film, written and directed by LDS Film Festival founder Christian Vuissa, is about a young LDS woman trying to honor her missionary calling while serving in Austria.

"I don't know why there's not more films like it," Vuissa said in an April interview with the Daily Herald. "It's not just the missionary films, it's also films like 'Church Ball,' 'Saints and Soldiers.' There's a number of [LDS] films that are very male-centric."

Movies about Latter-day Saints and Latter-day Saint themes have rarely been cash cows, even at theaters in Utah, and especially in the last couple of years, over which period theatrical distribution of LDS films has fallen off drastically. Despite the slump in interest, Salt Lake City-based distributor Excel Entertainment (owned, through parent company Deseret Book, by the LDS Church) didn't hesitate to take a chance on "The Errand of Angels."

For one thing, movies about missionary work have tended to perform better than other LDS films. "It's the coolest thing that Mormons do," said Randy Davis, Excel's general manager. The new movie, in particular, Davis said, has a surefire formula for success: "You have beautiful people going to a beautiful place to talk to people about things that are beautiful."

Even moviegoers who have no interest in LDS culture, Davis said, might be happy to see something that doesn't have dark, depressing themes or offensive content. "So many movies now make you feel like you want to take a shower," he said. "This movie feels like a shower. You walk out and you feel uplifted."

"The Errand of Angels" (the title is taken from the second line of the LDS hymn of "As Sisters in Zion") originated in the mind of Heidi Johnson, a stay-at-home mother of four who lives in Fairfax Station, Va. Johnson, 35, served a proselytizing mission to Vienna and, as many missionaries do, kept a daily account of her experiences in a personal journal.

"I always kind of wanted to do something with my mission journals," Johnson said. "In 2005, I started to think it would be cool to tell a story about sister missionaries."

Johnson said she's been keenly aware that, even when sister missionaries are shown in LDS movies, their presence never amounts to much. In the missionary comedy "The R.M.," she said, "I think they have a guy dressed up like a sister."

A family connection got Johnson in contact with Vuissa -- her father-in-law was mission president of the German mission where Vuissa served. Together, the two of them looked at what she'd written and Vuissa crafted a screenplay from it. The final product, Johnson said, has stories from her mission, stories from Vuissa's and a few made-up stories that grew from this or that seed of actual missionary experience.

"Christian, being a filmmaker, knew how to tweak things" to make them more cinematic, said Johnson, who's credited as a producer on the new film. She's happy with the changes, she said: "I was more concerned about having a movie that would help people than having an autobiography."

(One example: In the film, the main character, Sister Taylor, has a crisis-of-faith moment in a quiet graveyard. In real life, Johnson said, "that took place in a member's home. I went off to use the bathroom and I was like, 'I can't do this anymore.' ")

Vuissa said that women who've seen the film so far are moved by its portrayal of missionary work as experienced by women. "What I've heard from women is that they appreciate that it's a sincere, honest film," he said. In particular, Vuissa said, women are grateful that the film "presents sisters in a dignified way."

One impressive thing about "The Errand of Angels" that people may not glean from watching it is how much Vuissa didn't have to spend to make it. With the total cost of production in the neighborhood of $160,000 (as reported on industry site IMDb.com), it wasn't surprising to hear the word "guerilla" while talking to members of the film's cast.

Brigham Young University graduate Erin Chambers, 28, plays Sister Taylor, the character based on Johnson, and said that the cast would frequently shoot for between 12 and 16 hours per day. "And then we'd come home and I'd have to go over my German for the next day," Chambers said. "It was just a really, really intense shoot."

Rachel Emmers, 32, who plays a missionary companion of Chambers's Sister Taylor, said that, especially over the first couple of days of the shoot, a lot of her German dialogue was just strings of sounds that she'd memorized.

The cast worked in different kinds of weather, including filming scenes during a rainstorm, and occasionally worked in situations that you wouldn't expect to read about in an ordinary Hollywood production diary. Chambers remembered one scene that required Sister Taylor to board a train. The filmmakers didn't have a permit, so they just went to the train station and shot around ordinary arrivals and departures.

"I had to keep getting on" the train, Chambers said. "I was worried that it was going to leave with me on it. I didn't have a passport, or money, or ID or anything." Vuissa provided gentle encouragement. "Christian just kept telling me, 'It's fine. The train's not leaving yet,' " she said.

"We just did everything on the fly," Vuissa said. Including wardrobe changes. The cast, he said, "had to sometimes change in public bathrooms."

And when the missionaries talk to strangers in the movie, well, they're not entirely acting. Vuissa had them simply approach people on the street. Like real missionaries. "One of my greatest fears is having to speak to strangers," said Emmers. "You'd start speaking to people and then they'd start responding back to you. It was intimidating."

Chambers, who is LDS, didn't serve a mission, but being a movie missionary gave her a taste of what real missionaries go through. "I feel like I can say because I did this movie that I have an idea what it would be like," she said. "I have a lot of respect for missionaries."

• Cody Clark can be reached at 344-2542 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it