Trivia!
The Jesus statue featured throughout the movie belongs to Director/ Actor Luke Walker's grandparents, and was an heirloom of sorts. Vinnie Vineyard convinced Luke to use it on the shoot because he thought it was horrifying, although it held great sentimental value and Luke was reluctant at first. Keith Gavins dropped it during the shoot and it cracked in several places. Luke was livid. Tracy Yaste quickly picked up the pieces and glued it back together. One of the crucifix nails is still bent from the fall however.
Several characters in the movie are based on real life employees of the radio station Vinnie Vineyard worked with as a Southern Gospel DJ. The only exceptions are the characters of Arlo and Sister Christian. That was a total fabrication because Vinnie Vineyard wanted Luke Walker to play a comedic character after his role as the heavy in "The Hike"
The majority of the movie (before Y2K) actually happened. Writer/ Director/ Actor Vinnie Vineyard, an aspiring disc jockey back in the 90's, could only get a job at very small Southern Gospel and Conservative Talk radio stations. What he witnessed from the control room baffled him in real life too, because it was the first time he ever saw Pentecostal preaching.
Kandi Thompson and Vinnie Vineyard wrote the "Cuttin' Tongues scene" traveling back from a film shoot together. This is based on Kandi's experience at a Pentecostal service where the participants were angrily "speaking in tongues" at each other.
The actress that was going to portray Amelia Greene backed out at the last minute, so Vinnie called a wrestler named Sheena Layne (Rock-C) to see if she was interested. He first saw her when he and Luke produced a wrestling television show that she frequented and they were impressed with her "Shakespeare" in the ring. Sheena proved to be a natural actress and possessing wrestling and stunt skills helped improve her fight scene tremendously in the Third Act.
The three flashback stories in the movie are all true... The mural of Stryper in Vinnie's childhood home, the game of Simon Says in Stearns Kentucky, and Luke (as Arlo) trying to save a man's life and lights filling the room when he passed. The band name HUGS is used in place of a very popular and litigious Jewish rock band from the 70s.
Sister Christian is based on a skit that featured actress and radio disc jockey Amy Hale that Vineyard saw online entitled "Bad Medicine." Kirby Simon pointed Vineyard in Hale's direction for that difficult role, and Vineyard loved her work. Amy took the character from that skit and adapted it to a Southern Gospel radio DJ character. Since she was an improv comedian, Hale didn't have her lines written for her. She only performed two opening takes where she met Cousin Vinnie. One where she was unfriendly with her new DJ competition, and another where she went overboard flirting with Vinnie. Both scenes were funny, but after she turned the statue of Jesus around 180 degrees while coming onto Vinnie, the crew died laughing and they went with that take.
The scene where Vinnie is prank calling a woman named Julie about sausage, almost word for word, happened. That skit, where he called 10 or so friends early in the morning asking about sausage got him in trouble at the gospel station in real life. The lady he pranked named Julie became his wife years later.And is, in fact, the very voice actress reciting those lines she said years before. She added the bit about Y2K in for the movie, though.
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