It was "dumb Irish luck" that got "The Nativity Story" its Nov. 26 screening at the Vatican, according to Marty Bowen, the film's Catholic producer.

"I was altar boy of the year at Holy Family Church in Fort Worth, Texas, in '82 and '83. When you have that kind of clout, you can make things happen," joked Bowen, a parishioner of Good Shepherd Church in Beverly Hills.

In a more serious vein, Bowen said, "The church is looking for entertainment that will embrace its values, rather than be on the defensive with films like 'The Da Vinci Code.'"

Bowen, speaking to Catholic News Service from Rome, said that when Italians asked him where he was from he had to stop himself to answer "Los Angeles," rather than his native Texas, since he has lived on the West Coast for the past 15 years, spending most of that time as an agent before getting into the movie production business with "The Nativity Story."

"But if you really ask me where I'm from, I'll still answer St. Mary's Church in Mexia, Texas, where I had my first Communion and was baptized," Bowen told CNS.

From his time spent as a producer, Bowen acknowledged that "you never see a movie get made and released in a calendar year," as "The Nativity Story" was. "Maybe a quickie low-budget film, but this kind of thing is an almost-impossibility," particularly given the movie's budget, which Bowen put at the mid-$30 million mark.

"When we told New Line (the studio) what we wanted to do, they got in line very, very quickly," he said.

Bowen said he's a fan of the religious epic genre. "I thought 'The Passion of the Christ' was a terrific film," he told CNS, noting that Jesuit Father William Fulco was a consultant to both that film and "The Nativity Story." Bowen praised Father Fulco as "the most prominent scholar in Aramaic in the country --- and, being in Los Angeles, he's accessible." Father Fulco teaches at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

"The Ten Commandments" was also on Bowen's short list of favorite religious movies.

Bowen defended the decision not to cast a lot of high-profile stars. "The stars of this movie are Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus," he said. "We wanted to pick the right actor for the part and didn't want to see it being bogged down." Simply put, he continued, "Tom Cruise playing Joseph, it would detract from the story."

He said he did not know what impact the real-life pregnancy of 16-year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes, who plays Mary in "The Nativity Story," would have on the film's fortunes. She is one of the movie's few recognizable stars.

"Time will tell," Bowen said. "She wasn't able to be part of our press junkets. When you're 16 and pregnant, you really don't want to do that kind of thing."

In the new film, the tale is not told in a strictly chronological fashion. "People know the story," Bowen said. "We wanted to mix it up a bit, make them think."

Bowen decided to make the leap from agent to producer when screenwriter Mike Rich mentioned his idea to write a screenplay about the Nativity.

"When Mike Rich decided he wanted to write a movie that doesn't have to do with baseball ('The Rookie') or hockey pucks ('D3: The Mighty Ducks') but instead was about the birth of Christ, I was going to move from being on the sidelines to 'I want to do this.' It's the kind of movie I wanted to make," Bowen said.

For a producer waiting for a film to be released, it's a different kind of anxiety than it is for an agent. "For the most part, you're hedged," or have less risk, as an agent, since an agent handles many actors and new films or television shows come fairly frequently, Bowen said. For a producer, though, "this is a very nerve-wracking process. I've tried very hard to not get consumed by it."

---CNS