The Unbreakable Boy Makes Good

When Jesus Revolution became a surprise box-office hit in 2023, Franklin film studio Kingdom Story Company kicked off a run of bigscreen faith-based projects that challenged the reputation of a genre that had become a punchline even to the most devout. Founded on the profits from Jon and Andrew Erwin’s surprise 2018 blockbuster I Can Only Imagine that details the origins of the Christian rock hit, Kingdom has remained dedicated to high-quality productions and partnerships with name actors like Dennis Quaid, Hilary Swank, Anna Paquin, and Zachary Levi.

Yet, beyond the Erwins, Kingdom also owes much of its success to filmmaker Jon Gunn. Fresh off the acclaim that met his 2017 adaptation of the classic Christian book The Case for Christ, Gunn began working closely with the studio, serving as the co-writer for hits like Jesus Revolution, American Underdog, and I Still Believe and executive producing Prime’s new biblical series, House of David.

After last year’s Ordinary Angels, Gunn returns to the director’s chair with The Unbreakable Boy, an adaptation of Scott LeRette’s memoir about raising a son with autism and a genetic brittle bone disease. As the film makes its streaming debut fresh from its theatrical run last winter, Gunn sat down with The Pamphleteer to talk about his work with Kingdom and the challenges of adapting real life stories.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s the process of writing a story from a child’s perspective?

That was one of the challenges for me when I decided to do the film that way. I was helped dramatically by the fact that Austin is a real child. I have the book his father wrote that included lots of great anecdotes of Austin as a child with autism and brittle bone disease. There were bits and pieces of dialogue or funny things that he had said and these interesting worldview moments. 

The other great help was that I knew the family now and I could rely on them. I’d often call and say, “How do you think Austin would say this?” Or, I would get to talk to Austin, and I’d write down things that he said and use those as inspiration. It helped me to find his voice. 

The first thing I had to do to break this story was read a book that encapsulates 20 years of a family's experience, and to find both a voice and a way in and then to give shape to that. I love the idea of the autistic child narrating the story of the parents, and it instantly gave me a great amount of inspiration. 

But I did get a little nervous and asked myself, “Am I going to write a 13-year-old child with autism and get the uniqueness of his voice?” And so again, I just kept going back to the book, back to the family, and kept listening and talking. So many of the really unique, beautiful nuggets of Austin came directly from the real kid.

Since the movie is based on a true story, I have to ask about the film’s great running gag involving Fight Club, with Zachary Levi’s imaginary friend even dressing up as Tyler Durden. It hits home that this is also a movie about masculinity, but a very different movie than Fight Club, obviously. Was that something that was based in real life, or was that something that you used as a thematic and story anchor?

One of the things that I love about doing adaptations of real-life stories is that ideas come at you that you might not have thought of if you were just creating it whole cloth. I never would have thought to have the parent have an imaginary friend, especially considering the fact that I was already telling a story from the point of view of a child with autism, and he already had his own sort of magical realism moments thanks to the way he saw the world. There was just one mention in the book about how Scott himself–who was very OCD and had his own spectrum characteristics–would talk to himself a lot, and his mom would joke that he had an imaginary friend that he called Joe. 

So I made a note of it, and I was like, “Would it be fun to give him an imaginary friend?” And I first thought it was just too many ideas for the story. Then, I said, “Well, I’m going to give him a best friend, and maybe we’ll just discover at some point that his best friend isn’t really real.” That, of course, made me think of Tyler Durden and Fight Club. 

Because Austin is a huge fan of movies and talks about movies constantly, it was a self-reflexive way of keeping the tone throughout the movie with pop culture both through father and son, parent and child. Austin sees the world through the lens of the content that he watches and consumes. And, I’m just a fan of Fight Club, so I thought it’d be really fun to put his imaginary friend in a Tyler Durden Halloween costume.

It was an interesting exploration. I didn’t know if the studio and everyone else were going to go for it, and they really did. I received the gift of meeting Drew Powell–the actor who plays Joe–who's one of my dear friends now, and it’s just so spectacularly fun for me to watch.

This is your second movie in a row that deals with healthcare issues and medical billing and how it strains families. Is that something you’re naturally drawn to as a storyteller?

It’s happenstance. I think it’s a really valid exploration and conversation to have. I’ve told a lot of true stories, and I like getting into the nitty gritty of the challenges of what it is to live life. A lot of times, movies skip over bills and struggles like that. So both of these stories, Ordinary Angels–the one that I just made with Hilary Swank and Alan Ritchson–and this one deal very much with a child with health issues and the medical bills that were associated with that. 

In this particular case, similarly, that was part of their struggle. The mounting debt. It’s already hard enough to deal with health issues or children who need medical attention that’s expensive. And then when you start looking at the financial struggles on top of that…It’s good storytelling to have those conflicts, but it’s also a really relatable thing that I think many, many people struggle with. So to the extent that within America, we have issues in our healthcare system that feel very unfair. I guess I do have passion about that. 

What I enjoyed most about the film are the small moments like whenever the trash service gets canceled. This is a film that is really about how our ideas of adulthood are not always what we think, and our dreams are not always what we think. Is that a difficult thing to navigate as a director?

I love those moments like that. When you look at a family in financial crisis, we’re so used to seeing that the home is repossessed or the car is taken. But, I love the fact that one of the real crushing details of Scott and Teresa’s life was that when they were overspending and had mounting debt that the trash company came and took their trash cans. I’d never heard of that before. I think Scott even says that in the story–that he didn't even know that was the thing, but it happened to them. Those are the gifts that you get when you tell true stories. Those are the things you always look for when you’re creating stories from nothing. It helps a lot when writing to feed off of the individual, real things that happen to these people.

Kingdom Story is based here in Franklin. You've done a lot of work with them. Aside from the Erwin Brothers who directed Jesus Revolution, you’re the artist in residence with a hand in most of their projects. What is it about Kingdom’s approach to faith-adjacent movies and films in general that you appreciate and has kept this partnership going for so long?

It’s  because of the fact that these stories tend to be true stories, but are always aspirational and uplifting. That doesn’t mean that they don’t deal with difficult topics–we always do, or tend to–but the fact that they’re here to inspire and to bring positivity into the world, especially if it’s going to be something that’s related to faith issues at all. 

It was an absolute non-starter for me to be involved with a project that would use faith in a negative way as a separator or a divider. I have no interest in that at all. I think faith issues are interesting to explore. My father was a preacher, so I liked that this was a company that wanted to tell aspirational and inspirational stories that are about uniting and bringing people together. I think we found a lot of really compelling stories, whether it’s a sports movie like American Underdog or something like Ordinary Angels, it's a true story of a family struggling. Sometimes faith is part of it, but it’s always an uplifting and ultimately optimistic story to share. 

The Unbreakable Boy is now available for purchase or rental on disc and digital.