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The shocking thing about "Falling," the latest movie by Utah County-based filmmaker Richard Dutcher, isn't the movie's R-rated violence. Or its profanity. Or its harsh handling of issues of faith.

What's shocking is that Dutcher, who in 2005 had what he calls "a sudden shift in understanding" that caused him to leave The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wrote this challenging movie in 1999 - when he was still a devout Mormon, and before he started filming his landmark LDS missionary drama "God's Army."

"I wanted to write something purely for myself," Dutcher said last week from the Provo offices of his Main Street Movie Company.

"Falling" (which opens Friday at the Megaplex 12 at The Gateway) stars Dutcher as Eric, a freelance Los Angeles videographer, who rides around town with a police scanner hoping to get footage of bloody accidents and crime scenes. Eric, raised Mormon but not a regular churchgoer, deals with the ethical qualms of his job while his actress wife, Davey (Virginia Reece), faces a similar moral choice: whether to submit to Hollywood's "casting couch."

The idea of a story about "a lapsed Mormon having the beginnings of a spiritual rebirth" appealed to Dutcher then. "In 1999, I was someone who had recently had a spiritual rebirth," he said. Dutcher had considered making "Falling" his follow-up to the successful "God's Army" - but then he had the brainstorm for the LDS-themed police thriller "Brigham City" and started casting that movie instead.

"When I realized I was going to be in L.A. on 'States of Grace,' " Dutcher said, referring to the missionary tale that was a semi-sequel to "God's Army," he figured now was the chance to make "Falling." "It's another L.A. story."

But by the time Dutcher started filming "Falling" in 2005, spiritually he wasn't the same person he was when he wrote it.

"I asked myself some basic questions that I assumed I knew the answers to. But when I really asked the questions, those answers weren't there," he said. "As a Mormon, you look outwardly for your spirituality. Now there was a voice I hadn't heard before that was within me. . . . It was kind of a spiritually terrifying moment."

That difference in Dutcher's faith wouldn't have changed "Falling" much, he said, because the dialogue and violent content were always there. But the ending, which culminates in a scene with Eric kneeling before a Christus statue near the Los Angeles LDS Temple, would have been different.

"When I wrote it, there would have been more of a feeling of hope, of redemption," Dutcher said. "I think that's still there, it's just harder."

Dutcher now is among a group of artists - including the playwright and filmmaker Neil LaBute and the novelist Brian Evenson - who have left the LDS Church after finding it difficult to express themselves within it.

"The doctrines of Mormonism demand this kind of art. They demand an artist could grow as much as he could," Dutcher said. "But the culture certainly doesn't. . . .

"In religious artistic circles, people point to these eras - like the Renaissance - of artistic freedom. But the reality is it's really uncommon. Religious communities do not usually produce great art," he said.

Dutcher's departure from "Mormon Cinema" made its own splash. In an op-ed article last April in The Daily Herald of Provo, he gave some parting advice - and mentioned, almost in passing, that he was now a nonpracticing Mormon. The response set off a firestorm in the LDS blogosphere.

Dutcher said he always chafed at being identified as a "Mormon filmmaker," and his feelings intensified when a glut of LDS-themed movies followed "God's Army" and "Brigham City."

"I got stuck in this little box, and suddenly the box got filled in," he said, adding that he knew he didn't belong in that box because "I knew 'Falling' was coming, and I knew the response I'd most likely get."

While "Falling" gets its theatrical run - after its Salt Lake City dates, it will open in March in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago - Dutcher is busy editing his next movie, "Evil Angel," a supernatural thriller starring Ving Rhames that he shot in Salt Lake City. It's Dutcher's effort to make a mainstream horror movie so he can finance personal projects like "Falling."

"I still want to make those movies," Dutcher said, "but they don't do very well."

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