thank you all for coming today. It's a treat
on honor, uh, to speak to you today
about my book. Um all right, let me
start with the shaggy dog story. Um, in
fact, I used to teach for the Department of
Interdisciplinary Studies where I had the honour of, um
co teaching, of course, with Dr Elizabeth Starters
Melvin, um, on Jesus movies, which was
her idea after credit Elizabeth with this, um,
the idea was that Elizabeth would bring her scholarship as
an historian of the New Testament, particularly the gospel
of Matthew. I'm sorry. Uh, Mark.
Okay. Thank you, Mark. Uh, all
right. Yeah. Um, and I would bring
what I knew about Hollywood and and the way in
which they handle Jesus movies over the last century or
so. Which, to me, is a fascinating
history. Um, that I also have some history
with the Department of Communication. Back when they were
. How's the film program run by Dr Steven Prince
? Um, I've taught courses across this due to
them, and so let's see, Those are three
of the department's theater cinema now has the film program
Sociology, interdisciplinary studies. Yeah. All right.
Um, so this has been a great university of
great college to serve with. In that sense,
um, we can work with each other on genuinely
interdisciplinary projects. Um, I used to teach for
Southern Baptists at a school in Nashville called Belmont University
, run by the Tennessee Baptist Convention until a few
years ago when they split. Um, at that
time, I became interested in sociology religion because I
was in a sociology department and they really wanted me
to address religion. And and, uh So I
took on the challenge and began to look at how
evangelicals go to the movies. Evangelical organizations, it
turns out, spent a lot of time, a
lot of energy investing in parental guides for movie going
. And so I began to track these and got
to know some of the people who ran them and
was sort of going to conferences and presenting papers on
the research when the Passion of the Christ came out
. By that time, I'd come to Virginia Tech
and and joined the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, and
I and my colleagues deep prints. Now the film
guy, over in theater cinema went and saw the
Passion of the Christ and there we sat a couple
of films, scholars in a crowd that was largely
chanting through the movie as the violence. Woodcrest.
The chanting would grow in volume. You know.
Jesus, Jesus, Lord, Lord. And it
became clear that these were people who had earlier bust
in with church groups and had seen the film during
that powerful opening week when it had really, genuinely
been a religious experience and not just a Hollywood movie
, Um, as its filmmaker had intended and again
here, a couple of nerdy film scholars with due
respect to Steven Prince. At least I was a
nerd thinking Wow. Okay, this theater is not
just another theater here, and and this is not
just another movie. Um, so he and I
actually each one out and scored a publication off of
this. You know, being this is what we
do for for money. Um, And then I
let it go For several years when editors of a
British series and controversial films approached me, um,
they are interested in publishing a series of monographs on
films that got banned or restricted somehow in the U
. K. And elsewhere in Europe, for one
reason or another. And so the Passion of the
Christ certainly got its released restricted because of its violence
. Um and so I signed on, and that's
really where this book came from. What it gave
me an opportunity to do then was to dig in
deeper than I had before into the history of Hollywood
Jesus filmmaking. How do they do it? How
did C B DeMille do it? How did the
early silent film makers do it, um, did
the course that Mel Gibson and his icon production did
it differ from that? Or did he really kind
of play with the same old playbook? Um,
how have this become the biggest selling independent production ever
? How how did he struck Gold? As a
sociologist, I was interested in looking how organizational routines
govern that. How do they usually do it in
Hollywood? How do evangelical and conservative Catholic Church goer
churchgoers usually deal with Hollywood filmmakers who come to them
for help, how to rating sport and sensors and
and and other film industry groups? How do they
normally deal with the film with extensive scenes of torture
? Um, how do Muslim nations usually deal with
the movie that features Jesus et cetera. And so
it became a history of all these organizations and then
learning that history, I could hopefully say what went
so fabulously awry with this one, since this one
had a career unlike any other Jesus films. So
what came out of that a couple of years working
with Dr Struthers Melbourne in this Jesus course and and
those great students we had there and then doing a
lot of research on my own became the basis for
this book. So that's the shaggy dog story.
Now I want to take, um I suppose I
should just take 10 minutes, maybe just going through
the chapters. Um, not 10 minutes each.
Just 10 minutes giving you the punchlines, right?
Having told you where where I come from, Um
So, uh, let's say I'm going to edit
as I go here because I have more here than
I can say. Um, Gibson approached evangelicals and
conservative Catholic groups for support about midway through post production
on The Passion of the Christ because he had found
out that a small group of scholars and anti defamation
personnel working, um uh, for the Anti Defamation
League and also the Catholic Council and the Council of
Bishops had had seen a script, a shooting script
that had been distributed in Matera when they were shooting
the Italian externals. And this script alarmed these scholars
and anti defamation personnels and and and Bishops Council people
because and I can confirm their impression. That's when
I share. It suggested that the Judean authorities were
predatory, all but animal in their lust to to
do terrible things to the hero. Jesus. Um
, and they looked at this and I thought,
Oh, no, Here we go, back to
the Middle Ages, right here We go back to
a time when anti Semitism was was open season.
And so they began to speak to reporters about it
, and they said they were not real comfortable with
this. And they sent Gibson a long memo saying
, Please stop now, right? You know,
read, Write this. Get rid of all this
horrible dialogue. Do it differently, Please. It
was at that point that Gibson went to, um
, evangelical organizations in Colorado Springs National Evangelical Association.
Uh, focus on the family. Is there any
a is their whole, But that's evangelical Central,
really, into his organization's He went to them.
He said help. And they did. He hired
Pat Robertson's old publicist and they went to town.
And basically, what happened to to get to the
punch line was he created a marketing bonanza by saying
, Those Jews are trying to do it again.
They killed Jesus 2000 years ago, and I'm not
making this up now. They're trying to do it
to me. Mel Gibson. That was what he
said. Okay. And across the country, evangelical
organizations bought it. Um, notice my tone of
voice. They bought it and they went for it
. And they said, We're behind you, brother
. We're gonna make this movie of success. We're
gonna stand with you against those awful liberals, humanists
, liberal Catholics and scholars. And they took aim
at scholars. Now, all right, that was
really the punchline of the marketing campaign. It works
. Okay. They showed their support in part by
bussing in in massive numbers, selling out block booking
, opening week. Uh, anxious. Um,
Media Corporation had just bought Regal theaters. Regal theaters
Block, booked across the country, basically sold out
whole theaters for days as a gesture of support and
solidarity. It worked. Um, the movie became
a massive success. It became the kind of blockbuster
marketing phenomenon that Hollywood, uh, marketer's dream of
where everybody's talking about it, which means everybody else
needs to see it. And so we all went
out and saw it. All right, Um,
that was one punch line. Um, the proximity
that follows is they tried to keep it going.
Alright. Gibson's co producer, Guy who went to
school actually, and loyal and merriment with the women
, is now my spouse. Tony Cala Santa Good
Catholic College. Um, he was a conservative,
very conservative Catholic filmmaker, and he split off after
the success of The Passion with some of his money
and try to make a success with a number of
other conservative Christian movies. You may have heard of
movies like The Stoning of I Forget the Name,
The Stoning of Soraya Am, Something like that,
Thank you, and he's out there swinging. But
so far it has yet to blossom into a vibrant
conservative Christian industry. Um, the number of other
filmmakers said, Wow, we got a big Christian
audience ready to show up by the bus load for
our movies. Let's go. It didn't happen.
The following year, Gibson re released The Passion of
the Christ, with some of the awful violence trimmed
down in order to make it an annual event.
It didn't work. Nobody went. Basically. The
second punch line is we're back to normal as though
the movie had never existed. No massive changes have
occurred. It did not turn into a massive renewal
of Christian fervor in the US Evangelicals are not in
control of the Republican Party, much less the White
House and Congress. None of the dreams and hopes
that the release of this movie raised has come to
fruition. We're right back to normal. Hollywood is
spitting out its usual kid oriented swell. Um,
that we all know and love. Um, the
third punch line is that a massive exception was made
at the time by the rating sport. Uh,
the codes and ratings administration stamps all of Hollywood's movies
with P, G S and P, G,
S and R's and exits and so forth and be
whatever it is. Um, the rating that are
used very often used to be X NC 17,
and this movie features 2 10 minute long set pieces
of torture in which not only is a terrible thing
happening to her hero, but the people doing the
terrible things are obviously enjoying it. The M P
A, which which owns and controls Cara, has
never allowed such footage to be released with an R
rating ever. Okay, it's a deal breaker.
If someone is torturing someone else and obviously enjoying it
, that is an automatic used to be X now
NC 17. As a result, Hollywood usually doesn't
deal in that stuff. You're all thinking Well,
I've seen a lot of terrible violence, but you
haven't seen that in an R rated movie until The
Passion of the Christ. Okay, so the question
is, How did they do that? Well,
the way we think they did, it was a
They released a movie in the middle of the war
on terror, with the public discussion of torture going
on. And Dr Prince over in theater cinema has
actually got a nice track record in his own publications
, I think one of which is up here showing
that during wartime Hollywood loosens up a little bit happened
in World War Two happened in Vietnam. We think
it happened a little bit during the Iraq war But
the second reason was the big reason evangelical and conservative
Catholic organizations, by expressing their support for this film
, essentially put the M P A in the position
opposite to what it usually is in. Usually,
the MPA is coming down hard on movies and giving
them restricted ratings because it doesn't want to anger the
evangelical and Christian and Catholic organizations, afraid that they
will then call their senators and representatives and say,
we need more censorship, which they often did.
This is what happened in Natural Born Killers came out
. A variety of Tarantino movies have had this effect
, etcetera, etcetera. This time they were on
the other side. They were saying, Not only
do you want this movie at, we want to
take our kids to see it And so the EPA
said, Ha, well, that's different. What
are we going to do? And the M P
A. Which does not make its internal negotiations public
at this time and therefore I don't actually have direct
access to that conversation has suddenly made it clear that
they were in kind of an awkward position. What
I did get was a long, close look at
what happened in another country that had the same fight
. New Zealand. Um, it was stamped with
the restrictive rating Evangelical conservative Catholic organization stepped up and
said, Oh, yeah, you're trying to kill
Christ again. You loosen up the ratings and let
us take our kids. They went round and round
and finally, in fact, the New Zealand organization
said okay and lifted the rating a little bit so
they could take their kids. Um, I believe
that this is exactly what would have happened in this
country had they stamp that with an NC 17,
they would have angered the very people they try very
hard not to anger. And so they did what
nations around the world did not all but many and
said, Okay, have your violent movie. All
right, One more punch line and then I'm done
. I'm gonna skip a couple of chapters here.
But one of the big questions at the time was
, Is the movie really anti Semitic? Is Gibson
really anti Semitic? Um, are these anti defamation
personnel and scholars and liberal Catholics correct and valid in
in their charges? That was a huge debate.
I don't know if any. Remember this back and
forth. Well, a lot of people saw the
movie and came out disagreeing as much as ever.
The release of the movie did not settle the debate
at all. So what do I, as a
scholar do? Well, it's not. No one's
really asking me. But here's what I found out
when Gibson and a centerist wrote the screenplay, they
didn't just lean on the Gospels, Okay? They
picked up, um, transcribe meditations of Catholic mystics
from the 19th century. Um, the big one
being, uh, Catherine Emmerich. I believe it's
her name. A source. Basically, what happened
was, I believe a monk or a priest.
A number of German priest spent a lot of trying
transcribing her meditations. She would wake up from dreams
and visions and and narrate them. And so they
wrote these down. And this is available now on
a paper back here in the library. If you
want the dolorous passion of our Lord Jesus Christ and
she's 1/19 century Catholic German, you gotta give her
, you know, a break for being in the
historical position she's in. But oh, my goodness
, She did not have any sympathy whatsoever for Jews
. There's no bones about it. Jews were evil
, vile rats and lice who just lived to make
God suffer because they were furious with Jesus for being
Jesus, Envious of his power, etcetera, etcetera
, etcetera. Gibson and his co writer leaned heavily
on this. I don't believe they have any reason
. I have no reason to think that they understood
this as anti Semitic. It was just part of
their tradition. They were raised conservative Catholics. That
was just part of what you read. All right
, so they framed the screenplay accordingly. People on
the set occasionally expressed some reservations. We've got some
some anecdotes of Jewish performers saying, Yeah, Boy
, this feels kind of funny. And some liberal
Catholics on the set saying, Gosh, this seems
kind of funny to me, but generally speaking,
people got along well, professionals, they made the
movie. They were getting paid. Right. Um
, when Gibson read the charges from the scholars committee
, he thought I've got by that time, I
think he had in the low 20 million invested of
his own money in this movie, okay? With
no pickup deal from a major distributor at all,
he thought I'm gonna hit the trouble here. And
so he went into countercharge Moto. They're trying to
kill Christ the second time, and he went back
and he edited the movie and he began to take
things out that he knew. We're really gonna make
him look bad. And in fact, he deleted
from the subtitle Dialogue The curse, Uh, his
blood be upon us and upon our Children from helping
out. Now, is that John? I forget
? Um, yeah. The finished film is anti
Semitic. In this way, the motive of a
handful of people are really clear. Hollywood, if
you know, Hollywood works, characters, heroes especially
have goals. They have clear motivation. You know
what they're trying to do? Other people get in
the way, There's conflict, and then the movie
ends one way or the other. Okay, but
the goals have to be clear. The goal of
Jesus has never stated. Why is he doing this
? Why is he volunteering to die? This horrible
death on the cross? The movie doesn't go there
. The goal of God Almighty above is never stated
. The goals of the temple guards and Roman soldiers
who torment him are never stated. They're just sort
of having fun. The goals of the Judean priests
who are calling for his death are never stated.
Okay, now, in Hollywood storytelling, this is
different. This is weird that you would never say
why someone is doing something so remarkable. The only
people whose goals get stated are the people who try
at some point to help Jesus and failed Judas.
His goals are real clear. Okay, Pilot,
He wants to free Jesus because his wife is sympathetic
and he fails His His motivation is clear. Simon
, who helps to carry the cross. He's moved
by the plight of a of a condemned man.
His goal is clear. All right, Mary,
the mother of God, you can imagine her motivation
. Stop my son suffering. But the Judean priests
like Jesus himself. Their motivations go unstated what this
means. And this was a major factor in the
in the reception of the movie. So I can
finish my story here was that conservative Christians who understand
the motivation of God to be to ransom us from
hell. Okay. Substitution. Eri Atonement, the
doctrine is called could figure Jesus motives. They already
had that in their minds they didn't need to be
told. They understood this from their own traditions and
the G. D and priests. Well, their
motivations within that tradition are also well known. They're
Jews, okay? They're just mean. They're mean
to Jesus. You don't have to say why.
They're mean. They're Jews. And so, to
the most conservative groups who saw this film, these
didn't register storytelling problems. They understood it. They
didn't complain about the under motivated characterization. Whereas if
you go back and look at all the responses at
the time, um, liberal Christians, Jews,
unaffiliated scholars and secular reviewers went and saw this movie
. And I thought, What is going on?
Who are these people? Why are they being so
mean? Why is Jesus taking all this for them
? The under motivated characterization made no sense at all
. They're accustomed to Hollywood storytelling that lays it all
out. Well, this means to finish up here
is that Gibson was deliberately and systematically playing to a
particular crowd that already knew why the Jews do what
they do. Just as they already knew why Jesus
did what he did. And the rest of us
are just left there on the I mean, I
knew because I raised Presbyterian because I had Elizabeth telling
me, uh, but a fair number of people
were left kind of scratching their heads. So if
the movie is anti Semitic, it's anti Semitic.
In that way, in a very kind of implicit
way, it doesn't come out and say Jews are
horrible people. It just leaves you to figure.
Well, they kind of must be horrible people because
there's no obvious motivation for them to do these horrible
things. All right, so, uh, there
are a number of other punchlines and I'm not gonna
take your time with, but I will say in
closing that it is a pleasure to have this job
where I can take a year and a half of
my life and dig in on research like this.
It's really enjoyable as well as at least to me
, given my own interest, really enlightening. It
is also a pleasure to be able to work in
a situation where I get to meet with colleagues who
, at least for the occasional half hour, also
interested. So thank you for your attention your time
. Um it's an honor not only to have a
book out, but to talk to you about it
. and I would love to give answers. Um
, if I'm able to any questions, you might
have. Thanks. Meantime, I gotta have water
. Mhm. Yes, sir. I was the
way that this movie was publicized. Different from other
movies that were controversial. The last temptation of Great
Wow. Yeah, that was another explosion. Well
, Gibson tried. Gibson did what C. B
. DeMille had tried. And then the greatest story
ever told the filmmakers name has escaped my mind.
Guided giant Stevens? Yeah. George Stevens. Okay
. CB DeMille, in the late twenties with the
first silent version of King of Kings George Stevens,
who was, you know, huge Hollywood figure at
the time. He done giant and a number of
other really important Hollywood movies in 1964. They both
went out of the way to approach, uh,
mainline American Christian groups and said, Please support this
release truck. Your groups have to see it.
Advertise it. They had whole publicity campaigns ready to
hand out to church networks. Gibson's marketing team again
, this guy used to work outreach productions used to
work for Pat Robinson. They knew how to market
with grassroots Christians organizations, and so I don't have
time to rattle off all of the different ways ahead
of getting the word out and drumming up support.
It didn't work for De Mille because he also had
a spat with anti defamation personnel and rabbis. He
had tried to mollify them, but if you go
back and see his movie, you'll see why his
version of KFC is pretty awful. I mean,
he he really he was a Methodist CB Demel,
Um, Guy made the 10 Commandments. I don't
know if his name is known anymore, but he
was a great Hollywood filmmaker. He was, like
many, many mainstream Americans at the time, deeply
anti Semitic, you know, right in there with
Walt Disney. He just didn't like Jews very much
. His movie looks like it was made by a
guy doesn't like Jews very much at the time,
rabbis and anti defamation people said, Yeah, we
don't like it very much, and the bad publicity
actually kept viewership down. Hollywood didn't try that again
for 35 years, when George Stevens, just after
they had re made King of Kings, stepped up
and said, I'll show you how it's done.
And so he went to church groups and he had
himself nominated. For every Civic Award you can imagine
, he said, Americans must feel it's a privilege
to attend this movie, and he really got the
whole nation going marketing. And then people went and
saw it, and it was 3.5 hours of motive
, non motivated in a tone in toning and and
tableaus. And it was just not a very exciting
movie. And so again, it was a huge
failure. He had helped to re release it every
year, just like Gibson with The Passion of the
Christ, people had none of it. Gibson knocked
it out of the park. He was the one
who finally made it work because he really connected with
those church groups, and the way I think he
did it was he went and he said, Look
, those Jews are trying to get me okay And
in the middle of a very contentious election year in
which left and right were sharply polarized in this country
, in the way they really hadn't been in 64
with evangelical organizations fully shut up to to to move
in a way they were not. In 1964 he
finally was able to succeed. Where? Demel and
Stevens. We're not poor Steve. Yes, sir
. Thank you. Know mhm. I wonder during
your research, if you came across information or evidence
claims that Jesus was a black man, would it
have made a difference to the evangelicals? The a
custom decision was made to pass Jesus. Did you
come across? There are movies I believe in,
but they were not. They were not in the
way of my research path. That was not a
conversation that was part of the marketing of this film
. I don't think it was a conversation that was
part of the production of the film, although here's
an anecdote. Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in
the film, has blue eyes. They made a
decision having to do with his butts to contact lenses
, that they were going to have to brown his
eyes digitally and they thought, Well, with digital
compositing, we can do that. You go and
watch the movie, his eye, their mood eyes
. They changed from scene to scene. Sometimes I
got stills to prove this there. Jim Caviezel's Blue
. Other times they're this kind of bright yellowy brown
, very unnatural color. Other times. It's a
sort of weird purple color. They changed from scene
to scene and that I regard as a unintentionally distracted
consequence of having cast yet another yet another Arian actor
as the Semitic. Christ. Um Mm. How
would evangelicals have responded if he had classed a black
actor as Jesus? That's a great question. I
would love to see that happen just to test the
theory, I'm guessing. And I'm just gonna guess
here that the politics of the time were such that
they would have thought, Well, that's different.
But they would still have supported the movie because they
still had this intense animosity towards liberal humanist scholars and
Jews. And I think that trumped anything else.
And I may be wrong, but I think in
this case, it's one prejudice trumping another. It's
America. Yes. You think of it like in
journalistic terms, like Okay, we're telling a story
that happened. This is how it happened. How
do you avoid showing terrible violence to the person of
Christ? Uh huh. Let me tell you,
do you censor that out, right? Hmm.
All right. Identified with the mayor of Violence filmmaker
Steve Princeton in his writing. I'll plug his book
again. Uh, classical Hollywood violence makes a strong
case of filmmakers have always wanted to go real far
in the direction of showing violence. It was marketing
oriented Hollywood corporations that that restrain them. They don't
want to get the government in regulating their industry,
so they try to keep it clean. You know
, more or less, um, less. You're
probably thinking, but just enough. Um, Gibson
thought I'm gonna break through this. I'm going to
tell it like it was. And I can tell
you, if you go and see the footage that
his special effects artists had created for the initial cuts
of those scenes of torture, it'll grow hair on
your chest. It's nothing like what he finally received
. He went so much further than what you saw
. Those of you who saw the R rated version
because Gibson basically has a strong stomach and thought I
have to show it like it was This was a
terrible means of execution. He began to show this
these rough cuts to supporters in the summer of 2003
and immediately they said, Brother mill, Please don't
do this. We love you. We love your
movie. We're behind you all the way. But
you cannot show a man's flesh being ripped from his
bones on screen. You can't do it. And
so he, over the course of the next six
months, systematically, reluctantly cut way, way,
way back. If you go see the movie today
, this is the last gory thing. I'll say
if you go see the movie or I guess you'd
have to rent it. You never see blood drip
. Okay? You never see blood come from a
wound. Gibson took all that out. He It
is about a sanitized, as you could imagine,
a full frontal. Look at that action being so
everybody compromises. They have to. Those are Hollywood
rules. So I don't know if I answered the
spirit of your question there, though, I'll say
that they want to go where you're talking about,
but they just can't. People won't sit there kind
of a sensor. Yeah. Yeah, this case
there were critics. Yeah, trying to censor it
. Yeah, liberal. And you would suppose would
support civil liberties, as I do myself. Well
, Uhh. That's a long and very interesting story
. Liberals and conservatives tend not to be consistent in
how they recommend the regulation of violence. They tend
to want to regulate the other guys violence. And
there's a whole chapter in here that just gets into
that terrible, titillating, exploitive violence is the other
groups. Violence are. Violence is sincere. It's
overwhelming. It's powerful, it's emotional, it's honest
. Their violence is just exploitation. Scholars and humanist
critics do it, and the evangelicals do it too
. So I would say nobody is very consistent,
Right? Right. Mhm. You might might question
the idea of journalistic because you're assuming that we have
journalistic accounts of what happened. So nobody can claim
the journalistic because you don't have any video. What
happens to and not a lot of what was shown
in the movie doesn't square with. Yeah, but
the fact that crucifixion existed sound out horrible. That
sense, they can't. Romans couldn't do it in
slow motion. Okay. Yeah. You know,
I'm not sure there is a slow motion shot.
Well, no, it's trees. He slows things
down a little bit. Um, but, uh
, yeah. You know, if you look at
the torture scenes, they're actually cut together in a
fairly conventional way. I mean, as unconventional as
the movie is. In some ways it's shot and
edited and composed in a way that just standard issue
Hollywood. The only real storytelling liberties he took was
in withholding the motivation of some of the principal characters
. Basically, the really good guys and the really
bad guys. Otherwise, it's a garden variety Hollywood
movie. Please, I have a question about Have
you heard anything? Heard about how people, Christians
, evangelical Christians view that movie today? Yeah,
you know. Well, there are churches to show
this movie at Easter. Yeah. I mean,
if you drive around here enough, you'll see the
occasional sign. Passion of the Christ. You know
, screening this Saturday night or something? Um,
I don't know. I don't know. That's an
interesting question. I've not I've not knocked on doors
or made phone calls and ask. Did you have
a point of information about that? No. I
just noticed that for years and years and years and
years. Okay, that on Broadway, right?
It's an annual event. Okay, I have not
. It's great. Okay? It's a musical and
okay, version of Jesus. And he goes down
to Atlanta. Okay? It's a great physical,
and they show it to churches for years and years
. You can't go buy it on the open market
. You have to buy it from interesting. Interesting
. Okay, Yeah. No, that's interesting.
I might like to follow up with you of that
. It's reported from on stage, but it was
the longest running religious musical on Broadway ever. Do
you do you know any Debuted? Okay, Yeah
, because I'm thinking I mean, you know,
Broadway got into the action in the West and got
in the action in the late sixties, early seventies
, when Weber and Christ do Jesus Christ superstar.
And when is when is God spill written? Do
you remember? Yeah. Early seventies. Right.
So this is probably a little bit before that,
maybe. Okay, okay. Interesting. Interesting.
I wonder, You know, I was raised evangelical
presbyterian on the coast of California, and I never
heard of it. I wonder if it was a
regional thing, Um, and didn't make it out
to the West Coast. Southern? Yeah. I
mean, I'm guessing. Probably, but we were
talking about Remind me. I'm sorry. That was
a good digression, but I've got where we were
, Joe churches. Right. All right, all
right. Right, right, right, right.
Oh, well, the DVD has both cuts,
right? Um, yeah. So you can watch
it in both versions. Um, the second cinema
released was the more cleaned up version nobody saw in
the theaters. But the DVD sold very well,
and it's released in August 2004, Not as well
as Harry Potter and Spiderman, but pretty well,
right for for, you know, for a non
kid oriented movie. Obviously, the drunken, um
, slander issued in 2006 hurt his reputation and made
it clear that this guy really is basically a Hollywood
actor, and he acts like a Hollywood actor.
He acts like a like a like a schmuck.
Right? Um, rather than someone you really want
representing your evangelical or conservative Catholic organization, people.
One of my sons in law witness a person of
interest always refers to Interesting. I think it's very
interesting movie like that. Mm hmm. Yeah.
Well, you know, I would be fascinated to
see if people are watching it in In In,
what, 12, uh, 12 years. When
it when it's a 20 year old movie. Yeah
. No, I mean, it's something like that
is worth following up, you know, again George
Stevens had this fantasy that people would be watching the
greatest story ever told for generations like they watched The
Lion King and Pinocchio in sound era Wizard of Oz
. That's the dream. Generally, it has eluded
these filmmakers. I would be surprised if Gibson if
his film has that longevity. I think his the
reputation about the film and the filmmaker has been tarnished
enough that someone else can come along and trump him
with a new Jesus movie within a few years.
On the other hand, again, the punchline of
Hollywood's back to normal suggests you shouldn't expect to see
another new Jesus movie anytime soon. Hollywood majors don't
really want to go there. They want Harry Potter
. They want comic book heroes. They want franchise
friendly, kid oriented blockbusters. This is the kind
of thing you do if you're fabulously wealthy, have
your own money to spend and can risk everything.
And that's the position Mel Gibson was in. It
is very rare for someone in Hollywood in that position
to want to do that kind of thing. Please
, the dialogue was in Aramaic. Yeah, controversy
. There was a great deal of ridicule and and
more than a few people were a little surprised when
all of a sudden Jesus is speaking school but Latin
to pilot. But yeah, there was, you
know, it was Gibson's gesture towards keeping it real
. Um, it was the fact that he had
publicized it, as this is historically as it was
, that really alarmed the scholars and anti defamation personnel
because that meant when he brought in this Catholic mystics
anti Semitism, that he was selling it as historical
truth. In fact, you can't do that,
you know. I mean scholars generally picky about what
claims you make anyway about history. But given that
it was anti Semitism in the world is strife torn
, as ours is, they really thought you can't
do that, you know. Please stop. And
so that was part of the controversy. But the
evangelicals didn't have a problem with hearing the real word
of Christ. You know, people are accustomed to
subtitle dialogue, and you know, he originally meant
it to be without subtitles to play to people who
already knew the story, which again, is why
he felt it's got great liberty to violate the Hollywood
rule of clear motivation for your protagonist. and antagonist
, right? He felt like he didn't have to
say why Jesus was there or why the Jews were
so mean. Because everybody already knew who really mattered
. And if you don't know, then either you
don't matter, or you should study up and become
someone who does know. I mean, that was
really the campaign, and so he didn't want to
have subtitles at all. It was a major concession
to to the mass market that he did in the
first place. And by the way, his concession
about the curse, his blood be upon us and
our Children, the dialogue is there. He just
got rid of the subtitle. Um, and if
you go look at the video release, he has
the subtitled version of the curse. The real hot
button, Anti Semitic. Uh, Touchstone. He
has that as an extra. You can go in
and watch the scene with the subtitle, uh,
and and watch a little extra defiance of those evil
Jews by pilot, if you want to. Um
, Gibson cut that stuff out because he was trying
to mollify some of his opponents at that point.
Yeah. Yes, sir. Well, going on
for what you said before. Do you think a
movie marketed in this type of matter could work today
? Or do you think this is like, one
time kind of deal that the media kind of just
blew up? Well, it was a one time
deal in that that particular conflagration had never occurred before
. I mean again, Stephens Animal had tried to
get churches to just go whole hog in support of
a movie about Jesus, but it failed. I
believe that what happened was the Gibsons willingness to pick
a fight with liberal scholars and Jews led to a
conflict. I mean to speak. Sociology is here
. You know, when you pick when you start
a war with someone, you your own group peaks
in solidarity. People come together, you know,
they band together to fight the evil foe. And
that's essentially what sold this movie. You would have
to have another fight like that to have another marketing
bonanza like that. Otherwise movies like that don't sell
that way. Church groups don't go out of the
way to see Hollywood movies. I mean, why
should they? Uh and so this was a real
This was a unique event. I don't know who
would be willing to pick a fight like that today
, right? Um I don't know who would be
in a position to capitalize a movie. That would
be the crux of a fight like that today.
But then I don't have a crystal ball. Who
knows? It may happen next year. Um,
but, uh, those kind of things are rare
. The last really big blow up in Hollywood was
the last temptation of Christ when a liberal Catholic filmmaker
, Martin Scorsese, did a version of concerts Circus
novel about Jesus, dreaming that he gets up off
the cross and has a normal life, including a
family with With With Magdalene and evangelicals and conservative Catholics
back in the mid eighties, when that movie came
out said, Oh, no, no, this
is not Our Jesus is not our gospel And they
picketed and I've got a photo of of a of
a huge rally outside the Universal offices in Hollywood,
and someone's got a huge placard up. Says something
to the effect of Christ. Zero Jews, too
, Meaning they've done it again. Okay, they've
crucified our cross by telling this offensive pornographic story.
Um, generally speaking, Hollywood doesn't like it when
people picket outside Universal Studios. They don't like the
bad publicity. They're afraid it's bad for business and
will lead to government regulations. So generally speaking,
the majors will not go there. 20th Century Fox
had a first look deal with Icon Productions. They
had a chance to distribute Passion of the Christ.
In retrospect, they were kicking themselves for not having
taken it because look at all the money. But
they looked at the script. They looked at the
controversy and they said, You know, this is
not how news Corporation does business. You know?
You're thinking Rupert Murdoch. It was shy of controversy
. He didn't want to do that, and so
they didn't do it. So I think it would
be a long time before we see something like that
again. Okay, um, looking at the clock
, I think we're probably wrapping up is there's the
last question you can take it. Otherwise, I
thank you for your attention, and I'm happy to
hang around and and talk with people if you have
other questions. In the meantime, thank you all
for hosting this. It was a real treat.
Thank you.