FEBRUARY 4.-Passion's Gibson, ADL Correspond
Mel Gibson and the Anti-Defamation League, the most vociferous critic of his upcoming The Passion of the Christ, exchanged letters about the ADL's fears the movie will stoke anti-Semitism, Variety reported. ADL chief Abraham Foxman, who screened Passion in Orlando two weeks ago, renewed his request for a meeting with Gibson "to discuss our fears concerning the unintended consequences that might be unleashed when your film is presented to the public," the trade paper reported.
"We understand that many faithful Christians will come away from viewing your film with the thought that Jesus died for all people's sins; but history has borne out the fact that many come away using the Passion as the very basis of hatred toward Jews," Foxman reportedly wrote.
In a response, Gibson didn't agree to the meeting, but praised Foxman's "most lucid and eloquent style." "You are a man of integrity and a man of faith, and I do not take your concerns lightly," Gibson wrote. "I hope and I pray that you will join me in setting an example for all of our brethren; that the truest path to follow, the only path, is that of respect and, most importantly, that of love for each other despite our differences," he added.
Foxman responded, "Unfortunately, your letter does not address any of the issues we raised in our most recent correspondence and the concerns we have been raising all along since we first reached out to you in March 2003." Passion will open on 2,000 screens on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 25.
|
BR>FEBRUARY 4.-Gibson to Delete a Scene in 'Passion'.
www.nytimes.com
Mel Gibson, responding to focus groups as much as to protests by Jewish critics, has decided to delete a controversial scene about Jews from his film, "The Passion of the Christ," a close associate said today.
A scene in the film, in which the Jewish high priest Caiaphas calls down a kind of curse on the Jewish people by declaring of the Crucifixion, "His blood be on us and on our children," will not be in the movie's final version, said the Gibson associate, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The passage had been included in some versions of the film that were shown before select groups, mostly of priests and ministers.
"It didn't work in the focus screenings," the associate said. "Maybe it was thought to be too hurtful, or taken not in the way it was intended. It has been used terribly over the years."
Jewish leaders had warned that the passage from Matthew 27:25 was the historic source for many of the charges of deicide and Jews' collective guilt in the death of Jesus.
Mr. Gibson's decision to remove the scene could indicate that he was being responsive to concerns of Jewish groups that the film will fuel anti-Semitism. Mr. Gibson was the co-writer, director, producer and financier of the $25 million film, which will be released in more than 2,000 theaters on Feb. 25, Ash Wednesday.
This reporter was shown a two-hour version of the R-rated movie this week. The film features agonizing passages as Jesus, played by Jim Caviezel, is mercilessly beaten by Jewish and then Roman guards, and jeered and hounded by a Jewish mob on his way to his Crucifixion. It is unclear how close this version is to Mr. Gibson's final film.
In this version, the Roman leader Pontius Pilate is depicted as being reluctant to harm Jesus, who Pilate's wife warns is holy. Largely to mollify a restive Jewish mob outside his window, Pilate agrees to a severe lashing and scourging of Jesus, but the crowd and the high priest demand more.
Pilate says in Latin: "Ecce homo" - "Behold the man" - displaying the broken and bleeding Jesus to the crowd. But the high priest insists, in Aramaic, "Crucify him." Pilate responds, "Isn't this enough?" The mob roars, "No," and only then does the Roman leader agree to the Crucifixion.
Because passion plays historically preceded outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence in Europe, the film passage is a particularly sensitive matter with Jewish groups at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise in parts of Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
But Mr. Gibson further raised hackles among Jewish leaders in an exclusive interview by the writer Peggy Noonan published in the March issue of Reader's Digest.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, accused Mr. Gibson of insensitivity when he compared Jewish suffering in the Holocaust to that of millions of others who died in the war.
Ms. Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, asked Mr. Gibson about his father, a conservative Catholic who was quoted in a New York Times Magazine article last March as denying that Holocaust took place. Mr. Gibson answered that he loved his father. Ms. Noonan insisted: "You're going to have to go on record. The Holocaust happened, right?"
Mr. Gibson responded: "I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century 20 million people died in the Soviet Union."
In a letter to Mr. Gibson, Rabbi Hier wrote: "We are not engaging in competitive martyrdom, but in historical truth. To describe Jewish suffering during the Holocaust as `some of them were Jews in concentration camps' is an afterthought that feeds right into the hands of Holocaust deniers and revisionists."
Mr. Gibson's spokesman, Alan Nierob, denied that the director was looking to further inflame those leaders.
"There's no doubt in my mind that not only does he know the Holocaust and acknowledge it, he has shed tears over it, with me," he said.
Rabbi Hier responded that Mr. Gibson missed a chance to reduce the tension with Jewish groups. "I think he was lobbed an easy question. He could've used the occasion to take us on a different road, instead he marginalized the Holocaust, he diluted its significance, and it's a lie," he said. "Either he is very ignorant of sensitivities in Jewish communities of riling survivors, those who have lost loved ones, or he is doing it deliberately."
Mr. Foxman also protested Mr. Gibson's remark on the Holocaust. "At the very least it was ignorant, at the very most its insensitive. And you know what? He doesn't get that either. He doesn't begin to understand the difference between dying in a famine and people being cremated solely for what they are."
|
FEBRUARY, 12.-A BUNCH OF PIRATES ATTACKS ICON AND THE PASSION
The FBI has netted itself some pirates.
Following a government investigation, three men stand accused of dubbing pre-release films for their own use and face misdemeanor charges of copyright infringement.
The brouhaha began after a three-minute clip of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ showed up on the Internet. Shortly thereafter, the New York Post printed a review of the movie based on a pre-release copy.
An FBI investigation traced the pre-release copy and clip of Gibson's film to Lightning Media, a Hollywood post-production facility.
Lightning employees Richard Young, 42, Victor Ochoa, 31, and Frank Pelayo, 23, were given their walking papers Thursday after the investigation allegedly revealed that they were actively flouting copyright laws.
In addition, dozens of copies of pirated movies were seized from people who worked at Lightning Media, or who knew people who worked there, prosecutors said.
The company quickly issued a press release, emphasizing their lack of knowledge on the situation and their eagerness to cooperate with the government investigation.
"We learned, almost six months ago, that some employees were illegally in possession of unreleased feature films," CEO Steve Buchsbaum said in a statement. "These employees did so without the knowledge or authorization of Lightning Media. Apparently they were able to circumvent our stringent piracy protection controls."
Sounds like somebody needs to look up the meaning of the word, "stringent." However, prosecutors have said there's no evidence pointing to any culpability on the company's part.
In any case, the three men face up to a year in prison as well as a fine, if convicted.
Prosecutors cannot tie the former Lightning Media employees to the sale of pirated tapes.
|
STAPP HAS WRITTEN FOUR SONGS FOR "THE PASSION".
BEVERLY HILLS,- Scott Stapp has put together four songs for Mel Gibson's controversial new movie "The Passion of the Christ."
Walking the red carpet at music mogul Clive Davis' Grammy party on Saturday, Stapp said he's in talks with his label for permission to hand at least one of the tracks over to the actor/director. "Hopefully that goes through. He wants to do it real bad, and I do too," Stapp said.
They'd better hurry - the movie hits theaters February 25.
|
HOLLYWOOD, 17 February 2004.-
Jewish Leader Wants Vatican Response on Gibson Film
A prominent Jewish leader has asked that the Vatican respond to Mel Gibson's controversial The Passion of the Christ, Reuters reports. Abraham Foxman, the U.S. director of independent Jewish pressure group the Anti-Defamation League, met with several Vatican officials and urged them to instruct Catholic bishops around the world to issue statements locally telling their congregations that the film, which depicts the last 12 hours of Jesus Christ's life and has been deemed anti-Semitic, is an artistic work and not a pure portrayal of gospel accounts. "It's Mel Gibson's version of the gospel, it's Mel's gospel. He's entitled but he's promoting it as the gospel truth," Foxman told Reuters. "He's promoting it as biblical, historical truth and I believe the Church has a responsibility to its teachings, its interpretation, and this is at variance with what the Church is all about." Foxman added, "I would hope that the Vatican and the Catholic Church would stand up to defend its teachings because in fact what the film is an interpretation that challenges what the Church has been teaching for the past 40 years." Foxman also challenged Gibson to appear in an on-screen postscript to tell viewers not to blame Jews for the death of Jesus Christ or else his "passion of love would turn into a passion of hate."
|
FEBRUARY,17.-Mel Gibson tackles the controversy surrounding his new film, charges of anti-Semitism, and the despair that spurred his Faith.
Mel Gibson was interviewed by Diane Sawyer on ABCNEWS' Primetime.
At "the height of spiritual bankruptcy" more than a decade ago, abusing alcohol and drugs, the actor Mel Gibson said he once contemplated hurling himself out a window.
But instead, he turned to the Bible, which ultimately inspired him to direct his new movie, The Passion of the Christ.
"I think I just hit my knees," Gibson told Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview on ABCNEWS' Primetime. "I just said, 'Help.' You know? And then, I began to meditate on it, and that's in the Gospel. I read all those again. I remember reading bits of them when I was younger."
"Pain is the precursor to change, which is great," Gibson said. "That's the good news."
Gibson's renewed faith will be on display for moviegoers to see starting Feb. 25, Ash Wednesday, when The Passion, depicting the final 12 hours of Jesus' life, debuts in theaters.
But in the months leading up to its release, the Aramaic- and Latin-language project has sparked controversy, which Gibson discussed with Sawyer on the special Monday-night edition of Primetime.
Blaming the Messenger?
Gibson insisted on Primetime he is no anti-Semite, and that anti-Semitism is "un-Christian" and a sin that "goes against the tenets of my faith."
When asked who killed Jesus, Gibson said, "The big answer is, we all did. I'll be the first in the culpability stakes here."
Gibson told Sawyer he simply tried his best to interpret the Gospels in The Passion of the Christ.
"Critics who have a problem with me don't really have a problem with me in this film," Gibson said. "They have a problem with the four Gospels. That's where their problem is."
Asked whether it was the Jews who killed Jesus, Gibson noted Jesus, "was a child of Israel, among other children of Israel. There were Jews and Romans in Israel. There were no Norwegians there."
|
HOLLYWOOD, February 20, 2004 -- Mel Gibson's Father Calls Holocaust "Fictional".
As if Mel Gibson needed any more controversy over his upcoming religious epic The Passion of the Christ, now his father is adding his two cents. In an interview with the radio program Speak Your Piece!, airing Monday on the small New York-based Talkline Communications Network, Hutton Gibson stated he thinks the Holocaust was mostly "fiction." According to The Associated Press, which published excerpts of the transcript released by the network, Hutton Gibson told host Steve Feuerstein, "It's all--maybe not all fiction--but most of it is," when asked about the Holocaust. "They claimed that there were 6.2 million (Jews) in Poland before the war and after the war there were 200,000, therefore he (Hitler) must have killed 6 million of them. They simply got up and left. They were all over the Bronx and Brooklyn and Sydney and Los Angeles," he added. Hutton Gibson also suggested Jews want to take over the world, adding, "It's all about control. They're after one world religion and one world government." When asked in media interviews whether he shares his father's views, Mel Gibson, who has said repeatedly in the media that he is not anti-Semitic, says only that he loves his father and will not speak against him. Alan Nierob, a spokesman for Mel Gibson, declined to comment.
|
