Jews OK Mel's film
07feb04
MEL Gibson's controversial film about the last hours of Jesus's life is unlikely to incite hostility against Jews, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry said yesterday.
<<http://heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,8603505%255E2902,00.html>>
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----- Original Message ----- From: NewsMax.com To: NewsMax.com News Alert Sent: Monday, February 09, 2004 1:45 PM Subject: Mel Gibson: My Sinfulness Led to 'Passion'
Mel Gibson: My Sinfulness Led to 'Passion'
Mel Gibson says he was inspired to make his controversial film "The Passion of the Christ" after finding that he needed to take a good look at himself and did not like what he saw when he did.
"You get to a place where, you know, you have to re-evaluate your insides and like, change, because, you know, I'm a monster. I mean I can be," he said, according to the Los Angeles Times. "It's like, you know, I've been offered every kind of excess that money and fame brings and it's not good enough."
Gibson made his remarks during a 40-minute live Q&A before 3,800 invited guests at the evangelical Azusa Pacific University on Saturday.
As he has from the very beginning of the controversy, Gibson emphatically denied that the film, which depicts in exceedingly graphic scenes the suffering of Jesus during the last 12 hours of his life, is anti-Semitic.
The Times reported that when Gibson was asked whether the film will foster anti-Semitism, he said "I'm not anti-Semitic. My Gospels are not anti-Semitic. ... I've shown it to many Jews and they're like, it's not anti-Semitic. It's interesting that the people who say it's anti-Semitic say that before they saw the film, and they said the same thing after they saw the film."
One critic of the heavy marketing of the film, Kenneth L. Waters Sr., assistant professor of the New Testament at Azusa Pacific University, said that while he thinks the marketing aspect is a little bit too heavy-handed, personally, he called the film "gripping and very captivating ... and pretty much held the line as far as the biblical story was concerned." He told the Times he did not think the film was anti-Semitic.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, has seen the film twice and repeated his widely reported charge that the movie is "the work of Mel Gibson" and not a story from the New Testament, a criticism denied by scores of biblical experts who have seen it and testified that it faithfully follows the Gospels.
"As someone who has dealt with the issue of anti-Semitism professionally since 1977, I know about what it is more than Mel Gibson," Hier said. "Every Jew who appears in this film, except for the disciples of Christ, are portrayed cruelly and portrayed as a people with an almost sinister look in their eyes. ... Jews who see this film, I believe, will be overwhelmingly horrified."
Gibson supporters, however, stress the fact that many of those who have seen the film are themselves Jewish, and deny they saw anything anti-Semitic about it.
Speaking of the film's R-rating, Gibson said it is justified given that the scenes of the crucifixion are brutal and relentless. "Part of what I was endeavoring to do was to kind of push it to the edge a little bit," he said. When it was suggested that he could have toned the film down, Gibson responded, "Dude, I did tone it down."
The film premiers in over 2,000 theaters on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 25. Experts say it could recover the $30 million Gibson spent making it in as little as five days.
Read more of the latest on "The Passion of The Christ"... Click Here: L.A. Times: 'Huge' Turnout Expected for Gibson Film
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