Posted on 02/25/2004 3:07:12 PM PST by Timesink
Nightline Daily E-Mail February 25, 2004
TONIGHT'S FOCUS: Whether by cunning marketing, runaway buzz and controversy or the inherent power of the story, Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" opens today to enormous advance sales. The film will open on over 4,500 screens in the U.S.--more than "The Lord of the Rings." Much of the advance ticket sales are driven by the phenomenon that has developed around the film. While many Christians and Jews remain concerned about Gibson's depiction of Christ's crucifixion story, some Christian churches are seeing the film as a powerful tool for marketing of another kind: evangelism.
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If you have been living under a rock for the last six months or so, and have not heard that Mel Gibson's film about Christ's crucifixion has been surrounded with controversy, you might be surprised to learn that a film with no major movie stars, no surprise ending, and entirely presented in Aramaic and Latin with English subtitles, is already setting box office records. With $10 million in advance ticket sales, the film that no major Hollywood studio wanted to distribute seems poised to become a financial success.
For months the film has drawn polarizing controversy, with critics charging that the movie is gratuitously graphic and anti-Semitic, and others saying it is a powerful emotional experience that reinforces the messages of Christianity. Today the film opens--and the public gets to weigh in.
As part of an unprecedented marketing strategy, Mel Gibson, the film's producer and director, and the film's distributors, have for months been working with churches, especially evangelical Protestant churches, to screen the film for their congregations and create "buzz" - the kind of word-of-mouth marketing that is gold in Hollywood.
Tonight we will explore the controversy surrounding the film's depiction of the last 12 hours of Jesus Christ's life, with interviews with people from various religious affiliations and who saw early screenings of the film. They include: William Donohue from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, John Dominic Crossan, professor emeritus of religious studies at DePaul University, Rev. Mark Stanger of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Father John Pawlikowski, professor of social ethics at Catholic Theological Union and Franklin Graham, of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
We will also look at the expectations and experience of seeing this film with a handful of its earliest audience members. Ted Koppel attended a screening Monday evening and spoke to audience members both before and after the film. Members of McLean Bible Church, a non-denominational evangelistic Protestant church in Northern Virginia, purchased over 11,000 tickets to the film this week. They invited parishioners to bring friends, family and co-workers of the film, especially people who are non-believers. All over the country today churches are buying out theaters as this church did. In Plano, Texas, a single businessman spent over $42,000 of his own money to ensure that the film plays on all 20 screens today.
Will the film result in new converts to Christianity? If so, what kind of Christianity? Mel Gibson's own traditionalist Catholic Christianity or evangelical Protestant Christianity that is hosting so many of these screenings? Or will it only reinforce the faith of the already converted and turn off non-believers? And will it breed the kind of intolerance and anti-Semitism that some have feared? With the film now only opened for one day--it is too soon to say.
We hope you'll join us to learn more about the film, the controversy and the phenomenon of "The Passion of the Christ."
Sara Just and the Nightline Staff ABCNEWS Washington D.C. bureau
I would also not that the Left and the press have accused Mel Gibson of being:
Why? Can anyone remember any such attacks on any director for any film ever? Someone once wrote,
It is one of the characteristics of the divine word, that whenever it appears, Satan ceases to slumber and sleep. This is the surest and most unerring test for distiguishing it from false doctrines which readily betray themselves, while they are received by all with willing ears and welcomed by an applauding world.
I think that explains a lot.
Nightline selling the power of God and Jesus' story short again, huh? I won't be watching, as usual.
Prairie
EXCELLENT POINT! And thanks for the laugh! I never heard Ted Koppel scared that blacks would attack whites after seeing Roots!
It's not at all too early to see how intolerant a large segment of the left is.
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