You could call it an apparition. High in the hills above Los Angeles, standing in the doorway of a Spanish-style chapel, Mel Gibson looks distinguished in a silky green suit, his face sporting a salt-and-pepper beard. He roams the outside terrace of the chapel, bending down to put cushioned kneelers in front of some of the older parishioners' chairs and stooping to gently soothe a crying child.
The sun streams through the chapel doors. Inside, it's quiet except for an altar boy ringing a set of golden bells; even infants — and there are many — sit still. The men are neatly dressed.
The women wear veils. Gibson kneels, puts his hands together in prayer and joins in the celebration of the ancient Latin mass, the kind still embraced by traditionalist Catholics, a devout group that has rejected the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Gibson approaches the altar to receive Communion.
After Benediction, he vanishes. This disappearing act is similar to the one Gibson has been perfecting ever since the release of The Passion of the Christ, the controversial film that he wrote and produced with $25 million of his own money, and that stunned Hollywood by grossing more than $600 million worldwide. With its release on DVD on August 31, the film seems likely to break even more records. In an unprecedented move, Fox Home Entertainment sent hundreds of thousands of flyers to churches inviting them to buy special packs of 50 DVDs at bulk discounts. With presales already 20 percent higher than predicted, it looks as if the DVD could rival the sales of the juggernaut known as Harry Potter.
Now that The Passion of the Christ has entered the pantheon of Hollywood blockbusters, Gibson should be a happy man. According to those who know him, however, he's not exactly singing hosannas.
Friends say Gibson was stunned by the extremity of the adverse reaction to his film. Critics from different denominations denounced it as anti-Semitic, some while it was still in production. The charges of anti-Semitism "affected him incredibly," says Father William J. Fulco, a Jesuit who translated the script of The Passion from English to Latin and Aramaic, and who spent many long hours on the film's set in Italy. Gibson, Fulco says, was also reeling from the publicity surrounding his father Hutton's claim in a New York Times Magazine interview that the Holocaust was exaggerated. "[Hutton] is an old man with strange views," says Fulco. "He didn't know the press was trying to manipulate him." This made Gibson angry. "He would phone me sometimes and say, 'Help me to pray through this.' It just devastated him."
I'm a traditionalist Catholic and can't see how this story is a "SLAM". It seems pretty innocuous to me.
With its release on DVD on August 31, the film seems likely to break even more records.
What's the slam?
I don't see a 'slam' in this.
Perhaps Mary Murphy (sounds like an Irish Catholic name to me) may have inserted some of her own speculation in saying Mel Gibson should be singing 'hosannas' for the money his movie made - but otherwise, it paints a picture of a devoutly Christian man.
In fact, I thought it was quite nice.
This is just ridiculous. You post one article, but make comments about a different article, and at first pretend that your comments are about this article. Now you seem annoyed with other FReepers for not seeing in this article what you saw in a different article, which you haven't (and probably won't) share with us. Get a grip!
Well, TV Guide has become very left. It seems they think the most important news to readers is who the latest homo character is on TV.