Posted on 09/10/2003 3:43:55 PM PDT by sydney smith
Mel Gibson hits back at 'vicious' critics of Christ film By Marcus Warren in New York (Filed: 09/09/2003)
Mel Gibson turned on critics of his film The Passion, about Jesus Christ, over claims that it is anti-Semitic but his language has ignited a new controversy.
The Australian-born actor and director said he was the target of "vehement anti-Christian sentiment" but admitted that the row over his £16 million self-financed film was good publicity.
In one of a series of inflammatory remarks quoted in this week's The New Yorker, Gibson accuses "modern secular Judaism" of trying "to blame the Holocaust on the Roman Catholic Church".
"It's a lie. And it's revisionism," said Gibson, a follower of Traditionalist Catholicism that still performs the Latin Tridentine mass. "And they've been working on that one for a while."
His film, due to be released next Easter but so far without a distributor, has been described as likely to fuel "hatred, bigotry and anti-Semitism" by the Anti-Defamation League and has been criticised by some Roman Catholic theologians.
Its commercial appeal is also open to question as it has been shot entirely in Latin and Aramaic, the everyday language of Jesus and his disciples. It is unclear whether it will be subtitled.
Its director portrays himself as caught up in a huge conflict between "big realms that are warring and battling. You stick your head up and you get knocked," he said.
"I didn't realise it would be so vicious. The acts against this film started early. There is vehement anti-Christian sentiment out there and they don't want it."
Gibson is not averse to dishing out venomous attacks of his own, however, with one target Frank Rich, a New York Times columnist, who implied that Gibson's father was "a Holocaust denier".
"I want to kill him," Gibson said of the columnist. "I want his intestines on a stick. I want to kill his dog."
Gibson said: "He never denied the Holocaust. He just said there were fewer than six million."
As proof of his desire to avoid confrontation, Gibson cited his decision to cut a scene in which Caiaphas says "his blood be on us and on our children" soon after Pontius Pilate washes his hands of the captive Christ.
"I wanted it in," he said. "My brother said I was wimping out if I didn't include it. But, man, if I included that in there, they'd be coming after me at my house. They'd come to kill me."
26 August 2003: Jews fear backlash from Mel Gibson's Passion 6 August 2003: Mel Gibson Christ film is branded anti-Jewish 29 June 2003: Mel Gibson's film on Christ condemned as anti-Semitic 23 January 2003: Gibson brings his passion for Christ to the big screen
Perhaps, but a thirty-three-year-long film really doesn't play well in Des Moines.
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