Word: gibsonized
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Months before its release, Gibson's movie, starring James Caviezel as Jesus, has stoked an incendiary debate on issues both fundamental and touchy: artistic freedom vs. historical accuracy, Catholic traditionalism vs. Jewish sensibilities. Often these issues clash within the combatants, as Jewish rabbis and writers, by nature defenders of the First Amendment, now call for Gibson to edit his film to their wishes--and Jewish movie people defend a project that has outraged their brethren...
...Passion punch-up broke out when Gibson's father Hutton, 85, a rabid Catholic traditionalist who writes treatises on the perceived lapses of Mother Church, denied the Nazi Holocaust in the New York Times Magazine. Now Gibson should no more be blamed for the sins of the father than Arnold Schwarzenegger is. But Mel, who attends Latin Mass, is outspoken against the Vatican's reforms of the 1960s. Some say he saw The Passion as his own declaration of Catholic fundamentalism. He wanted to steamroller the new Catholic orthodoxy, not steam up a host of biblical scholars...
...Gibson, apparently, winning ecumenical approval is less important than being true to his bold vision. But he did hold early screenings, stacking the audience with clerics, scholars and media types who would probably like it. That annoyed some of the uninvited, whose antennas had detected trouble when a group of interfaith scholars got an early version of the screenplay and criticized it for historical errors and unfairness to the Jewish figures in the story. (Gibson threatened to sue over what his company called a "stolen" script...
...Houston this month, Gibson screened the unfinished film for a group of Catholic, Jewish and Protestant leaders--all of whom signed a confidentiality agreement. That day one of the attendees, Rabbi Eugene Korn, director of Interfaith Affairs at the Anti-Defamation League, told the Houston Chronicle, "We still have grave concerns," and the ADL elaborated on them in a press release. This breach rankled other leaders, who signed a group letter sent privately to the ADL (a draft of which was obtained by TIME): "The Passion is a powerful and graphic film ... We do not all agree on the effect...
...Gibson's Hollywood posse is in his corner. "The story is controversial," says Joel Silver, who has produced five Mel-odramas (four Lethal Weapons and a Conspiracy Theory). "What this man [Jesus] was doing was new; people felt threatened by it and wanted him gone. Well, Mel's taken this timeless story and made it feel contemporary, as he did with Braveheart...