Wednesday - March 10, 2004
The Passion of the Christ
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I expect I will
eventually. Just like everybody else.
I'm amazed that this movie has been
controversial, and I'm also amazed that anyone predicted it would be a flop.
These prognosticators are just plain stupid. There's no polite way of saying
it. Religious films have always done well when they are done in grand style,
like The Ten
Commandments and a few others. Passion plays
have been poplular for millenia, and when Gibson announced that he was going to
make a new passion play and make it as realistic as modern technology would
allow, it was a no brainer that it would succeed. Anyone who predicted
otherwise was a fool.
I read an opinion article by someone I've never
heard of but who seems knowlegeable, named Martin Grove. Here's what he had to
say:
This was not what
anyone anticipated, especially not the distributors who turned Gibson down when
he was trying to put a domestic deal together for the film. While no one is
saying precisely who those distributors were, they clearly know who they are and
they're likely to be kicking themselves for a long time to come. It's hard to
fault them, of course, because nothing about this film should have convinced
them to do anything but try to distance themselves from the controversy it was
generating from the get-go.
It's a
pretty basic fact of marketing that controversy adds to awareness. So the
building controversy was great for this movie, and despite the idiotic
protestations of a few whacked out Jewish political hacks who thought it would
cause us all to go out and slaughter Jews in a new American pogrom, everyone
should have known that this is a story that is well known, and well loved. And
revered. The Bible has been the most read book since the printing press was
invented if not earlier, and the New Testament the most read part of the Bible.
Of the New Testament, the Gospels are most popular.
So tell me, why did anyone think that
anyone would be learning something they didn't already know about the Passion?
Sure, the realism of seeing this movie gives a more personal impact, but the
details are the same.
Good for Mel
Gibson. His marketing of this movie was brilliant, even if it wasn't his
intended method. He responded just right to the anti-semitic charges being
levied against him and the hype has made him
rich.
This is another nail in the
coffin of Hollywood. It has been bleeding for about a decade now. Here in
Austin, they say that more movies are filmed in Austin now than in Hollywood. I
don't know if that's true, but it is true that Canada, Austin, New Zealand and
many other places are taking the kooky Californians out of the loop.
And if the kooky Californians don't
know that Bible stories are popular, they're going to keep losing out on big
money makers like this one. Let's hope these nuts don't get a second chance at
it. I'm no fan of the Bible or of Bible stories, but I know enough to know that
there is a huge market for them in this country and around the world where there
are Christians.
This movie has tapped
into a very big part of our culture that consists of people who believe in god,
and because of their strong beliefs tend to stay out of movie theaters. Mel
Gibson has tapped into a largely unexploited part of the market. Your Aunt
Minerva might never have gone to see a movie in the past ten or twenty years,
but I'll bet she finds a way to see this one.
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