My friend Janet's Response To My Review of THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST

Sunday, February 29, 2004


Hi  Shlomoh. I totally enjoyed your review.  It was extremely erudite and well researched.  I am not a Bible freak so I only know generalizations about the story plus what is generally tossed about by the public, and what I channel in my meditaions.

What I want to tell you about movies though, since I am an experienced actor and have been analyzing scrips for about 30 years, is like Aristotle said in his POETICS,  "Art is not life. It is an imitation of life."   It's impossible to put every nuance of the actual story into a 2 or 3 hour movie. The writer picks and choses the points to make the bigger point that he is attempting to make.  Mel Gibson is an action actor and he made a Biblical action movie similar to the Hamlet he directed which was jokingly called Lethal Bodkin.

This is not to defend his point of view, which may in fact have been antisemitic, because, as I told you, he did not refute what his crazy father said or try to stop him.  I'm sure the movie will stir up riots in places like Brazil where there are primitive Catholics, and I'm sure Jews will be leaving Chile as soon as the movie reaches there.

Do I think that some Jews hated Jesus and wanted him dead?  Yes, the actual killing was done by the Roman occupiers.  But I think Jesus may have planned his own death in order tho fulfill the prophesy of MESHIACH.  I channeled it but I could be wrong. We will never know.

The one thing the great uninformed public should have been told however was that THE PASSION is one man's viewpoint of a Bibical story about which we can never exactly know what really happened.  Jesus might have made in his loincloth while he was being scourged.  That wouldn't look nice but it probably really happened.  Did he feel an itch while he was hanging on the cross? Did he have an erection?  These are real physiological things that might have happened . Or a pigeon might have landed on his head?   But not for the son of G-d.  Reality is never as exciting as drama. So Mel put his point across.

But here's the bright side. You could make a commentary movie like MY DINNER WITH ANDRE and put your own points across, or do a monologue like Spalding Gray used to do, and I will direct you.
It's brilliant.  There is your entry into show business and you will have a big audience of people who want to know another side of THE PASSION.  A one man show offering your views, and I'll bet you could get investors and do it downtown at PS 122.

That's all for now.

Love
Gittel


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