0:00

We'll be the very model of a modern

0:02

network TV show each time that we walk

0:04

into this Augustan famous studio. We're starting out

0:06

from scratch after a run of 20 years

0:08

and so we hope that you don't mind

0:10

that our producer was not doing well. We

0:12

hope that you don't mind that their producer

0:14

was not doing well. We hope that you

0:16

don't mind that their producer was not doing

0:18

well. Welcome to Michael and us. I'm

0:20

Will Sloan. Luke Savage is with

0:22

me. Listen, I just have

0:24

to say, Luke and I have just been watching Studio

0:27

60 on the Sunset Strip

0:29

for an upcoming episode. It's

0:32

a little teaser for you all. Yeah, it's like

0:34

we're just, I don't know. I'm vibrating. I'm just

0:36

having such a good time. I've never

0:39

really been into the West Wing. I've

0:41

never watched it seriously or ironically except

0:43

for this podcast. Unlike me for whom

0:45

it's my favorite show. But I have

0:48

seen all of Studio 60 on the

0:50

Sunset Strip and revisiting it now. I

0:53

mean, we were actually going to record

0:55

on it today but we realized very

0:57

quickly, this is such a rich text.

1:00

We might just watch all of it.

1:02

If we just made Michael and us

1:04

about Studio 60 on the Sunset

1:06

Strip for the next month and covered every

1:08

episode, I'd be okay with that. I mean,

1:10

we just saw folks, fans of

1:12

Studio 60, us in the Studio 60

1:14

community will know what I'm talking about

1:16

when I say that we have Gilbert

1:19

and Sullivan in our heads right now. Oh my

1:21

God. He will be the very model of our

1:23

modern network TV show. I am

1:25

a card-carrying credentialed Sorkinologist,

1:28

okay? But I've never

1:30

seen Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

1:32

So as soon as it started, I

1:34

couldn't believe that I was actually seeing

1:37

it. It only exists in myth to

1:39

me. Watching it felt very strange and

1:41

uncanny. It was like watching something that

1:44

was a memory of a past life.

1:46

I feel like I've seen it even

1:48

though I haven't. It is kind of

1:50

awesome just watching it again where it has

1:53

this swagger to it in the early episodes

1:55

of like, this is the next big show.

1:57

Every... moment

2:00

has that that weight. Every character

2:02

introduction has, meet the new Jed

2:05

Bartlett. Yeah, well anyway, we'll talk

2:07

about it in more detail later.

2:09

More to come. So, quite

2:12

a week, huh? Tough week. Yeah, we've

2:14

got a big movie to discuss on

2:16

this episode. It's one that our super

2:18

delegates, that is those who subscribe to

2:20

patreon.com/Michael and us at the super delegate

2:22

tier for $10 a month, they get

2:24

to nominate a film once a month

2:26

and vote on a film for us

2:28

to discuss. This month, they

2:30

chose Passion of the Christ, which was a

2:32

good choice. Although, yeah, it has nothing to

2:35

do with anything that's going on in the

2:37

world right now. Well, expect to be persecuted

2:39

for your beliefs just like Christ was. There's

2:42

my tenuous link. That's right. People

2:44

who exhibit decency and compassion, they're

2:46

always hectored by extremists from both

2:48

sides. That's right. Well, did you

2:51

watch the White House Correspondents Dinner?

2:53

No. I watched it. Oh

2:56

my God. I'm actually surprised to hear that.

2:58

You're a glutton for punishment. Well, I

3:01

was trying to watch the Leafs game and it

3:04

was not going well. My friend Mitch was here,

3:06

and Madeline was watching it on her phone. And

3:08

at a certain point, it's like, okay, the Leafs

3:10

are not going to win. So,

3:12

let's flip over to the White House Correspondents

3:15

Dinner. So, I can't say I watched all

3:17

of it, but I saw the big stuff.

3:19

I saw Colin Jost. I saw Biden,

3:22

who apparently, this was the shortest

3:24

address ever delivered by a president at

3:27

one of these. Can't imagine why.

3:29

I mean, a thick spectacle any

3:31

year, but this year, good God. Honestly,

3:33

one of the most nauseating things I've

3:35

ever seen. I mean, we're basically preaching

3:38

to the converted if you're listening

3:40

to this. I'm sure you already agree.

3:42

A hundred journalists dead in Gaza.

3:44

Yeah. And I mean, even without that,

3:46

the White House Correspondents Dinner has

3:48

always sucked. Its premise is entirely fraudulent.

3:51

It's like, oh, the fourth estate, bold

3:53

and intrepid. It always keeps

3:55

the bastards in power to account, but for

3:58

one evening every year. we can

4:00

all get together and have a big fancy night

4:02

where we toast democracy and freedom of speech and

4:05

the press. And of course, that's a very nice

4:07

idea, but it's not what your

4:09

average White House correspondent does. And what

4:11

the White House correspondents that it really

4:14

underscores and what it really feels like

4:16

is a meeting at court. Like, from

4:18

start to finish, this basically felt like

4:20

a Biden campaign event. And that's not

4:23

an accident because particularly with the specter

4:25

of Trump looming over everything, the people

4:27

in this room basically, whatever their nominal

4:30

self-conception is bold truth-tellers, they basically

4:32

think like they work for the

4:34

president or, you know, in this

4:36

case. I mean, I don't have

4:39

anything clever to say except the

4:41

obvious, which is, you know, two

4:43

nights later when the police are

4:45

cracking down on the Columbia encampment,

4:48

the journalism students are like locked

4:50

in the Pulitzer Building, told they

4:52

can't leave or they'll be arrested.

4:54

There are snipers on the rooftops

4:56

of American universities invited by the

4:59

deans and pointed at the

5:01

students of those universities. It's

5:04

insane. Anderson Cooper is on

5:06

CNN spreading conspiracy theories about

5:08

outside agitators while the Columbia

5:11

radio station run by children

5:13

basically are doing good reporting. I

5:16

tuned into it last night for a

5:18

few minutes. Absolutely incredible. Those guys should

5:20

win a prize. Fuck the White House

5:22

Correspondents Dinner. And, you know, watching Colin

5:24

Jost, I mean, I could not believe.

5:26

I mean, so first of all, the

5:28

jokes, not funny. And I was actually

5:30

pleased to see The New York Times

5:32

panned his performance the next day, which

5:34

I can't remember who it was said

5:37

on Twitter. Like, imagine you're Colin Jost

5:39

and you've debased yourself for this shitty,

5:41

awful president in this particularly horrendous moment

5:43

of his presidency. You've just blown smoke up

5:45

his ass. And then having done all that, The

5:47

New York Times, the people you're trying to impress,

5:49

they don't even like your jokes. Even to them,

5:52

your jokes fall flat. And I have to say,

5:54

watching it, I was really struck by it didn't

5:56

feel like it was going over that well in

5:58

the room. in the room and

6:00

like, I don't know, this was just my

6:03

impression. I'm not sure what other people thought,

6:05

but the jokes were kind of falling flat.

6:07

The vibes were off. I like to think

6:09

that the protests outside made a lot of

6:11

people feel guilty to be there and kind

6:13

of undermined like the normally like chirpy aura

6:16

that surrounds something like this. Or

6:18

if not guilty, contributed to an impression

6:20

that wait, this is the prestige place

6:22

to be like something's not working here.

6:24

I should look good here. Why

6:26

am I not looking and feeling good here? So

6:29

yeah, Colin Joe's just up there giving like

6:31

one of the smuggest, most of the

6:34

sequist performances. I mean, I guess that

6:36

he is an old like Pete Buttigieg's

6:38

friend, you know? Yeah, you said he

6:40

was Pete Buttigieg's roommate? They

6:42

were dorm mates, it turns out. So

6:45

dorm mates at Harvard. So look, I get

6:47

that he's not one of us, but he

6:49

is a youngish comedy guy. Like I want

6:51

to say, buddy, you know you don't have

6:53

to do this. The fact that he's chosen

6:56

to do it like says something. Like

6:59

he's not just a shitty libbed comedian, like he's a

7:01

bad guy. You're a comedy

7:03

guy who is not a million years

7:05

old. Like wouldn't you know better than

7:08

to do this? Why not be like

7:10

one of those comedians who goes to

7:12

the White House Correspondents Dinner and like

7:15

roast the thing? You know, do a

7:17

Colbert or a Michelle Woolf. And that,

7:19

you know, those incidents, right, that's the

7:22

tell about how fraudulent the premise of

7:24

the White House Correspondents Dinner is because

7:26

any time, the rare time, somebody's even

7:28

stepped like one centilla over the

7:31

line into like anything approaching

7:33

actual satire or criticism. People

7:36

are disgusted. How dare you? Yeah,

7:38

I mean, I guess Colin Jost, you know,

7:40

likes the people in the room and wants

7:42

to be liked by the people in the

7:44

room. But I don't know, if you're a

7:46

comedian, wouldn't you rather be the guy who

7:48

goes viral? Wouldn't you rather become the folk

7:50

hero who told off the assholes and the

7:52

elites of the Correspondents Dinner? Yeah, you should

7:54

check out a little show called Studio 60

7:56

on the Sunset Strip where they where they

7:58

make bold. Common yeah,

8:00

yeah, yeah this studio the

8:03

tradition in this studio, you know the mother's

8:05

brothers sit here Anyway,

8:09

yeah needless to say fuck the White

8:11

House Correspondents dinner absolutely awful and then

8:13

of course a few days later I

8:15

mean recording this on May the first

8:17

happy May Day by the way I

8:20

guess the passion of the Christ is

8:22

our May Day episode Sorry about that,

8:24

but you know This is less than

8:26

24 hours after police moved on the

8:28

encampment at Columbia And again, you know,

8:30

I don't have too much to say about

8:32

this I think if you're listening to this

8:34

we're probably on the same page But I

8:36

did just want to read a little bit

8:39

from a write-up by Jack Murchison in The

8:41

Nation. This was published this morning It's called

8:43

This is how power protects itself and he

8:45

writes this shock and awe campaign was about

8:47

smashing a rapidly expanding student movement whose bravery

8:49

has captivated people around the world It was

8:51

about eliminating the threat that the pro-palestine movement

8:53

poses to business as usual and it was

8:55

about reminding these students these kids who had

8:57

the nerve to sit in tents of who

8:59

is in charge and who isn't the students

9:01

at Columbia and City College and UCLA and

9:04

the University of South Florida and all of

9:06

the more than 70 Gaza solidarity protests that

9:08

have emerged as campuses around the country committed

9:10

the sin of believing that it is acceptable

9:12

for them to try to Influence what happens

9:14

at their school or heaven forbid what happens

9:16

in the world at large? The

9:19

hope is that these protesters will learn who

9:21

the world is really supposed to work for

9:23

that there is a sky-high price to be

9:25

paid for questioning the Natural order of things

9:27

you can feel the question thrumming through the

9:29

violence and repression How dare

9:31

you but here's the lesson in all this

9:33

the people in charge are scared They are

9:36

terrified of the power of the movement for

9:38

Palestine of its size moral righteousness Fearlessness diversity

9:40

and love and they are terrified that one

9:42

of the key pillars of the American system

9:44

support for Israel No matter what it does

9:47

is being shaken So we'll link to that

9:49

people can read the whole piece But this

9:51

gets me to the only a real point

9:53

I have to make here I think many

9:56

of us are rightly skeptical if not downright

9:58

contemptuous of the tendency in certain quarters

10:00

of the media to play so

10:02

much stock in what happens on

10:04

university campuses, particularly the campuses of

10:06

Ivy League and elite institutions. I

10:08

think that contempt is completely justified.

10:10

It's absolutely ridiculous to read, you

10:12

know, 50 year old New York

10:14

Times columnists who find what, you

10:16

know, 18 year olds are

10:18

doing and saying on a campus like

10:21

Yale or Princeton, traumatic, so traumatic they're

10:23

building an entire identity around it, they're

10:25

writing books about it. All of that

10:27

is completely ridiculous. Having said that, there

10:29

is a reason why a protest

10:31

like this at a place like

10:33

Columbia touches the nerve of a

10:35

certain kind of commentator. That's because

10:38

they understand that one of the

10:40

major purposes of an institution like

10:42

Harvard or Yale or Columbia is

10:44

to train the next generation of

10:46

American elites. And so when there

10:48

is this kind of open defiance

10:50

going on, open defiance of the

10:52

established orthodoxy, open defiance of the

10:55

adults, open defiance of the Biden

10:57

administration, they see that as a

10:59

threat. And they're absolutely right to. It

11:01

is a threat. That's the only thing that

11:03

explains the absurd hyperbole with which these protests

11:05

have been framed and discussed. I mean I

11:07

saw last night David Frum actually had a

11:10

tweet where he said, if you want to

11:12

stop yourself from becoming Weimar, you have to

11:14

enforce public order against the Reds and the

11:16

Browns. I mean that is where we're at.

11:18

I have no idea if he actually, I

11:20

mean it's hard to believe that even David

11:22

Frum would say something like that and mean

11:25

it with 100% seriousness.

11:27

But regardless, resorting to

11:30

a sentiment like that, I mean equating

11:32

teenagers who are sitting on the lawns

11:34

at college campuses in protest against the

11:36

mass slaughter of their fellow human beings,

11:39

equating that to the brown shirts is

11:41

utterly beneath contempt. And the one positive

11:43

thing you can say about it is

11:45

the constant resorting to that kind of

11:48

thing just shows how shaken these people

11:50

are by what's going on. I

12:13

mean, we're talking about the Passion of

12:15

the Christ on this episode. Hell yeah.

12:17

A super delegate pick. And whenever

12:20

we watch a movie, our minds turn to,

12:22

well, what did Roger Ebert think of it?

12:25

And maybe some of you listening

12:27

are tired of our constant invocations

12:29

of Roger Ebert, but the thing

12:31

is, nobody is a better bellwether

12:33

of or representative of a certain

12:35

kind of mainstream opinion. Yeah, Will's

12:37

right. I mean, less people think

12:39

that Roger Ebert is just like

12:41

a character we're bringing in because

12:43

we respectively have long-standing relationships with him

12:45

and his work. I mean, that's part

12:47

of it, but that's actually not the

12:49

reason why we use him. Like Ebert

12:51

is, as Will says, a very important

12:53

barometer of a certain kind of informed,

12:55

received wisdom in the culture, and that's

12:57

the main reason we talk about him

13:00

so much. And I think this was

13:02

actually, it's not uncharitable to say that

13:04

this was his project, to be America's

13:06

critic. And that's why he

13:08

called his books The Great Movies, not

13:10

The Great Movies, not Some Great Movies,

13:13

not My Personal Cannon. He called it

13:15

The Great Movies. So he gave The

13:18

Passion of the Christ four stars. Okay.

13:21

Did he see it? One

13:24

assumes. He writes, and actually,

13:27

he does get at something in this review

13:29

that I, I wouldn't say I agree with

13:31

it, but I 20% agree with it. Okay,

13:33

hit me with it. Because if there's one

13:35

thing you can say for The Passion of

13:38

the Christ, it is that it is true

13:40

to its vision and uncompromising in it. It's

13:43

limited, narrow, dark-hearted vision.

13:45

And Ebert writes in his review,

13:48

I prefer to evaluate a film on the basis

13:50

of what it intends to do, not on what

13:53

I think it should have done. So

13:55

already, I think he's conceding way too much ground

13:57

there. But he continues, it is clear that Mel

13:59

Gibson wanted to make graphic and

14:01

inescapable the price that Jesus paid,

14:04

as Christians believe, when he died

14:06

for our sins. Later on he

14:08

says, For we altar boys, this

14:10

was not necessarily a deep spiritual

14:12

experience. Christ suffered, Christ died,

14:15

Christ rose again, we were redeemed, and

14:17

let's hope we can get home in

14:19

time to watch the Illinois basketball game

14:21

on TV. What Gibson has provided for

14:23

me, for the first time in my

14:25

life, is a visceral idea of what

14:28

the passion consisted of. That his film

14:30

is superficial in terms of the surrounding

14:32

message, that we only get a few

14:34

passing references to the teachings of Jesus

14:36

is, I suppose, not the point. This

14:38

is not a sermon or a homily, but

14:41

a visualization of the central event in the

14:43

Christian religion. Take it or leave it. That's

14:46

what Ebert says. I think that's bad

14:48

criticism. Yeah. Ebert, as

14:50

the critic, should respect himself and his

14:52

role a little more. The move he

14:55

makes off the top there saying, I

14:57

evaluate films based on not what they

14:59

should be doing or should have done,

15:01

but on what they intend to do.

15:03

What if the project is flawed? What

15:05

if the idea is bad? Yeah, I

15:07

mean, that's where I was going. I

15:09

mean, he leaves himself with no resources,

15:11

henceforth, having issued that declaration. He leaves

15:14

himself with nothing that allows him to

15:16

actually ask fundamental questions about the film,

15:18

whether it needed to exist, whether its

15:20

project is a good one. And having

15:22

just seen it for the first time,

15:24

I have to tell you, I have

15:26

none of Ebert's reservations. I'm willing to

15:28

say this is a bad film. I'm

15:30

not going to give it, I'm not going

15:32

to give it a star rating. I mean,

15:34

if it has one, it would be one

15:36

or maybe zero. But I have no reservations

15:38

about saying that this is a bad movie

15:40

that represents a bad project. And even on

15:42

the basis of the narrower scope of critique,

15:44

he tees up there. This movie fails on

15:46

its own terms. It is a badly executed

15:48

version of the bad thing that it is

15:50

trying to do. It sucks. Before

15:52

we get to the movie, and there is actually a lot

15:54

to talk about. Oh boy. I think

15:57

the star rating thing is funny.

15:59

And Ebert has no shortage

16:01

of defenders who will say, well, you

16:03

know, he didn't even like giving star

16:05

ratings. They were sort of imposed on

16:07

him by the Chicago Sun-Time. We are

16:09

all fallen creatures. To which

16:11

I say, well, they certainly infected his thinking.

16:13

We're all sinners. And

16:15

star ratings increasingly, you know, I have

16:18

a letterbox to count. There was a

16:20

time five years ago when I would

16:22

sometimes put a star rating on a

16:24

movie. And I do that increasingly not

16:26

at all anymore, unless it's like five.

16:29

It feels ridiculous to look up, you know,

16:31

you'll go and you'll see that somebody's given

16:33

chimes at midnight, four and a half stars.

16:36

Even this movie, The Passion of the Christ,

16:38

which to give it a star rating is

16:40

very strange. Like you're gonna quantify this. Like

16:42

do you go to a gallery and you

16:45

say, well, this Edward Munch painting is three

16:47

and a half stars. Or

16:49

this Warhol is two, you know?

16:52

It's strange, it's so reductive. Well, I mean,

16:54

here's the thing. I mean, you were telling

16:56

me that there's another review where he actually

16:58

kind of lays out what the stars mean

17:00

to him, what the metric is. And for

17:02

him, it's a relative category. And you can,

17:05

maybe you can explain to people what that

17:07

means. But to finish the thought, to me,

17:09

if you're gonna give things a rating, it

17:11

only makes sense as an absolute category. I

17:14

think fundamentally I'm on board with you here.

17:16

I mean, I don't, I'm not sure I

17:18

really believe in giving films stars. I mean,

17:20

I've reviewed films many times. And for me,

17:23

if a film is interesting enough to review

17:25

in the first place, your job as the

17:27

person reviewing it is to make qualitative judgments,

17:29

value judgments about it, not quantitative ones. We

17:32

were like, oh, it's this many bags of

17:34

popcorn or whatever. I mean, I guess to

17:36

be fair to old Roger Ebert, he did

17:38

have to review films every single day, certainly

17:40

every single week. And so obviously, and you

17:42

know, he's doing it for a mainstream newspaper

17:44

where a lot of people are reading the

17:46

film reviews as kind of a should I

17:49

go see this, you know, it's kind of

17:51

a, you know, consumer review. But to me,

17:53

that just speaks to it being sort of

17:55

instrumental and a profaning of the enterprise of

17:57

criticism. Well, this review, and this is one

17:59

of my favorite. favorite Roger Ebert reviews. Well,

18:03

I should say it's one of the quintessential

18:05

ones. It's one that I disagree with vigorously,

18:07

but so much of his project is in

18:09

here. In 2004, he reviewed

18:11

the movie Shaolin Soccer. In fact, within weeks of

18:14

his review of The Passion of the Christ, Shaolin

18:16

Soccer, for those who don't know it, is a

18:18

Hong Kong comedy. I think at this point, it's

18:20

safe to call it a bit of a classic.

18:22

I mean, I love Shaolin Soccer. I think it's

18:25

a great film. I haven't seen it, and not

18:27

knowing anything about it except what Will has just

18:29

said, I guarantee it's better than The

18:31

Passion of the Christ. Ebert gives it

18:33

three stars, and he begins his review.

18:35

Shaolin Soccer is like a poster boy

18:37

for my theory of the star rating

18:39

system. Every month or so, I get

18:41

an anguished letter from a reader wanting

18:44

to know how I could possibly have

18:46

been so ignorant as to award three

18:48

stars to, say, Hidalgo, while dismissing, say,

18:50

Dogville with two stars. The disparity between

18:52

my approval of kitsch and my rejection

18:54

of angst reveals me, of course, as

18:56

a superficial moron who will do anything

18:58

to suck up to my readers. What

19:00

these correspondents do not grasp is that

19:02

to suck up to my demanding readers,

19:05

I would do better to praise Dogville.

19:07

It takes more nerve to praise pop

19:09

entertainment. It's easy and safe to deliver

19:11

pious praise of turgid, deep thinking. It's

19:13

true. I loved Anaconda and did not

19:15

think the United States of Leland worked.

19:18

Some dated movie references here, by the

19:20

way. Just goes over my head. But

19:22

does that mean I drool at the

19:24

keyboard and prefer man-eating snakes to suburban

19:26

despair? Not at all. What it means

19:28

is that the star rating system is

19:31

relative, not absolute. When you ask a

19:33

friend if Hellboy is any good, you're not

19:35

asking if it's any good compared to

19:37

Mystic River. You're asking if it's any

19:39

good compared to The Punisher. And my answer

19:41

would be, on a scale of one

19:43

to four, if Superman, 1978, is four, then

19:45

Hellboy is three and The Punisher is

19:47

two. In the same way, if American

19:50

Beauty gets four stars, then Leland clocks in

19:52

at about two. And this is why

19:54

Shaolin Soccer, a goofy Hong Kong action comedy,

19:56

gets three stars. It is Piffle. Yes,

19:58

but superior Piffle. If you were even

20:00

considering going to see a movie where the

20:02

players zoom 50 feet into the air

20:04

and rotate freely in violation of everything Newton

20:07

held sacred, then you do not want

20:09

to know if I thought it was

20:11

as good as Lost in Translation. So, I

20:13

mean, in this review, it's like it's

20:15

kind of a phony populism

20:18

that unthinkingly reinforces certain hierarchies of

20:20

taste, and I love the examples

20:22

he uses as like, well, four

20:24

stars. That's obviously, you know, Mystic

20:27

River. That's Lost in Translation. And,

20:29

you know, the highest, the

20:31

highest pinnacles of the Cathedral of Arse,

20:33

right? And Shaolin Soccer,

20:35

which, folks, if you ask me, better

20:38

than Mystic River, certainly better than The Passion

20:40

of the Christ. I'll tell you that fucking

20:42

much. But like The Passion of

20:44

the Christ, I don't know, it's just interesting the

20:46

benefit of the doubt that he'll give that. I

20:49

mean, by his own logic, I don't know,

20:51

I think Shaolin Soccer accomplishes what it sets

20:53

out to do. And

20:56

I mean, what, you know, what

20:58

is The Passion of the Christ? It's

21:00

four stars relative to what? Pasolini?

21:02

Pasolini's four stars. This shit's zero stars.

21:04

Yeah, yeah, but this is a movie,

21:07

The Passion of the Christ is a

21:09

movie that came marketed as an event,

21:11

okay? Right, so he just treats it

21:13

as one. That's right. That's right. Like,

21:15

this is a movie. There was a

21:18

drumbeat, a drumbeat of publicity, a drumbeat

21:20

of discourse for a whole year. And

21:23

you kids listening who weren't there at the time won't

21:25

know that in 2004, the election year of 2004... Hell

21:29

yeah. ...a... The

21:31

most important election of our lifetime. A

21:34

moment when temperatures were high, unlike

21:36

now, of course. Huh? Unlike this

21:39

election year. There

21:41

were kind of twin movies that were

21:43

these big cultural phenomena that had a

21:46

year of discourse around them. On

21:49

the left, you had Fahrenheit 9-11.

21:51

On the right, you had The

21:53

Passion of the Christ. Both movies

21:55

that were scorned by Hollywood, you

21:57

know, Disney famously dropped Fahrenheit 9-11.

22:00

Harvey Weinstein distributed it himself. The Passion

22:02

of the Christ, this is a movie that

22:04

Mel Gibson at the height of his power,

22:06

one of the biggest stars in the

22:08

frickin' world, spends 30 million

22:11

dollars of his own money

22:13

to make the most realistic,

22:16

the most uncompromising, the most brutal

22:19

movie about the death of Christ.

22:22

In late 2003, Frank Rich in

22:24

the New York Times is already

22:26

waging war on this movie, digging

22:29

up unpleasant information about, let's call

22:31

it, the opinions of Mel Gibson's

22:33

father. Certain things about

22:35

Mel Gibson's life and thought are coming

22:37

to light, to which Mel

22:39

Gibson famously said of Frank Rich, I

22:42

want to kill him, I want to kill his dog, I

22:44

want his intestines on a stick. That's

22:47

the kind of man we're dealing with here.

22:49

But the stakes felt so high in this

22:51

movie. And so yeah, it comes with this

22:53

affect to it that somebody like Ebert. Right,

22:56

and we can put Ebert to bed in

22:58

a minute, but I do think it's worth

23:00

underscoring. And yeah, as you've said, you know,

23:02

maybe reminding a few of our Zoomer listeners

23:04

that, yeah, this was one of the biggest

23:06

movies of 2004. I mean,

23:09

I was aware of it, even though

23:11

I was a teenager living mostly in

23:13

rural Ontario at the time without regular

23:15

access to TV, didn't really go to

23:17

the movies. My parents did not see

23:19

this movie. I knew all about it.

23:21

It was much discussed. It was the

23:23

kind of thing that was riffed on

23:25

in, you know, South Park and multiple

23:27

episodes. So yeah, it was everywhere. And

23:29

yeah, here Roger Ebert comes along. You

23:31

know, I do appreciate the two reviews you

23:33

read, the one in which he discusses the

23:35

star rating system and the, you know, the

23:37

Pasture of the Christ, because I think, you

23:40

know, if nothing else, at least Ebert was

23:42

explicit about how he approaches this task of

23:44

reviewing movies. So one,

23:46

the ratings he gives them are relative rather

23:48

than absolute. And two, when he watches something

23:51

like The Passion of the Christ, he reviews

23:53

it on the basis of what he thinks

23:55

it's trying to do, not what it should

23:57

be doing. And so once again, the Pasture

23:59

of the Christ is a very important thing.

24:02

mere fact that this film has lots of

24:04

money behind it, that there's a big star

24:06

behind it, that it has quite explicitly had

24:08

a marketing campaign behind it that has teed

24:11

it up, quite overtly teed it up to

24:13

be, you know, cultural event of the year,

24:15

trademark symbol. That is enough for Ebert to

24:17

kind of take it seriously and to not

24:19

ask any questions about whether the insane shit

24:22

that Mel Gibson is trying to do is

24:24

worth doing or is valuable at all. So

24:26

this movie is horrible.

24:28

It sucks. I

24:30

mean, it's awful. You know,

24:32

as an old lapsed Catholic myself, I

24:35

mean, there's nothing to enjoy or like

24:37

or respect about this movie. But you

24:39

know, if I do have 2% of

24:41

respect for this movie, I'm

24:44

thinking of where Mel Gibson is coming from.

24:46

And, you know, we saw the Diane

24:49

Sawyer interview that he did a huge

24:51

prime time hour long interview. Batshit insane

24:53

interview. It's, it's, I will get into

24:56

it later. Because there's some, there are

24:58

some treats from that interview. This

25:01

interview aired on like ABC in prime

25:03

time and 20 million people saw it.

25:05

Okay. And it is that should have

25:07

ruined them. The tone of it, like

25:09

it is as insane as that, you

25:11

know, the famous interview with Tom Cruise

25:13

that was like leaked, you know, where

25:15

he's talking about Scientology. It is that

25:17

but on, you know, yeah, marquee prime

25:19

time, you know, and it's Diane Sawyer

25:21

asking about his father's Holocaust denial and

25:23

shit like that. Yeah. But anyway, the

25:25

interview starts with Gibson saying it's not

25:27

about pointing the fingers. It's

25:29

not about playing

25:32

the blame game.

25:40

It's about faith, hope, love and forgiveness. That's

25:42

the reality for me. I believe

25:45

that I have to disingenuous,

25:47

I would say. Yeah, should have put

25:49

some forgiveness and love in it, asshole.

25:51

If that's what it was about. Ebert

25:54

is Ebert is correct that this movie

25:56

is not about Christ teaching. It's not

25:58

about the political context. that led

26:00

to Christ's execution. It's not about context at

26:03

all. It is

26:05

barely about Christianity. It is

26:07

single-mindedly about Christ's suffering. And

26:12

Ebert is right. Take it or leave it.

26:14

And Gibson obviously wanted to focus on the

26:16

magnitude of Christ's sacrifice, the magnitude of the

26:19

suffering he endured and how we all should

26:21

be very grateful for that because all this

26:23

suffering was for us. He died for our

26:26

sins. I actually don't think that idea comes

26:28

across. No. I don't think he conveys

26:30

exactly how this translates to

26:32

the dying. No, because

26:34

you need to have the stuff about Christ's

26:37

teachings. You need to have the love and

26:39

compassion and universalism in order for there to

26:41

be stakes in this. Well, I mean, what

26:43

actually comes across, there are several moments in

26:45

the movie where we do see bits of

26:48

Christ's teaching, little flashbacks. And

26:50

without exception in them, he's saying, if

26:52

you follow me, you will be persecuted.

26:54

And it's this too I really like

26:57

because, like I said, this is barely

26:59

a movie about Christianity and it's

27:01

not really a Christ biopic either. This

27:03

is an autobiographical film. What's actually happening

27:05

in those sequences is different parts of

27:07

Gibson's psyche are talking to themselves and

27:09

being like, look, if you make the

27:11

passion of the Christ, you will be

27:14

persecuted, but it's okay. It's your ticket

27:16

into the kingdom of heaven. This is

27:18

how we wipe clean all those DUIs

27:20

and the many future DUIs and the

27:22

soliloquies that might accompany them to come.

27:24

Yeah. Unfortunate knighted

27:26

Malibu. No doubt about

27:29

that. But also just thinking about where Gibson's

27:31

head is at. Famously, he

27:33

is a Catholic, but he

27:35

rejects Vatican II. In fact,

27:38

his father, Hutton, the late

27:40

Hutton Gibson, RIP, died

27:43

at the age of 100. So, you

27:45

know, only the good die young. That's

27:47

all I'll say about that. But Gibson

27:49

himself and his father were members of

27:51

a splinter sect. In fact, I

27:54

think in a church that Gibson himself paid

27:56

to have built, that does not subscribe to

27:58

Vatican II. You know, his. father

28:00

had said words to the effect of

28:02

Pope John Paul II is the Antichrist

28:04

or that sort of thing. Part of

28:06

the explanation one assumes for the fact

28:08

that this film has no English in

28:10

it, right? Like much of it's in

28:13

Latin. That's right. You know, probably the

28:15

most famous thing to come out of

28:17

Vatican II was that, you know, the

28:19

liturgy no longer had to be delivered

28:21

in Latin. And there are Catholics for

28:23

whom that's a bone of contention. Antonin

28:25

Scalia would drive like 90 minutes every

28:27

Sunday to, you know, whatever nearest Latin

28:29

mass church was. Right. So that he

28:32

could sit there and listen to a

28:34

bunch of shit he didn't understand. Yeah,

28:36

beyond me. I don't get it. But

28:38

in that Diane Sawyer interview, she asked

28:40

him, you know, many biblical scholars think

28:42

that a lot of the stories are

28:44

metaphors or they're exaggerated or they're, you

28:46

know, using poetic symbolism or this or

28:48

that. Do you believe them all literally?

28:50

Do you have a literal belief of

28:53

the Bible every sentence in it? Yes.

28:56

Yes. You either accept the whole thing or

29:00

don't accept it at all. Now,

29:02

obviously, I do not subscribe to that belief.

29:04

The Catholic Church does not subscribe to that

29:06

belief. But I take this movie to be

29:09

a sort of metaphor against

29:11

cafeteria Catholicism, basically. This is what Mel

29:13

Gibson Sink's faith is. He's looking at

29:15

you and he's saying, all you Catholics

29:17

out there think that you can have

29:19

a second Vatican council that makes things

29:22

easier. You think you can listen to

29:24

a fucking sermon in English? Faith

29:26

is about sacrifice. Faith is

29:29

about self-abnegation. Sometimes faith is

29:31

about suffering. Apparently. And watching

29:33

movies, too, apparently, is about

29:35

suffering. Yeah, sometimes movies won't

29:37

give you such niceties as

29:40

being entertained, having narrative structure.

29:43

A second idea. A second

29:47

idea would have been nice. I think you'll

29:49

agree. So it's the extent that I have

29:51

any respect for this movie. It is in

29:54

that. And I'm saying that in the most

29:56

qualified way. With a giant smirk on your

29:58

face. Yeah. I hear

30:00

you. Look, well, I both agree and

30:03

disagree because this film did, in a

30:05

way, do something for me. It

30:07

scratched an itch that

30:09

I've been feeling since we watched, well,

30:11

you know, we've on two recent episodes

30:13

discussed the installments of the wacky evangelical

30:16

God's Not Dead series. Thanks again to

30:18

friend of the show, Alex Shepard of

30:20

the New Republic, for joining us on

30:23

those. You can hear the latest one

30:25

at patreon.com/Michael and I. Those movies sure

30:27

are a good time, but, you know,

30:29

something that I think was really hitting

30:32

the three of us after watching the

30:34

third one, especially, I mean, the fourth

30:36

one got more wacky, but, you know,

30:38

still is doing this thing where it's

30:40

trying to kind of hedge. It's making

30:43

these pragmatic concessions in the interest of

30:45

broad appeal and box office returns. The

30:47

people behind those films are committed ideologues,

30:49

and yet they have to be like,

30:51

oh, well, actually school prayer helps everyone.

30:54

And it's not, you know, a sectarian

30:56

or a communitarian demand that we're,

30:58

you know, pressing on secular institutions.

31:01

Actually, you know, school prayer or

31:03

teaching creationism in public schools or

31:05

whatever, that's the real secularism. You

31:07

know, right-wing evangelicals are the only

31:09

tolerant people in America. He's doing

31:11

all that kind of bullshit. But

31:13

a man who builds his own

31:15

splinter sect is not interested in

31:17

reaching across the aisle. This

31:20

movie is much more in the lineage of something

31:22

like, if footmen tire you, what will horses do?

31:24

Yes, I agree, but I only partly agree. The

31:26

film did scratch this itch where, you know, I

31:28

watched the God's Not Dead movies and I thought,

31:31

oh, can't you just like, can we just have

31:33

some balls to the wall, wacky Christian stuff, please?

31:35

Like, do you have to do this stuff? Do

31:37

you have to shoehorn all these things in where

31:39

you're telling the audience, oh, yeah, we're not racist.

31:41

It's like, yes, you are, you know? And so

31:44

this movie is, yeah, it's completely insane.

31:46

I mean, Mel Gibson says he's a

31:48

Catholic, but I mean, there's a certain

31:50

point at which the insane kind of

31:52

Catholicism to which he subscribes, I mean,

31:54

this is the real horseshoe theory. It

31:56

just converges on, you know, the most

31:59

insane right-wing evangelical. So in

32:01

that sense, it did kind of, you know,

32:03

scratch the itch for me. It was like,

32:05

okay, yes. This movie feels like a high-budget

32:07

version of an insane evangelical film where it

32:09

does not care about narrative structure. There's, you

32:11

know, characters just sort of appear and then

32:13

disappear and they're, you know, they appear as

32:15

if you're just supposed to know who they

32:17

are and what their role in the story

32:19

is. There's no exposition. There's just the same

32:21

dumb idea just, you know, used like a

32:24

crude instrument beating you over the head over

32:26

and over again. So it did all that.

32:28

But where I disagree is I think,

32:30

you know, Gibson is too much of

32:32

a Hollywood guy. This movie is filled

32:34

with all of these bullshit, like musical

32:36

cues. Right away, about 15

32:38

minutes in, there is a scene where,

32:40

you know, the evil rabbi counselor, whatever,

32:43

throws Judas Iscariot, a bag with the

32:45

pieces of silver in it, and then

32:47

for some reason the bag flies through

32:49

the air in bullet time. Why?

32:52

This movie ends in what feels like

32:54

about a three-hour long, like a documentary

32:56

length sequence of not just Christ's crucifixion,

32:58

but him carrying the cross through the

33:00

streets, all of it. And it seems

33:03

to me if Gibson was taking his

33:05

own premise seriously, he would not have

33:07

had any music here. He would have

33:09

filmed this like a documentary. But no,

33:11

it has to have all these heavy-handed

33:13

musical cues to tell you how to

33:16

feel, which is very much like the

33:18

worst evangelical filmmaking you see. Like no

33:20

subtlety can be permitted. There can't be

33:22

any subtext to anything, either in terms

33:24

of what you're seeing on screen or

33:26

as pertains to whatever, you know, religious

33:29

or spiritual message the film is conveying.

33:31

Scripture is the most literal thing ever.

33:33

Like nothing is allowed to have subtext,

33:35

symbolism, metaphor, anything. And that to me

33:37

is where the passion of the Christ

33:39

not only fails as a film, I

33:42

mean it sucks, obviously, but it fails

33:44

according to the narrower category of analysis

33:46

that Ebert offers. You know, it fails

33:48

on its own terms for me. Yeah,

33:50

I mean there's a standard line on

33:53

Mel Gibson that, well, you know, he's

33:55

a wacky guy with strange views, but

33:57

you got to hand it to him.

34:00

He's a good filmmaker. He knows how to

34:02

make a movie, which I would say actually

34:04

what if he's a bad filmmaker? If you ever

34:06

considered that what if he made what one good

34:09

two good movie? Apocalypse, I think he kind of

34:11

maybe got a given a mobile after this I'm

34:13

starting to think maybe I should look at that

34:15

one again I saw Braveheart once I thought it

34:18

sucked. I think Hacksaw Ridge is a piece of

34:20

shit That's just my opinion and this one is

34:22

a painting of Christ on black velvet It's

34:26

exactly what you say, you know So if I

34:28

were making a movie like this and I'm

34:30

not but just on a dramatic

34:33

level Yeah, it would be interesting. You

34:35

know, what are the political reasons for

34:37

Christ persecution in this movie? It just

34:39

shows a a cabal. Let's put it

34:41

that way You

34:45

know some elders of Zion rounding

34:48

him up following certain protocols I

34:50

would say a persecuting

34:53

Christ for the crime of being such a

34:55

good person and Which we

34:57

basically never see him being a good person Well,

34:59

there's a flashback where we see him make a

35:01

tape makes a table and he's nice to his mother

35:04

and he shows you that

35:06

Flashback when he's being persecuted as if to

35:08

say why would they round up this guy

35:10

had a man made a table? He's so

35:12

nice What's

35:15

the problem? Um, but yeah,

35:17

you're right It's like all of these

35:19

tacky Hollywood touches like if the movie

35:22

actually were just about its one idea

35:24

and was fiercely Committed to its one

35:26

idea then you might have something but

35:29

so the centerpiece scene of the film

35:31

is Christ getting scourged Which

35:33

is one line in the Bible,

35:35

but nevertheless Gibson expands it to

35:37

a 15-minute set piece gruesomely violent

35:40

Incredibly sadistic and you know Christ

35:42

having had literal muscle torn out

35:44

of his back. Okay He's got

35:46

checkerboard of gore this scene I

35:48

should say is quite disgusting. It's

35:51

really nasty Yeah, so, you know

35:53

having had that done to him.

35:55

He like stands up like an

35:57

action hero and does this this

36:00

action hero pose. That's not a serious work

36:02

of art. That's a work of art that

36:04

fails on its own terms. It's

36:07

like, what if a wretched,

36:09

racist, darkhearted man, whose dad

36:11

is literally a Holocaust denier,

36:13

what if that man could

36:15

only communicate through kitsch? Whenever

36:18

that generic Middle Eastern music

36:21

plays, you know, like

36:23

you think Arnold Schwarzenegger has to

36:25

go save the embassy. Yes,

36:28

yes. This

36:30

movie is both too weird, but it's

36:32

also not weird enough. It's like, if

36:35

you're gonna make a dumbass weird movie,

36:37

you have $30 million to turn your

36:39

insane racist guy, Mine Palace, into a

36:41

movie to market it as the cultural

36:43

event of the year. Just fucking own

36:45

it. He's too much of a Hollywood

36:47

guy. Anyway, we should get into

36:50

the actual, you know, plot of the movie

36:52

such as it is. Yeah, and if you

36:54

know the words, sing along. That's right, yeah.

36:56

Some have called it the greatest story ever

36:58

told. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We open with a

37:00

title card. It's Isaiah 53. He

37:03

took our pain, he bore our suffering.

37:05

His punishment brought us peace. Now, I

37:07

was not raised Catholic. I gather that's

37:09

often read on Good Friday. In its

37:11

original context, it was obviously speaking about

37:13

Christ. I think maybe in this film,

37:15

it's about Mel Gibson. Now, something that's

37:17

probably of note here, just vis-a-vis mine

37:19

and Will's respective reactions to this movie.

37:21

I mean, I hadn't seen it and

37:23

he saw it when it came out.

37:25

But as Will's alluded to already, you

37:27

know, he was raised Catholic. I was

37:29

not raised as anything. I

37:31

have, you know, one side of my family is, you

37:34

know, Church of England, but, you know,

37:36

I was not raised in a religious

37:38

context at all. A thoroughly secular, agnostic

37:40

household. I did spend some time in

37:42

church as a kid because I was

37:44

in choir. But I mean, like, I

37:46

never went to Bible study or anything

37:48

like that. So my knowledge of even

37:50

the most basic Christian stories is kind

37:53

of rudimentary. Like, it comes from reading

37:55

St. Augustine very closely. You know, it

37:57

comes from studying political theory, which, if

37:59

I said... say is a rather unorthodox

38:01

route. So I'm going into this movie relatively

38:03

blind compared to Will. The film opens and

38:05

it's like okay what are we doing here?

38:07

When is this? Who are these people? I

38:09

mean obviously I have some familiarity with all

38:12

this stuff but for the first you know

38:14

15 minutes or so like unless Will had

38:16

told me I would not have understood that

38:18

okay this is you know there are things

38:20

on the screen which indicate that this is

38:22

just after you know hours after the Last

38:24

Supper. You know we're dealing with the late

38:27

period Jesus you know. Yeah he's making his

38:29

Abbey Road. That's right. He's falling out

38:31

with the disciples. They're all you know

38:33

they're all kind of going solo and

38:35

doing their own little things you know.

38:37

Paulie and Pam you know he's carrying

38:39

that weight folks. The weight of our

38:41

sins. Now I think my reaction to

38:43

the film was partly informed by my

38:45

relative ignorance compared to Will's but also

38:47

this film is barely a film.

38:49

It doesn't do any just basic film stuff

38:51

to explain like what's going on. There isn't

38:53

even a title card you know saying the

38:55

year. There's nothing 33

38:58

AD. So you have no idea what's going on

39:00

like the film just takes as axiomatic like

39:02

folks you know all the backstory here it's

39:05

Jesus Christ Jesus of Nazareth you know him

39:07

you love him. We're not gonna tell you

39:09

what his teachings were because you know those

39:11

you love those too. So henceforth everything you're

39:14

gonna see is just racism and torture porn.

39:16

So I'm no biblical scholar. I know some

39:18

of the classic stories. I'll tell you what

39:20

I know about Jesus. You know he's born

39:23

King Herod hears that there was a Messiah

39:25

somewhere who was born so he orders all

39:27

the firstborn in a certain radius killed. I

39:29

always found that a little far-fetched frankly.

39:32

Nevertheless 33 years later we see him

39:34

again. He's doing miracles. He's healing the

39:36

sick. He's casting out devils. But then

39:38

on top of that he's got a

39:40

whole system of ethics that he's developing.

39:42

Love your neighbor like yourself. Turn the

39:45

other cheek. All the hits. He's also

39:47

a bit of an anti-imperialist. A bit

39:49

of an anti-Roman zealot. This gets downplayed

39:51

a little bit. I feel like some

39:53

of those edges were probably sandpapered off

39:55

the Bible a bit you know as

39:58

they were trying to sell it. Nevertheless,

40:00

things are going okay for the son

40:02

of man until he starts getting a

40:04

little big for his britches. He

40:08

fucks up the moneylenders at the temple.

40:12

He rolls into town surrounded by

40:14

his posse all waving palms. The

40:18

Romans and the rabbis look at him and

40:20

they say, you're fucking

40:22

around, now you're going to find out.

40:24

Yeah, some Roman thugs show up at

40:26

the beginning and they're like, yo, where's

40:29

the Nazarene troublemaker? Yo, we're looking for

40:31

Jesus of Nazareth. You got him here? None

40:33

of that context is in the movie. What

40:35

we know from the movie is that the

40:37

Nazarene troublemaker and the authorities don't like him.

40:40

Yeah, and the authorities, I mean, folks,

40:43

just look up a picture of the

40:45

authorities and I think it speaks for

40:47

itself. What you know is that the

40:49

council of rabbis have them arrested and

40:52

they beat them up, they torture them

40:54

a little bit. They take him to

40:56

Pontius Pilate, their imperial ruler, and they

40:58

say, you got to kill this guy.

41:01

He's making life difficult for us. He's

41:03

forming his own splinter sect. He says

41:05

he's the king of the Jews and

41:07

that poses a problem for the cabal.

41:10

And Pontius Pilate, who in this movie comes

41:13

off as pretty affable. He's like a centrist.

41:15

The film is very clear that it's

41:17

like, look, the Romans aren't the villains, okay?

41:19

The Romans are just doing the bidding of

41:21

the villains. Yeah. There's

41:26

a really great bit where Pilate, who's

41:28

doing everything he can to not crucify

41:30

Christ, that's something like, oh my

41:33

God, I have to deal with

41:35

so many uprising. Yeah, he's having

41:37

a pain conversation with Mrs. Pilate.

41:39

Who is fully in the tank

41:41

for Jesus. That's right. She thinks

41:43

he's divine, but he says, you

41:45

don't understand, being a brutal imperial

41:47

ruler is hard.

41:50

It's a polarized time. These are

41:52

the conversations that Joe Biden is having

41:55

with his wife. So he tries to

41:57

pawn Jesus off on King Herod down

41:59

the... And King Herod, here's

42:02

the thing about Mel Gibson. He's

42:04

heard what you've said about ancient

42:06

Rome. He's heard that it was

42:08

much more sexually liberated than now.

42:10

He's heard all that Gore Vidal

42:12

shit and he doesn't like it.

42:14

And so that is representative of

42:16

the King Herod scene, where King

42:18

Herod is the swishiest, most cross-dressing,

42:20

most makeup-wearing King Herod in film

42:22

history. And he's surrounded by this,

42:24

well, it's like a scene at

42:26

a Caligula, for God's sake. Yeah,

42:28

you know what this actually reminded

42:30

me of, was do you remember the

42:32

scene in 300 when the sort of

42:35

hunchback traitor, who the Spartans won't let

42:37

fight with them, and he goes to

42:39

Xerxes tent or whatever, and it's like,

42:41

yeah, everyone in the tent is, you

42:43

know, gender-fluid or whatever. It's basically meant

42:46

to be like Tumblr or something. Like,

42:48

that's what Herod's court is like as

42:50

well. Mel Gibson, important to emphasize, also

42:52

a famously homophobic man. If you just

42:54

look up Mel Gibson homophobia, you're gonna

42:56

find a lot of stuff. Yeah, and

42:59

we should also note that Satan appears

43:01

in this movie as gender-fluid,

43:03

right? Like, am I wrong

43:06

in saying that? Well, Satan's played by

43:08

a woman, in fact, yeah. But of

43:10

ambiguous gender in the film. Yeah, sort

43:12

of androgynously depicted. And that's Gibson showing

43:14

you what he thinks of as demonic.

43:16

Which, you know, when I think of

43:19

demonic, I just think of this movie,

43:21

Mel Gibson, and the press tour he

43:23

did to promote it. Just a word

43:25

on historical accuracy, too. I mean, the

43:27

decision to have all the dialogue be

43:30

Aramaic and Latin, I mean, that contrasts

43:32

amusingly with just all the Hollywood touches

43:34

of the film. I mean, late in

43:36

the movie, Gibson, for example, invents this

43:38

cathartic moment where the bad guy on

43:40

the cross next to Jesus, you know,

43:43

there's the good guy on his left,

43:45

the bad guy on his right. Well,

43:47

the bad guy gets a little crow

43:49

on top of his head pecking out

43:51

his eye. You know, just idiotic Hollywood

43:53

flourishes like that. Again, he's a man

43:55

with no taste. So like his idea

43:57

of historical accuracy is just a simple.

44:00

as well they should they should all be

44:02

speaking Aramaic and the movie should have no

44:04

narrative frills. Right and it

44:06

shouldn't really be operating at any level

44:09

of abstraction or symbolism either. This

44:11

movie as I've said feels

44:13

very much like a film

44:15

made by a conservative Protestant

44:18

evangelical because it has the

44:20

most literal interpretation of scripture

44:22

imaginable. It sees no kind

44:24

of wider valence to the

44:26

events it's depicting apart from

44:28

the individual's literal suffering like Christ's

44:31

suffering has no kind of wider dimension

44:33

to it because Christ teachings aren't really

44:35

apart from where he says yeah if

44:37

you're a Christian you're gonna be persecuted

44:39

if you follow me you'll be persecuted

44:41

because Christ teachings are given no more

44:43

substance than that. We have just the

44:46

most crudely literal story imaginable and here

44:48

you know the film can I think

44:50

reasonably be charged with making the same

44:52

pragmatic concessions for broad appeal if I

44:54

can put it that way as the

44:56

God's Not Dead movies because yeah this

44:58

is a Catholic movie, but it's clearly

45:01

targeted towards American evangelicals and it clearly

45:03

worked on them. There was widespread evangelical

45:06

support for this movie. Well Frank

45:08

Rich in those New York Times

45:11

columns that earned Mel Gibson's ire.

45:14

Partly they were focused on what

45:16

Mel Gibson's father was saying, but

45:18

they were also alleging that Gibson

45:21

had very consciously sort of stoked

45:23

anti-Semitism throughout the year-long build-up to

45:25

this movie by hosting all of

45:28

these preview screenings for mostly evangelical

45:30

groups with a few you know token

45:32

rabbis here and there and propelling this

45:35

narrative of you know Hollywood doesn't want

45:37

me to make this movie. Hollywood doesn't

45:39

want you to see this movie. I'm

45:42

being persecuted for my beliefs just like

45:44

Jesus was in this movie just like

45:46

you are in real life and the

45:48

unspoken part being and yeah by the

45:50

same group too. Pat Robertson fucking loved

45:52

this movie. Ted Haggard loved this movie.

45:55

Jerry Falwell loved this movie and yeah,

45:57

it's not hard to see why because

46:00

Theologically it feels very close to

46:02

the kinds of sermons that guys like

46:04

that preach. I'm not sure where this

46:06

fits in by the way, but one

46:08

of the many little micro controversies around

46:11

the movie was in the Gospel of

46:13

Matthew during the crucifixion, someone in the

46:15

crowd is quoted as saying, his blood

46:17

be on us and on our children,

46:19

which, you know, it's the blood libel

46:22

statement, you know, and in the film,

46:24

it is apparently sad in the film,

46:26

but Mel Gibson relented to pressure to

46:28

not subtitle it. He wanted it

46:31

to just be completely inscrutable. In a

46:33

New Yorker profile from 2003, it

46:36

says, Gibson yielded, but he has

46:38

some regrets. I wanted it

46:40

in, he says, my brother said I was

46:42

wimping out if I didn't include it. It

46:44

happened. It was said, but man, if I

46:46

included that in there, they'd be coming after

46:48

me at my house. They'd come kill me.

46:50

So that was in the New Yorker. That

46:53

was in the New Yorker. He

46:56

mentions what his brother's comments on the film

46:58

are. Did he canvas any other members

47:00

of his family for thoughts on

47:02

the film? Also, you know, just

47:05

returning to the Diane Sawyer interview,

47:07

obviously, children are not necessarily responsible

47:09

for the sins of their fathers.

47:11

But when Diane Sawyer was asking

47:13

Mel Gibson about his father's Holocaust

47:15

denial, here's what he said. Again,

47:18

this was on TV. Tens

47:21

of millions of people heard this. So just enjoy.

47:23

I think as soon as I started filming, that

47:26

beacon of journalistic integrity, the

47:28

New York Times, was,

47:32

you know, dispatched someone to go

47:34

down there and take advantage of

47:36

my father even before I could

47:38

finish filming. But you know,

47:40

do you think they really want to know what my dad

47:43

has to say or did they ever

47:45

want to know before I started making this

47:47

film? I don't think

47:49

so. It's a it's a it's a thing to try

47:51

and drive a wedge in between a man's own

47:53

flesh and blood. That's my father. OK, I love

47:55

him. And if

47:58

they're going to try and drive a wedge in there, it ain't going to.

48:00

happened. Gibson's father, Hutton Gibson,

48:02

age 85, who has written books

48:04

and a newsletter with some decidedly

48:06

provocative terms of phrase. He has

48:09

called the Pope, garrulous, perilous,

48:12

the Koran kisser. And

48:14

in that New York Times magazine interview he

48:16

seemed to be questioning the scope of the

48:18

Holocaust, skeptical that six

48:20

million Jews had died. So

48:23

what does Gibson think? Do

48:25

I believe that there were

48:27

concentration camps where defenseless

48:29

and innocent Jews died

48:31

cruelly under the Nazi regime? Of course

48:34

I do, absolutely. It was

48:37

an atrocity of monumental proportion. And

48:39

you believe there were a million, six

48:41

million, millions? I

48:43

think people wondered if your

48:46

father's views were your views on

48:48

this. Their whole agenda

48:50

here, my

48:52

detractors, is to drive away. It's between me

48:54

and my father. And

48:57

it's not going to happen. I love him.

48:59

He's my father. And you

49:01

we will not speak publicly about him. I'm tight

49:03

with him. He's my father.

49:07

Gotta leave it alone, Diane. Yeah,

49:09

but the thing is, you know,

49:11

Mel Gibson clearly not as insane

49:13

as his father. You know, definitely

49:15

a level-headed guy. He did a

49:17

Playboy interview in 1995 in which

49:19

he described Bill Clinton as a

49:21

low-level opportunist, you know, fair enough,

49:23

who was telling him what to

49:25

do. He went on to

49:28

say that the Rhodes Scholarship was established

49:30

for young men and women who want

49:32

to strive for a New World Order,

49:34

which was a campaign for Marxism. He

49:36

later tried to walk that back.

49:38

Weirdly, Gibson actually seems

49:41

like he was critical of the Iraq War

49:43

and he praised Michael Moore for Fahrenheit 9-11.

49:45

Yeah, well, good

49:47

for him, I guess. More recently

49:49

he's taken a heroic stand against

49:51

child sex trafficking with his endorsement

49:53

of Sound of Freedom. One of

49:55

the most disturbing problems in our

49:58

world today is human trafficking. In

50:01

particular, the trafficking of children. Now

50:04

the first step in eradicating this crime

50:08

is awareness. It

50:10

goes east down to freedom. Oh yeah,

50:12

I got something to say about that in

50:14

a sec, but apparently in 2016 he said

50:17

that he wasn't voting for Trump or Hillary.

50:19

And then in 2021 he attended UFC and

50:21

was filmed offering a salute to Donald Trump.

50:23

Anyway, to return to Sound of Freedom, since

50:26

that was the last movie I saw Jim

50:28

Caviezel in, the whole time I just imagined

50:30

the film as part of the same universe,

50:32

the Sound of Freedom. Caviezel is still playing

50:34

Tim Ballard there. I was just waiting for

50:37

it after Christ is resurrected and ascends to

50:39

heaven. The film having the same thing as

50:41

it does at the end of the Sound

50:43

of Freedom where Caviezel's face just fades and

50:45

you see fucking Ballard's fucking bloated visage staring

50:48

back at you. So look, I feel like

50:50

we've given short thrift to the plot in

50:52

this movie, but the thing is folks, this

50:54

film has no plot. That's not just a

50:57

tongue in cheek thing that we're saying. The

51:00

plot of this movie is that Christ is suffering

51:02

under the weight of our sins after the Last

51:04

Supper. He gets arrested. There's

51:06

some centrist head scratching about what to

51:08

do. Violet in trying to avoid this,

51:10

he says to the crowd, listen, I can

51:13

release Jesus or I can release Barabbas. And

51:16

of course the crowd is, you

51:18

know, stacked with angry rabbis. So

51:20

they all say Barabbas, Barabbas. Judas

51:23

feels some regret. Then he kind of

51:25

gets harassed by some creatures that look

51:28

like the brood from the Cronenberg movie.

51:30

The devil kind of looks on in

51:32

various ways. The devil, by the way,

51:34

looks like they're related to Baron Harkonnen.

51:36

We spend, I don't know, five minutes

51:39

in Herod's court. Then Jesus gets

51:41

whipped, condemned. Gary's The Crucifix through

51:43

the Streets is crucified as resurrected

51:45

film ends. It's about two hours

51:47

long. It felt like five hours.

51:49

Awful dogshit movie. Terrible. Regarding the

51:51

sources, the movie is of course

51:53

based on the New Testament, although

51:56

apparently it was also based on

51:58

the visions of two nuns. from

52:00

several hundred years ago. I'm reading Christopher

52:02

Hitchens's article about the film in Vanity

52:04

Fair from 2004. He writes, The

52:08

first of these women, Mary of Agreda,

52:10

was a figure in 17th century Spain

52:12

who wrote that the Jewish culpability for

52:14

the murder of Jesus, quote, descended to

52:16

their posterity, and even to this day

52:19

continues to afflict this group with horrible

52:21

impurities, unquote. The second, Anne Catherine Emerich,

52:23

is better known. She was a 19th

52:25

century German, one of those who brooded

52:27

for so long and so morbidly on

52:29

the crucifixion that she claimed to have

52:31

received the stigmata, the bloody wounds and hands

52:34

and feet that are for some people the

52:36

sign of the true devotee. She also told

52:38

of a vision in which she saved an

52:40

old Jewish lady from purgatory. So yeah, some

52:42

odd sources for Gibson's script. Something

52:45

that I guess has to be reckoned with

52:47

is the fact that this movie was a

52:49

genuine cultural phenomenon. It made $370 million

52:51

dollars at the North American box

52:53

office even more worldwide.

52:56

This being an ultra violent

52:58

movie in a dead language.

53:00

I know that when I saw it,

53:02

I basically went kind of as a

53:04

rubber necker, if anything, or that

53:07

that's too harsh. I mean, it was just the

53:09

movie that everyone was talking about. Of course, I

53:11

wanted to see it. And also, I remember going

53:13

almost kind of in the same way that you'd

53:15

like watch a horror movie at a slumber party.

53:17

There'd been all this talk for weeks about how

53:19

incredibly violent it was. So I remember going into

53:21

it with this feeling of like, Oh my God, like

53:23

what's he going to show? Am I going to

53:25

be able to take it? Like, you know, there was

53:27

that feeling of anticipation in the air that I

53:29

think got a lot of people in theaters

53:32

that weren't necessarily right

53:34

wing Christians. It just became

53:36

this sort of event. It

53:38

was a different experience seeing

53:40

it in movie theaters because,

53:43

you know, you hear that

53:45

pulsing soundtrack, you hear every

53:47

flaying maximum Dolby head smashing

53:49

clarity. And you see

53:52

it in that moment of just

53:54

a breathless hype. It's a different

53:56

experience than watching it now. But

53:58

even then, like, I can't imagine,

54:00

you know, this is a movie

54:02

that seems to preach like so

54:04

squarely at the choir, I can't

54:06

imagine how anybody can connect with

54:08

it if you're not already sold

54:10

on it. I think of some

54:12

of the great Christian movies, you

54:14

know, in Pasolini's The Gospel According

54:16

to St. Matthew, he's very interested

54:18

in Jesus as a revolutionary figure.

54:20

Pasolini famously was a Marxist and

54:22

wanted to apply that to Jesus.

54:24

In Scorsese's The Last Temptation of

54:27

Christ, his big interest seems to

54:29

be in the idea of someone

54:31

who is both God and man,

54:33

somebody with God-like power and goodness

54:35

also dealing with his own temptations,

54:37

not just the temptations of the

54:40

flesh, but the temptation to not

54:42

be God, to be a normal

54:44

man. This isn't a movie that's

54:46

strictly about Jesus, but it is

54:48

a Catholic movie. You know, Abel

54:50

Ferrerra's Bad Lieutenant, which is probably

54:53

my favorite Catholic movie, you know,

54:55

if I'm creating a canon, its

54:57

central idea is if anybody can

54:59

be forgiven, and if we all

55:01

should aspire to turn the other

55:03

cheek and forgive, like what does

55:06

that actually look like in practice?

55:08

The nun in that movie who's

55:10

raped brutally and then forgives her

55:12

assailants, you know, without them asking

55:14

for it, or the Harvey Keitel

55:16

character in that movie who's thoroughly

55:18

reprehensible, thoroughly loathsome, he thinks he's

55:20

irredeemable, but her doing that act,

55:23

her forgiving her assailants, makes him

55:25

think that maybe he could be

55:27

forgiven, and that leads to a

55:29

sort of breakdown in him. Like,

55:31

that's a compelling idea, you know? There

55:33

are compelling ideas in Catholicism. Yeah, Martin

55:35

Scorsese's The Silence, another film, a brilliant

55:38

film. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. More depth

55:40

in like any single frame of that

55:42

than in The Passion of the Christ.

55:44

And the fundamental idea in this movie

55:46

is, well, maybe I'm answering

55:48

my question here, the idea is you

55:50

will be persecuted for your beliefs, and

55:53

you have to, like Jim Cavies, all

55:55

stand up after you've been whipped really

55:57

hard and flex. Like, that's the

55:59

movie's idea. And I guess to

56:01

those who find it powerful, that's what they

56:03

find powerful. Yeah, a truth that I suspect

56:05

is especially powerful when you do the, I'm

56:08

definitely not a racist promotional tour Gibson did

56:10

for this, and then get pulled

56:12

over two years later in Malibu. And

56:32

it's stupid. It's

56:44

stupid. It's

56:49

stupid. It's

56:51

stupid. How

56:54

many of you do it? How

56:57

many of you do it? How

57:00

many of you do it?