Wednesday, February 25, 2004
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Wednesday, February 25, 2004 |
Preparing for ‘The Passion’By JOHN THOMPSON and By LINDSAY BIANCHI It’s been called the “greatest story ever told” and starting today, Fayette’s movie watchers will get to see actor-director Mel Gibson’s spin on the crucifixion of Christ. “The Passion of the Christ” is Gibson’s $25 million epic about the last 12 hours of Jesus’ life and is spawning fervor among the Christian community. Churches have bought up entire showings of the movie to show their eager flock and are hoping more people will be converted to Christianity after seeing the film. But locally, one of the county’s biggest churches had an extremely tough time in trying to deal with the local movie theater. New Hope Baptist Church’s executive pastor Barry Thompson said he contacted Tinseltown at Fayette Pavilion about buying the theater out for six screenings. When he couldn’t get any help at the local level, Thompson then contacted the theater’s corporate owner, Carmike, and was disturbed at what he heard. “They told me I would have to purchase all 290 tickets for each show, which was fine. But they also said I would have to purchase a $5 concession coupon for each seat also,” he said. Thompson said members of his flock were quite capable of picking out their own concessions and was then told he would have to pay a $300 rental fee per screening, along with a $100 service charge. Frustrated by the theater chain’s lack of response, Thompson decided to seek a different route to enable members of New Hope’s flock to see the film. He went online and purchased $7,500 worth of movie bucks from Carmike and will hand them out this Sunday during a Bible study class. “This movie has spawned so much talk, we decided to do a six-week study class on it. Anybody who comes to our study class on Sunday will get $5 worth of movie bucks to pay for the movie,” said Thompson. Study classes start at 9:15 a.m. at New Hope’s north campus on New Hope Road and 10:30 a.m. at the church’s south campus near Starr’s Mill. Gibson’s movie opens on more than 2,800 screens today and has been the subject of controversy for months. The devout Catholic financed the movie himself and has been screening it the last few months to groups of evangelical Christians. The groups have been moved by the film, and hundreds of churches around the country have bought out screenings. The movie-star director has taken hits for what is perceived by some as the anti-Semitic tone of the film. But in one of the early reviews by Newsweek’s David Ansen, the esteemed film critic finds no evidence of the charges. Ansen did have problems with the violence in the movie, and does not recommend the film for children. “Relentlessly savage, ‘The Passion’ plays like the Gospel according to the Marquis de Sade. The film that has been getting rapturous advance raves from evangelical Christians turns out to be an R-rated inspirational movie no child can, or should, see,” Ansen wrote. But last week in an interview with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer, Gibson defended the film. “I don’t want people to make it about the blame game,” Gibson said. “It’s about faith, hope, love and forgiveness. That’s what this film is about. It’s about Christ’s sacrifice.”
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