Universal Pictures, which has been bombarded for the past week by
protests from conservative Christians asking the studio to shelve or
destroy the still-unreleased motion picture "The Last Temptation of
Christ," yesterday fought back with full-page newspaper ads explaining
why the company has no intention of allowing the movie to be kept from
public view.
"Much of what {the protesters} are saying is inaccurate and
exaggerated," a Universal spokesman said, reading from the prepared
statement that he said would be the studio's only public comment on the
controversy over the Martin Scorsese-directed picture scheduled for
release this fall. "This is censorship. People have a right to choose
for themselves whether or not to see this movie, and to form their own
opinions about it."
In an unusual public defense of its own picture, Universal yesterday
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used its newspaper advertisem*nts to reprint the text of a letter sent
to Campus Crusade for Christ Director Bill Bright, who had offered to
raise $10 million to buy and then destroy all existing copies of the
film. "In the United States, no one sect or coalition has the power to
set boundaries around each person's freedom to explore religious and
philosophical questions," read the Universal letter, which appeared in
The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the
Atlanta Constitution, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. "These
freedoms protect all of us. They are precious. They are not for sale."
At the heart of the furor, which has generated street protests in
Los Angeles and heated telephone and petition-signing campaigns in a
number of cities including San Antonio and Atlanta, is what some who
have seen it describe as a fictional examination of Jesus Christ
struggling with His own human frailty before accepting martyrdom to save
mankind. Based on the novel by the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis, who
is more widely known as the author of "Zorba the Greek," "The Last
Temptation of Christ" is said to show Jesus doubting His divinity,
tempted by sin, and in one long dream sequence at the end of the movie,
imagining vividly the life He would have led as a mortal man who
marries, has sexual relations and fathers a family.
It is this scene in particular, along with the many other references
to Christ's own wrestling with human impulse, that offended some
conservative Christian leaders so deeply that they refused to attend the
screening Universal arranged 10 days ago in New York so they could
judge the picture for themselves. Some of those who declined had seen
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fragments of the script, read Kazantzakis' novel or heard secondhand
accounts that convinced them there was no way even the most sensitive
director could put this material in a movie without being blasphemous
and violating what they regard as the unassailable truth of the biblical
notion of Jesus.
"It's almost as if you had done a story on George Washington, and he
was a combination of Benedict Arnold and Gomer Pyle," said Tim Penland,
who owns a Burbank marketing company and had worked with Universal
earlier this year to try to appease conservative Christians already
alarmed about the translation to screen of Kazantzakis' controversial
novel. Penland had read an early draft of the script, he said, and tried
to point out which parts would most trouble conservative Christians.
"I marked 80 pages out of 120 pages and said, 'You're going to have
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serious problems with these 80 pages,' and sent them back," Penland
said. He said he severed relations with the company when it declined to
show him the film earlier this summer, and said reports from the
screening have indicated that much of what he found objectionable is
still in the movie.
"The film is making the point that Jesus was a man who became God,"
Penland said. "All of that kind of discussion is blasphemy, and from a
theological standpoint it is total blasphemy. Because as we know, and
the Scripture portrays, Jesus was born both man and God, but He didn't
come out as man and then become God. He came to earth as God in human
flesh. He experienced all the pain and the suffering, and was tempted
like we are, but without sin. This film shows Him sinning, and Him
stating right there, 'I have sinned.' So this film is blasphemy to
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anybody who believes the Scripture."
Penland's view is shared by enough conservative ministers around the
country to have dominated the Christian radio talk shows and to have
generated intense telephone protest campaigns both to Universal and to
some movie theater chains. Petitions being passed around Texas and other
Southern states are urging theaters to refuse to show the movie, and
Campus Crusade for Christ is disseminating widely a "fact sheet" that
urges Christians to declare that they will boycott all businesses owned
by MCA-Universal if the company "releases a film defaming your Lord."
One small group took its protest to the sidewalk outside the home of
MCA Chairman Lew Wasserman, who is Jewish. In highly inflammatory
language, the group accused him of fostering an anti-Semitic backlash
by funding a movie some Christians would perceive as blasphemous.
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But some religious leaders who did attend the screening have said
they found the movie an interesting and not particularly offensive
treatment of what was, after all, a work of fiction. "How do you go
about controlling anyone's imagination?" asked the Rev. Eugene A.
Schneider, deputy director for the office of communications of the
United Church of Christ. "The author of the book was having a tremendous
spiritual struggle himself, and when people are involved with struggles
-- we all have imaginations that imagine things. For anybody to say,
'Well, this you cannot imagine, we have to put a limit on your
imagination' -- folks, that just is not possible."
Both Schneider and the Rev. William Fore, assistant secretary for
communications at the National Council of Churches, said they found
"The Last Temptation of Christ" to be in the end a picture that raised
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compelling questions about faith and the nature of divinity. "How is
Jesus man, or is He God?" asked Fore. "Now, I think that's an
interesting question for the film to raise ... He's ambivalent, He's
full of anxiety, He's human. And He rises above all that, and accepts
God's will to be the Savior."
Schneider and Fore made one additional point, which is that neither
of them thought this was the best movie he had ever seen. Schneider
called it "boring," Fore called it "ponderous," and both men suggested
that under ordinary circ*mstances a 2 1/2-hour movie about Jesus Christ
is probably not destined for box office history.
"So all this controversy is helping Universal a great deal," said
Fore. "They need it. I'm sure they detected that they don't have a
'Rambo III' on their hands."