THE 'TEMPTATION' FUROR (2024)

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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."