USA Today

Beverly Hills

Looking more like a Marine in civvies than the bearded and bloodied Jesus he plays in Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ’, Jim Caviezel has a confession.

“There was this moment when I understood that Mel was asking me to play Jesus,” he says, a silver cross flashing off a taut necklace. “And I kept thinking, ‘God, all I want to do is a comedy.’”

Gibson, seated nearby with actress Maia Morgenstern (Mary), lets loose his signature cackle, part ‘Lethal’Weapon’s off-kilter cop Martin Riggs, part Three Stooges. It is one of the few laughs in an hour-long conversation best described as sober, echoing both the serious mood on the Italian shoot and the controversy that still dogs the personal project (Jewish leaders fear the film will spur anti-Semitism).

As the auteur and financier behind the $30 million movie, an almost blow-by-blow account of Jesus’ final torturous hours, Gibson fields most of the questions with a level and largely hushed tone. His stars both defer to him (Morgenstern, a Romanian actress, repeatedly refers to him as “Mr Mel Gibson”) and support him.

“The film has philosophical meaning on many levels. And me and Mr Mel Gibson, it was as if we were talking the same language,” says Morgenstern, who wears a Star of David necklace. “We communicated without words.”

Morgenstern dismisses the suggestion that she was hired to calm critics: “I was not asked to do this part because I am Jewish. We were all doing art with a capital A.”

Gibson says the genesis of the movie was a crisis he suffered a dozen years ago after global

success had led to unspecified

excess. “When you’re spiritually bankrupt, I think you taint everyone around you,” says Gibson, appearing fatigued by ‘The Passion’s critical storm. “In a sense, it was for those people who loved me that I had to become a better person.”

Plenty of folks go soul searching, and the quest remains largely private. Why turn his into a major movie?

“You know, if I was Billy Graham, I’d have preached. If I was Jackson Pollock, I’d have painted,” he says. “But I have one good trick, that’s filmmaking, and that’s how I express myself. This (movie) is my meditation.”

But Gibson has been far from passive in defending his film. When word first surfaced of its controversial nature, the director stopped conducting interviews and started giving private screenings to Christian leaders whose support has led to strong early ticket sales.

“I felt like my rights as an American, as an artiste, as a human being, were violated right there in public,” he says, voice momentarily rising. “You know, ‘hand over the script, or else,’ and ‘take out these scenes.’ If you want to make me nuts, if you want to make me dig my heels in, do that.”

In fact, Gibson did heed some cries; he deleted English subtitles during a contentious scene in which a Jewish mob, chanting in Aramaic, says Jesus’ blood would forever be on the hands of Jews.

Gibson is a traditionalist Catholic, a conservative branch whose beliefs he was first exposed to by his father, Hutton Gibson. Recent articles have noted the elder Gibson’s denial of the Holocaust; the son will only say that “nothing, nothing can drive a wedge between me and my blood. He’s my father. I love him.”

Nor will he say much about his family (Gibson and his wife, Robyn, have seven children), other than to praise his wife: “She’s amazing. She just says, ‘Is what you’re doing right and good?’ Yes. ‘Well then, quit complaining.’”

On the film’s main charge — that it paints the Jews as inordinately culpable for the death of Jesus — Gibson shakes his head. “I don’t engage in anti-Semitism. Never have. According to my faith, it’s completely immoral,” he says.

“All these attacks over the past year have given me a daily opportunity to practise tolerance. And that’s something I’m kind of short on,” he says. “I have no time for name calling. But if it’s my lot right now to be on the barrel and take some abuse, so be it.”

Gibson demurs on naming his next project, either as actor or director. But there are hints he isn’t through mining this vein. “If I was going to do another Bible story, say from the Old Testament, what do you think might be the most interesting?” asks Gibson.

Caviezel tosses out the Ten Commandments. A visitor says the flood.

“I thought of wacky things while I was making this film,” says Gibson. “Even flashed back from Christ on the cross to Abraham sacrificing his son.”