Feb. 14, 2004 - Reader's Digest landed an exclusive interview with filmmaker/actor Mel Gibson in support of his controversial film, "The Passion of the Christ." Peggy Noonan's interview with Gibson runs in the March 2004 issue of the publication. In support of the interview, Reader's Digest released the following outtakes from the transcript which will not be included in the magazine article:
Mel Gibson on Tolerance:
"...even people who have been hostile provide you with an opportunity to practice tolerance. Which is a big lesson I need to learn. I'm just impatient, you know? And it's very easy if you get struck to try and strike back...I'm trying to learn that as I go...it's not about striking back."
Mel Gibson on 'Miraculous' Occurences on the Set:
"Yeah, these things were many. And, you know it's almost getting
like -- it's getting weird...I'm almost sorry I said anything, or
that anybody said anything...but I mean I was -- I saw these
things...I mean, there's 'Lightning Boy,' you know."
"We were up on top of the mountain and it was windy and the clouds were coming in...the whole film crew was there...and this grip...he'd never spoken a word of English to me. He was Italian, you know?...he looked at me and said in almost perfect English from Oxford...'I think old boy that we'd better get off this mountain before one of us in undoubtedly hurt'...So I said, ok, everybody off the hill...I immediately took off the rain started and it came down in buckets. And Steve McEveety was walking with Jim, who had an umbrella, and this great, big bolt of lightning went right down his umbrella and zapped him in the hand. His fingers were smoking. He had burnt fingers."
Mel Gibson on the Holocaust:
When Noonan requested Gibson go on the record and confirm that the Holocaust did actually happen, Gibson said, "I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century 20 million people died in the Soviet Union."
Mel Gibson on His Motivation for Making the Film:
"I was spiritually bankrupt, and when that happens, it's like a
spiritual cancer afflicts you," he said of the period when he first
began delving into the film's subject matter."
The Public Reaction to the Film:
"I expected some level of turbulence because when one delves into
religion and politics -- people's deeply held beliefs -- you're going to stir things up. But it was a surprise to have shots being fired over the bow while I was still filming, and then to have various loud voices in the press -- people who hadn't seen the work -- really slinging mud."
"My detractors would say that it (the movie) is going to promote hatred. I disagree. I think that's utter nonsense. The absurdity of that staggers me," Gibson said.
SOURCE: Reader's Digest
