My friend Paul Dini sends the following…
Saw your piece on your blog re: The Passion of the Christ. I saw it in December at a screening in Austin. I can appreciate the passion Gibson himself undertook in making the film, but the violence in it turned me off. There was so much of it. We all know what happened to Jesus and how he died. Showing a little of that goes a long way. I found the attention to detail in Christ's tortures was almost fetishistic. It went beyond unpleasant and became after a while, numbing. I watched as the torture began, then as they were doing nothing but beating Jesus for about five minutes straight, I began to nod off. I woke up a few minutes later and they were still beating Jesus. I walked out of the theatre (it was morning) went down to Katz's Deli, had matzo brei and juice, read the local Austin paper, walked back to the theatre, took my seat again and discovered they were still beating Jesus. Once they started to take out the nails and hammer, I split for good. I knew how the story came out and didn't need to see it through to its bitter, though for many, ultimately uplifting ending. Give me Ben-Hur any day.