Whither Hollywood, Post-Passion?

“Expect a slew of religious movies following the extraordinary success of The Passion of the Christ,” reads the lead sentence of an Associated Press story predicting Hollywood's reaction to the record-setting popularity of Mel Gibson's spiritual and artistic masterpiece.

If Hollywood, home of the blockbuster sequel, thinks it has hit upon another winning formula, it had better pay attention to the fine details. Most notably, the film industry has to acknowledge that The Passion is compelling not just because it is religious or even biblical but because it works hard to be faithfully so.

Hence the tough question: Aside from Gibson, are there other major producers in today's Hollywood with the faith and understanding to get religious and biblical stories right?

Consider the 1985 flop King David, starring a Buddhist, Richard Gere. Critics panned it while Christians and Jews alike rolled their eyes at the casting and at a film that could make a life so rich in the struggles of faith seem so lifeless. The box-office take was less than $5 million. The lesson: To make a film about a life of faith, the film-makers have to connect with the struggle in a meaningful way — in the way the audience will connect with it.

On the other hand, the 1998 animated Prince of Egypt grossed $218.6 million worldwide. Produced by Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks at a cost of $60 million, this retelling of Moses' transformation from adopted son of the Egyptian royal family to leader of the Hebrew slave revolt benefited from beautiful animation, well-crafted songs and a compelling treatment of Moses' personal journey.

Tellingly, Spielberg himself recently dodged questions about The Passion at a press conference for the release of Schindler's List on DVD, saying he was “too smart” to get involved in the controversy. Spielberg, who is Jewish, clearly is comfortable with stories from the Old Testament but, understandably, not the New Testament.

The Christian Film & Television Commission, founded in 1978 by Dr. Ted Baehr, has been among the groups actively lobbying Hollywood executives to attract more ticket-buyers with films that appeal to Christian audiences.

Baehr notes that “the number of movies with positive moral content has increased from 68 such films in 1991 to 202 in 2002 — an increase of 197%. Even more amazingly, the number of movies with spiritually uplifting, redemptive and/or Christian content increased from a mere 27 movies to 135 in the same time period — an incredible 400% rise.”

Baehr's lobbying has been buttressed by the insightful work of Michael Medved, the film critic whose best-seller Hollywood Versus America first broadcast the case that the film industry was losing out because of its antipathy for what its audience holds most dear. Medved, an orthodox Jew, argued compellingly that Hollywood's anti-Christian bias and fetish for R-rated films was chasing away tens of millions of moviegoers.

S. Abraham Ravid of Rutgers University published a 1999 study in the Journal of Business looking at what factors best predict box-office success for a film. Star power? Megabucks advertising? No and no. His conclusion: “The only significant independent variables are the ratings — in other words, G- and PG-rated films seem to do better.”

Hollywood has gotten the message that most R-rated fare does not sell. In fact, Hollywood columnist Martin Grove argues that Gibson broke “Hollywood's Ten Commandments of movie marketing,” including “Thou shalt avoid R ratings, subtitles, strange languages, blood and gore, and graphic violence because they limit a film's audience.”

It will come as surprising good news to many Americans that to “avoid R ratings” is now conventional wisdom. Many have noticed, however, that the PG-13 rating is often used as a means to get what once was R-rated before a larger audience. But if Hollywood producers think the lesson of The Passion is that they need to make gory, brutally realistic versions of Bible stories, they will fail. The Passion will then become an aberration, not the start of a trend.

If film studios seek out the help of people such as Barbara Nicolosi and Stan Williams, faithful Catholics trying to work from the inside to win over the Hollywood culture, they stand a better chance of creating films that will resonate with the audience.

Producers need to work from the perspective of faith — or at least from a profound respect for it. As for Gibson himself, he has said he wants to try doing something lighter for his next project, though he has created a hunger for more films of spiritual substance. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Michael Judge has urged Gibson to dramatize the amazing life of the real St. Patrick. A worthy subject, no doubt.

Countless stories could be turned into edifying films with mass appeal. I for one wish Gibson would take up the story of King Baldwin the Leper of Jerusalem, who despite his crippling infirmity led his knights into battle to defend the Kingdom of Jerusalem established after the initial success of the Crusades. King Baldwin's story is movingly told in historian Warren Carroll's The Glory of Christendom. Having already earned the scorn of many Jews, would Gibson take up a subject from the Crusades, with our nation in the middle of a war against Islamo-fascist terrorists? Perhaps not. But perhaps he's the only one who could.

Jay Dunlap writes from Hamden, Connecticut.