SUBMITTED BY Timbo

February 26, 2004 — Though "The Passion of the Christ" may be reaping big box office, it is making waves in Hollywood in different ways, according to the New York Times.

Amid the daily dealings of Hollywood, the film and the star have been fodder for unfavorable gossip. Dustin Hoffman has talked to friends about what he called Mr. Gibson's "strangeness" during the ABC interview. The producer Mike Medavoy said Mr. Gibson's religious zealotry made him feel uncomfortable. Mr. Hoffman is Jewish; Mr. Medavoy is the child of Holocaust survivors.

"One question is, `What propelled him to make the movie about the passion of Christ?' " Mr. Medavoy said. "It makes me a little squeamish. What makes me squeamish about religion in general is that people think they have the answer: `I think my God is the right God.' How do you argue against that?"

But many non-Jews in Hollywood have also been unhappy about the religious divisions that the movie has exposed and could deepen. A public relations expert who usually works closely with Newmarket, which is distributing the film, said she declined to work on the film, though she is Roman Catholic. "This kind of thing tends to bring out the worst in people," she said, insisting that her name not be used.

The director David O. Russell, who described himself as areligious, said that although he had not seen the film, he was disturbed by the prospect that "The Passion" could feed anti-Semitism. "There are so many wonderfully provocative things about Jesus' life and death that challenge us to be better people," he said. "If it stirs anti-Semitism, then what a wasted opportunity."

Melisa Richter, a publicist who worked for one of the largest Christian movie production houses in the country, Cloud Ten Pictures, wrote in an e-mail message that the film "feeds into the culture of anti-Semitism that is out there, repeating it again and again in a popular format (the film medium), lacking vital historical context and background."

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