Jesus eclipses Oscars
2004-02-28 11:01
Hollywood - Shrouded in secrecy and heralded by allegations of anti-Semitism and extreme violence, hype over Mel Gibson's new movie about the death of Jesus is eclipsing Hollywood's annual Oscars frenzy.
The heavily-disputed The Passion of the Christ, which opened in the United States on Wednesday to huge media fanfare, has knocked Oscar off the front pages just days ahead of Tinseltown's biggest night of the year, Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony.
"Gibson has collapsed the Academy Awards. The Oscars have been overtaken by the Passion," said Hollywood spin doctor Anthony Mora, an author and publicity expert who specialises in putting his clients in the news.
The controversy looks certain to make it a box office hit, keeping Hollywood tongues wagging over Gibson rather than cinema's highest honours, usually the sole subject of conversation in awards-obsessed Hollywood at this time of year.
Studio and Oscar bosses, used to being invincible in generating media "buzz," were desperately trying to boost the visibility of their films, their stars and the glittering Oscars show itself in the face of the stiff competition from Jesus Christ.
"The press and TV are focusing on the film - nobody is talking about the Oscars this week," Mora said of the dominance of the last days of Christ's life over the "golden guys."
"Every film in Hollywood dies for this kind of attention. It's getting much more attention than Lord of the Rings, - who's talking about Lord of the Rings this week?" he asked of the frontrunner in the Oscars race.
As Hollywood stars were polishing their jewels and having their designer gowns fitted for their stroll down the world's most famous red carpet on Sunday, their moment in the spotlight was being stolen by Mel Gibson.
Mora and other experts said Gibson and his distributors waged a cunning and savvy media campaign, eschewing traditional movie pre-publicity in favour of carefully orchestrated polemic which made the news pages as well as the entertainment section.
Gibson kept details of the film carefully under wraps for more than a year and excluded most media from seeing it in advance, preferring instead to organise advance screenings for hand-picked audiences - mostly churches and synagogue congregations and leaders who were sworn to secrecy.
"I think it was a calculated campaign," Mora said as Gibson, a fundamentalist Catholic who rejects the 1965 modernisation of the mainstream church, revealed he was "staggered" by the controversy but admitted he had taken advantage of it to promote the film.
"Once they saw there was a controversy they focused on the controversy itself - they didn't shy away from it. The media is always going to cover the most controversial story," Mora said.
And the strategy has worked in a way that had Hollywood's army of spin doctors' locked in rooms hatching plots to promote their next big thing with a healthy row, rather than the usual multi-million-dollar ad campaigns.
While Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings: The Return of The King, looks poised to walk off with the best picture Oscar and while Charlize Theron might well snatch the best actress trophy for Monster and Sean Penn and Johnny Depp vie for best actor, Gibson is laughing all the way to the bank.
Mel Gibson is the winner (of this year's Oscar week publicity battle), and he is not even nominated, Mora said.