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FRESH MDUCAN GRILLE

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Mel Gibson, left, directs James Caviezel as Jesus on the set of "The Passion."

I

finally reached her, "I didn't think my
chances were high," she said.
She changed her mind when Gibson
— whose work she had admired —
promptly mailed her the script and flew
her to Rome to meet with him. "It was
the day after my theater opening, and I
was exhausted but full of emotions," she
recalled. "My heart was about to burst."
When she walked into his pre-pro-
duction office at Rome's Cinecitta stu-
dios, her first impression was "of a man
who was utterly enthusiastic and confi-
dent of his artistic vision." He didn't
ask Morgenstern to read from the script,
which was written in Aramaic, Latin
and Hebrew, but rather chatted with
her about her Gogol opening.
"We started a conversation like two
actors, and we were talking and talk-
ing until the casting director inter-
rupted and said, 'I have to know.
What is your decision about Ms.
Morgenstern?"' she said.
'And Mel Gibson replied, 'Of course
I'll take her — now please keep telling
me Maia, how was your opening?'"
Afterward, the actress was whisked
away to the wardrobe department,
where "everyone was so disappointed
with me at first.
"They said, 'Oh, she has short hair,
what a pity."' Gibson, unperturbed,
simply had them make her a wig.
When Morgenstern arrived for the
shoot in November 2002, she found
Gibson to be a director "who knows
exactly what he wants. He makes no
compromises with his art, and he
respects actors very much."
Gibson agreed with her interpretation
of her role as "essentially the question of
a mother losing a child." He was gra-
cious when she discovered she was preg-
nant with her own, third child in the
middle of the four-month shoot.
Over the course of the production,
Morgenstern emphasized, not a single
scene struck her as anti-Semitic.

Characters such as Mary and John are
sympathetic Jews, and Gibson "allowed
me to make suggestions based on my
Jewish culture," she said.
In the scene in which Mary learns
Jesus has been arrested, it was
Morgenstern's idea to whisper the
Passover question, "Why is this night
different from all other nights?"
When visiting reporters asked why a
Jewish actress was portraying Jesus'
mother, she replied, "I played
Clytemnestra in Oresteia, and it didn't
mean I killed my husband. And as far as
I know, Mary was a Jewish lady, so I
think it is very normal."
In between takes, priests visited the
set and the devout Gibson attended
Mass, but the Catholic presence was
"discreet," according to Morgenstern.
"We worked hard but it was a very
relaxed environment. We were actors
from all over the world, and the atmos-
phere was of sharing, like an exchange
of cultures. And we had our jokes. Mel
Gibson came once with a red clown
nose and asked me, 'Would you please
put this on for your close-up?'"
After Morgenstern returned home in
2003, she said she read a New York
Times article about the Passion contro-
versy but remained relatively isolated
from the conflict. She was unaware of
charges that Gibson's father was a
Holocaust denier, for example, or that
Gibson told the New Yorker that "mod-
ern secular Judaism wants to blame the
Holocaust on the Catholic Church."
The actress said she never heard him
make such remarks; she is concerned
that the media scourging amounts to a
kind of "censorship" that will prevent
the movie from finding a distributor.
"I'm very worried about that, because
I want this film to be seen by many,
many people," she said. "Despite the
blood and the violence, it's a beautiful
film. I believe it brings an important
message, a peace message." ❑

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