Dear Mr Gibson, Please make a brilliant film about St Edmund Campion.
Yours Sincerely,
Catholics in England
The graphic to the left is from the Facebook group of the same name. (For those on Facebook, here is a link to the group.) More than one person has suggested to me in the past that it would be a great thing if Mel Gibson were to make a film about the life of St Edmund Campion. This was always a good idea; after the new Elizabeth film, it is a must.
So the campaign starts here. Someone reading this blog must know someone who knows Mel Gibson. 1. Encourage him to read Evelyn Waugh's stirring account of St Edmund Campion (if indeed he has not already read it); 2. Challenge him to find a good reason not to make a thrilling, spectacular and emotionally-charged blockbuster movie about the Saint which would inspire anyone with an open mind; 3. Emphasise that this will counter the black legend, whig history propaganda of "Elizabeth. The Golden Age".
Fellow bloggers: I don't often make blatant requests of this sort so I hope you will excuse me on this occasion. If you agree with this idea, please post something about it. Let's get the word out and...
Unleash the power of the Blog!
42 comments:
I totally agree!! I must say I thought the first Elizabeth film was reasonable enough but this sequal was a disgrace. Just dreadfully anti-Catholic and a very, very heavily biased view of history. I think we were lucky not to see the King of Spain wearing an eye-patch and stroking a white cat.
There was the fig-leaf at the start of the film:
"Fear creates fear. I am not ignorant of the dangers, sir. But I will not punish my people for their beliefs. Only for their deeds"
Laughable though when you watch the rest of the film.
How sad it is that Westminister Cathedral was the site of some of the filming. This gives the impression that the Church approves of the content of the film. If someone was making a derogatory film about my family would I permit them to use the family home for some of the scenes?
Sharon
Mr Gibson's production company has been working on an Edmund Campion film for a couple of years now.
Wow, the pulling out the guts bit would be right down Gibson's alley. Remember Braveheart? =)
Campion's account will make a brilliant movie and would serve as a great apologetic for the Church. I'm all for it.
"Catholics in England"
--And Scotland too! After all, she erm... killed our Queen!?
Dear Mr Gibson,
please stay away from St Edmund Campion, as any film by you will be 90% about hanging , drawing and quartering.
Yes my Priest wants the same...
Sounds like an excellent idea! Come on Mel Gibson!!!
I was hoping that Mel would make one about the Swiss Guards' last stand during the Sack of Rome, ala "300".
But the Campion movie would do, I guess, only if he made the tortures very graphic.
LOL, the Vader variation is great. I'm in. I'll post him.
Shall we start an online petition via your facebook group? We, the undersigned hacked off Catholics of Britain... ps please pretty please could I help with the screen play? :-)
I second the motion! We were discussing the same line of thought over dinner in Rome last week during a gathering of priests involved with the Faith Movement. Come on Mel give us another film to be proud of.
I have it from a priest chum who has discussed it with friends of Mel Gibson - this is an active, ongoing project with Austalian funding pledged. Watch this space
Oh i meant to say Miles Jesu had a meeting with Mel some years back..must see if they have a contact..
I just posted it on Fisheaters on Art and Entertainment...! Not a blog, but a lot of people will see it!
I'll see it on the large screen and buy the DVD. I recommend Eamon Duffy as consultant.
Romulus
*laughs* I love the Darth Vader image, Fr. Tim. God Bless!
Father,
The film was terrible and warrants your adjustment of the title.
My wife and I saw it the first weekend it came out over here. We're simply suckers for anything that smacks of 16th century England, we were thoroughly prepared though, and got a good laugh out of the comic book portrayal of Catholics. We're blessed to know y/our (we're across the Pond) history, but we were also aware that 9/10ths of the audience left feeling they'd just gotten a dose of truth.
I heartily concur that Waugh's book would make a great movie, and if anyone wants to work up a petition to send to Mel, I'll be the first to sign!
Many thanks for all the encouragement. It is very good to hear that the project is already being considered.
Keep posting - I'm not sure it's still being considered. John Mortimer was pproached to write the screenplay. Funding was available and MG was approached over a dinner. It was suggested that Jim Caviezel would be ideal for the title role. The way it was put to MG was what would he have to show for it when he appeared in public on Judgement Day.
It made him think. The outcome? The Passion of Christ.
So keep blogging if you want to prick his conscience - but please don't mention the Pope!
Such a great film would be something of an artistic stretch for Mr Gibson, involving, as it must, a positive portrayal of an Englishman. To the best of my knowledge, that's not something he's managed to do before in any of his films.
Still, he'd be able to make a whole bunch of others look right nasty indeed. That might actually be a fine "sales point" when he's approached.
Evelyn Waugh ?
Edmund Campion ?
Brilliant.
Why do I suspect the Church would want nothing to do with it ?
I second Fiorella to do the screenplay (based on Fr William's Daughter, which was great!
I agree completely! I also think a great follow up to "Apocalypto" would be the story of Juan Diego and the Virgen de Guadalupe.
Rob
I've always thought another great film for Mel would be an adaptation of "The Guillotine and the Cross" by Warren Carroll.
It could change our modern silly ideas about the 'necessity' of this revolution. (And dampen spirits on Bastille Day.)
It doesn't go far enough. It should mention that she was a:
Bastard
Bitch
Murdress
Perjurer (if she sware the traditional catholic coronation oath, she broke it. I don't think that Dr Owen Oglethorp, the bishop of Carlisle, would have continued with the coronation mass if she hadn't).
Evelyn Waugh's book is good as far as it goes but the opening is pure fabrication. Queen Elizabeth I did not die, semi-standing, on a pile of cushions. Far better is the book on which Waugh's is based, Richard Simpson's life of Campion, published in 1867. Then there is the recent collection of essays, 'The Reckoned Expense', edited by Thomas McCoog SJ, which brings the latest research up to date.
Simpson wrote a sentence that all Catholic bloggers should read, especially Fr Finigan: 'Those who think themselves infallibly certain that they are infallibly in the right can never profit from the lessons of history'.
If Mel is indeed making this film (and the rumour mill has been churning this out for some time)don't expect it to be objective history, but blood-soaked melodrama bordering on caricature.
I think a film about St Edmund Campion would be great but I'm a bit worried that it might end up as factually incorrect and biased as the Elizabeth films and Braveheart. If it were done well it could be brilliant but if not then it would be a disaster. The world won't scrutinise things of the world but when I comes to the Church its slighty less apathetic.
Hold on there! I really don't think that this new "Elizabeth" movie is going to bring the "No Popery" mobs out into the streets, torching Catholic chapels and looting homes, gin distilleries etc. We have moved on a bit since 1850. You have to reflect what so-called "historical" plays and movies are really all about. Was "The Crucible" really about seventeenth century Salem? Do you really think that "A Man For All Seasons" is primarily concerned with the religious wrangles of the 16th cent.? Why do you think the play "Richard II" was political dynamite in the last decade of the (real) Elizabeth's reign? Surely no-one cared too much about the deposing of a Plantagenet King two hundred years earlier. What's the real message of that beautiful film "The Mission"? Join the Society of Jesus. I think not. What these all have in common is that they are analogies (or parables, if you like) aimed at making a contemporary point.If you can't or don't want to(or daren't) make a play or movie about real contemporary, or near contemporary events, for fear of reprisal or prosecution for libel or whatever, you choose some episode in the past that, with a bit of bodging (or a lot of bodging) can be made to serve as a vehicle for what you really want to say. So with this movie. Ostensibly about Elizabeth I, it is almost certainly really about Indira Gandhi. For evil, plotting religious-extremist Catholics, read Sikhs and Hindu nationalist opponents of Gandhi's secularising policies (hammed up as Elizabeth's supposed rationality and "tolerance"). Elizabeth's story can also be given the happy ending (triumph over evil plotting bigots and dastardly assassins)which eluded poor old Indira. Believe it or not ? Believe it.
As for Mel Gibson being let loose on English history - you must be joking!! Mel's "historical" movies - Braveheart, The Patriot must rate amongst the crudest abuse of history as propaganda ever to hit the silver screen - right up there with "Friederich Der Gross" and "Alexander Nevsky" -though the latter did have some artisitc merit. Don't let enthusiasm for "The Passion of The Christ" blind you to that. Mel loathes the English. Why would he want to make a movie about an English saint and martyr? And would we really want him to?
I haven't seen this film, and don't intend to. The publicity still was enough to put me off. I mean c'mon, QE1 in armour and on horseback with her hair hanging down her back like some Brittanic war goddess??? Did he think he was making a film about Boudicca? But just out of curiosity, how has it actually done box-office-wise in the UK?
Over here in Ireland it averages 2 stars at most in reviews I've seen and I haven't talked to anybody who's even been to see it (then again, they mightn't want to admit to it).
As for a Campion movie, great idea, but as some other poster said it might be hard for Mel to do a sympathetic portrayal of an Englishman. What's the betting St. Ed would end up with a strongish, erm, "celtic" makeover :)? Jaykay
I've had the same thought since reading Waugh's biography a half-dozen years ago; this would make a great movie. Someone get Mr. Gibson a copy of Waugh's book if he doesn't own one already.
JB - analogy for Ghandi? Well that's a thought, I suppose. But the analogy or parable is meant to tell a truth through something familiar. Here, is is assumed that we are all familiar with the dastardly Catholics and the beatific Elizabeth I.
Couple of points. The Gandhi I'm referring to is not Mahatma Gandhi, it's Mrs Indira Gandhi, Nehru's daughter, who was sassassinated following the sacking of the Sikh Golden Temple at Amritsar. So was her son, Rajiv, subsequently.
As for the batific Elizabeth and dastardly Catholics - well, surely, we've all got that message haven't we, since "popular" history, esp on TV, never tires of peddling that particular theme of our "National Story". Whig history hasn't died. It's just evolved. And nowadays, it's got a new twist. Religion means Fanatics. Fanatics means suicide bombers. Catholics = Gunpowder Plot. Muslims = 911. Time for rational people to root out religion from the face of the earth; then we can all live in peace (pace John Lennon) and bathe in rivers of chocolate. Believe me, we're gonna get a lot of that. It's already started and it won't go away for a long time yet. Never mind. What was it Newman said about suffering persecution being the mark of the true Church? We should certainly expect to be persecuted, vilified at the very least - and welcome it as clear evidence we're on the right path.
Thanks to the wonders of my university, I'm 4 degrees from Mel...I'll pass the word down the line :-)
My brother has long wished for a film based on "The Western Uprising" by Fr Philip Caraman SJ. It's said that around ten percent of the population here in Cornwall was massacred by mercenaries under Edward VI for opposing the withdrawal of the Mass. How often do we English hear about that?
Yes, Yes, Yes.
Fr. Finigan, I had this idea nearly 2 years ago, after I had read Fr. Robert Hugh Benson's "Come Rack! Come Rope!" I kept thinking Mel Gibson should make a film out of this incredibly thrilling, inspiring, heartbreaking book (in which St. Campion makes a cameo appearance). I've mentioned it a number of times to others, and have even considered writing him a letter and sending the book his way. Will indeed post your suggestion on my own blog.
campiana7I emailed Tom Allen about 4 or 5 years ago asking him to read Evelyn Waugh's Edmund Campion and to see if he could contact Mel Gibson to do something. He replied that he would buy the book and that he was flattered that he thought I would think he could contact Mel Gibson...looks like he has!!
Chiara (non-de-plume)
Tom Allen
Tom Allen is editor-in-chief and president of www.CatholicExchange.com, a leading Internet portal for Catholics. He is also co-producing Jeff Cavins' new "Morning Air" drive-time radio program which is scheduled to hit the national airwaves in March, 2003.
Tom has spent considerable time and energy over the past four years developing a theatrical film about the life and ministry of Brother Bill Tomes of Chicago, whose work with the inner city youth gangs has attracted the attention of an array of major media, including Time magazine. The project, which Tom is producing with the actor Judge Reinhold, features a script written by noted Hollywood screenwriter Angelo Pizzo ("Rudy," "Hoosiers") and Jim Caviezel ("The Count of Monte Cristo," "The Thin Red Line") in the lead role. He is also developing a motion picture on the life of St. Edmund Campion, which will feature actor/director Mel Gibson in a supporting role.
Educated at the University of Notre Dame (B.A.-English, 1984), Tom studied film production at New York University and afterward served for four years as senior editor of Moviemaker Magazine. After that he served as assistant supervisor of a Catholic Charities homeless shelter for men in Seattle. He now lives in Oceanside, California, with his wife and four children.
If this was still pre Vatican 2, this would be a great idea, now I can only say the death of the martyrs of England and Wales seems like a terrible waste...
Crammers "Book Of Common Prayer" is now actually approved by Rome. It is used as part of a special Mass book for members of the USA Anglican church who were recived into the Church.
All that the Church suffered under the Tudors and latter during the penal times seems like a sad waste, in the light of the aftermath of Vatican2.
Mel Gibson, would be the first to agree with this conclusion...
Edward P. Walton
Regarding the above:
Included in the liturgical book mentioned above, they use Crammers , "Book Of Common Prayer" for the Eucharist, administering the sacraments, (weddings)
burial rites etc.
"The Book Of Divine Worship"
Newman House Press
21 Fairview Ave. Mt. Pocono, Pa 18344
Concordat Com Originali
Rev. Monsignor James P. Moroney
Committee on the Liturgy U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
Censor
Imprimatur
Bernard Cardinal Law
Ecclesiastical Delegate for the Pastoral Provision
August 28, 2003
ISBN 0-9704022-6-0
Edward P. Walton
Mr. Gibson, like all Holywood Producers, is motivated by Mammon. The risk he took on the Passion was financial and paid off. Therefore, his motive would not be the promptings of the Mystical Body, but the liklihood of financial success. Campion, to my mind, is a great idea: but there are not enough minds who would pay £7 a go to make it viable. Sorry. The Anonymous C
Does anybody really want to see the truth about St Edmund Campion or is it too gory and needs to be kept under wraps for the majority of people. I think people should know the truth. And St Margaret Clitherow come to that. Wonderful lady.
Hello, hello helen! I agree with you - the "gory truth" about St Edmund Campion is part of a life story that is full of heroism and hope.
Anon - I don't think Mel Gibson is motivated by cash in the same way as all other Hollywood producers. He arranged daily Mass on set early in the morning when filming "The Passion of the Christ" and most people considered it a high risk financially. Until he made his money back the first week :-)
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