Mel Gibson and the Pope Movie

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dsproule

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My husband heard on Catholic radio that Mel Gibson was thinking about doing a movie on Pope John Paul II. Isn’t that the best news?!?!?!? I can’t wait. Who do you think would be the best actor for the job?
 
That would be a BLOCKBUSTER!!!

I imagine the lead would be played by a no-name that can speak Polish but many languages as well???
 
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dsproule:
My husband heard on Catholic radio that Mel Gibson was thinking about doing a movie on Pope John Paul II. Isn’t that the best news?!?!?!? I can’t wait. Who do you think would be the best actor for the job?
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Unless it came from Mel’s mouth himself, I would be skeptical. Consider just a month ago we had the Fatima movie from Mel until he shot that down.

PF
 
Sounds interesting if true.

Just today, my dad recommended I try and see an old movie called ‘Shoes of the Fishermen’ or something like that, starring Anthony Quinn I think, something based on a book written by an NY journalist about the whole vatican procedure of handling a Pope’s death and finding a new one who turns out to be a Russian man from Siberia. Said to be very similar to how John Paul II became pope. Has anyone seen it?
 
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jdnation:
Sounds interesting if true.

Just today, my dad recommended I try and see an old movie called ‘Shoes of the Fishermen’ or something like that, starring Anthony Quinn I think, something based on a book written by an NY journalist about the whole vatican procedure of handling a Pope’s death and finding a new one who turns out to be a Russian man from Siberia. Said to be very similar to how John Paul II became pope. Has anyone seen it?
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Good movie. I would recommend it. Not sure how close it is to John Paul II, but not a bad movie.
 
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dsproule:
My husband heard on Catholic radio that Mel Gibson was thinking about doing a movie on Pope John Paul II. Isn’t that the best news?!?!?!? I can’t wait. Who do you think would be the best actor for the job?
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What’s your source, who said it and what station?
Well since Anthony Quinn is dead he’s not on my short list anymore he would have been good.
Gregory Peck he would have been good, he’s dead.
The Pope Used to be an actor to bad they didn’t get him for the job.
Jim Caveziel could play the younger Karol Wojtyla in Poland of course.
I don’t know if they could makeup the man properly without it looking fake for him to play the older JP2.
I think they should get an older actor to play his papacy years. The really good guys happen to be dead.
 
I think its speculation, but heres my picks for actor:

Anthony Hopkins
Patrick Stewart

And naturally, we have to bring in Peter O Toole as a Cardinal with ulerior motives, hes so good at that! 😛

I wonder if Barbra Streisand would let her hubby play Reagan again in a pro Pope movie? 😉
 
Maccabees/:
What’s your source, who said it and what station?
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I am the husband referenced in dsproule’s post.

I heard this information on Michigan Catholic Radio (1090 AM) from Executive Director John G. Kruse at about 5:15 PM Tuesday 13 April.
 
I also saw that on Spirit Daily’s web site: www.spiritdaily.com.

I don’t know why I thought of it, but Henry Thomas (E.T., Legends of the Fall) came to my head.

Wierd…:confused:
 
I saw the Shoes of the Fishman many years ago and remembering back on it the other day I thought it was actually about the election of JP II because of all the similarities. Then I learned it was actually made 10 years before, in 1968.

I have come across several distrubing claims about Mel Gibson, and I was wondering if anyone would like to respond to them. First, from watch.pair.com/passion.html:

“Gibson, who claims to be Catholic, belongs to an extreme sect in Malibu, California called the ‘Holy Family’ which has distanced itself from the main body of Catholicism and is not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Diocese. For Roman Catholics, the Holy Family is Jesus, Mary and Joseph, however, according to The Secret of Rennes-le Chateau, the Holy Family of the Grail cult is Jesus, Mary Magdalene and their children…”

Also, this site religioustolerance.org/chrgibson1.htm quotes him as saying, “I agree with everyone who says the Vatican is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” I can’t see how somebody with that view could make a credible movie about the life of Pope John Paul II.
 
It would be interesting of course but I can’t imagine any movie that could really capture the richness of the man. As someone said above, his fluency in languages alone would be hard to represent. The actors who play him would have to be actor-versions of JPII, genius dynamos, plus hopefully look like him a little. A movie could ultimately minimize the man in the eyes of the public at large, who will rely on it for all their information and then dismiss him as not such a big deal after all, especially if they are ill at ease with his teachings.
 
hmmm… Mel Gibson or the guy who played Jesus in The Passion for the young Pope and then Sean Connery for the older Pope! ooo! or the guy from CSI “Griffin”

yeah! i hope this is true!!!
 
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jdnation:
Sounds interesting if true.

Just today, my dad recommended I try and see an old movie called ‘Shoes of the Fishermen’ or something like that, starring Anthony Quinn I think, something based on a book written by an NY journalist about the whole vatican procedure of handling a Pope’s death and finding a new one who turns out to be a Russian man from Siberia. Said to be very similar to how John Paul II became pope. Has anyone seen it?
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I agree - it would be awesome if he did.

“The Shoes of the Fisherman” was taken from a book (I believe) by Irving Stone, who was sort of a pop fiction writer in the 50s & 60s. I’ve seen the movie a few times as a kid, but I really can’t recommend it now that I’ve grown up & developed some judgement. I’ll admit that the scenes of the election process are interesting, but other than that, it’s basically ****. While the main plot is about a Russian cardinal imprisoned in Siberia who is elected pope, the subplot is about some revolutionary young priest who is “persecuted” by the Church leadership for his unorthodox theology & how the pope defends him. The character of the pope is essentially a superficial 60s post-VII “progressive” dream come true: when he goes out to greet the crowd after being installed, he takes off his crown to gasps & talks about how he’s going to sell all of the Vatican’s treasures to stave off a famine in China & thereby World War III. It doesn’t help that he’s played by Anthony Quinn, one of the greatest hams to come out of Hollywood.

Other than the fact that the character is a Slavic pope, there’s really no similarity to our late John Paul the Great.
 
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timreg:
I can’t see how somebody with that view could make a credible movie about the life of Pope John Paul II.
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Anyone who could make such an amazing account of the passion of our Lord certainly has the wherewithal to do justice to the story of a man who devoted his entire life to Jesus with a passion.

Now, I don’t claim that Mel Gibson is a saint and I never liked much about his film-making before “The Passion”, but the fact is that the man went out on a limb to make perhaps the first really honest film about the suffering & death of Christ in the face of unwarranted & vicious criticism, and I admire him greatly for that. He might have made some extremist comments when he was younger, but I’ve seen several interviews with him during & after the filming of “The Passion” and he strikes me as being a sincere Catholic. There are still plenty of sources that can be used to discredit him, especially in the wake of the film’s success, and I suspect you ran across a few.
 
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