Tonight I have the director of that film Academy Award-winning director and actor. Let's welcome Mel Gibson to the Harvest Crusade.

Thanks Greg for asking me to come along here honored to be here and honored to be here.

They love you Mel

Well I love you folks you know about 12 years ago when I was literally when I made this film I was literally getting the tar kicked out of me and it was you people out there.

Evangelicals who stood up and supported me and I thank you at the time but I thank you again okay so that was great of you. Thanks so much.

You're welcome we love you know first of all Mel like you got some big guns going on there. Come on. Yeah you want arm wrestle right now. Come on. Let's go.

Okay go jump. Brave heart. I can't win. Okay. It's a dead heat. It's funny I was talking about backstage. I said Mel what was the first film that you were in and I chose some film.

I said no I was in something called Mad Max. I said yeah I think I've heard of that somewhere. Yeah I mean Mel has been in so many films but this film in particular the passion of the Christ you know as I said it it's sort of like going back in time.

I felt like I went into a time machine and almost was seeing it and you know there's some moments that are very graphic but as you've said in interviews maybe your film is realistic as it is.

In this graphic is it actually was the scourging the whipping the crucifixion itself but why did you make this film. Well I think there's a tendency for all of us to take that event.

Yeah and the extent of the sack of take it for granted. Yeah and filmically particularly said thematically I think it's been sanitized a fair bit.

So that it becomes I don't know ineffective ineffectual not emotional. Yeah and I wanted to illustrate the extent of the sacrifice Christ made.

So I felt that to do a film like that and my own experience contemplating over the years on the passion my imagination soared and there are readings on the matter that kind of brought home the dreadful reality of how bad it was.

And I just wanted to put that on film to give people maybe a new look and to sort of bring another theological perspective to it that perhaps they hadn't thought of before.

Yeah maybe hold them like just a little closer. Yeah wait that was so we can hear you a little bit but there you go that's good.

Now Mel there's a rumor the word in the street is that you're going to do a follow up to the passion and it's going to be written by Randall Wallace who how many of you have seen the film break part.

Have you seen break part okay well Mel directed that film he starred in the film is William Wallace and Randall Wallace wrote that film and so you and Randall are talking about writing a sequel to the passion.

So is that going to really happen. We're talking about that of course that's a huge undertake and you know it's not the passion too.

I mean it's called the resurrection that's right and it's right of course that's a very big subject.

Yeah and it needs to be looked at because we don't want to just do a simple rendering of it.

I mean we can all read what happened but in order to really experience and explore probably deeper meanings of what it's about is going to take some doing and Randall Wallace is up to the task.

He's also as well as a brilliant writer he's a great director director we were soldiers and heaven is for real and stuff so he's a good writer and director.

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