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Some interesting facts about the movie Last Tempt

(Reproduced without permission from PENTHOUSE, November 1988, by The Trace)

"Loony Bin"
by Marcia Pally

I've always been suspicious of where Donald Wildmon's American
Family Association (formerly the National Federation for Decency) gets
its funding. But now I'm sure the energetic reverend is in the pay of
the film studios. Why else would he lauch a massive campaign against
Martin Scorsese's _The Last Temptation of Christ,_ drawing the attention
of millions of Americans to a film that would otherwise slink through
the art-house circuit unnoticed by the S.R.O. audiences at Eddie
Murphy's _Coming to America_ or _Big Top Pee-Wee_? Any man who gets
this much press for an adaptation of a Kazantzakis novel has got to be
doing P.R. for Universal. And you couldn't find a better man for the
job.

Wildmon knows instinctively what every huckster, Broadway
producer, and publisher knew by trade at the turn of the century:
Comstockery is the best publicity. Ban a book or a play, or threaten to
boycott, and reporters from every rag in the country will trot out a
story in the very papers that wouldn't bother to review the show when,
or if, it came to town. So Wildmon sent out thousands of P.R. packets
to ministers across the country, urging a boycott of the film, which
shows Jesus struggling with human temptations and finally rejecting
them. Also on the hit list is everyone connected with the project, from
Universal Studios to Cineplex Odeon theatres and all the subsidiary
businesses that are owned by MCA Inc.

Presto! Reporters are scribbling their stories, quoting
Wildmon's covey of moral caretakers saying, "We're trying to destroy the
movie, we're not for censorship."

What a great ad campaign -- high profile and low logic,
self-righteous _and_ outrageous. As Mae West told the press, "I don't
care what you say, just spell my name right." But I can't give all the
credit to the fundamentalists. They are, to be fair, following in the
footsteps of the Catholics, who just a few years ago ran a similar
campaign about Jean-Luc Godard's _Hail Mary_. Now, there's one film
that needed help. It reaffirms the virgin birth, yet it is so...
Godardian that only six francophile cinema buffs would've gone to see
it. So the pope bans it -- the first work of art the Vatican nixed in
400 years -- and theaters sell out.

Wildmon's campaign is neat also because he can scream till
opening night, stirring up his succ?s de scandale, without any fear that
the film will actually be banned. Ever since the 1952 _Miracle_ Supreme
Court case, Americans have had the right to see whatever films they
choose without government interference. So Wildmon's ploy is foolproof.

I think. The _Miracle_ ruling came down in the fifties, and
things have changed so much since then.

Final note: When they started their ruckus, neither Wildmon nor
hs crew had seen the film.

 
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