ABC's "Judas" Film Screened at Biola
For director Charles Robert Carner, ABC's upcoming movie "Judas" is a Good Friday movie, not an Easter Sunday movie.
As he explained to a crowd of 250 packed into Myers Hall for an advanced screening of the flick, which airs on Monday, March 8, it is because of this that there is no resurrection scene at the movie's end.
Carner joined the film's executive producer, Frank Desiderio, and lead actor, Johnathan Schaech ("That Thing You Do"), for an intimate Q-and-A format session following Biola's exclusive Feb. 18 screening.
While Desiderio originally envisioned the film airing on Good Friday after the film's completion more than two years ago, he now sees the timing of the release of "Judas" as an opportunity for evangelistic dialog.
"Mel Gibson's movie is creating a cultural wave that we're surfing in on and I like it because you've got a movie in theaters and a movie on TV," Desiderio said. "This creates an evangelical opportunity for Christians and non-Christians to talk to each other."
Desiderio believes that the unique perspective of "Judas" puts Gibson's film into context by illustrating the political unrest of that era and showing why the Jews and Romans felt threatened by Jesus' message.
Desiderio added, " In Gibson's movie you just see the crucifixion and the resurrection. We show everything up to the crucifixion. The two movies taken together tell the whole story."
The trio shared with the audience their vision for the picture and discussed what makes this Jesus film so different from any other.
In addition to the absence of a resurrection scene, the script showcases the relationship between Jesus and Judas. Carner, Desiderio and Schaech all agreed that they were each compelled to join the project after reading the film's script.
"What attracted me to the project were a number of things about the script," Carner said. "First, there was the immediacy of the language, which I found to be accessible without being too anachronistic. The script presents the humanity of Jesus but also accepts, in a very matter of fact way, his divinity and mission. And the third thing that attracted me to the script was the way it brilliantly told what we know about Judas -- that he was a disciple, that he betrayed Jesus and that he committed suicide -- and told a believable story of how a man just like us could go through that."