Tara Ison - Reeling Through Life - How I Learned to Live, Love and Die at the Movies

How many people have died, because He turned away His face?

By now Judas is really worried, because Jesus can’t control it like he did before! He goes to Caiaphas, and in exchange for thirty pieces of silver tells him where The Last Supper (which I think was a regular old Passover Seder for these Biblical Jews, right?) is being held that night. Cut to a picnic in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus (terrible host) berates his followers (all men, no women, not even to serve the food, not even the faithful, besotted Mary M.) for all the bad things they are going to do: Betray him, deny him, and, once again, just not love him enough:

JESUS

For all you care, this wine could be my blood!

For all you care, this bread could be my body. .

I must be mad

Thinking I’ll be remembered

I must be out of my head

Look at your blank faces!

My name will mean nothing

Ten minutes after I’m dead!

Jesus sings his doubts straight to God now, Tevye- and Moses-like, gazing up at the heavenly clouds (the usual “visual” stand-in for God — if God is everywhere, why can’t He ever be represented by a cricket or a rock?), about how fed up he is with everything. He wants to know why he has to die for this to all work out — will that really make any difference?

JESUS

If I die, what will be my reward?

Can you show me now that I would not be killed in vain?

Show me just a little of Your omnipresent brain

Show me there’s a reason for Your wanting me to die

You’re far too keen on where and how

And not so hot on why. .

And yet decides in the next beat to stop browbeating God, and just go along with His plan:

JESUS

All right, I’ll die!

Just watch me die!

See how I’ll die!

Take me now

Before I change my mind. .

Jesus is arrested, passed from Caiaphas to Pontius Pilate (finally, a Roman), who tries getting Jesus to admit he’s planning a big coup as King of the Jews, which Jesus entirely denies. Bored by this petty Jewish criminal, Pilate passes him along to King Herod, who is in charge of the Jews, and we troop off to a porcine, granny-glasses-wearing, half-naked, poolside-lounging Herod (played in hilarious Richard-Simmons-meets-Bob-Fosse fashion by Josh Mostel, son of Zero — a Forgive me, please , to the Mostel family by Norman Jewison?), who, in the show-stopping number, part ragtime, part burlesque, entirely high camp, taunts him:

KING HEROD

So you are the Christ

You’re the great Jesus Christ!

Prove to me that you’re divine

Turn my water into wine!

That’s all you need do

Then I’ll know it’s all true!

Come on, King of the Jews!

Oh, what a pity, if it’s all a lie!

Still I’m sure that you can rock

The cynics if you try!

I’d only ask what I’d ask any superstar. .

I agree: Show me the miracles! But this is all beneath Jesus, whose silence throws Herod into a snit: You’re a joke, you’re not the Lord! You are nothing but a fraud! So it’s back to Pilate. By now a mob — a Jewish mob — has inexplicably gathered, ranting and raving that Pilate must crucify him! Crucify him, crucify him!

A-ha: The “Christ-killers” I have heard about! So the Romans were, in fact, the good guys, it’s the Jews , yes, such troublemakers, who are suddenly, misguidedly out for Christ’s blood. So, what is with these vengeful, angry Jews? There has been no actual threat made against them, no “Get your Jesus in line or you’re all in trouble!” edict; all the doom and gloom has come from other Jews like Judas and Caiaphas projecting their anxieties. The Romans haven’t seemed all that concerned about some lowly carpenter wandering around. Are the Jews so paranoid, so hungry for a prophylactic scapegoat? And where did this sudden clamoring mob of Jesus-denying Jews come from? Just minutes ago they were all over their rock star Jesus, hoping to touch the hem of his spotless white robe.

Poor Pilate actually pleads with the mob:

PILATE

What do you mean, you’d crucify your king?

He’s done no wrong

No, not the slightest thing!

I see no reason, I find no evil

This man is harmless

So why does he upset you?

I need a crime!

But the crazed Jews are relentless, so to appease these “vultures,” Pilate agrees to have Jesus (bloodlessly) flogged, begging the tight-lipped Jesus all the while to help him: Please say something, Jesus, save yourself, help me to help you! The bloodthirsty Jews are unsatisfied, so Pilate at last has no choice: You want your guy dead? Okay, fine, whatever.

Cut to a 1970s lounge act: Judas appears (reanimated, as he hanged himself after tipping off the Romans — the image of which taps into the visual rhetoric of lynching and is far more disturbing than the sanitized images of Jesus being flogged or crucified) in a V-necked white jumpsuit, back-up singers in fringed white disco-wear, and a groovy gospel choir behind them:

JUDAS AND SINGERS

Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ!

Who are you, what have you sacrificed?

Jesus Christ Superstar

Do you think you’re what they say you are?

intercut with more “realistic” images of Jesus dragging his cross (which seems to weigh about ten pounds) through the streets, still being taunted by the screaming crowd of murderous Jewish vultures. Suddenly the music stops: the sound of hammering (what is being hammered is out of frame), and the image, mostly in shadowy silhouette, of Jesus being raised on the cross. Mary M. is there, crying, faithful to the end. There is the sound of mocking laughter— Jewish mocking laughter, of course — that a few years later will sound exactly like nasty schoolmates laughing at pig-bloodied Carrie at the Prom.

JESUS

Father, forgive them. They know not what they do . .

“They” meaning, of course, the Jews. Who, in addition to being fickle and bloodthirsty Christ-killing vultures, are so, so ignorant.

The troupe, back in street clothes, reboards the bus, with the noticeable exception of Jesus, or the actor playing Jesus, whom they are leaving behind; the Mary M. actress and the Judas actor gaze reverently back to the final shot: A silhouette of the cross, the setting sun.

After the movie, I will ask my parents to purchase the hypnotic, addictive soundtrack on cassette, and for months I will walk around the house with my tape recorder, blithely singing Christ, you know I love you! I believe in you and God so tell me that I’m saved! Jesus, I am with you! Touch me touch me, Jesus! Jesus, I am on your side, kiss me kiss me, Jesus! just as I did with the Broadway soundtrack for Hair , when I walked around at age seven singing about fellatio and cunnilingus.