The history of casting Hollywood stars in epic stories from the biblical world has been chequered, to say the least. There have been some successes, such as Charlton Heston’s towering 1956 portrayal of Moses in The Ten Commandments, but many more performances have had an appeal that is chiefly kitsch, from Liz Hurley’s recent Delilah to Dennis Hopper’s Samson in Turner Home Entertainment’s The Bible Collection.
Now Terence Stamp is to take on the challenging role of God in an epic 20-CD verbatim version of the New Testament that is being put together in Chicago.
Luke Perry and Marisa Tomei will also be joining a 100-strong cast, playing Judas and Mary Magdalene respectively, and the former adolescent heart-throb Lou Diamond Phillips is to play Mark, while John Heard is cast as Matthew. Such is the optimism about the vast project, which began recording in July and takes the New King James version as its text, that a reading of the whole of the Old Testament is already planned too, with actor Richard Dreyfuss slated to measure himself against Heston’s mighty Moses. The complete production will fill 70 spaces in your CD rack.
The producer behind The Word of Promise is Carl Amari (43), an entrepreneur from Chicago who made his fortune by restoring and repackaging hit radio shows from the past. He was a millionaire at 30 after starting a company called Radio Spirits that licensed more than 60 000 shows featuring the likes of George Burns, Milton Berle and Orson Welles.
Following the huge critical and commercial success of Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ, which cost $30-millionm to make and has grossed R$612-million in cinemas around the world, Amari has embarked on a plan to offer a digitally up-to-date retelling of the New King James version.
His choice of actor to play Jesus was a shoo-in. Amari turned to Jim Caviezel, who took the central role in The Passion of the Christ and is a co-producer on the new audio project. Amari is still negotiating over the part of Satan, a character he concedes has ”some of the best lines”.
The idea came to Amari as he read the Bible to his young children one night and realised he could not communicate the drama and sweep of its stories.
British journalist and broadcaster Rod Liddle, who presented a Channel 4 documentary on the King James Bible at Easter, believes the poetry of the text comes from its clarity. ”It is so absolutely direct and unambiguous,” he said. ”More recent texts have strayed away from that powerful directness. It is effectively a guide to good, plain English. It is so simple and easily understood.”
Michael York is the narrator, providing a crisply English voice. ”This beautiful story was meant to be read aloud, but so often when it is read aloud it’s not done with the drama that is there within the story,” he said.
Americans are fond of casting British actors as authority figures and deities, as well as devils and villains. ”I think it has to do with diction,” York explained, flippantly suggesting that Simon Cowell, currently starring in American Idol, would be best suited for the role of Satan.
”There’s a hunger for things that speak to a spiritual life, and I think now, with what’s going on in the world, people are thinking about religion and their faith quite a bit,’ Amari said. — Guardian Unlimited Â