Mel vs. Chris

L.A. writer Christopher Noxon has more than passing interest in Mel Gibson and the Passion of the Christ. He wrote about the movie and its maker (and its maker's wacky father) last March in the New York Times Magazine. Since then, he's taken some heat from Gibson. Noxon recently saw a bootleg copy of the film and has been observing Gibson's media tour. He pens a piece at Salon.

Mel Gibson is on the TV, squinting straight into the camera, talking about ... me.

No, wait, this is even weirder: He's talking to me.

And he's pissed.

"You can say what you like about me," he says. "I'm a public person, I suppose, although I don't remember signing the paper saying I have no rights to privacy. You can pick on me. But like, if you start picking on my family while I'm out of town, get ready."

He lets that last line hang, leaning forward and raising his eyebrows suggestively. Suddenly he's Martin Riggs, the wild-eyed cop on the edge from "Lethal Weapon," laying down the law to a wiseass perp (in a scene that usually comes just before the one where he lets loose a left hook that sends thug teeth flying like so many loose Chiclets. Um, honey, can you check the deadbolt?).

Noxon speculates that the film's "amorous depiction of torture might be inspired by something a little baser than spirituality." And he writes there has been a surreal quality to Gibson's attacks on his NYT story.

I was simply dumbfounded -- I'm a lone freelance journalist who had approached Gibson's publicist with questions that were bound to come up when he decided to make a movie that not only represents a huge artistic and financial risk but also an open effort to evangelize. Why not simply address questions about faith, family and history? Why send a $400-an-hour litigator nicknamed "Mad Dog" after me, the New York Times and a homeowner's group that reviewed plans for his church? Why employ the same ignore-and-then-attack strategy with scholars who wanted a say in how the Passion was portrayed? Why limit screening audiences to political conservatives, evangelical Christians and Kathie Lee Gifford? Why offer this response to a critical piece on the film by New York Times columnist Frank Rich: "I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick ... I want to kill his dog."

For the record, Peter Boyer's piece on The Passion of the Christ in The New Yorker in September suggested that Noxon's father has been an antagonist of Gibson's plans for a new church in Agoura Hills. At Salon, Noxon's piece is paired with a take by Heather Havrilesky on this week's Gibson interview on ABC with Diane Sawyer.

(In Tuesday's LAT, Carina Chocano calls the Gibson-Sawyer matchup "a fascinating hour of television." [And by Tuesday, I mean Wednesday])