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The Passion
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Interview with producer Nigel Stafford-Clark and writer Frank Deasy
For producer Nigel Stafford-Clark and writer Frank Deasy, The Passion was an opportunity to present the greatest story never told – a fresh, exciting and insightful new version of the story of Jesus's last week on Earth.
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At various times over the past two years, Nigel Stafford-Clark could have been forgiven for thinking divine forces were shaping his destiny.
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The hand of fate never seemed more strongly at work than when he landed the role of bringing the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s epic new version of The Passion to the screen back in 2006.
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"It was the most extraordinary example of two things coming together," explains Nigel, the award-winning producer of Warriors, The Way We Live Now and, most recently, Bleak House. "I had just finished Bleak House and was looking for what to do next."
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As he searched for ideas, he watched a newly-released DVD of Pasolini's 1964 classic The Gospel According to St Matthew.
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"I loved it when I saw it in the Sixties and started thinking about what other versions of Jesus's story have worked on film. And I came to the conclusion that there wasn't really another one, which seemed extraordinary with a story which is told so often and is so much a part of our culture," says Nigel.
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Nigel began to conceive of a drama which told, for the first time, the story of what motivated all the central players in the Passion – not just Jesus, but his disciples, Pontius Pilate, the Romans, the High Priest Caiaphas and the Jewish authorities.
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"I was at boarding school from seven to 17 and went to church every day and twice on Sunday. So I had absorbed Christian doctrine, and was very familiar with the events of that week. But I never felt as though I had grasped the whole story," he says.
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"I started to think about a drama that put it all into context; that dug deeper into the characters and their actions. Why did Pilate agree to have Jesus crucified? Why did Caiaphas want him condemned to death? Why was there such excitement when Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday?
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"All these were questions that I'd not seen answered dramatically before. This is a story that's often presented almost as though it took place in a vacuum. But it didn't. It took place at a real time, and in a real place. And both have an impact on what happened."
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He was still turning the idea over in his mind when he heard of the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s own plans to produce a drama about Jesus, in an ambitious new version of The Passion to be broadcast across Holy Week, Easter 2008.
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Nigel immediately contacted Jane Tranter at the ´óÏó´«Ã½ and pitched for the job. His bid was successful.
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His first task was to research the historical and theological material relating to the period. The knowledge and resources of Michael Wakelin, Head of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Religion & Ethics, and his team proved invaluable in this.
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"We put together a document which was as much as we could glean on all those involved – Jesus and his followers, the Romans, the Jewish religious authorities, the everyday life of Jerusalem."
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This meant reading beyond the Bible itself.
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"The Gospels are, as they should be, at the very heart of the story, although you have to bear in mind that they were written after the event and they were written with a specific purpose. There is also a Jewish historian called Josephus who wrote a lot about that period (interestingly, Jesus rates only a few lines in his account). And there are excellent theological historians like Helen Bond, EP Sanders and our consultant Mark Goodacre whose work you can draw upon."
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The story that emerged from the research was more complex and compelling than the traditional narrative that has been the staple of film-makers until now. "As soon as you put it back into context, it starts to come alive as a story," says Nigel.
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"You suddenly begin to understand why everyone acts the way they do. For the Romans, Palestine was very unruly. They only occupied it because it was between two of their most important provinces, Syria and Egypt, and they had to keep the lines of trade and communication open. Palestine itself produced very little for them except trouble.
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"Indeed, the Romans didn't occupy Jerusalem for most of the year. The Roman governor lived by the sea in Caesarea Maritima and only moved into Jerusalem with his troops during the three main religious festivals.
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"Of those festivals, Passover was both the largest and the most tense, because of its underlying message of resistance to imperial power. It celebrated the punishment meted out to the Egyptians by the Jewish God. So there was an element of political insurgency built into the festival itself. If there was going to be trouble for the Romans it would happen then. For that week the Romans moved in and basically sat on the city."
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As Nigel began to understand this, so he began to see that the pressure on the Jewish Temple authorities during this time would have been immense.
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"This was the most demanding time of the year for them, not only because of all the rituals associated with Passover but also because of the deal with the Romans. If the Temple Guard could keep order in the city the Romans would stand back and keep a low profile. If the Temple Guard lost control the Romans would get involved. And when they got involved they took no prisoners."
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All this explained why the High Priest Caiaphas would have been anxious to keep the peace. And why Jesus would have felt like such a threat.
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"I'm sure initially he wouldn't have merited more than a couple of minutes at their security meeting. The authorities would have known of him. A preacher from Galilee. A bit of a miracle worker, which in those days wasn't that rare. But Galilee was a backwater. So he wouldn't have been high on their agenda," says Nigel.
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"But then they learn he is coming into the city on a donkey's colt and he's coming in through the East gate, thereby fulfilling two of the oldest prophecies of the coming of the Messiah. So suddenly he goes from quite low on their radar to very high.
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"The next morning he comes into the Temple and overturns the merchants' tables. The situation becomes even more volatile. And so the week begins."
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The most surprising conclusion Nigel reached at the end of this process was that the Jewish authorities and Caiaphas in particular, may have been given a raw deal by history.
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"The priests have never been given a fair crack of the whip. Clearly the Gospels were not interested in telling the story from their perspective. And subsequently this has been enshrined in all the versions of the story, so no one has really looked at it from their point of view. They've just become bad men in big hats," continues Nigel.
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"And that is so unfair, because it seems likely that Caiaphas was actually a good and successful High Priest for almost 20 years. He managed to keep the peace, to keep the balance which must have been very difficult, so that his people were protected."
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Above all, however, Nigel wanted the focus to be on the story's charismatic central figure.
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"The ultimate purpose of bringing the story to life is to try and cast a fresh light on Jesus," he says. "He has undergone centuries of elaboration and interpretation, and we wanted to try and strip that away, to get back to the startling clarity and simplicity with which he addressed both his followers and his opponents.
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"Whatever your beliefs, it is impossible not to be moved by his suffering and awed by the depth of his humanity, and we needed to find a way to convey that, so that he seemed to be talking as directly and powerfully to us as he did to those around him."
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As this research process was beginning, Nigel and executive producer Hilary Salmon also started looking for a writer. He arrived in the form of Emmy-winning Frank Deasy, author of such original dramas as Real Men, The Grass Arena, Looking After Jo Jo and Prime Suspect – The Final Act.
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"The Nativity and the Passion were probably the first two adult stories I absorbed growing up in Dublin. Christ crucified is such a powerful, visceral image it burns itself into a child's consciousness. You never forget it but what is it telling us, what's it really about? I wanted to write a Jesus I could understand, one who feels real. I've tried to write the story like it's never been told before, you're meeting these characters for the first time," says Frank.
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He goes on: "This is a Passion you needn't ever have lifted a Bible or heard a sermon to enjoy. It's a drama about the people, their hopes, fears, human frailties, as they are tested during this week. Jesus, the disciples, Mary, Pilate, the Temple Priests, they all go through their own passion.
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"It's a very exciting story – a week that transforms Jesus from a minor local preacher to a defining figure in Western culture. That's quite a tale and we've tried to tell it with the maximum suspense, intrigue and drama.
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"It's also a moving and an uplifting story; we follow Jesus as he struggles with his destiny, his human weakness in the face of suffering and death. Later we see the renewal of hope and purpose in the light of death."
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After a lengthy period immersing himself in the Gospels and the history of the period, Frank's first job when he began writing was to put all this information to one side. Ìý
"At the end of the day you can only truthfully tell the story that comes from your own heart. A big early challenge was finding a voice for Jesus. A friend who is a priest suggested making Jesus speak in a simple, direct language, befitting a man who was arriving in a complex, sophisticated city having spent his early years in the provinces.
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"I travelled to Israel, to Jerusalem and the Galilee and it began to come together for me, I began to find a voice for Jesus, an easy conversational style, quite plain spoken, almost working against the grandeur of many Gospel translations.
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"One key to the writing was to understand the historical context in which the story was set and to explain what made each character tick. Everyone had to have a motive that we could understand, a logical psychology to the things that they do," says Frank.
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Some of these characterisations were flights of the imagination.
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"Jesus's betrayer, Judas, for instance, is seen as a spy, in the pay of the Jerusalem Temple Guards. All it says in the Bible is that 'Satan entered Judas'. It's in Luke. And that's it," he says.
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"So I wanted him to have a plausible background. I wanted to know why, if he had lived with these guys for two years while Jesus roamed Galilee, he became an informer. The first step was to think maybe he had been an informer before. The High Priests did receive reports back from the rest of Judaea about what was going on there, so it was plausible.
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"The thing that really brought him to life for me was making him very young. He is unsure and is torn between two fathers, Caiaphas, the most important man in his society, and Jesus, who he is enchanted by," adds Frank.
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"I've always had a soft spot for Judas, I wanted him to be forgiven."
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Equally Mary, Jesus's mother, about whom next to nothing is known historically, was also a work of Frank's interpretation.
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"In every single version we have seen she has been a long-suffering, adoring Madonna figure. It doesn't work dramatically and it's not plausible," he says.
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"So I thought of my own mother. She was a school teacher in Ireland in the Fifties but when she had children she had to stop working. She was a very intelligent woman and was deeply frustrated spending the rest of her life in a house of five men," he explains.
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His Mary is a woman like this, older, angrier and more willing to fight for her son than in previous versions of the story.
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"Now I couldn't point to any historical basis for that, but her emotions, her character feels real to me," says Frank.
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"Penelope Wilton takes that thumbnail sketch and brings it to life."
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Almost all the other characters, however, are based on hard historical evidence. Frank portrays Mary Magdalene as a supporter of Jesus's ministry, who follows him firstly through Galilee and then into Jerusalem.
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"There is increasing evidence she was a wealthy widow who supported Jesus's campaign. As he emerged from Galilee he needed backing," notes Frank.
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"Pontius Pilate is seen as a tough, soldier-politician dealing with the difficult task of keeping a lid on the political and religious cauldron that is Jerusalem.
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"Again I wanted his decisions to be plausible in their motivation. He's a guy managing a career and his wife's social aspirations, in a volatile political situation," he says.
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"I enjoyed seeing the world from the point of view of Caiaphas, the High Priest who asks Pilate to have Jesus crucified. When Deasy began developing him as a real character, with a life beyond the Temple, his drama really began to take shape.
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"As soon as I gave him a family I began to feel very comfortable with him. It is one thing to say he is defending a social and theological order but when he has a pregnant wife and a father-in-law who is also a former High Priest, which was true, it sets him up in a family context. He is trying to protect his world for noble reasons."
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Frank is proud of the drama that emerged at the end of this year-long process.
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"The stars of the show are the cast and the director Michael Offer, it's fantastic to look at and to me the performances are really fresh and moving and exciting. Jesus certainly touches my heart strings, he's bold and inspiring, fearful and uncertain, deeply and profoundly tender, Joe Mawle does an amazing job."
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He will be surprised if there is controversy, despite its innovative approach to the story.
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"Among people who care about these things it will provoke discussion not controversy, in the sense of people taking offence? They'll have to look hard for something to be upset by."
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Nigel agrees: "There are things that are new and perhaps surprising but essentially we are trying to tell the story by reducing it to its essence.
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"It's not going to cause controversy because of the way we're doing it. What will cause controversy is the fact that we are doing it at all. This is, after all, a story that has been argued about for 2,000 years. But I am more than happy to let the audience be the judge."
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