Peter Gabriel and The Passion of the Christ

Interesting little Passion-related story on the Always On Network / Blog, Davo's Dispatch #2:

Speaking of events of Biblical proportion, one of my dearest Davos friends, musician and social activist Peter Gabriel, told me a story about "The Passion of the Christ." The controversial new film depicts the last 12 hours of Christ’s life on earth, and it turns out that the movie’s Website had incorporated some of Peter’s songs without permission. This fact set in motion a dialogue between Real World (Peter’s entertainment company) lawyers and those of the movie producer, Mel Gibson.

As Peter explained it, Mr. Gibson called him immediately to apologize and ended up making a donation to Peter’s non-profit organization, Witness, for his penance. He also agreed to send a tape of the movie to Peter for his private viewing. "I watched it and wept," Peter recounted. He says it is a very violent movie, but well directed with amazing cinematography.

And the controversy that the film is anti-Semetic [sic], painting Jews as "the killers of Jesus"? Peter points out, "Well, the Pharisees certainly didn’t look too good, but neither did the Romans."

I'm not quite sure where the "some of Peter's songs" is coming from; an earlier version of the teaser trailer used a Peter Gabriel track and that may have been on the official web site -- I can't recall. I do remember clearly that there were a bunch of samples of Peter Gabriel's songs on the site that describes itself as "the premier international fan site", which has been around for some time; and that site did remove the Peter Gabriel songs pretty quickly after they'd arrived.

Incidentally, the official site now does have John Debney listed as the one who has scored the film, with a little bio.