The Da Vinci Code; This Year's Biblical Box-Office Bonanza
The Da Vinci Code is now off and running as this year�s megabuck Biblical controversy. Question is, why do we seem to be afflicted with such a nearly annual entity? Slight thought reveals the obvious. Given the big numbers that a major studio has to turn to make a return on a movie, it�s hardly a wonder that they keep turning to what they, in their needy bottom lines, consider the biggest subjects available. Apparently, The Bible is pretty much at the top of their list. Here they can find one topic after another that, treated cannily enough, is guaranteed to outrage the sensibilities of millions of comparatively sincere and innocent people � and, as a result, garner enough free publicity to ensure that the usually mundane redo of Biblical history will become a must-see movie for millions around the world. Proof positive, last year we had the sincere savant of the box office, Mel Gibson, release his Passion of Christ on an expectedly ruffled world, and this year we�ve got resourceful action-adventure scribbler Ron Brown unloading the Hollywood version of his Da Vinci Mother Lode. No doubt in coming years one of the less-scrupulous perpetrators of popular outrage will write a book and/or make a movie about such admittedly touchy stories as the Virgin Mary and what exactly the Angel Gabriel was doing there the night he told her she was going to conceive. While this proclivity to Biblical blockbusters is inevitably tough on believers, it�s also hardly a source of placid delight to those who look on the entire explosive subject as evidence of almost inconceivable gullibility, even high up the ladder of either advocacy. Which, unfortunately, confirms just how wide an audience Hollywood can expect to attend such ventures toward assured filmic bullion.
